Interesting article and I think it explains how they're successfully losing my industry advertisers by Google focussing more on the retail-end of transactions with "provable" conversions...that's if I've understood it correctly?

I know what your industry is, but I don't know enough about it to say that that's what is going on. But it definitely seems like they're going more for targeting users (personas) as opposed to placing contextual ads.

As an advertiser I can say that for me, that approach does produce more results.

But it's probably true that that won't be the case for every niche.

But it definitely seems like they're going more for targeting users (personas) as opposed to placing contextual ads.

That's how I understood it as well and to be honest it makes much more sense for Google since it is a much easier quantifiable metric to qualify rather than trying to comprehend trading practices of global evergreen companies of which they have absolutely no understanding whatsoever.

He was making a point about content saturation. However, this applies to display advertising, as well. If you are targeting people in apps and/or on YouTube, people are even less likely to click as they do not want to leave their environment of “video watching time” or “app using time.”

This does not mean that your ad has gone unnoticed or that these people are uninterested in your offerings. The interested user is just more likely to open another tab and navigate to an interesting offer directly or via search – if they convert, you generate a view-through conversion.

Additionally, many of the new GDN creative units carry so much visual information and expand to fill your entire screen — it’s impossible to argue that they are not influencing conversions that happen without a click. The key is making sure your view-through conversion window makes sense based on the type of advertising you are executing and the consideration period for your product.

It wouldn’t make sense to attribute a sale of socks to an unclicked banner a user saw 28 days ago, but if a user scrolled through several pairs of socks within your dynamic ad unit yesterday, attribution of that view-through does make a lot of sense.

This is intriguing..surfer sees a banner ad ( your banner ad ) for socks, but wants to stay on the same page ( publisher page or youtube etc ), so opens another tab and searches socks.."if they convert" ( presumably this means presumably buying from you ) "you generate a view-through conversion" ( presumably again this means that G are tracking* the surfer and that you will pay for the "conversion"..What happens if they search and click on one of your ads on a SERP page..do you ( as an advertiser ) pay twice ?..once for the "view-through" due to the socks banner ad, and once for the click on socks adword in serp..?

*it would appear that respecting "do not track" would negate this additional revenue stream for G..

I wonder how advertisers will be charged if ( as seems to be inferred ) G deems that a surfer who sees a socks banner on a site and then navigates to your site directly via the nav bar, and whose arrival at your site is picked up by G ( because you use Ganalytics ) and interacts enough with your site to be considered a "conversion" by G..The period of 28 days is mentioned as "wouldn’t make sense"..but "yesterday" does..I read that as "if a surfer sees your ad , but does not click on it, you will be billed for a "conversion" if they visit your site within a 24 hour period ( or maybe longer, but less than 28 days )..if they interact with your site.."scrolling through your sock offers on your site" may well be a "conversion" even if they do not purchase..

Sounds to me ( wearing my merchant hat ) that if I were to run ads on the content network** ( or even adwords in search) that it would be better for the health of my credit card if I did not run Ganalytics on any of my sites***..So as to prevent G attributing "conversions" "without actual click throughs"..and charging for them..

** Unlikely..;)
*** I don't..;)

Wearing my publisher hat, it has been obvious for a while now that "contextual" adsense makes more money for individual publishers , but "personalised" adsense makes more money for G..

Advertising is deliberately less well targeted to the context of the publisher sites..whereas adwords is precisely targeted to the content of the SERP page that it appears on...the article confirms this is Google policy..

They are interested in quantity, not quality..

Thanks to netmeg for the link :) , helpful to have one's observations confirmed..

Interest based ads make a lot more for me than contextual.

What happens if they search and click on one of your ads on a SERP page..do you ( as an advertiser ) pay twice ?..once for the "view-through" due to the socks banner ad, and once for the click on socks adword in serp..?

As far as I know you pay twice if they click twice, unless they click twice in a single session.

The conversions are defined by the advertiser, not Google. It's any action you want a user to complete on your site, whether it's a sale, a sign up, viewing certain pages, whatever. It's up the advertiser to define the conversion (or goal) and decide what the value of the conversion is to him.

They are interested in quantity, not quality..

That's not my takeaway at all. They are interested in targeted.

Interest based ads make a lot more for me than contextual.

They do work differently in different areas..If I'm surfing English language sites the ads are primarily "personalised" ( if the site content is not "focused" ) based upon browsing history, or perceived interests..But never enticing enough to get me to click..If I'm surfing in French, the ads are usually in English ( based on browser and OS info ) and still not very accurate albeit somewhat personalised..the French ads that I get are usually unrelated to the sites, and to my browsing history..Same thing happens if I use other languages..

Maybe they "target" personalised better in the USA..been a while since I have use proxys to test..

As far as I know you pay twice if they click twice, unless they click twice in a single session.

Ah..no :)..What I meant was ..if you merely see the banner ad on one site..but click on the same advertiser's adwords ad in SERP later..do G charge twice ? ..reads to me like they may consider that the "seen ad" "converted"..and so charge for the "seen" and the "clicked"..

By quantity over quality..I mean a site about a spread of subjects, site A, ( subject DIY ) whose content is crowd sourced from site B and other specialist DIY sites which pulls 100K eyeballs per day, and can serve 100k personalised ads..is thus better for G ( and ranks higher ) than a site ( B ) which pulls 100 eyeballs per day ( a specific detailed aspect of DIY , whose content is used by site A) and can only be served 100 personalised ads per day..

I've seen the above happening over the last year or so, particular very large UGC , crowd sourced content sites ( type A ), outranking the sites that their content is taken from ( type B )..as far more eyeballs are at type A sites, G are showing them in higher serp positions, sending more traffic, and exposing more eyeballs to the personalised ads..

As you have said in the past ..G likes popular sites..

I don't think that they care too much, if at all, how such sites become popular, nor what is the quality of the sites, as long as the eyeballs are there..

Enough eyeballs and personalised ads shown to each pair of them, G is the overall winner..seems to be borne out by their earnings breakdowns each year..

Here "reality TV"* is extremely popular, and the ad rates are high for 30 second spots in the ad breaks during it, which is great for the ad agencies and the TV companies, but it isn"t "quality"..and I'm certain that "product placement", which is used within the reality TV, ( which is what contextual ads are closest to ) is a better ROI, for the product manufacturers..

*Mainly the kind of heavily scripted take 6 guys , 6 girls, put them in a house** with cameras and microphones everywhere, including the bathrooms, and let the drooling TV spectator masses hope that they get a glimpse ( or more ) of them getting upto ( or down to ) stuff..

**beach hut, beach camp, luxury villa etc..

The conversions are defined by the advertiser, not Google. It's any action you want a user to complete on your site, whether it's a sale, a sign up, viewing certain pages, whatever. It's up the advertiser to define the conversion (or goal) and decide what the value of the conversion is to him.

By this ..

It's up the advertiser to define the conversion (or goal) and decide what the value of the conversion is to him*..

Do you mean that the amount charged is decided by the advertiser and not G..?

*my bold

Ah..no :)..What I meant was ..if you merely see the banner ad on one site..but click on the same advertiser's adwords ad in SERP later..do G charge twice ? ..reads to me like they may consider that the "seen ad" "converted"..and so charge for the "seen" and the "clicked"..

No, in CPC bidding, you are not charged if the ad is not clicked upon.

Do you mean that the amount charged is decided by the advertiser and not G..?

No, the amount charged for the click is not the same as the value of the conversion. If I decide the value of $2.00 for a conversion of an email signup, I don't want to PAY $2.00 for each click, because I have to cover the cost of the clicks that don't convert.