Google announced yesterday that it will begin auctioning off video advertising through AdSense, its wildly popular Internet advertising system. The video ads will need to be clicked on to play, which means they will be less obtrusive than what some sites are using now. From a consumer perspective, this change doesn't mean much, video is just as easy to ignore as text ads, especially when it doesn't automatically play.
There is a considerable amount of disagreement in the blogosphere about the business applications. IP Democracy, who saw this coming, and puts the added revenue from video between $58M and $472M depending on the CPM, or cost per thousand impressions, rate. Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch, however, thinks this plan is a dud. He points to cost of production, and the type of advertisers who now use AdSense as the main factors which will limit the success of video ads. As commenters at TechCrunch point out, perhaps the plan here isn't to get current AdSense advertisers to buy video ad space, but to get the big players who have shunned the service to consider it. Large corporations who are more concerned with spreading their brand name on the Internet than achieving direct sales could enter into this space.
There is one other thing to consider, and that's the Lone Ranger blogger -- anyone out there trying to monetize his or her blog without the help of a Web development team or an advertising department. Video ads from Google could help these bloggers capture the appearance of professionalism on their blogs. An established blogger like Arrington can sell ad space directly to a number of advertisers, the lesser known blogger could use this type of service to make it seem like he has that kind of clout as well. — Brian Ward
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