The Power of the +1 for Display Advertising

Even if you haven’t set up your Google+ profile yet, then you most certainly have heard of Google’s latest foray into social networking. Google+ launched 3 months ago with a closed beta, so only those invited to the party could set up a profile and use the network. Google recently opened up the party to everyone, when they announced on Sept. 20th that “anyone can visit Google.com/+” and get in on the action. So, what does this mean for you, as an online business and site owner? Well, maybe its time to take +1 seriously.

If you’re an Adwords advertiser, you may have noticed the +1 icon appearing beside your own (and your competitors) ads in search. The +1 icon is now being rolled out to include display ads on the Google Display Network (just display for the time being). As a regular web user, you are likely to encounter at least one if not many sites within the Google Display Network in an average day online. Therefore, this is a great way of reaching potential audience. Google hope to use the power of +1 to leverage social recommendations, which ultimately, should help advertisers sell more online.

As we have seen on other social media advertising platforms, recommendations can be a very powerful tool in selling online. This is just an echo of everyday like – if your friend tells you about a great new shampoo, you are more likely to pick that bottle off the shelf next time you are browsing the aisles at your local Tesco. Online, Google sees +1’s as acting in a similar way, adding value for users and for advertisers. For example, if a user within your own Google account profile has +1′d an ad, you are now more likely to be served that ad on the Display Network. Google describes this as an “extra boost”. Google will be using this metric to gauge relevancy of ads, so along with other factors like quality score and bid cost, Google are now rewarding ads with lots of +1’s. We can’t help but speculate that while this only specifically affects campaigns with +1 ads at the moment, as time goes on, accounts with lots of +1 ads may get some kind of overall benefit at an account level too.

As an advertiser, Google do now give you the option not to allow your ads to be +1′d – although, looking at how Google plan to rate ads, it may be unwise to do so. Google measure +1’s at a URL level, so a site’s +1’s are a combination of those done onsite, within an ad and through other platforms with this functionality. As a user, you can also choose to opt out and publishers can also choose whether or not they wish to serve ads with the +1 icon. It’s still quite early in the +1 story, so it will be interesting to see how other sites, publishers and end users choose to embrace the +1.

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