Whenever someone goes to the Google Web site and searches for “mesothelioma,” Google Inc. receives $50 from each of the law firms and other advertisers that pay to guarantee their ads appear next to the search results.

The price for this “key word” for a form of asbestos cancer is the highest paid to Google by advertisers.

While Google’s system of matching “key words”with content and its pay-perclick charges are transforming advertising, its recently announced deals with three high-profile broadcast companies, Fox Interactive, MTV, and XM Radio, is a sign of a new advertising thrust.

“We are a real partner to the world’s largest publishers, as well as ad agencies and advertisers,” the head of Google’s advertising sales strategy, Patrick Keane, said in a recent telephone interview with The New York Sun.

The three companies have agreed to let Google provide search technology for their Web sites and to sell advertising on the sites in return for a share in the proceeds.

Google’s partnerships with press and broadcast companies and other content providers allow it to place advertisements “inside” sites, not merely beside search results.

“You could be reading an article in the New YorkTimes on Tiger Woods’ recent victory and you might actually see Google ads around that article. We match our ads to the content on that page. We have many partners — About.com, AOL, the Times, and now Fox, MySpace, MTV, and XM,” Mr. Keane said.

These partnerships also help Google do “site targeting” for its advertisers.

For example, the Hollywood studio promoting “An Inconvenient Truth” will provide Google with audience research such as their interest in energy, conservation, and eco-tourism.

“We will help them identify a network of sites across the Web to reach that psychographic audience to promote that movie,” he said.

This move by Google into partnerships with press and broadcast companies is designed to expand its advertising revenues beyond search results, which comprise only 10% of Web usage, he said.

“Ninety percent of Web use is reading and buying,” he said.

Despite win-win partnerships, some content providers and ad agencies worry that Google will eventually enter their turf. One legendary ad man, Sir Martin Sorrell of WPP Group in Britain, has posed the question: “Is Google friend or foe?”

“We are a friend. We are a great mechanism for advertisers and their agencies by providing accountability, scale, relevancy, a great user experience,” he said. “We also work with small advertisers as well.Google means that the smallest advertiser has the ability to compete with the greatest. We have democratized advertising.”

Google has also expanded on its original ads.

“We started with just 95 characters of text, but that’s broadened,” Mr. Keane said. “We have click-to-play video, banner ads, but one thing we certainly have a strong aversion to is interruptive user experiences such as popup ads or continuing animated ads.” Google does have video ads, but they start only after users click on them.

“With our videos, the user must initiate the experience. Interruptive advertising is not useful or relevant for a user,” he said.

Google’s mission is to provide search for free and make money by providing a tasteful electronic billboard aimed at pleasing, not jarring, viewers.

“Our advertising platform is much broader than the flat, two-dimensional content of print, which is why we like to work with Fox, XM, and others,” he said.”We can bring the same relevancy to other forms of media like radio.”

When asked whether Google will move into content like Yahoo, which employs journalists, he said that’s not in the cards.

“We’re pretty comfortable where we are. We are a great conduit for publishers to syndicate through us.Our partners already have great content and we are a mechanism to tap that content,” he said.

Google’s advertising strategy continues to result in huge revenue jumps, but one cloud on the horizon is the issue known as “click fraud,” which involves unscrupulous competitors clicking continuously on rivals’ advertisements in order to run up their costs. Google recently settled a court case with an advertiser that had been overcharged due to this type of fraud, and the company agreed to set aside $90 million in free advertising for future successful claimants.

“Invalid clicks is a problem in the industry,” Mr. Keane said. “We want to build a system that’s even more sophisticated to quickly see where some of the clicks are invalid and be able to filter those out.We have a lot of technology in place that finds that behavior before it hits our advertisers and publishers. We have the world’s best engineers, scientists, and mathematicians focused on this. And we will refund our advertisers and publisher partners who are victims of click fraud.”

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