Adsense video pilot?

[Dan Morgan]

Anyone else get an email from Google regarding participation in an AdSense Video Pilot?

The tone of the email suggested it was limited rollout although other clues indicate it was sent to all publishers.

[Dan Morgan]

Okay, so anyway I got an invitation to join Google's AdSense video content channel pilot. Long story short is they allow you to place code which provides the user with effectively a content channel with video content coming from a range of partner sources (WSJ etc), which Google will place video ads in from time to time.

[polspoel]

So it's not like a 10 second advertisement before or after a flash video that you yourself uploaded and own? (In your own flash player)

[Dan Morgan]

So it's not like a 10 second advertisement before or after a flash video that you yourself uploaded and own? (In your own flash player)

Correct, it is not like that.

[Chris]

Let us know how it goes.

[designer-gspr]

Has anyone actually made a profits from adsense where they could actually quit their day jobs?

[Dan Morgan]

Let us know how it goes.

Will do. It is a 4 week beta, which will start shortly.

[James]

Has anyone actually made a profits from adsense where they could actually quit their day jobs?
http://www.problogger.net/wp-content/earnings-august.jpg

[Chris]

Has anyone actually made a profits from adsense where they could actually quit their day jobs?
Lots of people, including myself (though I quit my dayjob before adsense existed, but if I needed to do so now, I certainly could off adsense), and many others here.

[Shawn]

What was your dayjob?

[Chris]

I never had a 9 to 5 one really, but before my websites took off I worked part time in a genetic engineering lab and part time as a web designer.

[ses5909]

That would be a neat case study Dan

[Dan Morgan]

The code has been enabled in my account so I will be implementing it later and will post a link.

[Dan Morgan]

I do not have a lot of time at the moment therefore I have put this up on my homepage (http://www.ski-review.com) which also gives it maximum exposure.

It is currently rendering as normal Adsense ads however Google state I may not be able to view the previews as I am not in the US, so I am not sure if Adsense is the default, or if it has its own crawler that need to drop in first.

Be grateful to hear if anyone can get it to churn out some video from the US.

[AmbulanceBlues]

Be grateful to hear if anyone can get it to churn out some video from the US.

No, not yet. Not for me at least. I was interested to see if I could see google ad videos from my work terminal, as it already blocks youtube and googlevideo type embeds. I'm not even seeing a blank space, as with those others. Just regular text ads.

BTW: Where, on the page, should we be looking?

[Chris]

I've gotten a video ad on my site before. It was some car add with play and stop buttons, not very long or anything.

[Dan Morgan]

I've gotten a video ad on my site before. It was some car add with play and stop buttons, not very long or anything.

Yeah I have seen those too. Quite funky. It is going to be interesting to see how this pans out - quite innovative as G is providing sticky content around the ads with the emphasis on the content rather than balls out video advertising.

[Dan Morgan]

https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=58571

Some light reading.

[Dan Morgan]

No, not yet. Not for me at least. I was interested to see if I could see google ad videos from my work terminal, as it already blocks youtube and googlevideo type embeds. I'm not even seeing a blank space, as with those others. Just regular text ads.

BTW: Where, on the page, should we be looking?

Top of http://www.ski-review.com, directly underneath "New! Ski Lifestyle Video Channel".

You can report on this separately but reports are delayed 24 hours. I hope you can differentiate between clicks on the Adsense "default" and those served via normal ads.

It is also annoying that you can choose which channel to show, but not which playlist (i.e. the skiing one) within the channel.

[AmbulanceBlues]

Still nothing for me.

I did just have a disturbing thought: TRUE dotcom and mortgage company video ads. If those types of ads start to flourish, I might actually invest in some ad blocking software. This could easily turn into the type of ads car salesmen put on TV. I don't want that in my web browser.

[rpanella]

I got invited into the pilot as well (from what I can tell everyone was), but I decided to wait on implementing it. Do you have any results yet Dan? How has it performed vs standard adesense ads?
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WEEDTRACKER (http://dispensaries.org/)

[Dan Morgan]

Not everyone was invited - you have to meet certain criteria and have content relevant to the channels/playlists available.

Overall earnings have increased, but only because of the higher profile spot implemented and only from text clicks appearing as defaults. Reports were sluggish to appear in my account after implementing the code (should have been 24 hours later) although somebody Google side is looking at that for me, although more worrying is the fact that no data has appeared in terms of video plays and revenues. Just zeros as of now. Therefore as far as I am aware I have not served an ad yet within the content, and because I am in the UK I am not sure if any video content is being served either which is rather worrying, but alas this is a beta so I am not expecting big things.

[rpanella]

I am in the US and I definitely see videos on your page and have watched a couple ads myself. Interesting that they are not showing you any video stats yet, perhaps they are just severely delayed. Thanks for the info and keep us updated.
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[Dan Morgan]

That is great news, thanks - some reports are showing now with conversions etc, so everything has worked out. Good results so far revenue wise but it is early days yet.

[rpanella]

I decided to implement the video ads on my site after reading this thread to see how it went. The videos were pretty well targeted to my pages and I placed them where I previously had a tribal fusion box of the same size, about halfway through the content. The pages I put them on receive about 3k pageviews a day.

Its been about a week now and I have to say I'm pretty disappointed with the results. First off they don't seem to count page impressions, only the number of times videos were played and ads were played (I'm assuming this is what the reports mean since they only say clicks and conversions). I'm not sure I'm allowed to report the eCPM but I will just say thats its even lower than my 2nd and 3rd tier boxes that I usually run in the same spot from Casale and Valueclick.
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[Dan Morgan]

I did not expect big things here due to the fact it is a pilot and a test of (presumably) the technology + reports integration. The results you see will not reflect a full scale deployment in terms of the mechanics, process or commercials of delivery.

The difference between this and prerolls etc is that the ad can occur at any point during the video playback. So firstly, not every impression will yield a rendering of the playlist selector, not every rendering of the playlist selector will result in user interaction and the playback of a video, and not every playback will result in an ad being shown (not to mention the ads are skippable).

Personally I only record "conversions" (ad plays) and not "clicks". Again this is not reflective of a go live environment as the video stats are bundled under referrals at the moment - which I doubt would be the case later on.

I am happy with the results based on the fact that I have not commandeered an existing ad spot and based on the eCP-Conversion and I suspect that with more fills and a more diverse array of content video ads might work out to compete with standard ads when backed out to relate to impressions and good publishers do what good publishers do and find a way to increase users via the placement of this product. Of course this ain't for everyone either but unlike vanilla AdSense, this is a source of free sticky content (which, Google wont penalise you for in the duplicated content stakes either). Integration and turning this into a source of content not just a revenue stream (or rather a means to a revenue stream) is the key in my opinion.

A public beta would give a more accurate reflection, this is a limited roll out.

Heh, this page is showing skiing AdSense ads.

[rpanella]

I was mistaken and actually the two stats it reports to me are impressions (which I assume are video plays) and conversions (which I assume are ad views). From my stats, the playrate (plays/visitors) is barely higher than my normal CTR on ads in the same position, maybe twice. Not to mention not all of them view ads, and each ad pays much less than an adsense click as well.

I definitely agree with you that the best utilization seems to be making the videos a standalone source of content instead of sticking the videos in the middle of you existing content like other ads. For example a music site could create a music video section with all the music channels they provide.
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Yamaha dsp-1 (http://www.yamaha-tech.com/wiki/Yamaha_DSP-1)