After beta testing their scrolling ads for months (we have been seeing them all over the Internet since last december), Google Adsense has eventually launched them for the publishers today. It lets you scroll vertically or horizontally according to what suits your websites. These ads are not browser dependent at all and will work in any browser. The “Show More” option at the end of the Adsense ads was not very convenient when you had to wait for the full page of ads to open, and finally try to find something relevant to our needs.

But there must have been some good reason as to why Google has launched these scrolling ads. A wild guess would be the page ads not generating the expected number of views or maybe Google desperately wants to show you more ads through this creative scroller. And I am not even kidding when I say the word “creative” for these ads as these have a nice fade in/fade out effect while you scroll through them.

If the statistics show a constant increase in the viewership of ads (the publishers get paid for each click that a reader clicks!), then we can say that in some way or the other it is beneficial for all (publishers, advertisers and of course Google). No complains even if we are at the receiving end because there is not much we can do now, can we? Well in a way, these scrollable ad strips do save your time and effort. At least the testing period has (must have) proven this.

According to many ‘Internet experts’ it would affect only a tiny percentage of readers to check out more ads. But this tiny percentage is big when we are talking about the World Wide Web. The best would be, go test it yourself, and see if it fades out your expectations today (or not?).