Google Video Ads Have Arrived

Check out the latest online advertising idea from Google. Embedded video ads. I like how they went with a subtle overlay approach on the bottom of the video. I had thought they would have gone with the standard 10-15 second ad clip before the video, which I hate... and I think they realized folks hate.

The interesting thing about this ad format is it gives control to the viewer. The ad overlay only shows up for about 10-15 seconds during the viewing of the video clip. During that time the user can decide to click it and watch the ad, or ignore. It will disappear if you choose to ignore it. Very clever and user-friendly.

The only downside I see from the start is the size of the market for such ads. Since they are embedding video within video, it would appear you would need to have a budget to be able to create a video ad, which most of us small-timers don't have.

It would be cool if they would allow smaller advertisers the ability to just create overlay ads and when clicked they would launch a new browser window to the destination website. That would open the door for thousands of additional advertisers to utilize the technology.

This is only going to help grow their already dominant video market share (YouTube) by enabling amateur videographers to now make money on their viral videos. It is a great win-win situation. I'm thinking of doing more video stuff now because of this.

The cost is going to be set right now to $20 CPM (cost-per-mil, or more informally how much you pay per 1000 ad impressions). I wonder how they came to this number? I would have to guess the CPM payout would be higher than standard since you are guaranteeing prime placement in the viewing area... where on a web page you really are not sure what you are getting in regards to placement. In this new embedded model you get the users focused attention, since they actually requested the ad play.

Lots of money to be made. As always, good work Google.

New Google Adwords CPA Beta Program

Google is beta testing a new CPA (Cost per action) model for Adword advertisers. This is great news (in my opinion) for Google Adsense publishers. From what I read on the Adsense site, it appears publishers will have complete control over whether they want to use the program at all or continue to use the CPC (Cost per click) model.

The CPA model allows publishers to specify the particular site/products they want to promote OR they can simply specify the keywords they want to target, and Google will show the top performing CPA programs for those keywords. This rocks in my opinion. It takes all the maintenance problems out of dealing with affiliate programs like CJ and Azoogle, and pretty much makes it maintenance free.

I can simply specify the keywords "ring tones" and not have to worry ever again about staying on top of which new programs are better than others, which payouts are increasing, etc. Google will worry about all that for me.

It is ideally what all publishers have been asking for all along... the ability to specify their own keywords for the ads. Only this format is the CPA model, which has huge potential for payouts if you have good targeted traffic.

For folks with non-targeted traffic sources (ie -Digg, etc) you may not benefit much from this model, but I'm banking that the existing CPC model will remain around for a long time to come.

My First Successful PPC Campaign

Just wanted to report on my first successful arbitrage month using PPC campaigns. I had my first month in the green during December spending $230 on advertising for a return of $500. That is $270 pure profit... =)

I'm always looking for new revenue streams to help stablize my income. This was an area I felt had a lot of potential so I started dabbling in it a few months ago.

We'll see if I can keep it up. With Google constantly changing their placement rules/algorithms it may get more difficult. But for now I'm going to stick with my campaigns and pour a little more cash in to see where it goes.

Happy New Year!