InsideGoogle

Google Rolling Out Flash Video Ads

The Google AdWords blog has announced that they are fulling rolling out “click-to-play” ads. We’ve seen these ads previously, appearing as Flash ads in the style of embedded Google Videos. Unlike traditional animated ads, Google has gone overboard making sure they don’t annoy anyone, because they don’t do anything unless you click a really obvious play button.

These ads can be extremely valuable, for two reasons: Because they require the interaction of the user, they are valuable to the advertiser, since it is quite clear that the user noticed and watched the ad, and was at least somewhat interested in its content, unlike every single other type of ad. Also, because the ads appear similar to Google Videos, any website which occasionally embeds Google Videos is going to earn serious money from these ads, since users will be drawn to the ads and their money-making play buttons.

If Google were to give a way to get only video ads, I’d be there in a second.

First, as with all AdWords ad formats, video ads will compete for placement on sites in the Google content network with other text, Flash and image ads — and, as with our other image ad placements, you can choose to bid on a CPC or CPM basis.

Second, these ads will be supported by both site- and keyword-targeted campaigns. You can choose to serve your video ad on a specific site or on pages in our content network that relate to your product or service. As always, you have the ability to geo-target your video ads internationally, nationally, or locally.

Finally, unlike some intrusive advertising, users will have complete control. When a page loads, only a static image will be visible; the video will not start playing until the user initiates it. He or she will be able to advance the video, pause it, adjust the volume or click through to the advertiser’s site, as you can see in the example below:

But, you may say, video is only for big branding oriented advertisers. We beg to differ. This feature makes video ads much more accessible to all advertisers. Now, an owner of a small bed & 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.

That isn’t a real ad, so feel free to click on it without worrying about click fraud. However, I might interest you in some ads below….

|
|
|
\/

Ha ha. I’m funny.

Anyway, The New York Times talked to Gokul Rajaram, a Google director of product management, who said that the video ads will generally cost anywhere from the single digits of dollars to the low double digits. The bad news for Google: Since the publishers (guys like me) get a pretty decent cut of the ad revenue, that means Google won’t see a lot of that higher price.

Of course, that’s also the good news, both for publishers, and for the strength of the AdSense network, which has seen slow growth. If Google can fill enough ad inventory with Flash ads, it can revive interest and maybe even score some new publishers. If Google ads a video-only ad format, all those video sites out there that repost YouTube and Google Video content might be inclined to sign up.

I hope someone at Google is thinking about that.

Some bonus quotes:

The AP:

The activation feature could discourage many advertisers from signing up for the new video service, said Jupiter Research analyst David Card. “This isn’t going to be a game changer for Google, but it gives them a much richer palette.”

Greg Sterling:

In addition, it suddenly gives Google a real product for brand marketers, something the company has wanted but hasn’t really had until now. Yahoo! has had much more to offer brands. It will be interesting to see how many of them will try this out.

Loren Baker:

Advertisements can now offer video tours, normal TV commercials, CALL NOW call to actions (perhaps with an interesting Google Click-To-Call twist), ability to view the video before clicking over to a site, and strong branding via the multimedia spots.

UPDATE: Check out Darren’s take:

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.

May 23rd, 2006 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | PPC, CPM, AdSense, AdWords, Advertising, General | one comment