This a pretty serious deal for all the mortgage leadgen guys. These ads are directly in competition with them and the top-of-page placement means that they pretty much have to participate in this or they'll simply lose traffic as users are siphoned off through this product.
Google's most certainly pissing off some of their very large advertisers here.
Does anybody know why so few states are available? Are there restrictions on mortgage companies as to what states they operate in, like there are for health insurance companies?
I've always been an advocate for states rights (a republic of states), but these sorts of things seem like they violate Article 1 Section 8 of the constitution in that they impede interstate commerce, and for little reason other than to favor one company over another, at the expense of the citizens.
Comparison ads is new - they are starting with mortgage, they will get into everything where you pick one out of many based on some criteria. With this google gets closer to the online PoS to say.
They tried a shot earlier with Google Products and now they are back with a more promising channel.
This looks pretty good. There are some other mortgage comparison sites, but somehow they always look like they're trying to sell you a product from one of their affiliates, rather than getting the best deal out there for the site visitor.
Google's most certainly pissing off some of their very large advertisers here.