Watch out DoubleClick, Google starts serving ads on third party sites
Earlier this month Google announced a new advertising program that sells and delivers ads on other publishers' Web sites taking advantage of its already growing keyword advertising business according to this Wall Street Journal story (subscription required):
The new ad program is content-targeted and automated. So, an Internet user reading a Web page on astronomy might see a related, Google-delivered advertisement for telescopes on that page. The program makes Google, which has focused primarily on providing search technology, look more like an advertising company, similar to DoubleClick Inc., which sells and delivers ads on third-party customers' Web sites.
"They're not laser-focused on search," said Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Watch, a newsletter. "This makes them a media company, an advertising network."
Google, which serves more than 200 million searches each day on its network of Web sites and partner sites, said this is a natural extension of its existing one-year-old advertising program. Google, which boasts more than 100,000 advertisers world-wide, said it already has been serving ads on other sites, such as AOL Time Warner Inc.'s America Online, EarthLink Inc. and Ask Jeeves Inc.