The percentage of space occupied by ads varies depending on the search.
35% ads only 1% of the time isn't nearly so bad as 35% ads all the time. And the auctions help guarantee that ad-crowding happens most often when searchers are actually well served by advertisements.
People searching for "saas help desk" probably want to find people to sell them support, rather than just info about saas. Searching for just "saas" alone reduces ad volume. Searching for "origin of saas" reduces ad levels further. Wikipedia is the top entry, and we're down to one lonely ad at the bottom of the page.
Similar divergences occur with "linux" and "linux support."
I'm not convinced fewer ads would be better. Imagine asking a friend for help with your broken machine, and he hands you the short biography of Linus Torvalds.
When you want pure information (for me, most of the time) ads drift out of the picture. When you want to buy something, they're more prominent, just as you probably want them to be.
N.B. - There is a hell of a lot of whitespace on a 1920x1080 monitor though.
35% ads only 1% of the time isn't nearly so bad as 35% ads all the time. And the auctions help guarantee that ad-crowding happens most often when searchers are actually well served by advertisements.
People searching for "saas help desk" probably want to find people to sell them support, rather than just info about saas. Searching for just "saas" alone reduces ad volume. Searching for "origin of saas" reduces ad levels further. Wikipedia is the top entry, and we're down to one lonely ad at the bottom of the page.
Similar divergences occur with "linux" and "linux support."
I'm not convinced fewer ads would be better. Imagine asking a friend for help with your broken machine, and he hands you the short biography of Linus Torvalds.
When you want pure information (for me, most of the time) ads drift out of the picture. When you want to buy something, they're more prominent, just as you probably want them to be.
N.B. - There is a hell of a lot of whitespace on a 1920x1080 monitor though.