Skip to main content

Google begins testing display ads in Gmail

display adsUntil now, ads appearing within you Gmail account were limited to plain, easily-ignored text. But Google admits it is testing display ads as well, which could be heading to your inbox soon.

As you can probably guess, display ads simply mean ads with images. A spokesperson told Search Engine Land that “We’re always trying out new ad formats and placements in Gmail, and we recently started experimenting with image ads on messages with heavy image content.” According to the website, Google began testing this tool last Friday.

Recommended Videos

Some outlets are reporting they’ve yet to notice any advertisements with photos in their inboxes, but we checked and immediately found one. It doesn’t seem to take up any more real estate than the text-only versions do, but it might denigrate the revered e-mail system to ad-heavy clients like Hotmail or Yahoo for some.

Google spokesman Rob Shilkin told The New York Times that for the moment, this type of content is still being tested and will only show up in some users’ inboxes. Unless the entire right hand side of the page becomes completely crowded with the stuff, we’re not terribly concerned – it looks like any other Google ad, meaning most of us glaze over it entirely.

It definitely shouldn’t be considered as controversial as Gmail ads selection process in general. The system was introduced in 2004, and users quickly realized that the ads relation to their inbox content was no coincidence. Google implemented a tool (be reassured that “tool” is not a person reading your messages) that would relate ad content to e-mail topics, with the exception of a few less-than-family-friendly topics (guns, sex, drugs, booze, and the like). If people can get over a system that basically reads their e-mail, they can probably accept display ads.

Molly McHugh
Former Social Media/Web Editor
Before coming to Digital Trends, Molly worked as a freelance writer, occasional photographer, and general technical lackey…
Topics
Careful — this Google ad could swipe your bank data without you knowing
Zoomed in version of Homebrew website.

Using Google ads to push their malicious sites to the top of the results page is a trick cybercriminals use all too often. The latest example is a fake Homebrew website that uses an infostealer to swipe personal data, browser history, login information, and bank data from unsuspecting victims.

Spotted by Ryan Chenkie on X and reported by BleepingComputer, the malicious Google ad even displays the correct Homebrew URL "brew.sh," so there's no real way to spot the trick before clicking.

Read more
Google is testing a feature that will let AI hide away internet pop-ups
Google Chrome browser running on Android Automotive in a car.

Google is testing a new feature in Chrome Canary, the experimental version of the Chrome browser. As reported by TechRadar, the "PermissionsAI" feature is designed to deal with pop-ups from websites asking you to share your location or consent to notifications.

According to Chromium, the tool will use Google's "Permission Predictions Service" and Gemini Nano v2 to analyze users' previous responses to pop-ups and guess how they will respond to new ones. If you're likely to decline, the feature will block the annoying pop-up that appears in the middle of your screen and instead hide it away in a corner in case you need it later.

Read more
Gmail may add a handy temporary email address feature
Moto G 5G (2024) in Sage Green showing Gmail.

Future Gmail versions could include support for temporary email addresses if Google ever enables this feature that has been discovered within its app code.

Android Authority discovered the feature, referred to as “Shielded Email,” within the code of the recent 24.45.33 release of the Google Play Services APK. The publication detailed that its APK teardown revealed several clues about how the feature would work.

Read more