Google Guaranteeing Top Ad Spots to Movie Studios with Media Ads

Google AdWords made an announcement yesterday via their Inside AdWords blog (you’ll see a link for it in our blogroll down to the right) that at first glance seems to apply only to major film studios.  When you analyze it, however, it could have some very serious ramifications for brands in every vertical.  Let’s dissect.

Google AdWords Introduces Media Ads

As you’re probably aware, AdWords offers a number of different ad formats for advertisers through extensions in their search network and as the ads themselves in their display network.  This includes various forms of video advertising on both networks.

Well, Google is now releasing a new ad format related to videos: Media Ads.  Their description:

Media Ads is a new ad model that introduces new ways to target, pay for, and experience video ads on Google.com. Unlike Video Extensions, which simply attaches a video player to your existing AdWords ads, Media Ads is an entirely standalone format designed to put your videos front and center.

How does it work?  Well, the video appears in the ad itself, which because of its top position – more on this in a bit – appears with the light yellow background, below the title, to the left of the description.

Then when you click on the video, it does that cool lightbox thing where the background grays out and the video gets huge without opening up another window.

AdWords Media Ads Pricing Model

Pretty cool experience when you’re just paying for a click, right?  Lee Corso says, “Not so fast, my friend” and ducks behind the booth to put on some mascot head.  I know it’s his shtick, but I seriously expect that guy to show up at the Pittsburgh furry convention every year.  Although, I’d have to hear about it on WDVE to know about it because I totally don’t go to those.

So the model is flat-fee.  I don’t know how crazy I’d be about that compared to the traditional pay per click formula, but it is a pretty cool experience and – here’s the key – you get guaranteed top ranking.  You also don’t actually put in any keywords, so it’s dependent upon Google to determine that the search is related to your brand for your ad to show.

Just for the Major Film Studios

Having missed the announcement yesterday, this news caught my eye because of a Search Engine Land tweet mentioning an AdWords offering specifically for “Major Motion Picture Studios.” Film marketing is of personal interest to me because of my wife’s careers as a literary agent and producer and because of a close writer/director/editor friend with whom I regularly discuss the topic.  And you probably know that SEODog is a major film star now.

When you scroll down to the original Inside AdWords post you’ll notice the last paragraph; both sentences are key, so let’s take them one at a time:

Media Ads is still in limited release to major motion picture studios promoting new release features.

That means if you’re one of the big boys like Sony or Paramount, you’re set. If you’re an independent, you’re out of luck, although my sense is that you wouldn’t have the budget for this flat rate offering any way. Anyone outside of the film industry, it doesn’t matter, so you can stop – wait, what?

Over time, we plan to offer Media Ads to more advertisers in more industries to help them promote their videos on Google.com.

That’s why I mentioned brands earlier instead of films when talking about search queries.  Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see where this is going.  How long before guaranteed top listings is offered to all brands…for a (high) flat price?

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