The Techcrunch post on Google’s CPA release contained a mention about Google’s decision to launch text link ads.

No longer will Google ads need to be confined to their own space on the site - publishers can subtly embed ads right into hyperlinks within the main content of the site itself (see second paragraph of quote above). Other companies already do this, but Google has never tread into the “advertorial” space before.

I think they are a great company, use their products, but I’m not a fan of this format. From their blog post:

Ad formats: You can create text ads, image ads, or our new text link ad format in your pay-per-action campaign. Text link ads are brief text descriptions that take on the characteristics of a publisher’s page. These Javascript-based ads will display like regular hyperlinks and allow publishers to embed these links inline with other text to promote your product or service.

I’m surprised more people aren’t talking about this. I’m looking forward to the transparent image ad overlay that will ‘transparently cover your entire webpage’ generating clicks to your site from a placement that ‘is completely invisible to the user.’

UPDATE: Dave also has a good post about this where he talks about some of the potential page rank implications.