Friday, September 19, 2008

Google’s Video Content

Google’s video content come from YouTube and come with two kinds of
ads.


The future of the Internet on mobile phones might be a little unclear. The
future of video on the Internet seems to have been settled.

Users love it.

They watch television on YouTube and they’ve become used to seeing videos
on blogs and websites. Even Oprah has now launched her own YouTube
channel.

That’s both a challenge and an opportunity for publishers. It’s a challenge
because creating original video content can appear difficult and look
expensive. Actually, it doesn’t have to be either, although at the very least,
you will need a digital camera.

And after putting together “The Next Internet Millionaire,” I can tell you it’s
also a lot of fun!

But video is also an opportunity because you don’t need original content.
There are tons of clips available on the Web that you can place on your own
site and earn from the ads on your page and embedded ads in the video
itself.

Two of the best places to find videos like these are Revver and Google itself.

Revver doesn’t have as big an inventory as YouTube, but it does share ad
revenue. The site embeds an ad into the video, lets publishers place the clip
on their own site and gives them 20 percent of the income. That might not
sound like much, but don’t forget, you’re getting the content for free and you
can still put AdSense units around it.

The alternative is to use Google’s video content... which is drawn from
YouTube.

The videos come with companion ads placed above the screen, which can be
either text or image-based, and overlay ads which appear at the bottom of
the screen. Both can pay by impression or by click.

Interestingly, the overlay ad changes as the film progresses and users can
even choose to move back and forward through the ads. They can also
choose to close the overlay, which might not be so good.

You can only place one video unit on a page but you can change the
surrounding color to blend the unit into your site, choose from three different
sizes and select content by category, creator or receive it automatically
targeted to keywords you supply.


Have you noticed what’s missing?

That’s right, at the moment, you can’t choose individual clips yourself.

That’s a huge hole in the plan and there have been complaints that Google
has been serving automated video that isn’t very relevant.

If you’d like to give it a try, click the AdSense Setup tab and choose the
video units link. You’ll have to link your AdSense account with a YouTube
account — you’ll only have to do that once — and you’ll then be free to
create your AdSense player, choose content and paste the code onto your
page. You won’t even need to host the video on your own site.

I think these video units can be a great way to enhance the content on any
website. They’re very simple to use, offer additional revenue streams — and
give you one less content post that you have to create yourself.

Much though will depend on the sort of creators available in your content
field or the clips that Google decides to give you.

Test to see whether Revver or Google gives you the most revenue — I
suspect that it will depend on the content of the video, so make a point of
searching both for good clips — then get into the habit of offering films about
once a week.








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