Google testing video AdSense Ads

Last Monday Google announced on Inside AdWords blog the possibility for advertisers to show video ads on Google's AdSense content network.

What will the impact of this announcement be?

1) Many fear that more rich media ads will negatively impact the user experience. However, as JenSense noted, the video ads are not intrusive given that they “will not start playing on their own, but the ad unit will show a static video screenshot instead. It will require user action to start the videos, and users will also be able to pause, adjust the volume and click to a customer site”. I personally find it quite distracting and annoying when video ads (or any type of rich media ad) start playing without my consent, so I welcome the fact that the video ad will only be an image, and that I will retain control of whether to play it or not.

2) This format will provide another distribution channel for TV and video ads fueling growth of this ad media. Companies can potentially use it to test the appeal of their ads before broadcasting them on TV (although it is believed that while it is easy to repurpose TV Ads, it's not a good idea).

3) Smaller-budget advertisers will have the opportunity to enter the once-expensive video advertising market. For example, as described in Inside AdSense blog “..an owner of a small bed and breakfast in Lake Tahoe can put a video tour of his beautiful chalet right next to an article that talks about skiing the epic slopes of Squaw Valley”.

4) The growth of video ads will probably encourage new experiments with this format and I am expecting ad agencies to become quite sophisticated at this (for example, adding an interactive Flash layer to streaming video, a practice called “hot spotting”).

Will this new format really take off? From an advertiser’s and publisher’s perspectives, a lot will depend on how video ad fee will be determined (i.e..: whether the fee will be paid once the user hits ‘play’ or once the user actually goes to the advertiser’s website). But most importantly, it will depend on whether users will be attracted by this form of advertising. From a user’s perspective, the benefit of a video ad is that it can provide more information, in a more engaging way, and without forcing the user to leave the original site. For this reason, I think Google video ads will be better accepted by consumers and clicked more than display-ads or simple sponsored links. Whether or not users will then decide to visit the advertiser’s site will depend on the relevance of the product and the appealing of the ad.

The first video ads will appear this week. Will you play them?

Comments

[Michael Hosting]

I like this idea. Some internet sites resemble more and more TV programs and not newspapers and magazines as before. So, google just helps them to move in this direction.

[Bill]

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