I don’t consider myself a betting man, however I have been known to stake a beer or two in friendly waging banter when it comes to trends and predictions. Fortunately for me, my colleague and friend Michael is good for it 😉
Several years ago in a company meeting, I posited that Google would at some point soon be showing image ads in the SERP’s.
You could argue that the recent announcement around Image Extensions in AdWords is yet another attempt at moving towards a more visual web.
If you take into account Googles Merchant tie into Google AdWords as expressed by Product Listing Ads (PLA’s) you could lay claim that image ads in the SERPs occurred June 2011.
I thought the merging of image ads onto the SERPs would happen based on my experience with Google Adsense and the results I saw from text ads versus image ads performance. Yes, people still click on banners. In many instances, banners outperform text ads. Seemed like only common sense Google would want to monetize the SERPs as readily as they could.
YouTube TrueView ads, although they live on Googles video platform, are going to be the next step in bringing sound, motion, and enhanced user experience to the SERPs. Stay tuned, I hope it doesn’t take another 3 years for that to happen.