Online ads turn more interactive and innovative
The new world of Internet brings with it, new ways of entertainment and a lot of hope for advertisers, as websites and search engines are coming up with newer concepts to cater to them.
Google recently introduced a new ad format, designed to make sure that users find the information they are looking for and as an advertiser one is able to reach potential customers with the right information, in the format the users like. They have named this format as ‘Media Ads’.
This format of advertising, Google says, is a new ad model that introduces new ways to target, pay for, and experience video ads on Google Search. Unlike other video formats, Media Ads is an entirely standalone format designed to put your video ads front and center. With Media Ads, you don’t pick any keywords, the targeting is completely automated.
“When someone enters a search on Google.com/Google.co.in that our algorithms determine is directly related to the movie/show/games/DVDs title (most commonly the title and variations on it), we automatically display the Media Ad at the top of the search results page. The format does not allow advertiser to pick competing keywords for example: If a user types ‘Sach ka Saamna’ only ads units containing video from ‘Sach ka Saamna’ will appear on your search,” Google said.
The media & entertainment category search volumes on Google search have shown phenomenal growth. In the last two years the query volumes have grown at over 125 per cent YoY.
“Our research has shown that a substantial number of users are usually looking to watch the movie trailer, TV show clips on the search results page itself which translates into a very high response rate for this Ad format,” said Head of media sales, Google India Praveen Sharma.
Social networking site Facebook is also going to introduce sponsored stories in news feed from January 2012. These ads will appear on the right side of your Facebook page and will be, for the time being, available for the desktop versions only.
“We're committed to making sure that people’s experience in News Feed is optimal and we intend to roll this out slowly to ensure this,” Facebook said in reply to a Deccan Herald query. People on
Facebook are highly connected. On average, people have 130 friends and like or join about 80 pages and groups.“ This means that people are already seeing stories about their friends engaging with businesses and organisation in their News Feeds,” added Facebook.
The online advertising space is not only beneficial to the advertisers but in certain cases is a source of income for users also. Such is the case with YouTube partnership programme.
The Partnership Program is a revenue-sharing program allowing creators and producers of original content to earn money from their popular videos on YouTube. A partner can earn revenue from relevant advertisements that run against your video using Google's proprietary technology. This programme was launched in India in September, 2011 and has seen pretty good response since.
After the video creator has been accepted by the programme, ads start appearing next to their videos. The revenue from those ads are then split with the partner who gets the maximum share.
Amit Agarwal, a personal technology columnist and also the founder of a how-to site Labnol.com, have been a regular uploader on Youtube since 2006. However, lot changed in his life once he joined the partnership programme with Youtube.
His YouTube channel features short screencast-style videos to help people become more productive with software and web apps. “Because I am a YouTube partner now, I can have a customised and more professional-looking page for my YouTube channel. This branding increases credibility and does help in converting ‘casual visitors’ into YouTube channel subscribers more easily,” said Agarwal.
YouTube adds contextual and relevant ads to my videos and thus I earn additional revenue based on a combination of impressions and clicks, added Agarwal.
Meanwhile, another online portal, Yahoo, also, has innovative advertising techniques where users get to see localised ads. In this process, a user sees only those ads that are close to his geographical location.
This makes ads much more useful to the customer as well as the advertisers. It has also recently launched 3D ads under the name of PolyAds which shows multiple ads in a single slot. It gives a better visual performance for the consumers who find it better than viewing regular ads.
“The online ad market is set to change as the needs of the consumer change and innovation is the driving force for companies in this regard,” said Vice President & CEO Yahoo India R&D, Shouvick Mukherjee.
