Dive Brief:
- After launching a Matched content option for websites, Google is now allowing ads to be served next to those recommendations, opening a new revenue stream.
- After the feature is enabled relevant ads appear in Matched content units and will replicate the look and feel of those recommendations.
- Google will gradually make Matched Content ads available to eligible publishers worldwide over the next few weeks.
Dive Insight:
For publishers, Matched content is only available for websites with multiple pages, unique images and high volumes of traffic. Marketers can look at site management settings in AdSense to see if a website is eligible for these ads, and if so, those ads don’t count toward Google content ad limits per page.
Below is an example of the new feature Google provided in a blog post that shows what content "promoted by" Zagat.com could look like.
Google launched its Matched content recommendation tool last April for AdSense users.
"Starting today, you can use Matched content units to directly generate revenue by allowing ads to appear alongside your recommended content," Google Product Manager Tobias Maurer wrote in an AdSense blog post about the news. "With the new 'Allow ads' feature, relevant ads will appear within your Matched content units, and will be styled to complement the look and feel of your content recommendations."