5 replies to this topic

[kat]

I'm just curious - I know Google has the Adwords ads on the right-hand side of search results. But where do the Sponsored Links at the top of the page come from? Are they Overture results? Or do they come from some other PPC source?

Thanks!

[qwerty]

Those are also Google ads. I think they were called "Premium Sponsorships," or something like that. For a while, AdWords ads were being mixed into there if there wasn't much competition for a keyword phrase.

But I believe that program is being discontinued. They're not taking on new sponsorships, and I think they're raising the prices on the existing ones in order to get people to leave the program.

[kat]

Thanks for your quick response!

I thought I had read somewhere that Google used Overture results in their Sponsored Links at the top, but either I misunderstood or Google has discontinued that practice. How strange that their phasing that out - do you think they'll replace it with something else?

[qwerty]

You may be thinking of the fact that Yahoo, which uses Google for its organic search results, uses (and now owns) Overture for pay per click ads.

I assume Google discontinued those ads because they either weren't profitable, or they got bad feedback on them. It looks like AdWords is going very well for them, and they seem to be making a good effort to make their advertisers happy with AdSense, so we'll just have to see how it all goes.

[Haystack]

Hi guys,
Google has decided to phase out their Premium Sponsorship program (the ads at the top of the page) in favor of just using Adwords. This is phasing out as contracts for the top results expire. However, they are now starting to show Adwords ads in that area but the rational behind when they do this isn't clear to me.

Both types of ads are definitely Google ads. If I was to guess why they've chosen this path, I bet it's because of the administrative costs involved in hand holding the premium sponsors wasn't justified next to the returns generated through the further automated Adwords ads.

[Jill]

Google's never used Overture ads in any of their listings.

Jill