Search Engine Marketing

Ads that run above search results. In the pre-mobile era (sometimes known as the Cretaceous), such ads also ran alongside search results.

Before Google’s monopoly of search engine marketing spending, some marketers would buy such ads on multiple search engines.

These ugly, boring, wordy ads that all look indistinguishable from each other are the most consistently effective forms of advertising. They’re the antithesis of the kinds of creative, story-driven, emotional, logo-plastered ads that are supposed to be the crowning output of the industry.