"The principle behind the advertising products we build at Google is simple: ads are information," says Vice President, Product Management Susan Wojcicki. "But the type of information that ads provide is getting more varied and inventive all the time, and as a result ads are getting more interesting, social and useful."

Users can break Google’s offerings down by search, display, mobile, measurement, and all features. Under search, you can find more info about product listing ads, search funnels, and location extensions with multiple addresses. Under display, you can find stuff about remarketing, the YouTube video targeting tool, the ad creation marketplace, above the fold advertising, and YouTube Insights for Audience. Under mobile, you’ll find info about click to call phone extensions. In measurement, you’ll see search funnels again, and analytics intelligence.

Under each offering, users will find info about the product’s status (such as if it is in limited beta for example), what it does, and why you’d use it, as well as a video demo.

"As advertising evolves, we want to build the tools that make it possible for marketers to connect with customers in meaningful, creative ways," says Wojcicki. "We’ve found that the best way to do that is to focus on the user, test new approaches regularly and listen closely to the feedback of the advertisers using our products."

Google will regularly add tools and features to the site, so this may be one to bookmark if you’re a Google advertiser.

Davis leads efforts to develop and implement policies, processes, and tools to protect the Google network, the company’s consumer and advertising products, and its users.

"For Google, there is no higher priority than the safety and security of our users," Davis said. "We look forward to becoming an active member on the NCSA board and helping users more safely enjoy all the benefits the Internet has to offer."

The NCSA is a nonprofit organization that includes government, corporate, academic, and other non-profit organizations together to spread education and awarenes about Internet safety.

"The NCSA is proud to welcome Google, one of the foundational pillars of the Internet, to its board of directors," said Michael Kaiser, executive director of NCSA. "We look forward to partnering with Google as we plan and implement new comprehensive education and awareness efforts. Google’s unique perspective will be invaluable."

Google joins other major technology forces on the board like Microsoft, Cisco, McAfee, Symantec, EMC, and SAIC. The NCSA operates StaySafeOnline.org.

Groups involved are the American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA), the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), the Council of Better Business Bureaus (BBB), and of course the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB).

"Consumers deserve transparency regarding the collection and use of their data for behavioral advertising purposes. I am gratified that a group of influential associations – representing a significant component of the Internet community – has responded to so many of the privacy concerns raised by my colleagues and myself,” says Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Commissioner Pamela Jones Harbour.

What Google Has to Say

Google recently testified in Washington regarding privacy and advertising. Highlighted in the testimony were three main topics:

- Google’s main advertising products and the benefits Google believes online advertising brings to advertisers, online publishers, and individual Internet users

- Google’s approach to privacy, specific steps that the company takes to protect users’ privacy, and the release of interest-based advertising

- Ideas and recommendations for how to better protect Internet users’ privacy with respect to advertising, as well as more generally

You can read the entire testimony here (pdf).

In a post on Google Public Policy Blog today, Google Managing Policy Counsel Pablo Chavez talked about the principles and Google’s own behavioral-based or "interest-based" advertising.

"When we launched our own interest-based advertising product in March, we worked hard to include several innovative features to give users more control and information — including ads labeled ‘Ads by Google,’ a tool called the Ads Preferences Manager (which lets users view, add, and remove the categories that are used to show them interest-based ads), and the choice to opt out of interest-based ads altogether," says Chavez.

"One of the key strengths of the principles is the fact that they apply to a broad range of companies participating in online advertising — advertisers, publishers, and ad networks," adds Chavez. "Of course, for any self-regulatory effort to be effective, there has to be some kind of enforcement process. Between now and early 2010 — when the principles are expected to be implemented — the Better Business Bureau and Direct Marketing Association, two of the groups involved, will work to set up that process to make sure it has real teeth."

The Principles

So what are these principles? There are seven of them:

1. The Education Principle
2. The Transparency Principle
3a. The Consumer Control Principle
3b.The Consumer Control Principle (applies to service providers)
4. The Data Security Principle
5. The Material Changes Principle
6. The Sensitive Data Principle
7. The Accountability Principle

I won’t get into all of the specific details of each one here, but you can read the entire document here if you are interested. Either way, it is good to see that these organizations are taking consumer privacy this seriously.

There have been a lot of privacy concerns regarding Google’s Interest-based advertising, which was announced earlier this year. Essentially, this is where Google serves ads based on users’ browsing history. The company does have a video available about privacy in relation to this.

In her testimony, which is available in its entirety in this PDF document, Wong discusses three main topics. These are:

- Google’s main advertising products and the benefits Google believes online advertising brings to advertisers, online publishers, and individual Internet users

- Google’s approach to privacy, specific steps that the company takes to protect users’ privacy, and the release of interest-based advertising

- Ideas and recommendations for how to better protect Internet users’ privacy with respect to advertising, as well as more generally

In the first part,  Wong discusses the benefits of AdWords, AdSense for search, AdSense for Content, the Google Content Network, DoubleClick, etc. "In our experience, users value the advertisements that we deliver along with search results and other web content because the ads help connect them to the information, products, and services they’re looking for," she says.

With regards to privacy, Wong says the following three fundamentals have to be "at the bedrock of" privacy products and practices:

- Transparency
- Choice
- Security

Wong also notes that innovation is "a critical part" of Google’s approach to privacy. "To best innovate in privacy, we welcome the feedback of privacy advocates, government experts, our users, and other stakeholders," she says. "This feedback, and our own internal discussions about how to protect privacy, has led to several privacy innovations, including our development of new privacy tools for new products and our decision last year to anonymize our server logs after nine months for IP addresses and 18 months for cookies."

If you have any amount of interest in Google and privacy, particularly with its relation to advertising, you should definitely read the entire testimony. What do you think about it? Comment.

"Without commenting specifically about Twitter … you could imagine that … it could be a channel for product information, marketing information, real-time information for which you can hang advertising products, whether it’s a text ad or a video ad or so forth off of it … It strikes me that’s a logical strategy for them to pursue and something that we would be very happy to pursue with them and all other players in that space.” (via SIA)

Also, apparrently the "big day" was in reference to Ashton Kutcher breaking 1 million followers and going on Oprah.

Update: Now Twitter CEO Evan Williams has posted a very curious Tweet:

Related? (via SIA)

Original article: Rumors and wishful thinking about Google buying Twitter are pretty much commonplace these days. Last week, TechCrunch got the buzz going in its latest round implying that the 2 companies were in late stage acquisition talks, but that was eventually dismissed as false.

It was revealed a short time later however, that Twitter was talking to both Google and Microsoft about possible advertising deals, the product of which we have yet to see.

The New York Times talked to Twitter investor Fred Wilson. "Mr. Wilson could not rule out an acquisition, conceding that ‘money has a powerful impact on people’ and that despite the Twitter co-founders’ desire to build a big company, they also have to answer to investors and employees," reports Times interviewer Claire Cain Miller.

Other things Wilson said though are interesting in their own right. He says the most important thing for Twitter as far as metrics, is the "tweet view." This is anytime a tweet is viewed (in case you couldn’t figure that out) – but that goes for Tweets viewed from anywhere – twitter.com, Facebook, or any other apps.

"So, a partnership with Google or Microsoft, for example, could increase Twitter’s tweet views while also providing the bigger companies with a real-time stream of messages relevant to their audiences," writes Miller. Another partner from Wilson’s firm likens the concept to past partnerships between Google and companies like AOL and Yahoo in Google’s early days.

So acquisition or no acquisition, there are Twitter/Google or Twitter/Microsoft real-time search possibilities. It’s going to be quite interesting to see where this all leads.