A selection of content on Google Video has been made available for free as advertisers have signed on to support those videos. “Free video made possible by www.bk.com,” reads the text above the Google Video replay of the Hatton-Maussa fight from last November.
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I’ll spare you the suspense; Hatton wins the fight by TKO in the ninth, and the WBA light welterweight title.
Too bad it couldn’t have been the first Corrales-Castillo bout, but you do get what you pay for after all. As ZDNet’s Garett Rogers noted, the “free today” videos are paid for by advertisers.
But Google’s algorithms are not making the choices to match up content and advertisers. Instead, the advertisers choose the videos they want to see associated with their brands. Burger King, with its recent “manly” advertising efforts, looks like a logical choice as a boxing sponsor.
Rogers listed the five advertisers participating in the Google “free today” video test: Burger King, H-P, LowerMyBills.com, Netflix, and Shopzilla.com. By clicking the link to their ads on a Google Video page, a new window displaying the advertisement appears.
The savings varies depending on the video viewed. Two minutes of Linkin Park news would have set the viewer back 30 cents, while a nearly hour-long look at Stone Cold Steve Austin’s early wrestling days normally goes for $4.95.
Google noted on the video site some of the videos it makes available for the free play range from 30 cents to $14.95 in price. Considering what is currently playing for free on Google Video, we wouldn’t be surprised to see “Ishtar” or “Gigli” as the formerly-$14.95 options offered for viewing.
It is a new test, albeit one that appears to be more of a toe dipped in the waters of ad-supported video instead of a full-bore cannonball into the pool. There is no urgency for Google to suddenly become the king of ad-supported premium content, but with YouTube grabbing more traffic than Google Video, maybe they should feel a need to push the envelope a little harder.
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David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
