(Newswire.net — October 13, 2013) San Francisco —
Google (Nasdaq- GOOG) recently updated its terms of service and how it will be utilizing your personal information across its network when decided which advertisements to show. If you currently have a Google+ account, you will begin to notice that whenever you give a business a review or a plus 1 rating, your rating may appear alongside ads that Google runs for that company. basically if you happen to endorse a hotel by giving them a nice review or a + rating, Google can run the hotels advertisement across their entire network and include your rating or review within that advertisement.
Google is calling these advertisements shared endorsements. What happens is that your endorsement will appear alongside those ads but only to people that you have included in your Google accounts inner circle. You have the ability to opt out of the program by simply going into your Google account and unchecking the share endorsements box in the your settings section. If you are endorsing products and services of people that you want to help, promoting their advertisements is a great way to help them show potential customers that they already have received positive reviews.
Google is taking lessons from the initial success of the targeted advertisements that Facebook implemented on to their website. When you like a business or fan pages on Facebook, your endorsement is seen by all of your friends and fans. Google realizes the power of referrals and is positioning the Google + advertisements to be the hottest type of advertising in the coming year. It is more likely that someone will try a product or service if they see a reminder from a friend or family member, that they had tried and loved the product. Google understands that a person is six times more likely to use a service or product if a friend or family member referred them there.
Google has taken the lead from Facebook and has implemented some unique twists to the concept. Google will display your reviews and your +1 ratings on content that does not contain advertisements as well. You gave a cook book a nice rating and review for their delicious baby back ribs recipe that you purchased on Google Play. When one of your inner circle visits the product page for that cook book, your review and your rating will be displayed on that page. This is one feature that you can not opt out of on Google. This is a very big win for business owners who use the Google circle to help promote their products or services. The more people that join the circle, and rate the business, the better it looks to people who are looking for an impartial and unbiased opinion of that company. It really is a win win situation.
Google learned a very valuable lesson from Facebook, when it was discovered that Facebook was using members content without their consent as basically spokespeople for ads on Facebook. That was a costly $20 million mistake that Google will not be making. They recently updated their terms of service policy to let all Google users be aware of the advertisements. The update to the policy also included some important warning to mobile device users. These warning were in relation to keeping your information private and to not text while driving.
Google+ is an amazing social network, with funtionality and tools, which makes Facebook look like a coloring book. With the merger of Google+ into the proven success of Adsense, it is just a matter of time before the market absorbs the learning curve of Google+ for the advantage of a higher advvertisement ROI. The author predicts a quick death to Facebook, which after Google+ will be known as FaceSpace.