The online video advertising space is expanding with Google launching “click-to-play” video ads to its Adsense network. Like its other AdWords formats, video ads will compete for placement on sites in the Google content network. Although online video ads are not something new, Google is changing the format with an “opt-in” play mode, as the ads do not play automatically.
Is this a good format? Apparently, Michael Arrington does not think so and predicts this is something that will go down the pipe.
“When someone clicks on a video, they aren’t clicking through to a website, where some sort of action can occur that can be tied to an ROI. People like Adsense because it can result in sales or other trackable actions. Videos don’t do that. Even though the web is making multi-media drop dead easy, people still like text (and that’s why blogs are interesting to a lot more people than podcasts).”
We, however, must respectfully disagree with Mr. Arrington, as we think he is examining this from the wrong perspective. Instead of comparing video ads to CPC text-based ads, we should be looking at this in relation to the effectiveness of video ads on broadcast TV. With the spread of personal DVR devices like TiVO, consumers are finding it increasingly easier to skip commercials altogether and advertisers must explore new mediums and offerings to get their messages across.
Google is definitely on the right path here, as video ads on the Internet tied to search terms can be much more relevant than the commercials on television. However, Google is still one key step away, as they are only tying videos to the title and summary text associated with a video and not the actual content of the video. If Google were able to figure out this last step, they would be able to deliver perfectly relevant ads each and every time a user interacted with a video.
Online video ads are only going to become more and more interactive, clickable and relevant and while Google’s initial offering is lacking in many ways, it is a significant first step.
