There will be banner ads on the Google homepage and/or web search results pages

Back in late 2005 Marissa Mayer, VP of Search Products & User Experience at Google wrote;

"There will be no banner ads on the Google homepage or web search results pages. There will not be crazy, flashy, graphical doodads flying and popping up all over the Google site. Ever."

Fast forward to 2007...

At the recent Citigroup Technology conference in New York Nick Fox & Sundar Pichai made some comments in relation to image/video ads being integrated into Google's universal search results;

"Fox says integrating video or image ads into sponsored search results is an option that has come up in internal discussions, since search ads are there to give users information that is most relevant to their query. "In many cases that's a text ad," Fox says. "In some cases, it may be an image, a video, or something else. But the risk is not showing something garish or flashy, because users would become blind to the ads and it would hurt the business long-term."

And Pichai added;

"the images and video ads you see today on content networks are not what will work. They won't carry over well." Any steps Google makes will have to be "incremental and evolutionary."

Personally, I think it's a logical step that needs to be taken with the introduction of Universal Search. There are times when a video or image ad will result in a better user experience when compared to standard text ad. I think Google is taking the correct approach to this - "incremental & evolutionary".

A key element that will need consideration (and I'm sure most would agree) is the current "instant approval" for ads/keywords that run on Google's own search results. I think video/image ads would all have to go through an approval process, similar to site targeted or content network ads do. I could just imagine some of the video/image ads people would try and sneak into Google's results and the outcry that would follow.

I've been in discussions with other search marketers who strongly disagree, for a number of reasons, with the opinion that image and video ads have a place in Google's search results. A few years back I was on that side of the fence as well but with Universal Search staring search marketers in the face it's time to accept that image & video ads will be in the search results in the future. We can either get our video and image assets in line and ready to use or pretend like it won't happen and watch our competitors jump ahead of us in that space.

Thoughts on image and video ads in Google's results? Feel free to comment.