Google Video Ads

I'm baaack.

Read this interesting post today on video ads on Ken McCarthy's blog Looking at Video On the Web , an always informative blog that jogs me back to posting on my own blog.


Ken tells us:

As predicted on this blog last winter, Google is adding online video advertising to its pay-per-click arsenal - and it's happening this week.

Wow. So what else are those whiz-kids at Google thinking up? It's a no-brainer that they would begin to host video ads in the future as a one stop shop. For those of us that occasionally upload video clips to hosts for streaming, the user experience on the other end can prove varied as the player wars grind on in earnest.

In a previous post I linked to Google's video site to show a cool video clip about base jumping. Although the quality is funky it's easy to play.

At the time I thought Google's business was only about replicating the success of YouTube's model. No way. If Ken is right, it looks as if Google's video hosting service was the company's test drive for what may well prove to a lucrative venture.

I see a bright future ahead in which businesses promote themselves online with video clips such as this one by Guba, also featured on Ken's blog. What better way to get to know the services a firm provides than by hearing its owners speak on a video click-through ad?

For those of us cross-media producers struggling to support worthy documentary projects, producing video ads may prove a future source of subsidy. I have been dreaming of that day ever since I registered the URL www.streamingmessages.com three years ago.

Here's Ken's post if you're too lazy to click through.

Google pay-per-click video ads

Here's a super-short cheat sheet of what the service is going to look like:

1. It will be based on the winning pay-per-click model
2. The ads will appear as small, static boxes
3. The video plays only when the prospect clicks the static image

And here's the kicker... Google will host the video.

(If there's one group that has bandwidth to spare its the guys at Google!)