Mar

21

Is Google Moving Into PayPerPost Territory

March 21, 2007 |

Head up to Mike Arrington for noticing that Google, with its new PayPerAction program is starting to muddy the waters between editorial and advertising. One can now embed a PPA ad into the editorial text as a hyperlink, which will show “Ads by Google” on mouse-over.

No longer will Google ads need to be confined to their own space on the site - publishers can subtly embed ads right into hyperlinks within the main content of the site itself (see second paragraph of quote above). Other companies already do this, but Google has never tread into the “advertorial” space before.

Everybody, including the mainstream media is all over the PPA announcement, but the little snippet Arrington found is buried deep in the text. I think Google is treating into some very dangerous territory here - reaching a point where it is almost advocating behavior only PayPerPost would condone (hell - PPP might even now be able to point at Google and say that if they can do it, so can we…).

I hope very few people will be using this, but given that there is money to be made from it, that is probably wishful thinking on my part.

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