the future of video advertising?

recently google's vice president of search products and user experience, marissa mayer spoke to the new york times about their test placement of live video advertisements on their search engine result pages or serps . she told the times, "the change reflects the evolution of the once-sparse google pages."

google is taking the stance that incorporating video with "˜paid' or "˜sponsored' search listings is necessary since the introduction of "universal search" last may. to those who may not be familiar, universal search was google's first step toward media integration on their serps. in other words it is the addition of image, news, and video results to the normal textual serps.

"...text ads are not as effective on pages with search results that include images and video. the eyes of users automatically gravitate to the images more than the text" mayer's said. "now that google's main search results pages include more images, video links and other elements, it is more appropriate to have corresponding advertising formats."

so what will the video ads look like?

the video enabled ads will look nearly identical to the normal 70 character ads that are typically shown on google. the main difference between the two types of advertisements is that video enabled ads will have a small plus-box attached to them. searchers who want to engage the video will have to click the box to open a small thumbnail video.

i found this mock-up of what the ads may look like, which was created by search engine land's very own danny sullivan. apparently the new video ads will not be apparent to most searchers initially, which i seem to agree with as i have found no sign of video life on google serps.

also noted in the article, "advertisers will not pay extra to put video in the ads. they enter a price they will pay for a click in google's regular text-ad auction. but in the video ads, the advertiser pays when users click to see the video, even if they never click through to the advertiser's site." if google chooses to stick with this type of payment system it will make video advertising a very qualified tool for marketers who are looking to build brand identity.

to me google has always been a place where i go to find any information i need, and 95% of the time my favorite results are textual (the other 5% are snl video searches). it is hard to imagine google becoming a visual medium for video and banner advertisements, but then again, as long as the results remain relevant this may just be the next step into the ever expanding universe of search marketing.