[LEMONS] 4.13.2004
Testing Gmail Ads
One of the more interesting, and concerning, aspects of Google's new Gmail service is its ability to scan the text of your email messages to serve Google text ads. I had sent and received several messages without ever having an ad served. But then I exchanged a few emails with someone to whom I was trying to send a large attachment. In the body of the emails, we discussed the attachment's size, and her inability to receive it. And then, voila, my first Gmail ad--a remarkably intuitive text ad that offered to solve the very problem we were discussing. This intrigued me. Just how smart is the system? I thought I'd experiment with a few messages, just to see what types of ads Gmail would serve if I gamed the system.I began by trying a message that I assumed Google would have no trouble with, a short message about Wi-Fi routers:
(click to enlarge)
Gmail performed as expected, serving up thee Wi-Fi ads, one of which was specifically about routers, and another of which would have led me to a router in a few steps. But what would happen if I made the message more specific? Would inserting the text "linksys" and "smc" cause Gmail to serve me an ad for those specific routers? Yes:
This was an easy one, I would have been surprised had Gmail not picked up on the Wi-Fi text and served me a related ad. But what happens when the query is a little more nebulous? I tried writing a message that a human would obviously pick up on as having to do with traveling to the San Diego area. I was interested to see if Gmail would serve me an ad for San Diego, rental cars, airfare, or hotel rooms. But I also tried to make the message somewhat vague. Gmail did not pick up on it:
Getting nothing, I tried again, this time inserting the word "travel" into the message. Again, no ads:
I decided that maybe Gmail would do better with a few specifics, so I added some corporate names to the message, to see if that would prompt a few travel ads. It did:
I wondered if Gmail weighted the subject line more heavily than the body of the message, but Gmail still did not get that I might be traveling to San Diego:
Finally, I tried spelling out exactly what I was looking for, a la Ask Jeeves. This time Gmail picked up on what I was getting at, but remained San Diego focused:
But note that in the above message, I had listed San Diego multiple times. What would happen if it only showed up once? Gmail again was unable to serve me an ad:
Interestingly, I tried inputting the exact text from the messages that resulted in ads in a regular Google search just to see if I'd get the same results. But rather than doing a better job of filtering through the message and serving text ads, as I expected, the regular Google search didn't serve me any ads at all.
So what does all this mean? I don't know. I'm just a caveman. But what I'm taking away from it is that although the ads are pretty damn smart, they aren't brilliant.
Update: If you have any interesting results from Gmail ads, please either email them to me, or link to them in the comments section below. Also: note that some of these are "sponsored links" while others are "related pages," and according to Kevin "Nobody pays for them to be there."
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