Google AdWords: Now With Images

Some AdWords ads on Google are now showing associated images — and getting much larger in the space they take up — through a “Show products from” Plus Box implementation that some are seeing now when searching at Google.

For example, try search for bluenile, which brings up a Blue Nile ad. Under the usual ad title and description is a plus symbol (called a Plus Box), followed by the words, “Show products from Blue Nile for bluenile.” If you click on the box, it opens up three product listings from Blue Nile, each listing with an associated image.

The most shocking part of this ad is that how much room it takes up. Here is the ad when it is closed:

When you click to open up the product results, the whole visible part of the page is consumed with this one ad. Here is an image of just the ad, that measures about 370 pixels tall for me:

The ad also shows on the right hand side, as Steve Rubel shows. I was able to replicate Steve’s findings, by searching for diamonds. This implementation is better, in my opinion, because it does not change how the natural/free results are shown but rather only pushes down other ads on the right hand side.

Images associated with search ads are not too surprising. We have seen implementations of video ads in AdWords several times. It just seems to me that Google is willing to try anything now when it comes to ads, from video to images to multimedia and who knows what.

Do note that back in November of last year January, I reported that Google was testing product results within AdWords. But those product results seemed to have been powered by Google Base and did not contain product images.

Google has also been testing showing banner ads in image search.