San Francisco — While claiming over a billion video views per day, Google Inc.’s YouTube video-sharing site certainly gets a lot of traffic. And now the search giant has launched its Promoted Video advertising service that lets Australian YouTube users promote their videos for a fee, essentially the equivalent of Google AdWords for YouTube videos. The Promoted Videos service lists advertisers’ videos in a distinct column among relevant search results.
Those seeking to promote their videos will be able to bid on search keywords in the same way they do with Google search, and then pay per click for the number of times their video is viewed.
Mitsubishi has been experimenting with the service locally to market its new Outlander 4×4, and its advertising agency believes integrating video is the next logical evolution of search engine marketing.
According to Google there are now 20 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute of every day. As Jay Akkad, a YouTube product manager who is in Australia to launch the service noted, with that level of uploading “the problem arises around video discovery. Imagine Mitsubishi wants to launch a new car in 2010. How do they get that content discovered?”
In the beta stage, Mitsubishi was among the Australian brands to experiment with the Promoted Videos service, which is already available in the US.
The service is based on Google’s AdWords and priced on a Cost-per-Click (CPC) basis. Advertisers bid for priority and listings are determined by CPC bid and relevance to each search query.
Quoting Google’s ‘democratic’ values, YouTube product manager Akkad said its targeted everyone from individuals looking to pay $5 a day, to corporations spending more than $10,000.
He named Nike’s popular video of basket-baller Kobe Bryant jumping over an Aston Martin as an example of how corporations could use YouTube to reach a wide audience.
“There are many great examples on YouTube,” he said in a statement. “The content has to be compelling. If you move away from TV ads, there are real opportunities to engage with users and be more flexible with time.”
Simon Dunwoody, search director of Mediaedge:cia which has created the Promoted Video campaign for Mitsubishi said that by employing terms like “4×4” or “4×4 review” it had been possible to steer people to Mitsubishi’s YouTube videos and that the click through rate had been good. However he acknowledged that since this is only a fledgling service in Australia, there are relatively few competitors vying for viewers.
That had though also left Dunwoody querying why the click per view cost had proved higher than the 5-10 cents he had been anticipating. He said he was discussing this cost discrepancy with Google
Google has also released what it refers to as Call-to Action overlays which can drive YouTube viewers directly to other websites.
The dashboard is integrated into the existing AdWords dashboard.
The move, which is the latest step in YouTube’s move towards putting itself on a commercial footing, was announced in a posting on the YouTube Australia blog today.