Google has announced the launch of its advertising service ‘”click-to-play video ad format” that allows businesses to show videos online, available for advertisers worldwide. Advertisers can now run this new format on the Google content network to reach their target customers. An example can be seen on the Google Video Ads demo page.
The service only plays videos when a user clicks the ‘play’ button, which Google said is designed to protect the user experience and provide advertisers with genuine leads.
Thankfully, ‘click to play’ means just that. The ads are user initiated and will not start running unless asked to. Users who want to view the ads press ‘play’ on the control bar at the bottom of the window to start the video. The way it is being sold to the advertisers is that as the user asked to see the ad, they get more engaged users and qualified leads.
Click-to-play video ads are user-initiated and can be targeted to specific sites or contextually. Both targeting models support a geographical targeting overlay, up to the city level. Video ads compete in the ad auction with other text, image and flash ads for placement on a site.
To simplify the process, once an advert of up to two minutes long has been uploaded by a company its management is handed over to Google. Advertisers can then buy space on specific sites or spread the ads around related sites based on the context of the material.
Click-to-play video ads will automatically appear on sites within the Google content network that allow video ads. Pricing for click-to-play video ads can be either cost-per-impression or cost-per-click.
Advertisers will be able to measure the effectiveness of their video ads by tracking video play-back rates, click-through rates to their destination site, as well as how long users interact with the video.
According to Google, sellers simply have to upload their video files. There are no hosting or serving fees, making such video ads accessible to both large and small advertisers and providing brand advertisers with a richer and more engaging format to communicate their messages.
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment has placed commercials for DVDs of American Dad and The Simple Life on several websites.
According to Duncan Plexico, Fox’s executive director for digital marketing "Google lets advertisers pick the sites where their ads will appear. Some are extremely small but popular with the young male demographic the studio is seeking. They are not only giving us the niche sites, but now we have got a rich media ad that breaks through the clutter better."
Paramount Studios, which has already trailed the service on specific sites, claimed that it was happy with the results.
"Pull marketing (getting people to click to play relevant content) is much more effective than push marketing or auto-play ads," said Andrew Lin, vice president of interactive marketing at Paramount Vantage.
“I could not ask for better placement. Paramount was able to choose where the video trailer played, and it was on sites that were highly relevant to our target audiences.”
No doubt it will lead to a whole new sub-culture of viral advertising aimed at water cooler conversations around the world. Already sites like Google video are peppered with so called guerrilla advertising where major corporations try to come up with wacky and engaging content. Video on Google – especially with the incentive of an opening shot to tempt the user to run the ad – will give the creative agencies – and the guy with the web cam – a whole new format to play around with. Oh, and Google will presumably make a lot of money.
Video ads compete in the normal Google AdWords auction with other text, image and flash ads for placement on a site.
The worldwide Google service offers adverts in Japanese, simplified Chinese, Danish, Korean, Dutch, Norwegian, English, Polish, Finnish, Portuguese, French, Russian, German, Spanish, Hungarian, Swedish, Italian and Turkish.