1. If they're paying per click-through, why do they want to pay less? They're only paying if someone reaches their site. The end result is the same!

Sounds to me like they're using this as an excuse to pay less.

Posted at 4:40AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Joost Schuur

2. This survey is misleading. In all liklihood, advertisers *will* pay less for clicks from ads in Gmail. Google now discounts clicks from AdSense that do not perform as well as search listings, based on conversion stats. Assuming Google finds that a user clicking on an ad in Gmail converts less often than a user clicking on the same ad in search, the advertiser will pay less for the click from Gmail.

Posted at 4:40AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Brian Morrissey

3. This story about advertising on Gmail inspired me to blog about Googl'e business model. See http://www.venturpreneur.com/weblogs/archives/000424.html. I wonder about Google's ability to sustain advertising revenues over the long haul. To date Google has not been an advertising agency. It doesn't create snappy ad campaigns. It just displays very basic text ads created by others. Although targeting based on subject-matter content of searches or emails is bound to be more effective than random ads, I still believe that this business model is doomed over the long haul. There is more at the above-cited post, but it seems to me that Google will face a dilemma: as people become habituated to ignoring Google ads, Google will be tempted to make the ads more invasive, but that threatens the very separation of ads and content that most of us appreciate.

Posted at 4:40AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Gordon Smith