Google Images Now Come With Ads!

We will now see advertisements on many of our Google Image searches.

In a March 5, 2019 blog post, Google announced a new advertising promotion that will appear in Google Image searches. According to a post, written by Surojit Chatterjee, the company’s data indicate that many people who consult Google Images are actually shopping for products and looking for pictures of items they might purchase. So the company has created “shoppable ads” that will appear at the top of the image page illustrating where items can be purchased.            

Just for fun, I searched for towels. Sure enough, at the top of all the towel images were ads for places that sell towels — JC Penney, Home Depot, West Elm, etc. I Googled bracelets and printers with similar results.

The advertisements are clustered in searches for items that people purchase rather than categories than where an individual might be looking for a picture but not a purchase. Results when I looked for cats, dogs, elephants, rocks, fish, sand, leaves, etc., did not produce any shoppable advertisements.