Google to serve ads in news results

Google is to start serving advertising against search results on Google News, the company has announced.

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It’s placing text ads next to headlines delivered from the 4,500+ global news sites sourced for the Google News service in an attempt to generate revenues from as much of its business as possible.

Google project manager Josh Cohen wrote on the company blog, “What this means is that when you enter a query like ‘iPhone’ or ‘Kindle’ into the Google News search box, you’ll see text ads alongside your results, similar to what you see on regular Google searches.”

The move could further frustrate some news organisations that have previously criticised Google for deep-linking into their content without permission. Google didn’t reveal a revenue model for the new offering, leaving it unclear whether ad revenues will be shared with news sites.

Nevertheless, Josh Cohen said the company was only ever going to roll it out if all parties were happy.

“We’ve always said that we’d unveil these changes when we could offer a good experience for our users, publishers and advertisers alike,” he said. “We’ll continue to look at ways to deliver ads that are relevant for users and good for publishers too.”

Last month Google closed its underperforming Prints Ads programme, designed to apply the AdWords model within print and newspaper advertising.

This story first appeared on newmediaage.co.uk