Google has confirmed that it is testing the placement of fairly large banner ads in the results of certain brand-related searches.
The whole thing started after a post on Twitter by user @SynrgyHQ who noticed a large banner in search results for the term Southwest Airlines.
A Google executive confirmed that the company is running a "small experiment" these days, only in the US market. As you can see from the photo, the ad covers a very large area of the results page, probably to test the influence it has on users.
Other information reports that Google's "experiment" includes more than 30 companies, including Virgin America and Crate & Barrel, while the test banners appear in less than 5% of total searches made daily with Google's engine.
However, this move is surprising since Google in 2005 had ruled out any possibility of including banner ads in search results and on the Google homepage, stating that such a thing would be "crazy." An important detail of the story is that this particular statement was made by Marissa Mayer, who is now CEO of Yahoo!.
Source: insomnia.gr
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