Everyone is buzzing this morning over the news that Google will begin serving up video ads. Here's some details, straight from the Google-shaped horse's mouth:- Placement of video ads will be determined by CPC or CPM auction, just like everything else.
- Advertisers still have the same options (site selection, keywords, geo-targeting) that they have with text ads.
- The ads, when initially served on the site, will be static images that the user has to click on to play, giving them a measure of control. That also means anyone clicking on that ad likely has a strong interest and therefore that impression has more value.
Michael at TechCrunch doesn't like this for a whole host of reasons. Let me disagree with him point-by-point:
- This not being on search results makes it worthless. Not necessarily, for the same reasons that site targeting is sometimes more effective than search keywords.
- Lack of click-thru makes this worthless. Yes, some sort of interactivity would help but this is a good first step. Let's not dismiss it based on this point just yet.
- Spotrunner helps people create and place TV ads cheaply, so why use Google? And how clickable (or effective) are TV commercials?
- People don't want to click on a video ad. Why not? Clicking to start the ad is so much less annoying than having one autoplay and having to click to stop it. If the ad fits the visitor's interest than I don't think this will be a big deal for them.
- Producing a video ad is beyond most small advertisers. And this just opened up a whole new market for people to work with companies to produce them.
- These hurdles will cause low CPC and click-thru rates. Maybe at first, but wait a couple months until people start playing around with it and experimenting.
