Google Instant Preview Ads Fully Launched For Search Ads

Apr 25, 2011 at 9:14pm ET by Pamela Parker

Google is now showing Instant Previews — small thumbnails that show when a user mouses over an ad — for all search ads, presumably helping to qualify consumers before they actually click-through on an ad. The feature has been in testing for at least a week or so.

The company is touting the new functionality as a win-win for consumers and advertisers. Consumers get a sneak peek at the landing page before they click through on an ad, and advertisers don’t have to pay until the users actually click through. Once they do click-through, they’re presumably more interested in the advertisers’ product or service, given they’ve had a chance to preview what they’ll get on the other side.

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Top News

About The Author: Pamela Parker is a contributing editor for Search Engine Land and Executive Features Editor at Marketing Land. She’s a well-respected authority on digital marketing, having reported and written on the subject since 1998, including a stint as managing editor of ClickZ. She’s also worked to help monetize independent publishers’ sites at Federated Media Publishing. She blogs about media and marketing at The River and about cooking, gardening and parenthood at Free Range. She can be found on Twitter as @pamelaparker. See more articles by Pamela Parker

Connect with the author via: Email | Twitter | Google+ | LinkedIn

Read before commenting! We welcome constructive comments and allow any that meet our common sense criteria. This means being respectful and polite to others. It means providing helpful information that contributes to a story or discussion. It means leaving links only that substantially add further to a discussion. Comments using foul language, being disrespectful to others or otherwise violating what we believe are common sense standards of discussion will be deleted. Comments may also be removed if they are posted from anonymous accounts. You can read more about our comments policy here.

http://www.wire-stone.com Kevin

I am not seeing this live in my area yet (Idaho) are you sure this is fully rolled out to all users? If it is just rolling out what is their estimated timeframe to get to all users? Thanks!
http://www.lhessellund.dk Lars Hessellund

@Kevin
Have you clicked the magnifier? In Chrome you have to click the small magnifier at the right side of the ad, just click once and you will be able to see the preview of all the ads and organic results.
http://www.jrsanfeliu.com/blog jrsanfeliu

Hi Pamela!
They first test the Instant Ad Previews but now it’s official. I’ve made a review of that new feature proposing the effects that this new feature can produce to Adwords CTR and CPC. Check it out! and we’ll discuss it.

http://www.jrsanfeliu.com/blog/en/google-instant-preview-en-google-adwords-instant-ad-previews/
JTrip

The Google instant preview ads were working for me last week but now that it has supposedly officially launched they no longer work. That being said, when they were working last week I couldn’t decide if I found them useful or if I found them to be annoying when they popped up.

By the way this will have to be my first and last post. I understand the reason for stopping spam but I can barely read any of the words I’m supposed to type in the box below to get my message to be posted.
http://www.tysonkirksey.com Tyson Kirksey

I think this is an excellent feature, but is there any data on usage rates so far? My feeling is very few people actually use Instant Preview in the organic results, where it’s been fully rolled out for a while now. 0-5% maybe?