AdSense Gets Click-To-Play Video Ads

[shor]

http://adwords.blogspot.com/2006/05/...r-adwords.html

In the coming days, we will be adding click-to-play video ads to the line-up of text, Flash and image ad formats currently supported by the Google content network. At launch, video ads will be available to AdWords advertisers in the US, Canada and Japan - but we plan to roll them out to other regions shortly.

Now, let's talk about the details.

First, as with all AdWords ad formats, video ads will compete for placement on sites in the Google content network with other text, Flash and image ads -- and, as with our other image ad placements, you can choose to bid on a CPC or CPM basis.

Hot on the heels of the Google Base + Google AdWords monetization, this new features allows advertisers to put click-to-play videos via Google Video technology onto the Google content network. We're a publisher that already has existing online videos and TVCs so the ability to use these videos for online branding purposes that are accountable is interesting news.

Instead of estimating eyeballs for our TVCs we can capture the number of clicks for a video + any resulting click-through to our site. Like a TVC with a dial-in phone number but even less obtrusively, I can measure the effectiveness of the TVC. Add tracking to the click-through and I can track the effectiveness of a video in generating conversions. As of yet, it's not available in Australia, so would be interesting to get any feedback on this product.

[integramed]

I think video ads are an exciting development by Google. I'm assuming distribution will only be across the content network (AdSense), but that's fine by me. Does anybody know when this feature will be live in the AdWords control panel?