Google has it. They do. The future of Web advertising is being determined by Google, because they own such a massive part of that market. And this is largely a good thing, because the advertising Google delivers is generally pretty unobtrusive and is also highly targeted to users whenever possible. To me, this is a big part of the success of Google: not being annoying (not being evil is minor compared to this).

But is that it? Does Google define best practices in Web advertising?

For now, the answer is yes.

I have been involved in marketing and advertising on the Web for many years, and it’s clear that for a long time we had it wrong. I wrote what I think were some pretty clever banner ads, but people quickly learned to ignore banner ads, because they were easy to ignore and mostly terrible. So people didn’t often look at my ads, even if they hopefully weren’t bothered by them.

Then, we had the plague of popup ads. I am proud to say I never developed one of these things. They were (and are, to those who have not figured out how to block them) real and infuriating impediments to what people are trying to do on the Web. And they inspired a whole slew of software to stop ad delivery.

But, as far as I know, no one cares to stop Google ads.

That’s because people really only see them if they’re useful. I was horrified to see a big ad animation take over a washingtonpost.com page when I was looking to read an article–the ad obscured the headline, and offered no way to get rid of it. I was pretty taken aback that a team that must be as practiced as them would allow this to happen. Stop people from reading what they want, and you’re in trouble.

So, Google has it, though there are niche advertisers taking their place here and there. The Deck is a good idea, though it is savaged for design elitism. Earthlink, of all things, is trying to create a new dynamic in podcasts and whatever you want to call the video version of podcasts. (Disclaimer: Dave Coustan, the Earthlink corporate blogger, is a friend, but he and Earthlink had no part in this post.)

Eventually, I think major online media have three options–create your own ads that people will actually want to see, because they are good and relevant, go with the unobtrusive Google-style ads, or continue to annoy people and piss them off when they just want to read something. I am guessing that the smart money is on option one or two.