Following the recent news of a new ad format coming to Google AdSense, the Flaunt Digital team discuss what marketers need to know about ‘Auto-Ads’. Check out the full Industry Spotlight videos on the Flaunt Digital YouTube channel.
See below for a full video transcription.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION
Lee: So the first topic we’re gonna cover is Google AdSense launching a new type of format. Basically this is Google’s AdSense platform introducing AI into the way that AdSense will serve ads across the GDN network.
Jamie: How does this differ from the current AdSense formats?
Chris: It’s based on machine learning. What it’ll do is it’s one piece of code that publishers are encouraged to put across the website and it helps them to monetize the space a little bit better because it’s auto-placement. And the reason they’ve done is basically to make interaction better for ads. So it’s automatically choosing placements based on best performance.
Jamie: Is this just web or apps or mobile, desktop, everything?
Chris: I’m not too certain to be honest but yeah. It’s simplifying the way that publishers can advertise and use and monetize the space, and I think they’re reporting on quite substantial growths in revenue through published sites as well. I think that, yeah, the main benefit is that it saves time for publishers messing about and figuring out where they’re gonna place ads on the websites. And this piece of code will basically identify the most relevant position for that ad to be served, which is effective for everybody. It’s effective for advertisers, it’s effective for publishers in terms of making money.
Jamie: Cool. So it’s gonna figure out which position to put it in based on content in the page or it’s just gonna blast it everywhere and then decide which one works best and then keep putting it there? Or…
Chris: No, it’ll decide placement and frequency. So obviously it takes into account machine learning and AI and stuff, and it’ll figure out where to place it for best performance. So best interaction. Whether that’s, I don’t know, a click or a hover.
Jamie: Is that based on the industry you’re in? So when you set up your industry, say you say jewellery or whatever, and they’ve already been really successful putting jewellery ads in this place. More that, sort of, is that what you mean by machine learning?
Chris: Yeah possibly, I guess it’ll read history of similar sites and performance of particular categories or things like that. I imagine it takes a hell of a lot into account that we probably won’t ever find out, to be honest with you.
Jamie: If it’s cost efficiencies for advertisers then it’s good, isn’t it.
Chris: Well, yeah, it benefits both parties and I think the main benefit for publishers is it’s really simple to integrate. It’s just one piece of code that you put on your page. You turn it on or you turn it off.
Jamie: Oh, so it’s opt in? It’s not just taking over? Something you’ve got to specifically opt into by adding some more code?
Lee: Yeah, it’s a type of ad format.
Chris: Well, yeah. It’s an ad format that you choose so, yeah, instead of agreeing certain deals with exchanges and things like that you can just basically put this code over and say “Yeah, I’m happy for AdSense to deliver the ads in these placements across my site.” The only disadvantage of this is that obviously you lose a little bit of control when it comes to ads showing across your site. You don’t want to obviously completely blast every ad placement because your website will start looking a little bit messy and things like that. So it takes a little bit of control away from the publisher which isn’t great.
Lee: Yeah, however one of the key points is they reckon that it’s gonna provide a better user experience which is kind of an underlying theme with everything that Google are doing at the moment. So whether that means that if they deem it not a good user experience they won’t show it at all…
Chris: Yeah, possibly.
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