If you have a search marketing time machine, you can go back to the early days when search engines sold banners on a cost per thousand page impressions (CPM) basis. Then fast forward a few years later when IdeaLab launched GoTo.com to sell action-based text only ads on a cost-per-click (CPC) model.
A decade later, it’s much more complicated, as search marketing has splintered into a multitude of channels and opportunities. Google isn’t just text ads anymore. It’s not even just online anymore — you can bid on traditional print, radio and TV outlets through Google AdWords. The search arena has evolved and is continuing to do so at an amazing pace.
These days, Google allows advertisers to target consumers with text, display and even video as their ad of choice. The Google contextual network for instance allows for video ads that engage consumers with an advertiser’s brand and gives the option to click into the brand Web site for further interaction. Why is this important? According to comScore’s Video Metrix, there were over 4.3 billion videos viewed just in March 2008! The online community is watching more and more videos online, using outlets such as YouTube, Yahoo Video, MetaCafe and others. That number is up 13% from February showing a vast increase in video interactions online.
Why are these video portals so crucial for search engine marketing? Well, videos on YouTube for instance get crawled occasionally by search engine spiders and get listed in the search engine results pages due to universal or blended search. First page listings, even! Video and other corporate assets, if tagged properly, help obtain more search engine optimization real estate and that is the goal of today’s game for search engine marketing.
Video is growing fast and there is no telling how and where video will be incorporated into Search engine marketing in the future. Google has already tested video ads within the results pages (sponsored and organic links) back in February, where a flash module could be opened to play the video right on the page. This was a stretch for the all text based page layout.
What video placement is right for your campaign? There are a variety of options already, from InVideo ads to click to play video placement. Or simply target a video-based page with a contextually targeted text ad — your choice. If you are looking for a way to get your customers to spend more time with your brand, virally or informatively, then video is a good next step.
Search engine marketing as a marketing channel is growing up fast — text ads yesterday, video and mobile today. What’s in store for tomorrow?
