Display ad on Image Search

Google Image Search was redesigned a few months ago. At that time, they introduced a new ad format called Image Search Ads. This format included a thumbnail image accompanying a basic text ad. The feature has performed well and advertisers have reported satisfactory results. Users of the feature also have reason to be happy as the search results to their queries are accompanied by relevant commercial content.

In order to extend this service further, Google has now expanded the image ads format. Advertisers will now be able to reach a larger audience with engaging ads that would help to create both brand awareness as well as improve sales.

Display ads on Google Image Search will work in the same manner as they do elsewhere on the Google Display Network. Depending on the search being conducted, “relevant” display ads will be shown to users.

To start using this facility, advertisers have to use the AdWords Placement Targeting Tool to target Google Images and then select the category of searches on which they would like to advertise. Advertisers can either upload their own leaderboard ads (sized 728 x 90 pixels) or create new ones with the help of Google’s ad builder.

According to comScore, the average Internet user in the U.S. has seen about 6,000 display ads in the third quarter of 2010 alone. This new feature will add a significant volume of ad impressions to that number. Advertisers won’t mind, though, as it will help them reach a new potential audience.

At present, display ads on Google Images are shown only on a few queries in the U.S. and U.K. but the service will be expanded in due course.

Bing will now be used to power the new Quick Add feature on Hotmail. This essentially means that users can now search Bing from within Hotmail and add information from the search results directly into their email body.

Details about movie listings, images, videos, maps, restaurant reviews and many more info bytes can be searched and added directly into outgoing email messages, as can be seen in the example below:

The procedure to do this is actually quite simple.

The user first has to open up a new message page, by clicking on ‘New’. Then selects a category from the ‘Quick Add’ column, which can be found on the right hand side of the page. After that, users can select what sort of results they are looking for (image, video) and then search in the Bing search box. Bing returns the top 10 results within the same page. More results can be viewed in a new window. Lastly, clicking ‘Insert’ on the relevant result will add it in the message body where the cursor was placed.

One shortcoming of this facility is that it lists only a few search results. Those looking for more detailed search results, have to go over to Bing, and then it is not so easy to add the required result into the Hotmail message.

At present the Quick Add feature is available only in select locations like Australia, Canada, China, India and of course in the U.S. and U.K.

A software engineer at Google Image Search, Sean O’Malley, says “searching for the perfect image can be challenging if the search results match the meaning of your query, but aren’t in the style that’s useful to you.”

To begin with, they launched “face search”, which as the name implies allows one to find only those images related to the search query, which have faces in them. There are two options available; search with faces, and search without faces.

The next innovation was the introduction of photo search. If a user selects this option, the results will automatically delete all images containing cartoons, drawings etc. and focus only on images with photographic content. The reverse option is also available. i.e. users can opt to delete photographs, and select only cartoons and drawings instead.

The latest enhancement which Google has added, is the choice between clip art and line drawings. which allows users to decide beforehand, which category of results they wish to see.

To select any of these options, the user can click on the “Any Content” option in the blue title bar, of the search results page, or he can select “Content Types” on the Advanced Image Search Page.

These new facilities are very simple and practical ways to help users find what they are looking for without wasting their precious time and are sure to become very popular in a short while.

Back in 2007, Google had announced that they were missing out on as much as $200 million per year because they were not monetising their Image Search product. After that, there was no report of anything being done about this till some users spotted a single Sponsored Links result among the images, as reported on TechCrunch.

Today, though, a full line of three Sponsored Links are showing for most searches carried about by a handful of user accounts that have been selected to participate in the test.

The paid search listings that appear on Image Search results are not the same as those on the Web Search results page. The reason behind the difference in ads delivered is not yet clear. The ad copy of the ads that are common to both is the exact same, which makes one think that Google has some other selection criteria for delivery of these ads.

The presentation of the Sponsored Links above the organic search results here is different from that on the Web Search pages. The 4-line ad format with 3 ads placed side-by-side in the images results looks better than the 2-line format with 3 ads placed one below the other on regular search results as the organic image results are also shown side-by-side rather than one after another.

Why Google hasn’t done this earlier is a question worth asking.

At present search engines rank images based on the presence of keywords in text associated with the image, rather than the image itself. Results are often unsatisfactory and inappropriate. Image analysis results remain poor in spite of decades of research in the field.

The New York Times reports that search geniuses intend to introduce a system for image searches that is similar to PageRank, which is used for Web search. The new PageRank for product image search, or ‘Visual Rank’ as it is called, will actually try to understand the picture or analyze the visual link structure.

Image recognition, which is expensive and time consuming, usually breaks down with any images other than faces, alphanumeric characters and very specific objects. The new technology will instead try to identify more objects and also perform a link analysis with image processing. In this system, a numerical weight will be allotted to all images, thus weighing its relative importance vis-à-vis other images.

Classical image recognition methods can only compare images with a known image. However, with VisualRank, Google will use “visual themes”, to rank each image from a given set of images, based on how well it matches the theme. For example, when the word McDonald’s is used, the algorithm would identify the famous golden arches from their logo as the theme. A picture where the arches are prominently displayed would then be ranked higher than one in which the arches are in the background.

During a recent study Baluja, Jing and 150 panelists surveyed 2,000 of the most popular products search on Google. It was found that the VisualRank algorithm reduced irrelevant results by 83%. As of now all this has been done only on an experimental level and it remains to be seen whther Google can scale the technology and apply it to their entire database of images.