Google’s New Service May Have Given Birth To A New Demand,

By Jason Lewis
Posted Friday, December 10, 2004

If You Get In Quick You Could Be The One To Fill It!

The following report contains an outline of what I believe could be a business opportunity in the making.

Google has introduced a new ‘image ads’ facility to their AdWords advertising program. The image ads feature allows advertisers to display their banners on the content pages of Google’s publisher partners, who have opted to display these ads.

If you want to jump onto a trend tidal wave before it starts, it’s often a good idea to keep your eyes focused on what the big guns are up to. When the biggest search engine on the web brings out a new service like this one, you should always do a quick brainstorm to see what opportunities it might throw up.

One of the top all time business commandments:

Find a demand; then fill it

So, what new demand could start to surface, as a result of Google starting their new image ads service?

Try to think like your customer…

Let’s jump inside the head of a Google AdWords advertiser for a moment, to try and understand what he might soon start demanding. If we can establish exactly what he ‘wants’, as an entrepreneur, we can then look at what we can offer him to specifically fill that demand.

Traditionally, AdWords advertisers have only been given 4 lines of text in a small ad to try and attract the surfer’s attention. It’s been proving time and again, that if you include the keyword/phrase that’s being searched for in your ad, it will increase the number of people that click on your ads (clickthrough rate).

So, savvy AdWords advertisers have been accustomed to creating multiple ads, each one with a slightly different headline and or sub headline that includes the keyword/phrase they are targeting.

With the introduction of ‘image ads’, advertisers will want to do various tests to see which banners get a better response than others.

My guess is that what works for text ads, is almost certainly going to make a difference with the image ads as well. What I’m talking about here; is including the keyword/phrase in the text of the image.

Think about it…if someone is looking for information on a particular subject, there is a much higher chance of them clicking on a banner, if the text on the banner contains the exact word or phrase, which they want more information on.

A new demand is born…

If advertisers want to tweak their banner designs to target keywords more effectively, they are going to need a lot more banners.

Sure, a lot of companies and individual home business entrepreneurs are going to design their own banners. They’ll probably create an initial template for the banner, and then just alter some of the text to target certain keywords.

However, not everyone can design his or her own banners. There are plenty of websites out their offering banner design services and making a good living out of it.

How can you compete with the existing banner design services?

An advertiser wanting to use Google’s image ads service, have a specific requirement that is not currently being provided for by existing banner ad designers. Most banner design services charge between $80-$100 for a single custom made static banner.

An AdWords advertiser may have many hundreds of keywords that they are targeting for a specific campaign. For the keywords that provide the most traffic and potential profit, they are probably going to want banners that specifically target those keywords in their design.

This might narrow it down to about 5, 10 or even 20 keyword phrases. Now, this is a lot of different banners to order, and people aren’t going to want to pay $100 for each of these banners.

This is where an entrepreneur with his eye out for a new trend can take advantage. Special banner package deals can be created to specifically cater for the requirements of someone using Google’s image ads service.

Once you’ve created a main template for a banner, it’ll only take a few moments to change a bit of the text and save the banner as a different image. You could offer different package deals to give the advertiser more options.

To change the text on a banner and save the image with a different filename; will probably only take you a couple of minutes for each banner. For $80 you could easily offer 5 or even 10 different banners for the same price that your competitors are charging for one.

Most of your potential customers will be running multiple AdWords campaigns and could provide you with a lot of repeat business. With this in mind, you might consider offering a good discount for first orders, to help get the customer on board.

How do you promote such a service?

If you set up an affiliate program, a new service like this is ideal for a joint venture. There are a number of ebooks on the market teaching people how to use Google AdWords. You could approach the ebook authors and tell them all about your new service. Offer to create some complimentary banners for their own campaigns. If they like your work, they will probably promote your service to their list. They might even update their ebook and include a link to your website.

If you offer a good service at good prices, news of your service will probably spread quite well by word of mouth in newsletters and on message board forums.

Medium to Long-term outlook

As Google’s image ads grow in popularity, more and more banner designers will start to offer tailored packages specifically designed for this type of demand. Companies and individuals that build up a client list while this opportunity is still relatively unknown will be in the strongest position.

If you can build up a client list of regular Google advertisers, the repeat income from designing their ‘image ad’ banners for them could be quite substantial.

About the Author
Jason Lewis is author of the new 'Business Brainwaves' Newsletter. Uncovering new business ideas and untapped 'gaps in the market' that the average person working from home can profit from. Join now, while it's still free! ==> (www.BusinessBrainwaves.com)