This isn't a banner ad. This is essentially a branded search. It's not like Google is targeting users with Flash-based crud here. To call it a banner ad is kind of silly.
It walks like a duck but it doesn't quack like a duck. It shows up upon your specific input of the company name. I'm not sure what to call it, but 'advertisement' seems ill-fitting.
Now if it showed up when you typed a generic term like 'airline' I would agree it was an ad. But does it?
It's a prediction. Google's trend has been to get further and further away from their original design and core principles and push harder and harder on the boundaries of ethics and good taste. The end-game for that trend is to end up looking like a 1990's-style portal (which they already pretty much do, except at the moment all the content is still mostly Google properties). I could be wrong. I hope I am. But I'd give you long odds against.
To grow revenue when your product is selling for less you need to sell more of it, so ads will start appearing everywhere. It's just common sense. What else are they going to do... fire people and start a mass exodus?
If I search for MLK, I see his picture on the side. I don't see how getting a picture of Southwest Airlines when I search for "Southwest Airlines" is that big of a deal.
Now, if I were to search for "airlines" and saw that huge banner up there, I'd call that an ad and I'd be right there, handing out pitchforks. This? This is just returning searching results in a (arguably) prettier way.
It's a big deal because this is a false equivalence. A corporation with a marketing budget and a brand is not the same as an historical figure. I think that explains a lot of the leeriness around this move.
That said, I'm leaning towards your interpretation ("search results in a prettier way"). But the money involved makes me nervous.
You're saying that whether or not it's advertising depends on the context of where the paid ad appears, which is an arbitrary and baseless distinction.
If a company rents a billboard that's right outside their office, isn't that advertising? Sure, you could have looked at the front of the building to see their logo, but that doesn't change the fact that the billboard is advertising.
I disagree with your analogy. In your case, I would say the banner represents the giant logo over the door, just before you walk into the building.
In most ad-based marketing, you're typically not just randomly throwing your brand out there. Obviously, the expected ROI goes up when you can target the right demographic (saturday morning cartoons versus world news with Tom Brokaw). This is not that. This isn't a demographic-driven ad, based on search criteria like "airline travel" or "buy tickets from DEN to DTW". The person knew exactly what they were searching for. Hell, depending on your browser, typing that exact string in your address bar will take you directly to Southwest Airlines. Google just managed to convince companies to pay them for this, while at the same time presenting a prettier and more useful direct links within that box.
As an afterthought, the most-searched for term in our company web portal is "google". I would be extremely surprised if Google, themselves, don't have a ton of searches where they could simply append a ".com" to the search query and send them directly to where they wanted. I doubt my parents would even notice.
The difference is that Google does not charge MLK to have his info show up in knowledge graph results. As I understand it, they are charging Southwest Airlines for this big banner.
If it was just a larger knowledge graph box I doubt anyone would care.
How about just a banner. It reflects the content of the search. It would be an Ad if it was say, American Airlines pictured for a Southwest Airlines search. It's like seeing the official results being curated for the searcher.
I think this is exactly point I was getting at. Google is giving companies the ability to curate their own results, which is something Facebook (through pages) and Twitter (through featured tweets on high-profile social accounts) already allow.
Difference is that it's a search, not a dedicated page. I know there are a lot of cynics here, but that's not the same as a banner ad.
It's not an ad because it's an organic search result, which is directly relevant to what I'm searching. It's essentially the same as Google Image search result, only better suited for this particular page and request.
Care to elaborate on how its better suited? Why return what you are calling image results on a page that historically has been text only, especially when there exists a perfectly functional Image Search already?
Plus, why insert an image at all if not to convert people that would otherwise miss (or not be looking for) the text result?
> Google said that it won't be charging more for the banner ads - which take up large parts of the screen: "they are part of AdWords" [from the linked article]
"they are part of AdWords" -> Google considers them to be an an ad.
Ads doesn't, per definition, need to be irrelevant.
I actually have to agree somewhat, though (and I don't work in marketing). If you search for Southwest Airlines, why should Southwest Airlines not be the top result? Google has been showing pictures and information about people, products, and companies for quite a while now (https://www.google.com/#q=paul+graham), and shows commonly visited links off the main page of a website (as shown in that search for Paul Graham, they sub-link to his essays and other commonly visited pages).
It's very clear the intent of searching for Southwest Airlines; to get information about Southwest Airlines. The only difference between this result and any other result is that Southwest told Google what to put as their picture and sub-links, and Google made them pay for it. Searching for American Airlines shows almost exactly the same thing, except it's automatically populated by Google's engine, rather than being paid for.
it shows banner ads for companies including SouthWest
Airlines on pages which include them in web search results.
It's not just 'If you search for Southwest Airlines'. It's if in the list of results for the thing you searched for there's a Southwest Airlines page. It could be coincidental but suddenly you have a large advertisement at the top of your page.
It wouldn't be outside the bounds of possibility for this to encourage Google to rank Southwest Airlines pages more highly so that they can show the banner, thereby generating more revenue.
I only see the ad when I search directly for "Southwest Airlines". For example, search for "Southwest check in". Southwest Airlines is the number one result, but there's no ad on the page: https://www.google.com/#q=southwest+check+in
>If you search for Southwest Airlines, why should Southwest Airlines not be the top result?
Why? Because the homepage of a corporation should not automatically be the top result. If they implemented it that way, they could throw away the entire ranking algos!
What if SW Airlines fucks up one day and masses of reporting about this springs up? Yeah, better to have the big ass advert as top result when people searching for southwest.
Also, I am fairly certain this is just the start. Next step, widen the results. Search just for "Airlines" and get the big ass ad for Southwest on the top. Other airlines see this and also buy ad space. And pretty soon when you search for "best airline" you will be presented with a page that makes you wonder if you did an image search by accident.
While it may not be a banner ad, it's a foot-in-the-door technique. Display these branded search for a few years, so when they're ready to implement real banner ads, users won't be shocked.
Just imagine the press release.
"This isn't something new we're doing. We've been experimenting with showing users highly targeted banner image when querying for specific terms. We're only expanding that target to help users find what they need faster."
