Google Gives Advertisers Another “In” On YouTube
March 17, 2010
In a move that investors and marketers alike should applaud, Google's figured out another way to make money off the site it bought for $1.65 billion three and a half years ago. Today, Google explained that it's come up with a tool to help small organizations advertise on YouTube.
Emily Williams, a member of the Inside AdWords team, explained on the corporate blog, "[W]e're announcing another new feature in Display Ad Builder that lets advertisers use simple templates to create InVideo overlays and companion ads on YouTube." (FYI: "An InVideo ad is an animated flash overlay that appears at the bottom part of a video that a user is watching.")
Williams later continued, "Now, any advertiser can use Display Ad Builder to turn their image ads into overlays and run a campaign on YouTube in minutes. Depending on the type of campaign an advertiser wants to run, overlays can be bought on a CPC (Cost Per Click) or CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions) basis, and can be matched to YouTube videos based on numerous criteria (like demographics or content categories), or even on a video by video level."
This could prove to be a very popular option, considering that takeover ads on the YouTube homepage are said to be sold far in advance for hundreds of thousands of dollars. And the move also earns points for being low risk, since it probably didn't take much in the way of resources to execute and doesn't cut any privacy corners.
Now we just get to guess how much Google will actually make from the new feature. One slightly relevant note: earlier this month, a Citigroup analyst estimated that YouTube will pull in about $1 billion in gross revenue this year.
How Will Twitter Show Users Ads?
February 24, 2010
Twitter is testing an ad platform, which is expected to be released next month, possibly at the South By Southwest event in Austin. Though the timing of the release has not been confirmed, Twitter's head of product management and monetization, Anamitra Banerji, told MediaPost that they "are working on an ad platform, but it's only in the test phase."
According to Banerji, when Twitter does launch the product, it will make it clear when sponsors have paid for ads, and the ads themselves will be "relevant and useful, so the user doesn't think of it as an ad." This strategy seems to have been working well for Digg, which launched Digg Ads last year, to generally positive feedback from users (users can participate by voting ads up and down, which makes the more interesting ones more likely to be seen).
Twitter doesn't exactly operate like Digg though, but Twitterers do contribute to trending topics. On a recent panel, Banerji showed off a chart that looked at peaks and total tweets throughout the Super Bowl, with one line representing tweets about the actual game, and another representing tweets about specific advertisers.
It is possible that Twitter's ad platform would tie into this "what people are already talking about" kind of thing, but that would seemingly make it much more difficult for a lesser-known brand to have any kind of advertising success.
The truth is, nobody knows exactly how Twitter is going to present its ads yet. The question is, how can they do it in a way that users won't think of it as an ad? It's probably going to involve some real-time engagement on the part of the advertiser, which leads one to wonder how they will be different than any other unpaid, branded tweet.
"People are constantly talking and engaging with brands, sharing their feedback," MediaPost quotes Banerji as saying. "What if brands start to participate? What would the chart look like then?" I thought brands already did that.
It's going to be about how Twitter presents it. That could be a difficult problem to address, given that Twitter users use the service through many different third-party apps and devices, and often not the site itself. This is not a concept Twitter is likely to have ignored though, so if they're planning on launch next month, they must have a pretty good solution.
How would you like to see ads displayed on Twitter? Discuss here.
Vote For Your Favorite Super Bowl Ads Online
February 6, 2010
Brand consulting and advertising firm Hanon McKendry is holding it second annual online Super Bowl ad poll.
Viewers of the game will be able to visit superadbowl.com at the end of the first quarter to cast their vote for their favorite commercial. As votes are casts, the results will be compiled immediately and posted so fans will be able to see how their favorites compare to others.
"Super Bowl advertising is big entertainment, and everyone wants to voice their opinion," said Bill McKendry, founder and chief creative officer at Hanon McKendry. "We wanted to give average viewers a place to weigh in, in real time, on the ads they think hit the mark."
According to a Harris Interactive poll over 57 percent of U.S. adults plan to watch Super Bowl XLIV as much for the commercials as for the game. Among those who watch commercials, 35 percent say they are more likely to visit an advertiser's website after seeing a Super Bowl ad. In addition, 48 percent of online adults who watch the ads say they are at least somewhat likely to discuss them on social networking sites.
Visitors to the site will be able to cast their votes for one favorite commercial from each quarter. Voting will open at the end of the first quarter and remain open through February 9.
"As more and more Super Bowl advertisers maximize interactive opportunities, viewers are getting in the game and watching with their laptops by their sides," said Pete Brand, co-founder of Mindscape at Hanon McKendry, Hanon McKendry's interactive division.
"Superadbowl.com gives those interactive viewers a place to go, immediately, and be part of the action."
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YouTube Unveils Video Targeting Tool
December 5, 2009
Some people tend to shrug their shoulders when presented with options. Others know exactly what they want. For this second set - or at least the members of the second set who work for advertising agencies - a new Video Targeting tool from YouTube promises to be of great use.
A post on the YouTube Blog explained, "Video Targeting is modeled after similar Google planning tools and pretty much does what it says: it gives advertisers more control of their ad campaigns by letting them choose specific YouTube partner content they'd like to target."
The post then continued, "The tool is flexible and helps advertisers discover videos relevant to their campaign and their target audience: it suggests videos based on keywords (like politics or fashion), viewer demographics (like age and gender), interest-based categories, or some combination of the three. Or, if an advertiser has a video in mind, they can see if it's available to target specifically."
And as an example, a popular clip that critics of YouTube have singled out at for being impossible to monetize was shown in a screenshot.
Here's one important note, though: at the moment, Video Targeting is in beta, so it may be a while before advertisers that don't have a special relationship with YouTube have the opportunity to give it much of a spin.
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