This morning, I reported on and noticed yellow stars on Google AdSense ads — these ads were named “featured ads.” I honestly didn’t believe it. I thought maybe this was some type of AdSense hack that placed gold stars on the ads. I just received confirmation from a Google representative that these ads are, indeed, real.

Here is a picture of the ad:

Google told me: “We are currently running a limited test in which a small number of users are seeing ads that are marked based on signals related to quality and relevance. This experiment is part of our ongoing efforts to help users find what they’re looking for, and we’re closely monitoring feedback.”

This sounds like Google is showing a star near ads that are contextually more relevant than the others. I asked Google for confirmation on that point.

Clearly, many AdSense publishers will find these ads hypocritical, since Google disallows images placed near ads. But at the same time, I doubt publishers will mind Google placing these stars on the ads, since it will lead to higher clicks and more money for the publisher.

Many publishers have complained repeatedly that Google and Google News (not the leading online news site) reduces their content to “commodity” status or otherwise adversely impacts their brands. Google’s Fast Flip is a response to this in part.

It offers a more “branded” and visual way to consume news and magazine content from major publishers. We wrote about Fast Flip originally when it launched in Google Labs. Now Steve Rubel has found a page that looks like Google is getting ready to integrate Fast Flip into News:

It appears from the screen above that Fast Flip might replace some part of the news page below the fold. I like the concept of Fast Flip quite a bit but think it still has a way to go to be a compelling way to consume news.

We also speculated some time ago that Fast Flip might be the “platform” for the micropayments system that Google has been working on with a number of newspaper publishers. In the meantime, Fast Flip offers Google some valuable “inventory” against which it can serve contextually targeted display ads:

There’s also a mobile version of Fast Flip:

Fast Flip is a product that has the potential to make Google News different than its competitors and much more interesting than it currently is today.

Postscript: Here’s an official comment from Google:

At Google, we run anywhere from 50 to 200 experiments at any given time on our websites all over the world. A few weeks ago we started running a few small ones exploring how we might incorporate results from Google Fast Flip, the article-reading service we launched in Google Labs in September, into Google News. From these tests we hope to learn whether including Fast Flip results in Google News would provide a good experience for users and news publishers. More information about how Google runs experiments can be found here.

Google AdWords announced two updates including new alerts and place pages in performance reports, let me explain both in more detail.

The new alerts are designed to help you stay on top of your campaigns. In addition to the billing alerts, they added alerts for new keyword and budget ideas in the Opportunities tab. Also, for those that use conversion tracking, you can now create custom alerts for changes in conversion volume, conversion rate, and cost per conversion. These two new alerts are not yet available for those who have My Client Center (MCC) accounts, but Google hopes to add them soon.

A little over a month ago, Google launched Place Pages for Google Maps. On those pages are contextual ads powered by Google’s content network. Advertisers can now see how well those ads are performing via the placement performance reports. Google added:

With this update, you can more closely monitor and optimize your clients’ campaigns. While placement targeting is not available for Google Maps, you can increase the likelihood of appearing on Place Pages by increasing bids on high-performing keywords or by creating ad groups with highly specific keywords to target Place Pages relevant to your clients’ products or businesses.

Google has acquired AdMob (www.admob.com), a popular mobile display ad company, for $750 million.

Google has already built their own platform for AdSense on Mobile devices, but this acquisition gives Google access to AdMob’s more than 15,000 mobile Web sites and applications.

There are more details about this acquisition at google.com/press/admob.

Here is the email AdMob sent their publishers and advertisers:

Google to Acquire AdMob November 2009 Today we announced that AdMob has signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by Google for $750 million. We are extremely excited about this new partnership and what it means for our advertiser, developer and publisher partners.

AdMob’s people, products and tools will continue to work to deliver successful campaigns for you and to effectively monetize your mobile traffic – no interruptions. Our product and engineering teams will keep building great products for our customers. Our sales team will keep working with our thousands of advertisers to deliver successful campaigns. Our business development team will keep working to maximize ad revenue for the more than 15,000 mobile Web sites and applications that make up AdMob’s publisher network.

After our deal closes, AdMob will work with Google to accelerate the pace of innovation in mobile and do an even better job for you. We believe this deal will benefit our advertisers, developers and publishers by:

*Increasing our investment in building innovative and engaging ad units across platforms and to further improve targeting and tracking.

*Building even more powerful relevance and optimization capabilities, and more powerful technology and tools to monetize mobile traffic.

*Increasing the effectiveness of display advertising on mobile devices by leveraging Google sales team, infrastructure and relationships.

*Improving the already high level of service and support we deliver to our advertisers, developers and publishers.

You can read more about this deal at www.admob.com/google.

Omar

Postscript from Greg: I was able to speak to Google and AdMob CEO Omar Hamoui briefly today. The acquisition puts Google at the forefront of mobile display advertising and instantly brings Google a great deal of sophistication in the segment that it previously did not have. In fact that’s one of the things that Google emphasized in the discussion: they get a team that has been working the space and thinking about mobile display for four (or more) years.

Google also alluded to a potential for “holistic” approaches to display advertising when I asked explicitly about whether there was going to be some future cross-platform ad buying capability.

Though perhaps the most visible, AdMob is not the largest mobile ad network. According to an August compilation of Nielsen data by Mobile Marketer, here’s the reach of each of the top mobile ad networks (monthly unique users):

1. Millennial Media: 45.6 million
2. Yahoo!: 36.1 million
3. Google: 31.9 million
4. AOL/Platform-A’s Third Screen Media: 28.6 million
5. AdMob: 25.7 million
6. Microsoft: 25.4 million (doesn’t include the new Verizon deal)
7. Jumptap: 23.4 million
8. Quattro Wireless: 23 million

I asked Nielsen to confirm these figures and they declined to do so. But if they’re correct it would make Google the largest of the mobile ad networks, when combined with AdMob’s reach. In the $750 million all-stock deal, UBS analysts estimate that Google “could have paid 8-12x 2011 revenue for AdMob.”

Like many people, I misspelled a domain name today when I was trying to visit a web site. I typed Twiter.com (with one T) rather than Twitter.com. I wasn’t surprised to land on a site with ads, as is common when entering typos. I was surprised that both Google and Yahoo were making money off those ads.

Google has a program known as AdSense For Domains, previously known as DomainPark. Got a tasty domain but no content for it? AdSense For Domains will put lucrative ads up on it, for you (really lucrative: see more here and here).

The practice is known as domaining. And before some domainers start working up heated rebuttals, let me make it clear. There’s nothing wrong with domaining. If you were lucky enough or smart enough to land a generic domain like usedcars.com or taxforms.com, my hat’s off to you. It’s well known that people will simply slap words together, tack on a .com and see if they reach a site that has information about a particular topic relating to those words. Domainers earn off that traffic, and no one is misled when visitors directly navigate this way.

So saying domaining = spamming is the same as saying SEO = spamming. Neither is true. But there are spam tactics that happen in both areas along with the legit stuff. In the domaining world, it’s the typo traffic that’s often scummy, in my book.

Typo domains are domains that are nearly identical to the domain name of another well known brand. Here, there is often harm. Someone expecting to reach a particular site instead lands on a different one that’s cashing in on the other brand’s fame.

OK, it’s the person who is entering the domain name wrong in the first place’s fault, right? It’s like they dialed the wrong phone number. Why shouldn’t a domain owner be able to earn off of misdirected calls to their phone? Or, it’s the “real” company’s fault for not registering all the typos out there.

What about companies that have a name in use before another company becomes more famous? Is there really anything wrong with UTube — a well established pipe company — benefiting from a spike in traffic after some upstart YouTube video site came along? Or in the case of Twiter, that domain existed well before Twitter became popular, so why shouldn’t it tap into new found popularity.

These are fair objections. In counter to them, some typo domains are often registered after a brand becomes popular, with the obvious intent of riding on someone else’s coattails. For another, it simply violates the policies of some ad networks, Google’s included. In other words, the fault isn’t with the domain owner themselves. It’s with companies supplying ads in violation of their own guidelines or policies.

That leads us to what I saw when I reached Twiter.com, the single “T” web site:

These ads are provided by Google, not that anything on the page tells you this. Domain ads apparently aren’t forced to carry those “Ads By Google” notifications as with contexual ads. That’s a handy way for Google to distance itself.

The first and fifth ad indicates a relevancy issue for Google advertisers. If you’re advertising “Free VoiceXML platform” or “Monitor Server health,” why on earth is someone from Twiter (one T) going to convert for you? They might click out of curiousity, but the probably aren’t going to buy (in fact, there’s a lawsuit against Google over the quality of domain ads pending. Google’s has also been sued over trademark issues with typo domains).

Now look at the second ad, which I’ve pointed an arrow at:

Twitter? Twitter is here Need Twitter? Official Twitter site Twitter lets you share. Its Twitter www.Twitter.com

That ad surprised me. Really, Twitter (that of 2 Ts) decided to buy an ad for its own name via Google? Actually, no. Instead, it’s a Twitter user that bought the ad, driving people to their particular profile which, while indeed being on the official Twitter site, isn’t providing Twitter but rather a pitch for a book:

Clever person, right? Yes, but they also likely being misleading. That would violate Google’s ad guidelines and also may violate advertising laws in various US states, as well as nationally and in other countries.

That ad also shows two flaws in Google’s ad system. Clearly no human being looked closely at this ad, to review it for quality guideline violations. Meanwhile, Google’s requirement that the display URL in an ad match the domain name someone arrives at get exploited. This ad correctly shows a Twitter.com domain, even though the ad itself doesn’t speak with the authority of Twitter itself.

Check out the third ad, with an arrow pointing at the domain (which I’ve also bolded below):

Twitter Looking for Twitter? Find exactly what you want today. Yahoo.com

Why yes, I was indeed looking for Twitter. Glad to know that Yahoo has it now. I guess I missed news of that deal being cut. Let’s go get us some Twitter at Yahoo:

Ah, Twitter, er, shopping results. Maybe that lamp beams out tweets, when you turn it on. The results are kind of crummy. But that’s OK, because right at the top of the page, we get three paid search ads from Yahoo.

Now, it’s not Yahoo doing this directly. Looking at the URL that brings me to the shopping page, I see an affiliate reference. So this is someone earning money by driving Yahoo traffic. But Yahoo takes some of the blame here. It’s their affiliate, getting paid by Yahoo, and Yahoo should be policing this.

Yahoo, by the way, joined a coalition against typo domains back in 2007. They’re no longer listed as a member, which given these type of ads, is probably best.

The rest of the ads are all products somehow related to Twitter, so at least the misleading aspects aren’t there. But there still seems to be a violation of Google’s domain ads program policies:

Domains submitted for the AdSense for domains program may not violate any trademark (and related rights), copyright, trade secret, patent or other intellectual property right of any third party….

Google AdSense for domains is committed to respecting the rights of trademark owners. It is our goal that advertisers, users and trademark owners all be aware of Google’s process for reviewing perceived trademark infringement in the AdSense for domains network. If Google becomes aware of a domain name that contains a trademark (or typo), that domain will be removed from the AdSense for domains network.

At best, Google might argue that Twitter hasn’t submitted a formal complaint, so as far as it knows, there’s no trademark violation happening. That’s still pretty weak. Does Google, which often holds itself out as championing the relevant organization of information, really want to hold its head up about what’s happening on that page?

I don’t think so. That’s especially so when you consider the type of ads that show up on Google’s own site for a search on twitter:

That Twitter user claiming to be the official Twitter site doesn’t show there. Neither does the Yahoo ad promising to deliver Twitter.

If those ads aren’t good enough to be shown on the shining storefront that is Google’s search results page, they don’t get any better being plastered on some dark alley of the internet.

Postscript: After publishing this, I sent these questions to Google.

• Are the ads from that Twitter user and from Yahoo meeting your relevancy guidelines?
• Are they not misleading?
• If they are, were these actually reviewed by a human?
• And does the site violate your guidelines on typo domains or not?

In response, I was emailed this statement:

We don’t comment on specific ads or domains – but our AdSense for Domains policies are here. When we’re notified of complaints, we investigate for compliance with our policy.  We’ve found that advertisers enjoy the benefits of the additional reach that AdSense for Domains offers.  Many advertisers find that ads on parked domains perform as well as or better than ads on more traditional search and content sites.

Today, the site is no longer showing ads from Google. Instead, another company is providing the paid ads.

Google AdSense announced today at the CRS Conference that they are currently testing a new interface for the AdSense console. The beta is currently being tested by few publishers, but Google promises to allow “thousands of publishers” to test this out “over the coming weeks.”

Here is a picture of one of the screens:

Features include:

• More detailed performance reports
• Enables you to view daily stats in graphical formats
• Additional metrics such as the amount you’ve earned from various ad, targeting and bid types
• More options to manage the ads that appear on your site
• cleaner interface that makes it easier to find and review them within the Ad Review Center
• A streamlined AdSense interface to simplify common tasks, such as making a change to several ad units simultaneously
• Added more relevant help on every page, a message inbox for tips from our team, and alerts with important account related notices

The Google AdSense blog announced that sites designed specifically for full-rich mobile phones, such as the iPhone, Android or Palm Pre can now show high-end contextual ads.

The blog said:

Today we’re launching a new feature for AdSense mobile publishers that will allow you to take advantage of the high-end mobile phone browsing experience. This feature offers publishers the ability to run larger AdSense ads visible on high-end phones. Before this launch, AdSense mobile publishers were only eligible to serve smaller text and image ads on their website content.

We’ve done this by introducing a new JavaScript snippet that is easy to implement and specifically optimized for mobile to reduce latency on high-end mobile phones. Furthermore, this new snippet will allow publishers to select additional ad unit sizes from common AdSense formats.

Yes, Google is betting big on mobile ads.

Here is a video from Google on this news:

The NY Times offers an interesting article this morning, profiling Google’s efforts around mobile AdSense and display advertising on smartphones. It’s equally a profile of some of the people who work on the teams behind those efforts. The article is as much about process and Google’s culture as it is about mobile advertising:

On Tuesday, Aug. 11, which was supposed to be two weeks before the ads’ introduction, she and a group of marketers, engineers and sales people, most of them in Mountain View, Calif., were reviewing their progress in a Web conference.

Paul Feng, group product manager for mobile ads, asked Ms. VanDyke to update the group. She was using a type of coding that instructed the Web page to pull a piece of content from another source, in this case Google’s ad server. But she had never done this type of programming before, and was having trouble getting the ad to align properly. “Did that make sense?” she asked.

It seemed to. The other employees jumped in, arguing over whether this should be positioned as a new product feature or a new product, and asking for data for advertisers.

Google’s efforts on the mobile front are almost too numerous to mention (certainly in this post). According to Nielsen data Google also operates one of the top mobile ad networks (already).

Update: Google launches new AdSense units for high-end mobile phones (iPhone et al.). Here’s more explanation from the AdSense blog and the Google blog.

The Google AdSense Blog announced they are now bringing YouTube Promoted Videos to AdSense ad spots throughout the web.

Initially, Promoted Videos were shown on YouTube search results and then on related videos. Now, if an AdSense site has ad slots for 300×250 Medium Rectangle, 336×280 Large Rectangle, 728×90 Leaderboard, 250×250 Square, and 200×200 Small Square, the YouTube Promoted videos can show up there as well.

Yes, AdSense already has video ads, but these are different, in that these are YouTube videos and not video ads published directly to AdWords. To learn more about the standard videos, click here. To learn more about these YouTube Promoted Videos, click here.

The Google AdWords Blog announced that Google is now showing you conversions, within the AdWords console, for when someone sees your ad but does not click on your ad, but yet, still buys within 30 days after seeing your ad. Got all of that? No? Okay, let me give you a fictional example.

I run a flower shop online and I use AdSense to promote my business. You visit a blog that shows my ad about my flowers. You see the ad, but decide not to click on it. Then a day or two later, you remember my site, go to it, and buy flowers for your favorite blogger. Google will now show me that you saw my ad, didn’t click on it, but bought from my site within 30 days after seeing my ad.

Google calls this report, “View-through Conversions” and has added this column to your AdWords report. Here is a screen shot of the help tip on the AdWords report:

For more information about how this reporting works, see the FAQs.