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In the past, advertisers have worried that Google "house" ads compete for space with those who are advertising on SERP's for fairly granular search queries, such as "flight tracker." ...

Now it appears Google's stepped up their inclusion of house ads in Adsense creative units. I wonder if publishers get paid for these clicks? One assumes so, but is this kind of showboating really necessary from the company that is brokering the ads? Do ad brokers traditionally run their own ads above those who are actually funding the whole business, i.e. the advertisers' ads?

The example pictured to the left appeared on the home page of DMNews.com.

Andrew Goodman is Principal of Page Zero Media, a marketing consultancy which focuses on maximizing clients' paid search marketing campaigns.

In 1999 Andrew co-founded Traffick.com, an acclaimed "guide to portals" which foresaw the rise of trends such as paid search and semantic analysis.