Google has acknowledged in a public post that Google+ Paid Page Promotion (ads) are active and available to selected US Google+ brand pages in the US.

Google+er  Michelle Marie noticed the following tiny “ad” in the right column of her Google+ Page’s profile. Google has confirmed Page promotion with AdWords Express is initially available to local businesses in the U.S., but they’re rolling it out more broadly in the weeks and months ahead. Eligible businesses will see an “Advertise” link on their Google+ page. If they follow the breadcrumbs from that link they can find the following on their AdWords site:

The agency Virante believes Google+ has the better page promotion model, and that it will ultimately succeed better than Facebook‘s model because “Google won’t be placing the promotions within Google+ itself, but in its already existing ad networks.” So ads are coming but at least they won’t be sprayed all over the Google+ stream. Read more on why Virante believes Google’s ad model is better here.