Google Gives Advertisers Another “In” On YouTube

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.

Search Engine Marketing Spend Stabilizing

The Search Engine Marketing (SEM) industry continues to stabilize in the third quarter of 2009 and included some positive sings for the fourth quarter, according to a new report from Efficient Frontier.

"The third quarter results and a look beyond provide some encouraging signs for the Search Marketing industry as well as the overall economy," said David Karnstedt, President and CEO, Efficient Frontier.

"While certain sectors, such as travel, have continued to lag, other categories such as retail have picked up as we head into the fourth quarter, which is a critical time for online marketers."

SEM spend was up 5 percent compared to the previous quarter while year-over-year saw a 5 percent decline. Year-over-year (YoY) declines were driven by continued Cost Per Click (CPC) weakness with Google's search CPC dipping for the fourth straight quarter. Return on investment (ROI) remained stable as marketers continue to focus on efficiency.

While continuing to hold a dominant 70 percent plus share position, Google lost ground in terms of Spend Share both on QoQ basis a YoY basis by losing 1.78 percent and 0.83 percent respectively.

Yahoo's Paid Click Share was up slightly QoQ, but it lost both Spend and Click Share YoY. Yahoo' s Spend Share was down 0.07 percent and Click Share was down 2.43 percent YoY.

In contrast, Bing continued to grow since its launch in June. QoQ Bing saw gains in Paid Clicks and Spend Share by 0.68 percent and 1.02 percent, respectively. Bing numbers shows category growth across travel, finance, autos and retails with the most significant gains in travel and finance.

The travel sector saw a 14 percent loss QoQ and 39 percent loss YoY. While the QoQ loss is partly due to the seasonal nature of the travel industry, the YoY loss points to continued weakness in this space.

The finance category has stabilized with positive growth in consumer demand, with a 1 percent decrease QoQ and a 7 percent increase YoY.

Retail is the clear key going in the fourth quarter and the report forecast search will outperform the general holiday season spend.

The company expects strong consumer activity to continue and aggressive advertiser competition to follow as marketers look to capture interest and more importantly, sales. The net result of better conversions, improving ROI, and higher CPCs, will likely be seasonally strong spend increases for the retail sector in Q4 2009. 

 

 

YouTube Videos in AdSense Could Drive Clicks

Google has decided to start including promoted YouTube videos in AdSense. This means that these videos are now an available ad unit that can be displayed on AdSense publisher sites.

YouTube promoted videos include a thumbnail image with three lines of text, and when clicked, they take the user to a video or a channel on YouTube, so it's not like there will be full-sized YouTube videos in AdSense ad spots on publisher sites.

"Extending Promoted Videos to AdSense sites will enable these content producers to broaden their reach, while providing you with another way to earn from your ad space," says Arlene Lee of Google's Inside AdSense team. "At this time, these ads are only available in English to US publishers, but we're looking forward to expanding to additional regions and languages in the future."

The promoted videos are contextually targeted to AdSense publisher pages, and publishers will earn from them on a cost-per-click basis. They are available in the following formats:

- 300x250 Medium Rectangle
- 336x280 Large Rectangle
- 728x90 Leaderboard
- 250x250 Square
- 200x200 Small Square

"Just like other ads, Promoted Videos compete in our standard ad auction, so they'll help drive up competition among advertisers bidding to appear on your pages," says Lee. "When a Promoted Video wins the ad auction, it'll be shown alone in one of the eligible ad formats."

Videos of course have to meet YouTube's advertising guidelines and terms of use, as well as community guidelines. Publishers can prevent promoted videos from appearing on their sites by adding "youtube.com" to their competitive ad filter list. This will block all YouTube content.

It should be noted that the addition of promoted YouTube videos to AdSense has nothing to do with Google's video ads offering.

YouTube promoted videos could be a good way to increase AdSense clicks, because the very nature of them draws the user's attention to watch a video, and at the world's most popular online video site. Plus the videos should be relevant to the content of the page. This could be a big money maker for AdSense publishers. It should be big for people promoting their videos as well.

eBay Affiliate Program Goes from CPA to CPC

eBay has announced "Quality Click Pricing" for the eBay Partner Network affiliate program. The company describes this as a new payout structure designed to further reward affiliates who drive incremental transactions on eBay, and who send "value buyers" to the company's sites.

Essentially, the program will now run on a cost-per-click basis, as opposed to a cost-per-action one. Affiliates can get paid for sending quality traffic to eBay, even if that traffic isn't making purchases.

"The price paid per click will still depend on the short-term and long-term revenue of the traffic that the publisher drives to eBay, but will now also take into account the incremental value of that traffic to eBay, i.e., whether a sale happened as a direct result of the publisher’s actions," explains Steve Hartman of the eBay Partner Network. "The greater the incremental revenue and the higher the expected lifetime value of the customers an affiliate sends, the higher the EPC and total earnings the affiliate will receive.  Earnings Per Click (EPC) will be set daily for the previous day’s traffic."

eBay says Quality Click Pricing will simplify the commission structure, and that the payout will be more closely aligned with traffic quality. In addition, the company says publishers will be rewarded for "multiple sources of value in addition to sales." This includes revenue from advertising on eBay pages and PayPal transaction revenue.

eBay's new model for its affiliate program will take effect for new members beginning September 1st, and for existing members October 1st. There is an FAQ (pdf) document available on the subject.

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