As search results are incorporating more images and videos, it seems logical enough that the same should happen for those text ads that appear beside these results. Google has begun testing this notion this week, though not many users will notice it.
Selected advertisers have been given the opportunity to offer videos along with their sponsored results. These text ads will have a small plus sign icon marked with the words “watch video.” When a user clicks on the plus sign, a video will be shown on a small screen, and will be played manually at the user’s pleasure.
Advertisers would bid for these video ads through the AdWords interface. The bidding on keywords for these video ads will take place with regular text links. Advertisers will only be charged for one click, even if a user clicks on both the text and the video.
The number of users who will actually encounter these video ads will be minimal at first, as Google will test the waters to see how searchers respond to the videos.
Up until now, Google had only offered its advertisers the ability to run video ads on the sites of Google’s partners, and not on Google’s own pages.
This new advertising channel will be ideal for movie and television advertisers. Previews and trailers are usually engaging for users, and having these ads displayed for relevant queries seems like a good idea. Also, the fact that users will be able to control the playing of these ads should prevent them from being intrusive and unpleasantly surprising, as some video and audio ads are on other sites.
Google’s decision to test this out further solidifies the potential that online video holds for advertisers. It will not be long before more advertisers will be plugged into the service. However, it will be interesting to monitor how open this advertising option becomes. While it remains relatively simple and easy to filter offensive, irrelevant, and “spammy” words from text ads, it would be much more difficult to filter out undesirable video ad content. Until a clear, efficient solution arises, it’s hard to imagine Google opening this up to every single advertiser out there.
Sources:
http://www.informationweek.com/internet/showArticle.jhtml;
jsessionid=RFFBZWYHWLDXWQSNDLOSKHSCJUNN2JVN?
articleID=206504533
http://www.informationweek.com/
blog/main/archives/2008/02/google_search_r.html
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/
detail?blogid=19&entry_id=24275
http://blog.clickz.com/080215-195900.html
Jason Hahn
e: jhahn221@gmail.com
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