This week Google announced a test program to embed AdSense ad units into their Google Video player, rounding out their click-to-play video ad and video sponsorship offerings.

Contextually targeted text ads with video content seems to be the newest fad in video, replacing some of the short lived buzz about Flash layovers from the likes of VideoEgg or Pointroll’s TickerBoy, and the recently announced Adjustables.com. Google is the 800 lb. gorilla, driven by the popularity of the AdSense platform, but new competition from start-ups like ScanScout will at least make the space interesting.

Whether or not text ads in a media player prove to be an effective marketing tool will remain to be seen, but its cost-per-click and ease of implementation should certainly help drive some pretty quick adoption - or at least, testing - of this new opportunity.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007 at 1:56 pm and is filed under News, Real Ads, Streaming, Video Portals, WebTV, advertising. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.