Google Opens Its Content Network to Third Parties

All web masters know that the best way of making a website return initial investments is through online advertising. This actually translates into webmasters letting their website feature advertisements for various products. One of the highest used advertising services is Google's AdWords, which uses a site's content to advertise products through content relevant web links.

The service, which has been introduced by Google in 2003, deals with a Pay-Per-Click advertising system, which lets advertisers specify the words that should trigger their ads and the maximum amount they are willing to pay per click. Since its release, the product has registered significant improvement, but it also had to deal with some controversy. As of today, the service has received a new option that will allow third-party advertising tags to be displayed on the Google content network in North America.

The new "open" strategy will empower advertisers to work with Google-approved third parties to serve and track display ads on the Google content network. This will include rich media ads that, for the time being, will only be available in North America. The reason why this step hasn't been taken until now is that Google has not allowed third-party tags because they lacked a process by which they could review ads. The necessity of reviewing these ads is due to Google's need to make sure that the ads comply with their own standards and policies.

The impediment has been overcome and ad servers, rich media ad agencies can go through a certification process that, provided they pass it, will empower them with the new option. There are already a number of certified third parties, but Google will also certify more partners of this type in the future.

The new option will allow advertisers and agencies to manage their Google content network campaigns in pretty much the same way they do with their own campaigns.