Google Dropping Ads Into Gmail Inbox

Dire news everyone, soon you’ll be receiving ads directly in your Gmail inbox. What do you mean you already get that and just call it spam? Then why does this seem to be such a big deal?

Google Deposits Ads Directly Into In-Boxes

That’s right everyone, Google has begun depositing ads directly into peoples Gmail inbox. These ads are much like e-mails, as they can be opened and forwarded to other people. They’re marked with a pale yellow background, and have a nifty little blue tag that denotes them as ads. These aren’t like typical spam, because they’re not e-mailed to you, but rather deposited into the account via Google.

If you use Gmail, then you have probably noticed that your inbox is now split into multiple tabs. All of the Google ads will be placed into the promotions tab. This is part of Google’s Gmail Sponsored Promotions Program, in hopes of bringing in more revenue. Google gets to charge advertisers every time someone click on one of the ads in their inbox. Seems like an easy way to make more cash, as people are likely to accidentally click the ads when not paying attention.

This has peoples feathers all ruffled, because they don’t want their inbox all cluttered up. At least Google is nice enough to mark the ads as ads. Traditional spam tried to trick you into clicking it without realizing it’s not an e-mail. I can’t honestly imagine this being that lucrative or controversial. The tabs in the new Gmail are totally customizable, so you can easily just tuck away that inbox folder that holds them all.

Google made a statement to Venture Beat, describing how the program works:

Instead of ads always appearing at the top of your inbox, they’ve been relegated to a more appropriate place in your Promotions category. In addition, we’ve raised the quality of these ads and won’t show you an ad unless it’s relevant — which means you may sometimes see no ads at all in your Promotions tab. You can also dismiss the ads you see in your Promotions tab by clicking the “X” button on the right-hand side.