(New?) Adwords format for Gmail?

I was looking in my gmail inbox the other day and I noticed what I thought was a new adwords format. It was an image ad. I was very curious about it so I clicked on the ad and it opened up another larger image in the inbox. I was intrigued as I had not seen this before.

I did some searching and all that I found were some websites reporting this about a year ago so it's not really new. Apparently, it was being tested with a select few advertisers. However, I couldn't find anything else telling me if this is something that is open to all Adwords advertisers or not.

I logged in to my adwords account to see if I could select the new ad type while creating a new campaign but it doesn't seem to be available yet to the general public (or at least not to me).

I've learned that people compared this to a Facebook-style ad. I'm interested to know if anyone else has seen this or has had the privilege of advertising this way.

I can see some great benefits to using this as a way to build a list and I can also see some "local business" advertising opportunities here.

Does anyone else have newer information about this? Specifically if Google is going to launch this for Adwords users?


Thanks!