Google+ Spreads to AdSense, Will It Spread to the Whole Web?

Seen in the wild (well, OK, on this very site):

The “Recommend this on Google” hover box at the bottom is new, I’ve never seen it before (then again, my ads are usually from FM). It’s what we in the biz call a “social overlay” or a “social ad” – and as far as I can tell, it’s only available to those advertisers who use Google AdSense.

Why am I on about this? Because some weeks ago, Facebook told a bunch of advertisers and third parties (FM was one of them) that it was no longer OK to integrate Facebook actions into third party advertisements. This was always in their policies, but everyone was pretty much ignoring it – including most of the largest advertisers on the planet. After all, it’d be pretty hard to tell major television advertisers to stop asking viewers to “Like us on Facebook”. But for some reason, Facebook recently decided enough was enough online, and won’t let folks do exactly the same thing – with interactive functionality – online. You won’t be seeing ads on any site that integrate Facebook Likes, Shares, or other verbs, unless the advertisers paying for those ads have cut special deals with Facebook. (Or, of course, unless Facebook launches its own ad network…)

And yes, my sense of why Facebook might all-of-a-sudden-restrict advertisers or their partners from using Facebook actions in their ads stems from my prediction that Facebook is going to launch a competitor to AdSense, and that Facebook will want to differentiate its competitor by making “FaceSense” the only place across the web where you can run ads that drive Facebook social actions – Likes, Subscriptions, Shares, Recommendations, etc.

Because of this, I recently asked Google whether it would impose the same kind of restrictions on how advertisers might integrate Google+. I got a nuanced and careful response – Google doesn’t support it now, but is open to the idea in the future.

I’m thinking Google can differentiate itself by not acting like Facebook, but instead allow any advertiser to integrate “+1” into their ads, regardless of where that ad runs – be it a direct buy on ESPN, an independent web player like FM, or, as seen above, a buy on Google’s own AdSense service.*

Anyway, it’s worth thinking about as we plot the strategies of the Big Five – what will their policies be relating to corporate speech and social services? So far, the answer is “not sure.” Worth asking Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon, come to think of it….I can’t imagine, for example, that Apple welcomes Facebook icons integrated into its iAds product – but then again, Facebook now doesn’t allow it anyway. Which seems to me a violation of some corporate right to free speech – but I digress. For now.

* If you’re wondering why is AdSense on my blog these days, well, I’m getting more traffic than we thought I would in January, and AdSense is picking up some of the extra impressions. Thanks for reading – I’m honored.