Sell Ad Space on Google Base
On their blog, Google’s Google Base team has announced they will be adding support for Google’s robust payment system into Google Base. Right now, they’re testing it with a few select sellers. In case you haven’t heard of Google Base, it’s a Google service introduced several months ago that lets users post information… any information… in a classified ad-like format. The integration of a unified payment system (the same one they use for Google Video) is what some are calling an eBay-like approach. It will let users pay for items using their Google Account.
A lot of people haven’t found much use for Google Base. It doesn’t have the user… um…”base” of established online classified systems like Craigslist, and the non-specific “post all your information here” request by Google has so far resulted in a poorly organized mishmash of job listings, recipes, spam and the $1 million Cheeto.
Base’s open-endedness may make it possible to sell non-tangible items like say… advertising. Under normal advertising circumstances, Google would probably want you to use their AdSense/AdWords service, but what if you have an unusual ad format that’s not supported by AdSense? What if you want to charge more than what you normally get per-impression or per-click from AdSense? Or what if the ad space you’re trying to sell doesn’t quite jive with the AdSense terms of service? Why not sell on Base?
eBay has been used to sell advertising. The video blog RocketBoom made their advertising debut by auctioning off several short advertising spots on eBay that eventually went for $40,000. While Google definitely needs to hire a good UI designer so people can actually find intangibles like advertising-for-sale on Google Base (maybe they could get the guy that did Gmail), I don’t see anything inherent in Base’s design that would prevent the sale of advertising space. Google hasn’t announced anything about adding a bidding system to Google Payments, but once their payment system is in place, it’s the next logical step.
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Reader Comments.
So RocketBoom auctioned off their own advertising services? They ended up producing the spots for the purchaser?
Fascinating stuff - many onion layers.
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