Has Google Crossed the Ethical Line Too?

There’s an interesting debate going on in my last blog entry about Ziff’s use of IntelliTXT over whether in-article hyperlink ads are ethical or not. I’m surprised that I haven’t heard much about it, but Google also quietly launched their own version of IntelliTXT in late March as part of their new pay-per-action beta test for AdWords. Here’s a quote straight from the official “Inside AdWords” blog at Google on March 20, 2007 (emphasis mine).

“You can create text ads, image ads, or our new text link ad format in your pay-per-action campaign. Text link ads are brief text descriptions that take on the characteristics of a publisher’s page. These Javascript-based ads will display like regular hyperlinks and allow publishers to embed these links inline with other text to promote your product or service.” — Rob Kniaz, Product Manager for Pay-Per-Action

A few Google watchers caught on to this subtlety right away:

• Google Getting Grayer – Inline Text Ads? (Dave Naffziger)
• Do No Evil? Yeah Right (Rahul Pathak)

So there it is. Will Google’s adoption of inline text advertising bring more legitimacy to the IntelliTXT side of the debate? Personally I think it will even though many people may not like it. Not because it’s deemed ethical or unethical by any of us, but because there will simply be too many sites that begin to adopt it once it’s cannonized as part of the Google juggernaut. And as that adoption grows, it will soon become part of the normal Internet user experience.

Remember AFC? Google was the company at the forefront in blurring the ad/edit boundary when it introduced Ads for Content. Publishers were up in arms about how actually keying text ads off of the text of the content on the page crossed the line. Yet today a vast majority of publishers use some form of contextual text ad system … and many of them use Google AFC.

Again, I’m personally less concerned about whether people think that inline text ads are ethical or not … that’s always going to be up to personal interpretation either by indiviudals, publishing companies, web usability experts, or ethics board members at the ASBPE. What I’m concerned about is that ALL forms of contextual advertising actually be relevant and useful to the visitor. I wish IntelliTXT, Google, and all of us publishers would spend more time on that!