Google+ will extend its reach across the web
in the guise of new ad units.
Google has
been testing new social ads composed of posts published by brands to its
two-and-a-half-year-old social network, which they can now promote and target
across the Google Display Network.
It's launching the units, dubbed +Post ads,
with Toyota, the French telecom company Orange, and Mondelez brands Ritz
Crackers and Cadbury U.K.
The ads contain the same social context -- +1s
(Google's version of Facebook "likes"), shares and comments -- as any
Google+ post. Advertisers will only pay when a user hovers over the ad for two
seconds, which will cause it to expand on the screen.
Brands will be able to
promote photos, videos and Google Hangouts -- or group chat sessions hosted
within Google+ -- inside the ads. For example, Toyota is promoting its
"Collaborator," a tool it's built on Google+ to let people customize
their own car and invite friends to provide feedback via a Hangout session.
Meanwhile, Google+ itself will still be ad-free. Up until now,
brands with a presence on the network have only had their organic followings to
distribute content to. (Toyota USA, for example, has 247,000 followers.) But
the positioning of Google+ as a mechanism to promote content more widely could
be a hook for marketers to invest more in their presence there.
If the function of Google+ is in part to
be a place for marketers to create content for their paid ads, it also makes
the lack of user engagement less relevant. Google reports that there are 300
million monthly users accessing the Google+ content stream, but it hasn't
divulged daily usage.
While only
public Google+ posts are eligible to be promoted on the web, it will now be
possible for users to see their likenesses and comments packaged into social
ads, which was presaged in a disclosure by the search giant in October. The
setting that determines whether users' names and profile photos may appear in
the new ads is carried over from whether they had previously authorized Google
to personalize content and ads based on their +1s.
For the vast
majority who presumably have never gone that deeply into their settings, the
default is for their names and pictures to appear in ads, though they can opt out in
their account settings.
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