NEW YORK — Like many Internet users, Google Chairman and Chief Executive Eric Schmidt is not a big fan of pop-up and pop-under ads. But as the head of an ad-supported company, he also thinks they are symptomatic of Internet advertising’s continued inability to harness the connective power of the Internet to improve the user’s online experience.
“My view of the world starts with the end user,” Schmidt said in the keynote address opening the Jupiter/IAB Ad Forum on Tuesday. “It’s important the
advertising model doesn’t scare the user.”
Instead of rich media ads, Google, the fourth most-visited site by U.S.
Internet users last week according to Nielsen/NetRatings , uses keyword-targeted
AdWords, set off to the right side of a page of search results. The key,
Schmidt said, is that the ads connected advertisers to users interested in
their product’s area.
“Our commitment is the ad business we’re in does not in any way affect our
search,” he said.
To do this, Schmidt said the Mountain View, Calif.-based company focuses
more on the user’s needs, instead of the client’s, since keeping users happy
builds the scale advertisers want. This means ensuring that ads are simple and highly relevant — based as they are on users’ self-selected keywords.
Advertisers, meanwhile, are attracted by the prospect — and benefit from easily-tracked units.
“The Internet will transform advertising because of its trackability, not
its beauty,” Schmidt said.
This trend is likely to continue. According to Jupiter Research Analyst
Patrick Keane, pay-for-performance advertising accounts for 25 percent of
online ad spending. This is forecast to grow to 34 percent in 2007.
Schmidt said the key to Google serving its advertisers well is to serve its
users well. Google puts great emphasis on quickly answering user queries,
listing the number of seconds each search takes. With speed as a sine qua
non, Schmidt said that rules out fancy, Flash-enabled ads that would slow
page-loading.
Thanks to this approach, Google has attracted a loyal following. According
to research released this summer by consultancy Brand Keys, Google was the
online brand garnering the highest
customer loyalty for the second year in a row.
The company has branched out by providing paid-search services to other
sites, putting it in direct competition with Overture. Google has replaced
Overture as the paid-search provider on Earthlink, AOL, and AskJeeves.
While its unobtrusive advertising approach has paid dividends, Schmidt would
not rule out moving to different ad formats in the future, since his two
decades of experience in the tech industry at companies like Sun
Microsystems and Novell taught him that adaptability is the key to future
success.
“The mistake we always make is we assume the success in the next 10 years
will be the same as the success in the last 10 years,” he said. “The dominant players always get it wrong.”
