Google has made two improvements in its online advertising that will make the lives of local business owners, as well as mobile advertisers, very happy.
The first is that Google has created a simplified ad unit for local businesses to rival Yahoo’s Local Featured Listings. These new ads will appear on Google.com’s local results, and on Google Maps, and will consist of the company name, and contact details, as well as a link to the corresponding website (whether Place Pages, or the business’ website).
Though Google did disclose that the ads will be available on a flat-fee pricing system, they would not confirm what these prices would be, since they are still experimenting at that end. However, Search Engine Land contributing Editor Greg Sterling, in his article about the new ad format, speculates that they will cost between $20 and $200 USD, with prices varying according to market and category. The first month, however, is free.
Businesses looking to participate will first have to establish a presence in the Google LBC (local business center). Google Local Listings Ads is a self-service product, and, as with all things Google, it’s extremely user-friendly. To access the new ad service, users can find a new “Ads” tab in the LBC. Then they just claim the business listing in the LBC, and Google automatically creates the ad.
Google is also offering a tool for companies to know if their ad is generating results or not – with a phone message saying “this call brought to you by Google” before every call received from the Google Local Listing Ad.
Google is only offering the program right now in the San Francisco and San Diego areas, as part of a limited test. Google also said that it doesn’t plan to do any promotion for the new ad program. There had been buzz in the past about Google creating a similar program, meant to be called Simple Ads, which may have been a stepping stone for Local Listings Ads.
Next, Google has just announced that ad-units for mobile phones will be better optimized and larger to keep up with the growing popularity of high-end mobile phones. The new feature will allow AdSense to automatically detect if a user is accessing an ad through a high-end mobile phone, and serve the larger, more optimized ad automatically, to take full advantage of the larger phone’s capabilities.
The new feature has been made available through a new JavaScript snippet that is easier to implement and specifically optimized for mobile advertising.
Kaila Krayewski is a freelance journalist with a passion for all things internet. Having worked for nearly two years as the public relations manager for an internation search engine optimization company, and publishing hundreds of articles (how-to, informational, and otherwise) on SEO, she knows a thing or two about the field. Furthermore, having just started up her own website blondetraveler.com, she is doing her best to keep one step ahead of the search engines in order to keep the traffic flowing.
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