How Will Video Ads Affect Your Revenue?

[Joel Comm]

Just in case you hadn’t heard, you can now expect to see video ads appearing in an ad unit on your website. Google had been testing these in Beta for a while, and they’ve just graduated onto the general network. Advertisers can choose to pay on a per click or a per impression basis.

The ads will appear with a still picture and users will have to click “play” to start the video running.

In general, I’m really excited about video ads. I think they could change the way advertising works online eventually. We’re going to have to track them very, very closely.

The problem though is that it’s going to be very difficult to draw any conclusions about performance as these ads first spread across the network. Initially, users will be curious to see what the ads can do. Many people are going to click whether they’re genuinely interested in them or not. They’ll soon get bored doing that though so an early spike in earnings from CPC video ads might not tell us much about how they’ll perform in the future.

It’s also going to take a while for advertisers to figure out what ads need to get the most responses. At the moment, the few video ads that are around look like TV commercials.

Most people hate TV commercials and do everything they can to avoid them.

That approach also ignores one of Google’s biggest strengths: its contextualization.

At the moment, when users glance at the ad units on our websites, they see the keywords they entered into Google or phrases that they can find on the page. They can tell immediately that the site those ads point to has information they want.

Unless the advertiser does something very clever with that first still image, that’s not going to be true for video ads.

On the other hand, these ads are going to be much more eyecatching than text ads. They’re going to be very hard to miss and unlike conventional graphic ads, users won’t want to miss them.

My prediction? Most of these ads are going to appear on a CPM basis. They’re going to put up the average price for impressions and make traffic generation more important than ever. And with Google already paying less for CPM ads at the bottom of the page than above the fold, they’re also going to get us scratching our heads about the best places to put them.

We’re in for a busy time...

[PatSchraier]

My first impression is that customers will treat video ads like tv ads and ignore them. There has to be something very eye catching to get people to watch. Perhaps if they started up when the page opened it would work better but that might piss viewers off and they would click away from the page. I think I will vote against them, but also take a wait-and-see attitude. I can always change my mind if they start getting a good response.

Do you know if we will be able to select for or against the ads in the same way that we can for or against the graphic ads?

Thanks,

Pat

[lemsweller]

As a 35 year veteran of the "Media" it is the next logical step for the newest member of the media. The internet has the capacity to incorporate all components of video and audio and why not video ads? The ads that are well done will capture the attention of the audience just as they do on TV. The ads that are poorly done will not, and therefore not make as much money. Initially. It is as simple as that. The audience is too sophisticated to think of video ads as a novelty. If the ad is of high quality and has watercooler conversation potential, people will respond. Overtime however, as video ads increase, quality will naturally improve and people will get more comfortable with producing them at a low cost per unit rate. One picture's worth a thousand words they say. Google will set the price. The advertiser will have to determine if the cost is worth the effort in coming up with the pictures to make the sale. People still struggle with copy. Coming up with Good pictures requires more skill. But once it catches on, it will be another new exciting challenge to face.

Larry Emsweller

[nyfalcon]

Jib Jab is popular and if you get an ad similiar to something like that and its on a cpm. If your site gets a jibjab type ad and people send the page to their friends you can make a fortune.

On the other hand:

I think joel hit the nail on the head contextualization is the key to success at adsense. I know when I log into my yahoo homepage and they have trailers for movies or a visual ad playing I get off the page faster than you can say "contextualization".

btw Joel I just checked and contextualization.com is already taken, would of make a nice how to adsense/chikita site. :)

[Aderemi Ojikutu]

We are in a cyberspeed generation, a generation besieged by torrents of information, and therefore prone to impatience with any "baby-sitting" ads. The time it takes to click an adwords ad and quickly look through to see if the info meets your needs would definitely be shorter than the 'click and play' time of videoads.

Only about 20% of visitors to my sites spend more than 4 minutes, the overwhelming 80% spend far less time. True! pictures speak a thousand times better than words, but the written word is silently but certainly more IMPACTFUL than pictures.

I forsee, in the long run, an average of 20% 'market-share' or 'click-share' for the videoads.

[tigherrdk]

I think anything that makes the page different is a Good Thing.

I've heard somewhere that the ads served to a page tend to settle down, so that a frequent visitor will see the same ads repeatedly, reducing the likelihood of a clickthrough. I took this as a hint to swap from Text Only to Text and Images, and the addition of video as a possibility to the mix should enhance this variety even more.

Plus, if google runs out of ads for a particular page, I have some graphical ads of my own that slot in to the space otherwise left vacant.

[cyberdog]

Videos are unfriendly for 256ke'rs and below (connections) and will not make even those video ads to load before they make an exit.

These videos must be in good quality too, but MUST have minimal loading time/ filesize.

[tsutton]

These videos must be in good quality too, but MUST have minimal loading time/ filesize.

I am sure Google reviews them before makng it live.

[lemsweller]

Videos will work only if they make money. If they make money we will find a way to make them work. Like everything else we try, we test and retest. I say bring it on. The videos will have to meet a qualitative standard, otherwise they won't sell anything. To me it is the next logical step in the system. Well, actually, audio adsense would be the next logical step and I don't know if we have given that enough of a try. Then progress to video.

Larry Emsweller

[jar617]

Too bad we couldn't have a vle set up for ourselves. On the other hand, are these videos linking to another site or does the user stay on your site for the duration? That could be a plus, I tend to listen to one thing as I read another. So in the process of listening, they may see something else that interests them. But I have found that sometimes in order to shut the stupid thing off, I have to click off the site. Especially if an audio or video starts up at log on.
It does open up a whole new world of advertising. Instead of 30-60 seconds to sell a product, now you have 10........talk about taking it to the wire!

[tigherrdk]

Is this a demo of video ads? Not that impressive, if so.

But nor is an offer of £30 a week that enticing to anybody on this forum, i would have thought.

All a bit odd.

[adsensemaster]

I think they may need to pay more for vedio ads

[www.centraldirectory.net]

i think they should share more % of revenue to publishers because it takes more
diversion