Written by Liz Gannes
Posted Wednesday, February 20, 2008 at 9:00 PM PT

 

Google Finally Launches AdSense for Video

Remember back in the day when you gasped “$1.6 billion for YouTube!?!” “Where’s the AdSense of audio and video?” was what I wanted to know in October 2006, the week after Google bought YouTube. A year and a half later Google is taking the obvious and necessary step to profit from what it’s learned on YouTube: releasing contextual video ads for the entire web [that URL isn't working yet, but it's the one Google gave me].

Google will make the InVideo ad formats it developed for YouTube last year and extend them to its publishers and advertisers. The overlay ads will be targeted to both the content of the video and the site it’s displayed on.

Yes, video AdSense is late in coming — just like YouTube’s copyright protection scheme was last year. To be fair, figuring out what’s going on in a video, whether you want to monetize it or protect it, is hard — Google had to break a sweat on both these products. Till now the company had made oddly limited forays into web-wide video advertising: syndicating videos (including YouTube partner videos) within ad units.

Thursday Update: Lots of more info coming out on this story, so I started an addendum post.

Meanwhile, plenty of startups have emerged to fill the contextual video advertising void: ScanScout, Digitalsmiths, adap.tv, EveryZing. But Google isn’t going at this alone. At launch, it has signed an impressive list of partners for its video ads, including UGC, professional, and enterprise portals and platforms, but most interestingly other video advertising companies such as YuMe and Tremor Media.

YuMe CEO Jayant Kadambi, whose company will throw Google into the mix with other pay-per-performance providers, called the video AdSense offering a “powerful new avenue” for revenue.

Other named launch partners are how-to video sites BobVila.com, eHow, ExpertVillage, as well as My Damn Channel, PinkBike, TheNewsRoom, Revver, blip.tv, Brightcove, GodTube, and Eyespot Network. (Likely candidates that I was surprised not to see on the list Google provided are Ooyala and Howcast; the video platform and how-to site, respectively, were both founded by former Googlers.)

Paradoxically, while Google may be late to market, in the meantime it has done its part to make the market smaller. The company increases its share of the video market every month — at least in the U.S., where comScore reports Google sites (mostly YouTube) stream 32.6 of videos watched online, and host 43 percent of people who watch video online.

At the same time, while other generic video aggregators (e.g. Revver, Bolt) may be falling by the wayside, that doesn’t mean there’s any fewer new sources of video online. Legal streams of TV shows, for instance, are booming. Let’s see if Google can get a piece of that.

Sphere
Topic: Money & Power
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Comments & Trackbacks

  1. Liz, your link to http://google.com/videoadsolutions is broken

    Chris X on February 20th, 2008 at 9:54 pm - Permalink

  2. NM, I’m dumb

    Chris X on February 20th, 2008 at 9:55 pm - Permalink

  3. This is just awesome. But I have questions:

    1. Ads are only shown on videos by content providers who choose to display ads right?

    2. Any Youtube or Google Video content provider can activate showing the ads and immediately starts making a revenue based on amount of views and quality of the video (if people watch the videos till the end, and people come back for more, comment and all that, might bring more clicks on the ads)

    3. What is the expected revenue going to be per 1000 views?

    4. Will advertisers perhaps want to advertise on any videos, will advertisers be able to choose specific channels, tags, content providers to target their advertising on specifically, as well as which timecode to popup the textual advertising at?

    5. Does Google use voice-recognition to provide the best possible relevant advertising based on what is being said in the video? Voice-recognition would be awesome as well to automatically generate subtitles (also nice for people with bad hearing) and automatically provide the subtitles translated into all the different Google Translate languages. It would be fantastic to have the whole Chinese, French, Spanish audiences having suddently access to english speaking content. With possible collaborative manual editing of subtitles would be nice (pause the video, suggest a different way to subtitle/translate the text).

    Charbax on February 20th, 2008 at 9:57 pm - Permalink

  4. Excellent! How do you sign up?

    Also, I am confused by what you mean by “launch partners”? Do you mean the YouTube partner channels? Are they offering this overlay solution for ANY player (such as Blip’s)? Thanks!

    Frank Sinton on February 20th, 2008 at 9:58 pm - Permalink

  5. [...] NewTeeVee notes, Google has already signed some video advertising companies to work on this larger platform, [...]

    Google AdSense Opens More for YouTube Videos on February 20th, 2008 at 10:28 pm - Permalink

  6. [...] NewTeeVee notes, Google has already signed some video advertising companies to work on this larger platform, [...]

    Google AdSense Opens More for YouTube Videos : Tech Web Daily on February 20th, 2008 at 11:40 pm - Permalink

  7. [...] Now, Google is finally rolling out a fuller, more inclusive AdSense service for use with videos. Google has already signed some video advertising companies to work on this larger platform, including YuMe and Tremor Media. There are also a slew of video networks that have also signed on to be a part of this fuller AdSense network, including ExpertVillage, MyDamnChannel, and Revver to name a few. What’s that mean for the competitive methods for the likes of Revver and its new parent company Live Universe? As we’ve seen from the company’s other video network and YouTube rival LiveVideo, the marketing strategy of Greenspan is often to take a YouTube feature and make it better or more usable. In the end, that shouldn’t make much of a difference for participating in the video version of AdSense: Google has an extensive network for advertisers and publishers to tall take advantage of, and nearly every site out there seems to have no problem signing on for text ads that appear in one’s sidebars. Source:Mashable! and NewTeeVee [...]

    Web RoundUp: Feb 20, 2008 : unitedBIT on February 21st, 2008 at 2:19 am - Permalink

  8. [...] NewTeeVee notes, Google has already signed some video advertising companies to work on this larger platform, [...]

    Google AdSense Opens More for YouTube Videos | Social Media News Desk on February 21st, 2008 at 3:01 am - Permalink

  9. [...] Liz Gannes has the scoop on the Google site describing the Adsense video ads. But the site is still not up and [...]

    Google to Roll out Adsense for Video on February 21st, 2008 at 3:40 am - Permalink

  10. [...] NewTeeVee: Google Finally Launches AdSense for Video Share/Send Sphere Print Previous Post [...]

    Feb. 21, 2008: Check Out Google’s Data Center - GigaOM on February 21st, 2008 at 5:02 am - Permalink

  11. Hi Liz, the redirect is not working yet, but you can link here instead for now: google.com/ads/videoadsolutions/

    -Ryan

    Ryan Hayward on February 21st, 2008 at 6:19 am - Permalink

  12. [...] Traduction et adaptation de l’article de newteevee [...]

    Oueb-Revue » Blog Archive » Google l’achat de Youtube en lançant Adsense pour l’audio-video on February 21st, 2008 at 7:09 am - Permalink

  13. I don’t get the site. Looks like I’ll provide them my video and in return they provide a Flash video (with overlayed ad) that I broadcast through my own Flash video player. Am I understanding this correctly? If so… weak! Where’s the real YouTube integration?

    Dave Zatz on February 21st, 2008 at 7:13 am - Permalink

  14. I don’t think video overlay ads will be such a big hit for Google because they are particularly annoying. Watching a video is much different from scanning a website for information. I go into further detail on my blog -> http://www.russellheimlich.com/blog/why-youtube-video-ads-will-ultimately-fail/

    I also thought about how Google could innovate in this space and monetize video the way the whole company got started: with search. Think about it if you refered videos to people at the end, what if you watched a video and at the end if you clicked through to an advertisers video and watched some way through then Google could charge for that referal and split it with the video producer of the previous video. Make sense? http://www.russellheimlich.com/blog/how-google-can-turn-youtube-into-another-adsense/

    Russell Heimlich on February 21st, 2008 at 7:59 am - Permalink

  15. The Adsense blog has posted.

    At this stage of the beta participants require a minimum of 1 million videos served a month to join.

    Dave Zatz on February 21st, 2008 at 8:02 am - Permalink

  16. Hi Liz- Great piece as usual. In case anyone else was curious as well, I figured I’d post a comment instead of dropping you an email directly.

    As an ad network in the program, Tremor Media offers our publishers the ability to select Google ads as an additional source of advertising and an additional format option. This enables them, for example, to generate additional revenue if a user has been frequency capped because they’ve already seen a particular ad, or where a pre-roll may not be appropriate (short form content.)

    Corey Kronengold on February 21st, 2008 at 9:31 am - Permalink

  17. At least they made it easier to join the YouTube partners program

    theshadowfan on February 21st, 2008 at 9:45 am - Permalink

  18. [...] on Google AdSense for Video We were a bit ahead of the Google AdSense for video story when we published last night, and some more important details have emerged this [...]

    More on Google AdSense for Video « NewTeeVee on February 21st, 2008 at 10:14 am - Permalink

  19. Hey guys, I went through the additional materials posted this morning and wrote an update post. Hopefully it answers most of the comments left with questions.

    http://newteevee.com/2008/02/21/more-on-google-adsense-for-video/

    Liz Gannes on February 21st, 2008 at 10:23 am - Permalink

  20. [...] NewTeeVee notes, Google has already signed some video advertising companies to work on this larger platform, [...]

    Mint Communications » Blog Archive » Google Adsense for YouTube Videos on February 21st, 2008 at 12:27 pm - Permalink

  21. [...] NewTeeVee reports that Google is preparing to launch an improved version of its video ad units. The new ads will be in-video ads, showing up as pop-up overlays over the top of your video. [...]

    Google announces AdSense for video | money news blog on February 21st, 2008 at 1:20 pm - Permalink

  22. [...] NTV: “At launch, it has signed an impressive list of partners for its video ads, including UGC, professional, and enterprise portals and platforms, but most interestingly other video advertising companies such as YuMe and Tremor Media… Other named launch partners are how-to video sites BobVila.com, eHow, ExpertVillage, as well as My Damn Channel, PinkBike, TheNewsRoom, Revver, blip.tv, and GodTube, and Eyespot Network.” (Note: BrightCove is also among the named partners). [...]

    Google Launching Beta Of Adsense For Video; To Use YouTube-Like Overlays : Online media news summary of todays online advertising news on February 21st, 2008 at 2:32 pm - Permalink

  23. [...] NewTeeVee notes, Google has already signed some video advertising companies to work on this larger platform, [...]

    You Tube finally ready to make serious cash (for Google) « Neoco’s blog on February 22nd, 2008 at 4:16 am - Permalink

  24. [...] have a second reason for posting… Last week, Google launched AdSense for Video as a means for web publishers to monetize their video content with contextual advertising. However, [...]

    TiVo’s Risque Advertising? on February 27th, 2008 at 7:16 am - Permalink

  25. [...] links. Until just recently, there were no parallel options for monetizing video. But last week, Google added AdSense overlays for video, and now, as supersleuth Dave Zatz has discovered, Amazon is offering affiliate overlay ads for [...]

    Amazon’s New Affliate Video Overlays « NewTeeVee on February 27th, 2008 at 11:22 am - Permalink

  26. [...] Post from New Tee Vee on Google launching ad sense for video [...]

    stuff and things 29.02.08 « [bluurb] stuff and things on February 28th, 2008 at 10:16 pm - Permalink

  27. Google Adsense is the flagship of contextual advertising! Really the best webmaster program for earning money!

    DeSTInY on March 11th, 2008 at 8:29 am - Permalink

  28. Thanks for a very informative post. I will be sharing your blog link with my readers!

    John Carnegie on March 16th, 2008 at 9:03 pm - Permalink

  29. [...] http://newteevee.com/2008/02/20/google-finally-launches-adsense-for-video/ [...]

    Online video « Corporate Power in New Media on May 14th, 2008 at 10:15 am - Permalink

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