Dive Brief:
- Google is about to crack down on mobile sites that display app install ads immediately after mobile searches.
- The search giant will downrank sites that run these interstitial ads in mobile search results.
- Google also changed YouTube TrueView video ads in AdWords integrating these campaigns directly into the AdWords user interface instead of being lumped into a separate “all video campaigns” category.
Dive Insight:
Google giveth and it also taketh away.
Right after announcing mobile marketers will be able to purchase new interstitial ad designs ads on AdMob via AdWords and through the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, it revelaed plans to also to punish mobile websites that immediately serve up interstitial mobile app install ads. Sites that don't comply will be downranked in mobile search results. Beginning in November, mobile websites that serve visitors ads that hide a significant amount of content immediately after a user lands on the site from a search will lose Google’s “mobile friendly” stamp of approval and will take the accompanying search ranking hit.
"Sometimes a user may tap on a search result on a mobile device and see an app install interstitial that hides a significant amount of content and prompts the user to install an app," Google Search software engineer Daniel Bathgate wrote in a blog post about the update. "Our analysis shows that it is not a good search experience and can be frustrating for users because they are expecting to see the content of the web page."
In other recent Google news, it rolled out a new, more streamlined logo and it made a significant change in YouTube’s TrueView video ads, making those campaigns a part of the basic AdWords user interface rather than being lumped into an “all video campaigns” category. Making these ads easier to track for marketers should also help Google get higher adoption rates for TrueView campaigns.