-b- 22 Mar 05

Tads is good. I’m not sure about Ad Links at all and turned them on to see how they’d work. Google must be thinking that people who ignore the text ads will click on Ad Links. What’s also interesting is that there’s no link back to my site, once you click on the Ad Link.

fred 22 Mar 05

Actually, this is an awesome concept that google just coined. Why? By using tags that relate to the content on the page, they create a point of interest for people who are into the same thing. The resulting page (and now here’s the smart part) is so similar to a google search results page (that millions see every day), that people WILL follow the links. Browsing is a natural act, nowadays. Google is exploring that.

This will beat adwords down, imho.

B. Adam 22 Mar 05

Where I work (online paper) we always joked that our boss would eventually get his way and have an entire page of just ads that we would promote on our front page.

“Click here for lots of ads!”

We laughed at that because it was stupid and because we knew our boss knew better.

Well, it looks like Google is that stupid and doesn’t know better.

All their supposed “geniuses” are starting to give in to the ad folks, if you ask me. I bet the say “These ads help people find what they’re looking for! It’s good for the user!” Started with Autolink. Now this.

Keith 22 Mar 05

I can see how this could be abused, but I can also see how it could be put to great use as even more options for unobtrusive advertising.

I’ve been thinking my own site’s ads are a bit much, yet I’ve been loathe to loose them (mainly because they do decently and most people seem fine with them) completely.

Something like this may help me keep a bit of income coming in from my site and allow me to clean things up at the same time.

James 23 Mar 05

I can see myself using this service.

If I do a search for “user interface UK”, - and I’m actually wanting to hire a firm in London, - this would be useful for me.

Atleast, I don’t think the idea is ridiculous, which is what B.Adam is suggesting.

Mathew 23 Mar 05

It’s almost like a mini snapshot of a yellow pages. Not as odd as it first sounds, and if you are looking for a commercial service it could be quit helpful.

-b- 23 Mar 05

Agreed with Keith on the ads being non intrusive. I think it’d help if the landing page for them had your site’s logo and worked more like the Ad Search does.

Walker Hamilton 23 Mar 05

Shit. We don’t need a new name for these things, we have one: Text Ads.

Jeezus, must we come up with new names for pre-exisiting things all the time now?

Randy 23 Mar 05

Google Ad Links aren’t “text ads” as we think of text ads today. There’s no body of the ad, it’s just a single word.

Randy 23 Mar 05

Oh, and names are good things. You have one, right? Should we just call you PERSON 8172721?

Walker Hamilton 23 Mar 05

No no. We should have names. I’m speaking of technology items which have names that people try and coin new terms for constantly.

Some things can benefit from a coined name that is more succint than their original name. For instance, ECMA Script being more commonly referred to as Javascript. I think that have more knowledge or ECMA Script because of it’s “friendlier” name.

Perhaps Google’s Textual Ads might benefit from being known as “Tads”. This is a case, though, where I’m not sure that it will help. How will “Tads” raise the profile of google’s new ads? How is naming them “Tads” making something long and incomprehensible easier to grasp?

Walker Hamilton 23 Mar 05

p.s.
Who’s phone number is that?

-b- 23 Mar 05

As a whole, we suck at names - try RSS, podcast, meme, any of those on a nonbloggy crowd and you’ll get the blank stare.

Jonathan Fenocchi 23 Mar 05

Tads, eh? I like it. Hey, what if the text were vertical and fit in a very small horizontal space? Could we call them Tadpoles then?

ed fladung 24 Mar 05

I don’t think it’s such a bad thing, but when I went to Byron’s site and clicked on the “create a blog” ad link, the ads were terrible. from companies i’ve never heard of or would like to hear of. Tads is a great name, but maybe us geeks should call them “Turds”.

optimus 24 Mar 05

I thought these were a great idea. I had previously displayed Google ads but found them obtrusive and clutter-y. I’ve had the adlinks installed along my sidebar (same place as the old Google ads) and have had nary a click (versus many many clicks on the old ads).

Great idea, but doesn’t seem to be generating any traction. I think users might be loathe to leave a page without any idea of what the ‘payoff’ for the click is going to be. Google would do well to allow some sort of micronavigation within the ad box.

duff 24 Mar 05

I use gmail, and I find myself clicking on Google’s text ads almost every day. They work, they’re unintrusive, they’re relevant. I’ll probably click on the “tads” as well.

Of course I’ll cntrl+click on the tads to open them in a new tab in FireFox. I’m not about to lose what I’m looking at for some ad that might not be what I want. ;)

Hashim 24 Mar 05

every time I buy the newspaper there’s a huge section in the middle with just ads. Sometimes I buy the paper JUST so I can see those ads.

It’s called the classified section. And it’s good because it’s useful and relevent. Just like “tads”

Felipe 26 Mar 05

The idea is very good.. But please, let’s keep calling them how it should be called.. If they are tag-ads, or Ad Links, let’s call them Tag-ads or Ad Links… No “Tads”.. Not another acronym.. You see, in the comments above, “Tads” were already used (confused!?) with tag-ads, textual ads, text ads…
Why creating a 4 character acronym for a 6 character thing, like you suggested (tag-ads) ?

Will Spencer 03 Apr 05

It seems to me that Adlinks could be better if the ads were allowed to be longer and more informative.

The current ads are too short to really be enticing.

Darrin Ward 08 Apr 05

Great observation Will…

If the descriptions in those ads were longer then users might spend more time looking at them since they would look like more than just ad stings.

Of course - how long would be too long? It might not be fair to those listed at the bottom (then again they might up their bid for clicks).

This won’t happen though since Google still have to consider the links on their search results pages - they don’t want to clutter them, and they can’t just cut them off after x amount of characters.