Online Video Advertising Set To Become The Favoured “Channel”?

Lately, we have been hearing much about online video and the rise of social media communities, but how could these possibly be a threat to search engines? Yahoo!, MSN, and Google hold the largest share in the online advertising market, but their market share could well be halved if social networks become more popular. With over 65% of internet users now accessing Google to search for goods, services, or just general interest, it would seem like online ads would be best served on the search giant. But beyond this there are other forms of advertising that are starting to knock on the door and give search-based ads a real run for their money.

Some of the more traditional online channels have included banner advertising, classifieds, and directories, where you would create an ad, choose the appropriate channel and simply publish the ad. Search engine Google recognises the need for people to “get what they want” through search and out of this created the paid service Google Adwords, in which people effectively pay to get to the top of Google.

This, although potentially quite expensive depending on your industry keywords, it is a very popular advertising channel, and can yield some great results, if done correctly. This model, which is one of Google’s primary monetising services, tries to make search ads as relevant as possible via its various search algorithms. But with online traffic now moving towards current buzz “social media”, websites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are becoming more and more popular with people starting to publish their material online at a far more frequent rate than ever before.

You can create and account, add friends, create events, uploads images and videos, and almost manage your entire social life online via this application. Online traffic analytics firm Nielson recently concluded that the UKs most used brand was Facebook with 62 billion minutes being spent on the website during April. With vast communities popping up across these networks, it is also the ideal place for businesses and individuals to place targeted ads, and Google knows it. One of the key components of these networks is the ability to upload video content. With technology evolving, allowing us to capture images and video via phone or other handheld devises, we are in position to capture a moment and distribute it for the world to see.

One of the key components of Search Engine Marketing is being able to use a particular channel to distribute/publish relevant content to help push a company’s online awareness. Using video, it is not only possible to publish an advert for a chosen demographic, but it will also be possible for people to have video ads served to them based on their particular needs and requirements. So, if you are into cars, it will soon be possible to have car ads served to you based on comprehensive analytics, which contains details about behavioural activity online. This analytical data is the key to knowing what people want to see and what should be served to them. Thus resulting in highly targeted video ads and saving huge sums of money on traditional TV adverts.

So, could this spell the end for search engines as we know them? Well, there will always be a need for search based applications like Google, even if people use social media more. There is no rule preventing Google from incorporating targeted video based advertising into its applications and currently all of the big three search engines are looking to add this string to their bow.