Google AdWords steers viewers to YouTube videos

Beverley Head
Wednesday, 28 October 2009 07:39

Your IT - Home IT

Google has launched its Promoted Video service in Australia - essentially the equivalent of Google AdWords for YouTube videos. Mitsubishi has been trialling the service locally to market its new Outlander 4x4, and its advertising agency believes integrating video is the next logical evolution of search engine marketing.

According to Google there are now 20 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute of every day. As Jay Akkad, a YouTube product manager who is in Australia to launch the service noted, with that level of uploading “the problem arises around video discovery. Imagine Mitsubishi wants to launch a new car in 2010. How do they get that content discovered?”

If organisations or individuals can get their video content discovered there are potentially extremely rich pickings, as Google says there are now 1 billion views of video content being streamed each day.

Just like AdWords, Promoted Video allows users to define keywords and pay for those keywords on a cost per click basis. Promoted videos can be bought directly in AdWords, and users can place bids, select where they would like videos to appear, and set daily spending budgets.

Simon Dunwoody, search director of Mediaedge:cia which has developed the Promoted Video campaign for Mitsubishi said that by using terms like ‘4x4’ or ‘4x4 review’ it had been possible to steer people to Mitsubishi’s YouTube videos and that the click through rate had been good. However he acknowledged that since this is only a fledgling service in Australia, there are relatively few competitors vying for viewers.

That had though also left Dunwoody querying why the click per view cost had proved higher than the 5-10 cents he had been anticipating. He said he was discussing this cost discrepancy with Google

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