Google is now displaying “Listen Now” ads in the Knowledge Graph section of search results pages for some music queries. From there, it offers options from advertisers like Rhapsody, Spotify, and of course, Google Play itself.
It includes the price to listen for each service. In this Lady Gaga example, you can see that Google will let you listen for $1.29/song, while Rhapsody will let you listen with a free trial, and Spotify will just let you listen for free.
It’s somewhat interesting that Google chooses to show the purchase price for a single song in this section, rather than plug its new(ish) streaming service alongside these other services.
The test was reported on earlier by the Wall Street Journal, who got a statement from Google:
“We’re happy to help users quickly find legitimate sources for their favorite movies, music and more via Google search,” a Google spokesman said.
Two people familiar with the test described it as having started in the past few weeks. A Google spokesman confirmed that the music services pay for each click they get, the same way Google gets paid for its traditional text link ads.
Google has shown “Watch Now’ ads for movies and TV shows that are pretty much the same for quite some time now.
Image via Google
