Hot news emerging out of the AdWords blog today that they are releasing ‘click to play video ads‘. Here’s an example of what they will look like.
The ads will begin to appear this week. They will not be shown on Google’s own pages but rather on their publisher network (ie sites showing AdSense ads).
“In the coming days, we will be adding click-to-play video ads to the line-up of text, Flash and image ad formats currently supported by the Google content network. At launch, video ads will be available to AdWords advertisers in the US, Canada and Japan – but we plan to roll them out to other regions shortly.”
Advertisers can build video ads on a CPC or a CPM basis and they can either target specific sites with these ads or let them be keyword targeted (like their other ads).
Videos do not automatically play when a user comes to a site where they are showing. Instead they ‘click to play’.
There’s no word yet on the AdSense blog as to what the details are from publishers perspectives. One would pressume that video ads would be worth more than normal image ads or text ads and that publishers would have the chance to opt in or out of having such ads show on their sites in a similar way to them being able to select text and/or image ads.
I would also presume that these ads would predominantly be rectangle box ads and that CTR on these ads would be quite good at least initially due to the novelty factor of them.
Read more about Click to Play Ads at:
Anyone has ideas on what types of sites these video ads would be most effective? I’m thinking celebrity, sports and movie / media review sites.
I wonder whether these video ads will be available for small individual publishers.
And how will they Pay ? I mean cost per view or Cost per click ?
Thilak – read the post – Darren wrote that they are CPC or CPM ads.
Well, Its another boon from google for adsense publisher. People who have become ad blind for text and image ads, won’t be able to avoid (unintentionally) video ads. And i presume that these ads will be high paying also. The only thing i worry is that whether they will allow it for all the publisher or only for premium publisher as i am far away of becoming a premium publisher. Currently it is only in US, so people outside US have to wait for this opportunity to come.
Well for the reply of David i think they will be available on all fields, mainly it depends on the adword user but its not an obligation from google.
For Thilak’s answer i will say it will be CPC and CPM both as Darren has said in his post
Thanks Neeraj and Barb, Ohh I’m So lazy. Sometimes I just Ignore some paragraphs,
I presume that there will be some announcement regarding Video ads in Inside Adsense.
I’ve actually seen this type of ad on http://www.thesuperficial.com/ for the past couple of weeks, usually after the 3rd or 4th post.
Wow. Thats cool news. But Darren, i am sure miss that i can’t enjoy such great new feature by Google.
Awesome…I like em’. I wonder if you get paid if they play the video..or perhaps they have a text ad underneath the video? Hmm…
An interesting and welcome development.
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Interesting that they are hitting Japan at the same time as the US. Can’t wait! As somone said, how long will it be before the novelty wears off.
I am thinking of creating some short videos for my sites and blogs. I wonder how and if I could sell some ad space at the start of the video. Are there any companies doing this yet?
They sound intriguing, but as the UK’s not in the first rollout I won’t be seeing them on my site any time soon.
I’m far more interested in knowing when their ads for feeds are going to come out of Beta. They’ve been in testing for what seems like forever, and I think they’ll be profitable for me when I can finally use them.
I’m yet to see anywhere that says this is for US, Japanese and Canadian publishers only – just that thats the only advertisers accepted into it. It could be limited just to traffic from those countries but I doubt they’ll block it from publishers from different countries.
I think that – used correctly – these could become more than just a novelty. They could actually be useful.
Imagine a regional real estate company doing a 15-20 listing of homes currently for sale. Or imagine a large real estate company like RE-Max doing numerous regional campaigns in different parts of the country.
For tourism sites … another boon. Imagine being a hotel and being able to provide small video clips of rooms, people playing in the pool, or hanging in the lounge. Very cool indeed.
-dm
That is something for CPM services like Fastclick, but maybe if you have “Fast internet” traffic, you could get better income! People on dialup are “blind” on big flash pages, so they take off flash and similar stuff.
It’s going to blast income on sites with flash games, movies or like Ebaumsworld type of sites…
Take That Chitika!
Darren, you might want to add this just as someone else’s opinion about the service:
TechCrunch bets against Google PPC Video Ads:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/05/23/google-ppc-video-ads-im-betting-against-it/
Regards,
A.H
I wonder how well PPC on the image ads will convert. It seems odd when compared to the CPM image ads. But I guess if Google is doing the balancing and the CPC is high enough that they will still get rotated into the ad rotation and pay equivalent (I’d hope more) to the other ads, it’s fine by me.
Afer reading Techcrunch’s post, it seems more like a traffic-grabbing troll to me. Of course if plain pay per click video ads alone were the topic, conversion would be a concern. But since Google is including them in the bidding and optimizing their display based on bid and response (= overall earnings to the publisher and themselves) them just like other ads, how in the world would publishers make less money? Techcrunch clearly forgot the most important parts of the equation before going on about how bad the solution is.
If Google were to implement pixel ads, we (the publishers) would probably make more money. As long as they keep the revenue stream optimized, diversification of their offerings can only help. It’s not like they’re adding a new media that starts at 5 cent bids because the number of early adopters is low – it’s all part of the same pool of advertisers and bids.
I’ve been using their flex-code for quite a while now and think it’s time to go back to the regular old ad units that can support images and video… Now they just need the scrolling ad units like Quigo AdSonar and some more innovations.