Video ad formats

[Ronald Marva]

With the rising popularity of video ad formats, Google is starting to improve and provide add ons to this feature of Adsense. Recently they launched three new members of their click-to-play video ads family: the 728x90 Leaderboard, the 120x600 Skyscraper, and the 160x600 Wide Skyscraper.

Publishers will benefit from the increased competition among text, image, and video ads in these three formats; if a click-to-play video ad appears in one of your ad units, this means that it has won the auction against other ads and will generate the maximum earnings for you.

Guess this would translate to more income for your site.

[Plato]

I kind of like the idea of Video ads because it is very attractive as you can get more attention and more interaction from the viewer than with banners or Google ads. I have always imagined a day when music artists would be at home with "free" music and "Prelude Ads" paying for the music. So that as people share, the ads move along. " ShareAds ?"

[Vintage]

to be safe, stick to banner/ flash ads. Video ads work only in countries with access to high speed internet. when people have to wait for the video to load, they'll turn it off.

[David Tan]

Besides the size being bigger and creating a strain in bandwidth, Video ads are also usually much longer and will require more attention from the viewer, more than 10 seconds.

I wonder, if we click on the video let it run, and it's 20 seconds long. Would we have the patience and the attention span to last that long? Only if it keeps on being interested I guess. But how many of these kind of ads would I want to watch after a while? Plus it may work on the first time, but subsequent ads won't serve much of a reminder unless it's complemented with graphics/banner that will shout out the message.

[Tephus]

I think flash games are a good alternative to video ads. It increases participation and attention span while loading a lot faster. You can even have a contest based around your game.

[ABOTadmin]

I second Tephus. Flash can include video clips too. And the file sizes are much smaller than actually streaming a full clip. Plus you can add all sorts of interactivity like links and games and email forms. There are banners out there that allows you to buy the product directly by filling in your credit card and various other info in the banner itself (later redirected to a full secured site to complete the transaction). So flash is best, for now.

[David Tan]

Which brings to the question of what interaction is the best? Games? Getting people to play a flash game and when they win, it's redirected to the advertiser's site. Or a 'mini' banner size site that contains 'mini' categories to 'mini' info. Maybe a product demo or 3D view of the product?

What would get you to notice, click and find out more?

It's a beautiful chick in an ad that responds to your 'clicks' isn't it?

[Gajandra D]

Video ads would flourish in the fashion and cosmetic business. Simply because people would rather see fashion in a video sense rather than in a static view. One video ad could cover several different merchandise in a 20 sec clip. Now if you get for instance Tiger woods taking a swing form his Nike golf club I believe that would go over better. There is the one limitation which is connection speed which limits this format.

[Tephus]

I think as long as there is a variable video size and a Youtube-like pre load player, video ads are viable.