By Eric Auchard
Google Inc. said on Monday it would expand testing of its
much-anticipated video advertising system by working with two major
music labels to embed video ads on Web sites that make money running
them.
Google said it would distribute advertising alongside videos from Sony
BMG Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group over its AdSense online
ad system to Web site publishers in a four-week test now underway.
"Over the past few months, we have run tests to figure out how we work
with our partners and advertisers to combine high quality video
content with ads and then distribute them (over) the Google AdSense
network," Google said in statement.
The test with the two music labels follows an earlier public trial of
Google's video advertising system with Viacom's MTV Networks, which
provided music videos to run on a select number of Web sites running
Google ads.
As part of the test, advertisements would be billed on a cost per
thousand impressions (CPM) model, the traditional billing method for
mass market advertising as opposed to the pay-per-click billing model
Google popularized with text ads.
Google has been pushing ahead in recent months to expand beyond its
hugely successful text-advertising system into new advertising formats
including video, radio and mobile phones.
As a example, Warner Music has defined multiple video channels along
themes like "rock music" or featuring the "Divas of Pop Music." A Web
site owner can select a video channel and embed it on a section of the
site dedicated to running Google AdSense ads. Visitors then can click
to watch ad-supported videos within the video channel on sites running
the ads.
The Google advertising system splits the resulting revenue three ways
to the video content owner, the Web site publisher and Google. The
exact revenue splits were not disclosed.
Mountain View, California-based Google said in a statement on its
AdSense customer blog that only a limited number of Web site
publishers had been asked to participate.
"Over the next few weeks we'll be testing AdSense video distribution
and sponsorship with a small group of publishers," AdSense product
manager Christian Oestlien said in his blog post.
Sony BMG is a joint venture of Japan's Sony Corp (NYSE:SNE -
news). and Germany's Bertelsmann.
Copyright 2007 Reuters Limited.
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Eric Auchard, Reuters (reuuters@telecom-digest.org)