14 DAY TRIAL // Google has been trying to spin Google+ as a success since it launched it. But it's more than obvious that the company is still very much struggling to position Google+ as something people want to use as opposed to just something forced on them.
This is one of the big reasons why there are no ads on the site and probably won't be for a while to come.
Google has been discussing ads in Google+ for a while now, since at least last year, according to a report by Amir Efrati, based on people with direct involvement with the discussions.
One idea was to show graphical ads that looked and worked like a regular Google+ post would. Facebook already does this. Twitter, Pinterest, and others do the same.
The fear is that other sites, Facebook in particular, may be biting into Google's big advertising pie, especially since the company doesn't really have something to counter all these new "social" ads.
At the same time, these social ads are cheaper and less relevant than what Google regularly offers. What's more, too few people visit Google+ as is, so the company doesn't want to risk alienating those few with ads.
The fact is, not that many people actively use Google+. Sure, the company boasted about some 300 million "active" users in the stream. But "stream" at Google doesn't exactly mean what you'd think it does.
The "stream" includes actual visits to feed on the site, plus.google.com, or in the mobile apps. But it also includes users engaging with the notifications shown on all Google properties: Gmail, search, even YouTube more recently.
It's clear that Google+ is growing and more people are actively using it, but it still feels like the site has very little natural traction despite the company's increasingly concentrated efforts.