Google's Marissa Mayer had written in a 2005 blog post that the Mountain View, California-based giant wouldn't have banner ads on its home or web search results pages along with "crazy, flashy, graphical doodads" to distract users.
From the looks of things, that promise has just been broken.
SearchEngineLand reported a screenshot from Dallas-based Web marketing app maker Synrgy showing an experimental enormous banner ad for "Southwest Airlines" at the top of a search result for it. Google said in a statement that the run is only a test.
"We're currently running a very limited, US-only test, in which advertisers can include an image as part of the search ads that show in response to certain branded queries," read Google's statement.
Part of the search engine giant's founding principles were its lack banner ads on the opening and following pages. Google gained attention because it was uncluttered by advertisements and other elements. Founder Larry Page and Sergey Brin turned down a $3 million deal from Visa to display an ad for the credit card company, even though the site was losing money at the time, in 2000. Apart from Google products and Red Cross drives, the front page has never been used to advertise anything. Google's ad revenue is growing from services like YouTube and mobile.
The move comes as the company's dependance on its AdWords product has seen eroding prices in the amount of advertisers are willing to ay for ads for around three-quarters of its gross revenues.
How long the test would run, whether it might be extended outside the U.S., or what is the criteria for success - the answers to these questions wasn't given by Google. However, a spokesperson said that "Advertisers have long been able to add informative visual elements to their search ads, with features like Media Ads."
