Nevermind the millions of dollars invested by venture capitalists in the online video advertising companies. Google, the company that gave a bottom line to online video when it bought YouTube for $1.6 billion, thinks the business of online video advertising is a work in progress.
“We are still in the process of trying different things,” Susan Wojcicki, Google’s vice president of product management told a small gathering of journalists at company’s corporate headquarers in Mountain View, California on Tuesday.
It’s not clear pre-roll (before the clip) or post-roll (after the video clip) ads will work online. Google says it is experimenting with in-stream ads for now, but looking for new ideas.
The company is currently looking at different overlays or ways to put ads at the bottom of the video, banners around video, or or even simply opting for ads that are companion banners to the video clips, Wojcicki noted.
“There is going to be a lot of experimentation. We shall see how and where the market evolves to,” she said. Video creators are content owners looking for new ways to make money — clearly there is a need for an effective online video advertisng strategies. “The challenge is to make the ads useful, targeted.”
She pointed out that there is a good chance that video advertising will become more integrated with the content. Did someone say product placement! When I asked her if she thought longer-form video was going to help overcome some of the issues with online video advertising, she said that for now it is the short-form content is what people want to watch. Which means, from an online advertising perspective, we are back to square one.
The contextual problem with video is a huge one. I worked at a big media company for 4 years working on this particularly problem. Media companies have been having this problem for years – that is why there is so much content just sitting “in the vault” not being used.
One common answer that we always found: it is the METADATA! This is very different from indexing a bunch of text b/c even the spoken word in video can be completely different than what the video is actually about.
One reason (not the only one, of course) that i was so attracted to join Mefeedia as CEO – 3 years of metadata collected on thousands of contextualized video feeds.
We have some great ideas around solving the contextualizing/targeting of video ads – will keep you updated as things progress.
I understand the rush to monetize online video, but does it really have to happen in the video? I think people are far too easily concluding that video content cannot be monetized effectively with ads around the video. Pre-roll, post-roll… I believe these will always feel more intrusive. Is the embeddable nature of online video the main reason behind the push for in-video ads? But what about the other types of media are also being syndicated via RSS, newsletters, widgets, etc.? I think video should be looked at more as a way to drive traffic back to your site where conversion and monetization can take place. A mean, not an end.
The entire web experience is still completely new, not just video, and context will be a great challenge. Whatever solution Google comes up with I hope it is as pleasantly non-intrusive as their advertising on their search engine.
Until now Google has been pretty quiet about its in-video advertising capabilities. Earlier this year there was buzz about Google dabbling in in-game ads which leads me to believe they have been working towards perfecting their version of in-video ads for a while. I think contextual in-video ads will end up being the most compelling ad serving medium for consumers. However, there are so many companies in the video advertising game now, it is getting hard to keep track. ScanScout is definitely one to watch—they offer both an in-video overlay and a ticker with an expansion panel.
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Does any one know when Google video ads will be available for Pakistan and other south Asian countries?
Wow! “Video ads” is the search hot trends today in google. If you know where to put your investment safe i’m sure it’s a big success. Good article. Let’s promote business by video ads explain all the benefits that you have in your global business investment.
One rule that everyone should follow if they have a business, is that they have to tap into more possibilities if they want to get better profit. This is important because you can get a hold of more audience and customers if you extend your coverage through video advertisement.