Google warned us they were coming, and now they’re here. There’s good news, though: even as new video ads are sure to excite marketers, they may avoid the equally expected effect of annoying users.
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Blackberry’s Google Video Ad
Assuming Google doesn’t stray from its current approach, ten talking pictures will not compete for your attention every time you search for “shoes” or “computers.” Instead, it takes a degree of effort to see a single video; you’ll need to perform a search, look at the right column we’ve all learned to ignore, see if there’s a “Watch commercial” option, and finally, click on the thing to expand it.
We’ve taken a screenshot of what should happen if you follow those instructions for a “smart phones” query. Barry Schwartz deserves a tip o’ the hat for first using this combination of words, and Amit Agarwal gets another one for apparently being the first person to spot video ads in the wild.
Implementation seems to be a bit spotty, so don’t blame us if you can’t reproduce their results. Yet it’s likely that Google will go forward, and not back, with the rollout, since Marissa Mayer herself is a proponent of the project.
To users, we say, “remain cautious.” To advertisers: “do your happy dance.”
