Not Exactly Ads: In Text Ads with Search Bubbles

Search Bubbles within In Text Ads

Have you ever hovered over an in text ad double underline link only to find a bubble that offers to search more information about the highlighted term? This is a Search Bubble. When clicking on a search bubble, the visitor is lead to a landing page with search results for that certain highlighted term. Clearly, this is not exactly an advertisement, because the visitor is only offered search results and not more related content from an advertiser. But you do see quite a lot of these search bubbles among other in text ads… Where are they coming from? And more importantly, who pays for them?

Paying for Search

The publishers do get paid per click even when the in text bubble only contains a search link. In most cases, the advertiser is the search engine itself. In an online world dominated by Google, smaller search engines and niche search engines are forced to buy search traffic. In other words, to promote their search services, they pay for people to use them for search.

A good example for this is Microsoft’s Bing search engine. A relatively new comer with clear intentions to win market share over from Google, Bing is paying for campaigns to promote searches, trying to get people to appreciate their services and come back for more searches. Another example can be business directories or specialized niche search engines, which pay for initial searches, hoping for returning users later on.

This way, the in text ads network places search bubbles, but in fact, these are actual ads paid for by the target search engine. Therefore, in the eyes of the publishers, these are regular ads with standard pay per click model, while for the visitors of the websites, these ads simply offer more information in the format of search results.

Paid for Search Results

In addition to the search bubbles financed by the target search engines, sometimes the search bubble leads to search results that contain paid for results. The business model here is based on the potential revenues from visitors who click on the sponsored results.

Let’s clarify this with an example. Joe is looking for information about a certain disease through Google. He gets to a website with information about this disease and one of the possible treatments is highlighted with double underline as an in text ad. Upon a mouse hover, the opening bubble offers Joe to search more information about this treatment using a health related search engine. After he clicks, he lands on the health related search engine’s results page. These results are relevant to his search and he’s happy. He clicks on one of them from a local clinic that offers that treatment and becomes a lead for that clinic, a potential customer. The health related search engine paid 20 cents for that click. The in text ads network kept 30% of it, and paid the remaining 14 cents to the original publisher, which makes them both happy. Now, the health related search engine specializes in health clinics and was able to sell that ad to a local clinic for 70 cents. Again, both the search engine and the clinic are happy. The clinic for purchasing a valid lead for a price it was willing to pay, and the search engine for earning the difference between prices, in this case – 50 cents.

Search bubbles are sometimes condemned for being a tool for traffic arbitrage – publishers who buy cheap traffic in the form of run-of-network (RON) campaigns and transform it into revenues from higher paying ads. However, as shown in the example above, when handled correctly, all participants can be very happy with it. From the original website and visitor, through the in text ads network, and all the way to the search engines and their advertisers – all involved sides managed to earn from the transaction that got the potential customer and clinic in contact. And who knows, perhaps that in text search bubble would get Joe healthier.

Shopping Comparison Bubbles

One type of in text search bubbles is purchased by shopping comparison websites. While a publisher could get paid a little more for displaying an advertisement from the final online retailer, many online shoppers prefer going through a shopping comparison website that offers reviews of the product and price offers from different online retailers together with reviews of the retailers themselves.

This preference has lead to in text ads with shopping comparison search bubbles. Upon a mouse hover over a double underline link, mostly of a highlighted name of a product, the opened bubble will offer the visitor shopping comparison for that specific product. The target landing page will present the visitor with shopping alternatives and reviews. Due to the nature of in text ads that require the active permission of the visitor, shopping comparison websites find high conversion rates from such ads that bring visitors with good chances of purchase, which explains why they are willing to pay per click. Again, all sides are happy, from the publisher who got paid for the click, through the network and shopping comparison website, and on to the online retailer at the end of the line that gets a lead that has actively chosen to get there with high potential of purchase.

Happy People

So, the next time you see an in text ad with a search box inside it, either from a general search engine or from a niche information provider like a shopping comparison website, you can smile. True, this is not exactly an ad, but when managed correctly by the in text ads network, it creates a cycle of happy people.