In an interview with paidContent, Brad Bender, Google’s product management director, noted that when up to this point, advertisers who bought display on Google weren’t able to accurately select where their ads would show up. Major advertisers had been asking for a way to make sure that users see their ads when clicking on a site immediately, as opposed to seeing the spot once they scroll down. 

Rather than try to adopt the Online Publishers Association’s ad formats, which offer takeovers or follow users as they scroll down a web page, Google being Google, the company opted for what Bender calls “a statistically driven approach.” And that’s where the bidding—and Google’s ability to identify different browser formats, monitor sizes and screen resolutions—comes in. “In contrast to cost-per-click ad buys, which is about connecting to users by starting conversations, advertisers buying according to CPMs mainly want to get their ads in front of the right users immediately,” Bender said. “This filtering tool helps satisfy that need.”

Inside AdWords Blog Post:

New tool for brand advertisers on the Google Content Network

Two types of advertisers run campaigns across the Google Content Network. The first group, direct response advertisers, measure the success of their campaigns by looking for clicks, traffic to their sites and sales. In contrast, brand advertisers typically use display ads to raise awareness and purchase consideration for a product or service a person might buy down the road. Other advertisers are looking to achieve a combination of these goals to both drive awareness and elicit a response.

On the Google Content Network, we’ve been focused on building new capabilities that make it a great place for brand advertising of all kinds. For example, last year we introduced frequency capping to enable advertisers to manage how often their campaign reaches the right users. We’ve also developed new innovative tools to measure the impact of brand campaigns. Today, in response to feedback from brand advertisers, we’re announcing a new feature that allow these advertisers to reach their advertising goals more easily.

This feature, which filters out “Below the Fold” inventory, enables brand advertisers to be more selective about where ads appear. The new filter gives advertisers the ability to show ads only in places that appear on the user’s screen when the page loads, without requiring them to scroll down. Learn more in the Help Center.

With a host of different web browsers, monitor sizes and screen resolutions, it is hard for advertisers to predict where an ad will land, since the same placement may appear significantly different on each user’s screen. To simplify the process for advertisers, Google has implemented a statistically driven solution to determine which ads are above and below the fold. The statistically-driven model only considers ads “above the fold” if they are completely on-screen when the browser window loads.

Our goal with this release is to give brand advertisers greater control over where their ads appear, and make the Google Content Network an even more powerful, controlled environment for running, high performing brand campaigns. 

Inside AdSense Blog Post:

Attracting new brand advertisers to your site

We’re constantly focused on bringing new advertisers and more advertising spend to AdSense sites. One way to do so is to make it easier for brand advertisers to reach their goals on AdSense sites. Brand advertisers are focused on raising brand awareness and driving engagement, typically with display ads, for a product or service a person may buy in the future. Brand advertisers differ from direct response advertisers, who typically look for clicks and conversions from the campaigns they run on your site. 

For example, an advertiser selling DVDs online may want users to click through and make purchases, while a brand advertiser for an upcoming summer blockbuster may want to generate awareness among users. Because of their campaign goals, brand advertisers tend to be more selective about the sites their ads run on, as well as where on the page their ads appear. We want to help these new advertisers compete for the portions of your ad space that are most attractive to them so that we can increase your earnings over time.

With that in mind, we’re launching a new beta advertiser feature that we believe will help accomplish this goal. The new feature enables brand advertisers to target their ads to ad units that are immediately visible when a page is loaded—in other words, the portions of the page a user can see without needing to scroll down. The ads that are immediately visible are called ‘above the fold’; those that require a user to scroll down in order to be seen are called ‘below the fold.’

In order to determine which ads are above and below the fold, we’ve implemented a statistically-driven model. The model takes into account various user experiences and situations, including different web browsers, monitor sizes, and screen resolutions, and only considers ads above the fold if they are fully on-screen when the browser window loads.

If you’ve placed your ad units above the fold, advertisers using this feature will now be able to reach your site in a new way. If you haven’t, placing new ad units above the fold will enable them to do so. We believe this feature will help attract new brand campaigns to AdSense sites, bringing more revenue to publishers over time.