Google makes bid for Hollywood ad dollars

by Dan Leahul, revolutionmagazine.com 01-Sep-09, 15:05

LONDON - Google is attempting to woo entertainment industry ad dollars by allowing brands to display prominent videos in its paid search results, as it continues to move away from its core plain text ads towards more interactive opportunities for marketers.

Google is once again promoting its 'video plus box' to a number of US entertainment firms, including Miramax, Discovery and Travel Channel - a platform which allows advertisers to include video streams in search results.

Beta testing kicked off with an Electronic Arts campaign for its newest 'Need for Speed' video game and a Miramax promotion for its film 'Extract'.

The platform lets users to access a full-sized drop-down video by clicking a link in the paid search text ad.

A beta test of Google's 'video plus box' launched in July, after a short alpha test last year. Google has included video results in its search pages since 2007.

According to Hitwise, the entertainment industry simply isn't a big spender on Google search ads, despite that fact that searches for films, celebrities and video games make a large proponent of all searches - a sizeable revenue opportunity for the internet giant.

Only about 2 per cent of traffic to entertainment sites are the result of paid search links on Google, compared with 14 per cent for gaming-related sites - something Google wants to change.

The company won't disclose how long it intends to run the beta test, or if it even plans on expanding the platform anytime soon, outside of the "select and super-relevant" set of advertisers currently engaged.

However, the programme appears to be working.

According to AdAge, one of Google's guinea pigs - Travel Channel in the US, saw a its click through rate increase from 2 per cent to 6 per cent in a month after including video links in the text ads.

Google constitutes a "click" as at least 10-seconds of video watched.

Beta testing of Google's 'video plus box' follows its embracement of pre-roll ads on selected YouTube videos. In April, the company allow certain advertisers to show pre-roll ads on their videos on the YouTube mainpage, the BBC among them.

In June, Google also began testing a programme that allowed advertisers to include photos of products in their text ads, where advertisers are only charged when a customer purchases a product, instead of just clicking the link.