Google prepares to put new advertising initiative into motion

Google has begun testing animated .GIF ads to appear on the Web sites of its AdSense publishers. Adsense, Google's off-site advertising arm, delivers relevant ads based on the page content of a particular Adsense subscriber's site. Currently the cost for the animated ads will remain identical to the cost-per-click price of non-motion ones, and will have a 50kb size limitation. Similarly, advertisers will still have to battle to outbid each other for top billing keywords to ensure high exposure on relevant sites. Industry speculation has suggested that Google's decision to test the animated ads may be a result of the launch of Conducive's exclusively image-based contextual marketing site, adMarketplace, last Wednesday. Conducive includes eBay on its client list.