Google Integrating Banner Ads in Image Search

Have you noticed Google’s banner ads on Google Images lately? As part of their objective to improve users’ experience in best finding the information they are looking for, Google is testing ads on search pages for Google Image Search. This tryout is strictly targeting U.S. advertisers using text and static image ads.

The new AdWords ads on Google Images look very much like the existing AdWords ad but have their own thumbnail of product image, along with the text copy. Unfortunately, it appears that these new ads are triggered only by text matches and do not use image recognition which places it in a spot unrelated to remaining images in the results page.

It’s a bit early to tell how the algorithm is being tweaked; however, we are optimistic that after the testing period, the official launch of these ads to the public will bring about improvements in terms of relevancy to text searches. Irrelevant image ads would have a much worse outcome than irrelevant text ads and turning user traffic off is no one’s goal.