Google has expanded its online video advertising program beyond YouTube, with the AdSense video ads now available in beta across all of the company’s content network sites.
The video version of AdSense allows advertisers to buy text ads which run along the bottom 20% of the screen when videos are playing. This is supposed to be a less intrusive format than pre-roll video ads.
Since Google acquired YouTube in 2006, the search engine giant has been looking for a way to monetise the site, and online video in general.
According to the official Google blog:
“Unique to AdSense for video are text overlay ads contextually targeted to a combination of signals in your videos and on your site. With these overlay ads, the user’s experience is not interrupted; users determine how much they want to interact with the ad.”
Google’s will give advertiser two options for its video ads – either banner ads which will run at the top of the video player, and overlays which will be inserted over videos as they are playing.
These ads will be matched to the content of both the webpage hosting the ads, and the video on which they will appear.
