>Actually, I would really hope they do. One of the principles behind Google's ad systems is that they're useful for users and advertisers, that a good ad can benefit everyone involved.
...
>Disclaimer: Googler
I actually think this is both a strength and a weakness of google. They've gotten their (often very smart) employees to believe the company line.
I mean, don't get me wrong; I think that google ads (at least, before the doubleclick thing) are less bad than most ads online. They are less annoying.
And yes, consumers benefit from some of the things paid for by advertising, so I can understand the argument that google is overall good for consumers, because they use ads that are less annoying than usual for services that are actually worth paying for. In a real sense, google has lowered the "price" consumers pay for services and content that is paid for by advertising.
However, this isn't what you are saying. You are saying that ads in and of themselves are good for consumers. that it's /better/ to find a product through paid advertising than through 'organic' search results, as if an advertiser has an interest in giving the customer the lowest possible price, or the best possible service for a given price.
Most people outside the advertising industry find that position laughable.
Now, on the surface, this looks good for google. Employees buy the company line. And really, it seems like it's probably a useful way for an Engineer who is building an advertising platform to look at the problem. You want your ads to harm the consumer as little as possible, and your employees will feel better about building something to help people instead of building something to trick people. But, I think, if you dig deeper, there are problems. Because the company line is false (and it is in nearly all companies; I'm not singling google out on that part. The difference is that at most companies, nobody buys the company line.) you have employees with a false worldview, which can lead to incorrect decisions.
Because Google employees seem to feel that google has the best interests of the customer at heart, it becomes quite difficult for google employees, then, to predict when the rest of us (who assume that google does not have our best interests at heart) will feel that they've crossed the 'creepy' line.
At a more systemic level, within the space of running a search engine people use to find products and running advertising in the same space you will always have a conflict of interest. The better your organic search results are, the less likely the user is going to click on an ad. Google employees believing that the ad really is the best result will accelerate that process.
(of course, for now, google has such a good reputation that this doesn't matter until someone becomes better than them at search by a noticeable margin. I think it's a long-term problem, while the "don't be creepy" issue is more immediately urgent, but is easier for google to ameliorate that issue in the long term. )
> that it's /better/ to find a product through paid advertising than through 'organic' search results, as if an advertiser has an interest in giving the customer the lowest possible price, or the best possible service for a given price.
Nope, I said no such thing. Of course some strawman statement, that you hypothesize that I support, would be seen as laughable by a hypothetical population outside the advertising industry. But let's stick to what real people have actually said.
Considering that, and looking at my original statement, perhaps I should have said "can be useful for user and advertisers", like I said "a good ad can benefit everyone". That's a little more clear that there's the potential for this, and hopefully less Kool-Aidy.
I'm pretty sure this has been stated by actually official company representatives at some point, and I think it stands as relatively obvious, depending on what your definition of "good ad" is. If you're optimizing for the short term, and you're an ad marketplace, then a good ad is one that sells for a high commission - that is, one that has relative high CTR and bid price for a large total earn. But if those ads are scammy, then users will eventually either not click those ads, not click any ads, stop using the marketplace or the sites that display the ads, etc. So if you optimize for the long term you want users to be glad that they clicked on an ad, so that they'll continue to do that over the the long term, and that means making them good for the user. This means that a "good ad" has some usefulness to the user: if highlights a product or service they were looking for, it educates, it offers a good price, etc.
Yes, it's idealistic, but not overly so. The premise is just that built right, an ad system can produce good results for everyone. Good free content; relatively useful ads; revenue for content producers, ad marketplace, and advertisers; etc. I think this ends up being the case at least some of the time, and it's important to realize that it's not just by accident, it's by design. And it's not strictly capitalistic or benevolent, but a case where the two can coexist if done right.
Again, no where did I ever say that an ad is better than an organic result. Please don't claim that I did. It's simply not true.
>Again, no where did I ever say that an ad is better than an organic result. Please don't claim that I did. It's simply not true.
Hm. I'm sorry. That is the impression I've gotten from multiple google employees... that is the impression I got from your post, too. However, you are correct. that's not what you said, that's my interpretation of what you said, which yeah. Is a very different thing. (I mean, I could say I was using "saying" to mean 'meaning' but... yeah, I was incorrect, and rudely so. I'm sorry.)
>So if you optimize for the long term you want users to be glad that they clicked on an ad, so that they'll continue to do that over the the long term, and that means making them good for the user. This means that a "good ad" has some usefulness to the user: if highlights a product or service they were looking for, it educates, it offers a good price, etc.
I agree that making ads "less bad" is a good long-term goal for an advertising company (and I think google has actually done a pretty good job of that) I think my disagreement comes when you start calling ads 'good' rather than 'less bad' (outside of the content or services those ads pay for.)
The essential point of disagreement, I think, is that all other things being equal, both the merchant and the customer are better off if they make the exchange without paying a middleman. Sort of how many people feel that groupon is bad. Thus, when you say "a good ad can benefit everyone involved." I hear, perhaps incorrectly, "an ad can be better than an organic search result"
>Yes, it's idealistic, but not overly so. The premise is just that built right, an ad system can produce good results for everyone. Good free content; relatively useful ads; revenue for content producers, ad marketplace, and advertisers; etc. I think this ends up being the case at least some of the time, and it's important to realize that it's not just by accident, it's by design. And it's not strictly capitalistic or benevolent, but a case where the two can coexist if done right.
You still have the long-term problem that your organic search results are competing with your ads, creating a long-term conflict of interest within google. Nobody is going to click on your ads if your organic results are better than your ads.
That's actually as much, or more, of an argument for better ads as it is for "worse" content.
Competition is generally considered good, and I see competition all around here. In search Google is not simply going to slow down, that would be a recipe for obsolescence. If Google can make search results 10x better, I'm sure they can figure out how to monetize it. If Google lets Bing catch up, that's trouble. In ads, if the ads compete with search results, then make the ads better. Showing endorsements from friends is an example of this, just like such endorsements can show up in search results (I think, not sure). Ad networks also compete against each other, so another search engine that does ads in a way that's better for users will hopefully get rewarded for that, making others respond.
>That's actually as much, or more, of an argument for better ads as it is for "worse" content.
That's certainly a healthy way to look at it, but google is still competing with itself internally, which I think is rather different from competing with an external company.
>Competition is generally considered good,
There are two ways of competing; making your product [appear] better, and making the other guy's product [appear] worse. The difference between external and internal competition is that with external competition, you have the option of trying to make your competitor's product appear to be worse, but it's pretty difficult to actually make it worse. With competition within a company? It's much easier to actually make the competing product worse. (Note, I'm not saying that google is doing that... just that competition between departments within a company is often not as beneficial as competition between companies with different ownership.)
>I see competition all around here.
Well, first, I am glad that you (as a googler) see competition, but my view, as an outsider? you don't have serious competition. I mean, as a business owner (and someone who buys ads) your competition is... meat-space ads, mostly. And relationships with sites your customers care about. (Sponsorship and the like, which is higher labor, but I think often gives higher value to the advertiser than display ads. I'm not sure it's an approach that scales.)
As a consumer, I don't see serious competition for low-cost email. I don't see serious competition for search. You have a big lead, in most of your consumer products.
Obviously, Google doesn't have a lead at all in social networking, and, I think, google shifting so much of their emphasis to that market is a symptom of not having serious competition in other markets. (I believe, well... I hope that the social networking market is not as big or as important as the market right now thinks it is.)
>If Google can make search results 10x better, I'm sure they can figure out how to monetize it.
There's a difference between "oh, that would be nice" and "we must do this or we will no longer exist as a company (or lose significant market share.)"
I can tell you this from recent personal experience. Two years ago, increasing ram and disk allocations for my customers "would be nice" - and I started moving on it. some customers got upgraded, but not many.
Today? it's an existential problem. I've lost 15% of my customers in just a few months. If I don't get users upgraded (and open new signups) with dramatically more resources per dollar soon...
So yeah; Consider me motivated. Between my previous post and this post, I caused nearly a terabyte in ram (and servers to put said ram in) to appear in my van.
(I know that the motivations of public companies are... different. But generally, this is the narrative that is used to explain why competition is good, even if this narrative does not always fit the data.)
In ads, if the ads compete with search results, then make the ads better.
Or hide the content way down, or make the content slightly worse than ads, or make ads look like content. I mentioned the scams that Google, your employer does. This http://i.imgur.com/mhJhc5W.png is good for everyone, long term, right ?
...
>Disclaimer: Googler
I actually think this is both a strength and a weakness of google. They've gotten their (often very smart) employees to believe the company line.
I mean, don't get me wrong; I think that google ads (at least, before the doubleclick thing) are less bad than most ads online. They are less annoying.
And yes, consumers benefit from some of the things paid for by advertising, so I can understand the argument that google is overall good for consumers, because they use ads that are less annoying than usual for services that are actually worth paying for. In a real sense, google has lowered the "price" consumers pay for services and content that is paid for by advertising.
However, this isn't what you are saying. You are saying that ads in and of themselves are good for consumers. that it's /better/ to find a product through paid advertising than through 'organic' search results, as if an advertiser has an interest in giving the customer the lowest possible price, or the best possible service for a given price.
Most people outside the advertising industry find that position laughable.
Now, on the surface, this looks good for google. Employees buy the company line. And really, it seems like it's probably a useful way for an Engineer who is building an advertising platform to look at the problem. You want your ads to harm the consumer as little as possible, and your employees will feel better about building something to help people instead of building something to trick people. But, I think, if you dig deeper, there are problems. Because the company line is false (and it is in nearly all companies; I'm not singling google out on that part. The difference is that at most companies, nobody buys the company line.) you have employees with a false worldview, which can lead to incorrect decisions.
Because Google employees seem to feel that google has the best interests of the customer at heart, it becomes quite difficult for google employees, then, to predict when the rest of us (who assume that google does not have our best interests at heart) will feel that they've crossed the 'creepy' line.
At a more systemic level, within the space of running a search engine people use to find products and running advertising in the same space you will always have a conflict of interest. The better your organic search results are, the less likely the user is going to click on an ad. Google employees believing that the ad really is the best result will accelerate that process.
(of course, for now, google has such a good reputation that this doesn't matter until someone becomes better than them at search by a noticeable margin. I think it's a long-term problem, while the "don't be creepy" issue is more immediately urgent, but is easier for google to ameliorate that issue in the long term. )