Just like Google once offered…but apparently abandoned…Yahoo last week began showing select, sponsored video ads in their search results.
Sponsored Ad’s on Yahoo are the equivalent of Adwords on Google. In early 2008, Google began displaying these types of video ads in their general search results (and anyone could bid on and place video ads, just like they could with text ads). However, Google discontinued this service a short time later and only made video ads available across their “content network” (think Adsense publishers). No specific reason was ever given for this, however, the rumor was that people didn’t like seeing video ads in the Google search results.
So now Yahoo is trying the same thing…but with a twist. They are only showing sponsored video ads for major advertising partners and these partners are paying a fixed, monthly fee to have their videos displayed (unlike on Google, where fees were paid on a click-thru basis). So if you’re a small business, you’re out of luck (at least for now) when it comes to Yahoo sponsored ads.
It will be interesting to see if a year has changed anything…if video ads in search results can now actually take hold.
But in the meantime, if you’d like to see Yahoo’s new sponsored video ads in action, just go to the Yahoo homepage and search for “pedigree“. You’ll see a video ad for Pedigree dog food appear at the top of the sponsored ads.