Google+ +Post Ads: Bringing Engagement to Advertising

On April 16, 2014, Google announced that its +Post ads Google+ advertising platform, in beta testing with specific brand partners since last fall, is now open to any brand with a Google+ Page with at least 1000 followers, and an AdWords account.

In Brief: +Post ads are actual Google+ posts that brands can pay to push out to targeted audiences in Google's AdWords Display Advertising Network on millions of websites worldwide. Visitors to those sites can engage with the post right on the site.

UPDATE: I was just informed by Ben Fisher of SteadyDemand that he was able to successfully create a +Post ad using content from his personal Google+ profile.

Jump below for more information, and my take on why this is a revolution in online advertising!

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Why +Post Ads Are Revolutionary:

1. They One-Up Facebook on Content-Based Advertising

+Post ads mash together several modalities:

1. The efficiency of targeted advertising.
2. The engagement and reach of social media.
3. The branding power of interactivity.

Google didn't invent this idea. Facebook has had it for a while with its "Promoted Posts" advertising option for Facebook Pages, and Twitter followed suit by adding "Promoted Tweets."

What's different here is that Google is enabling social content ads that aren't on the social platform. Instead of littering Google+ with ads (one of the unsung benefits of Google+ is that three years in its stream is still ad free), +Post ads are places where people expect to see ads: on websites that already have Google Display ads.

Think for a moment about the sheer genius of this: Google is monetizing Google+ without pushing ads into the social network itself.

Because Facebook and Twitter operate (for the most part) in self-contained worlds, they are forced to push ads into their users social streams in order to monetize. But thanks to Google's vast AdWords network, they have ad inventory space across the web, and don't need to interrupt their users' social experience on Google+ itself.

2. They Bring Engagement to Web Advertising

+Post ads are the next level up in website advertising. That's because instead of the traditional static ad copy, +Post Ads are fully interactive, immersive content experiences. They are actual, live Google+ posts from the advertising brand's Google+ page, embedded in the display advertising space.

When a site visitor hovers over a +Post Ad, it expands into a full-sized version of the original post. The expanded version has all the interactivity of the post on Google+. If the post contains any links, the visitor can click them to view the web content. If the post has an embedded video, she can watch it right there in the ad space. And if she is logged in to her Google account, she can +1, comment on, and reshare the content, all while never leaving the site on which the ad appears.

As an added bonus, social proof such as the number of +1's the content has received appear right on the ad. And if the visitor is logged in to his Google account and any of his friends have engaged with the post, their thumbnail image may show on the ad.

3. They Will Make Google+ Even More Essential for Brands

When Google+ introduced brand pages, a great many businesses set up pages because, well, it's Google so it must be good for SEO, right? But when they found it hard to find an audience on G+, many neglected or abandoned their pages, only sporadically posting content or engaging, if at all.

I predict that +Post ads will make a major contribution toward changing that attitude.

• It will be much easier now to build a following since viewers can add the brand to their Google+ circles right from the ad.
• Content becomes even more valuable when you can push it directly to highly-targeted people and sites across the largest ad network on the web.
• Gaining engagement from a Google+ audience will be even more rewarded because of the social proof shown right on the ads.

Conclusion: Google+ +Post ads should be a gamechanger, both for brands and for Google's social network. While brands certainly appreciate whatever free organic reach they can generate from any social network, most also want a paid option that enables them to increase their reach to a targeted audience. Google+ +Post ads not only enable that, but do it on the largest stage in the world.

See Our Tests: We have now completed a two-week test of +Post ads. Come see our results and findings!

Recommended: For a look at how +Post Ads work and how you actually build them inside AdWords, see this post by Larry Kim of Wordstream.

Also, Stone Temple Consulting CEO Eric Enge has published an article on Forbes explaining why +Post Ads are a tremendous opportunity for brands.

I'd love to hear what you think. Please tell me in the comments!

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