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Twitter ads look like tweets, Facebook ads look like Facebook posts, and of course search ads look like search results, at least in Gmail they have their own designated area.

They replace the webclip ads when the "promotions" tab is enabled: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2013/06/ads-in-gmails-promo...

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So far, Google hasn't shown ads in search results that look like other search results though. This seems like a shift for them.

While they were never exactly the same visually, they show up under the search field, have the same link and text structure...the only difference in the lightly shaded background

I'm not sure if it's my imagination, but the shading seems to have gotten a lot lighter. It used to be quite clear what was a search ad and what was a result, but now you have to look closely.

There's really no way to know that unless you work for Google. Some of the ads show up with a shaded background, maybe some of them don't?

That is basically the original meaning of "don't be evil", or at least the one used in the IPO documents.

You would probably know, since it's hard to sell ads like that without telling people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_advertising

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