“So what we did, in essence, is we said advertising should be useful to a consumer just as much as the organic search results, and we don’t want people just to buy advertising and be able to show an ad if it’s irrelevant to the consumer’s need,” says Richard Holden, director of product management at Google. To accomplish this, Google developed a “Quality Score” model to predict how effective an ad will be. The model uses many factors, such as click-through rates, advertiser history, and keyword performance, to develop a score for each advertisement. “Essentially, what we’re trying to do is predict ahead, before we actually show an ad, how a consumer will react to that ad, and our interest is in showing fewer ads, not more ads; just the right ads at the right time,” Holden continues. The Google advertising model has revolutionized the advertising industry, and it continues to improve every day!

Questions
1. Describe several unique characteristics about Google and its business practices.
2. What is Google’s philosophy about advertising? How can less advertising be preferred to more advertising?
3. Describe the types of online advertising available today. Which type of advertising does Google currently dominate? Why?
4. How can Google be successful in the display advertising business? What other areas of growth are likely to be pursued by Google in the future?