San Francisco — Amid a flurry of good news and announcements for music aficionado, here is a bit of bad news for those using AdSense video units: The Inside AdSense blog announced that Google will be discontinuing its AdSense video units feature because of its poor performance. The company gave individuals about one month to land on another strategy.
Yes, beginning today, publishers can no more sign up for a combination of embedded YouTube videos and text ads. The AdSense Video units was introduced in October 2007 but due to performing to the expectations Google hoped for, the company will discontinue the service by the end of April, and all of the existing stuff will revert to a series of standard clip players.
A post on the Inside AdSense blog announcing the decision to “sunset” the feature, which allowed the displaying of YouTube content and ads on Web pages, the Google AdSense team explained, “After reviewing our AdSense video units feature… we have established that it has not had the impact we had hoped for.”
Google said it has decided to retire the feature at the end of April enabling us to focus our resources “on other opportunities to help publishers earn from their sites.” It emphasized that publishers who wish to continue showing video content from YouTube can simply go to any video page at YouTube.com and grab the code from the ‘Embed‘ box. Or, YouTube members can sign in to their accounts to create video playlists.
Also worth noting is that the discontinuation of AdSense video units does not impact the availability of other video-related ads options, stressed Google. It noted that video ads may appear in AdSense for content ad units for users who have “opted into” image ads. Also, AdSense for video is “still accepting applications from eligible publishers who produce video content,” said the Google announcement.
In truth, many publishers were recently not happy with the video ad units performance, in terms of earnings through the AdSense network. And now that it is no longer making available the option to sign-up for video units, Google asked those who are currently displaying them to begin removing the video unit code from their pages. It assured to credit to their accounts any earnings they had made from the units. Any leaderboard or skyscraper video units remaining on pages after April will direct visitors to YouTube and other video unit sizes will automatically convert to standard embedded YouTube players, said Google, stressing these players will not generate any revenue.
It appears as though Google is backpedaling too much due to the recession, and with such action, stockholders might lose confidence. A greater sense of unease could spread through the whole search and advertising industry, too.
The Inside AdSense post stated, “We appreciate your patience and understanding as we continue to develop our products.”