Google has announced that advertising on the Google results page may now contain video. Google claims the addition of video advertisements reflect the evolution of the once sparse Google results page.

Google already integrate video into regular search results as part of ‘universal search’, but have not done so in advertising on the site. Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of search products and user experience, said that text only ads weren’t as effective on pages with video and images as our eyes automatically navigate towards the image.

Google claims the ads should not be intrusive at first and will simply use a ‘plus box’ to signify a video is available. Google already use the ‘plus sign’ in regular search results to indicate a map or image is attached to a specific listing.

Advertisers will not pay any extra to put video in the ads for now, with the bidding to work like a regular text ad. However advertisers must pay each time the video is watched, regardless of whether the user clicks through to their site.

The use of Video in ads gives business owners some branding power they never had before. Traditionally it’s been hard to run a pure branding campaign using AdWords, as it’s very focused on click-through and sales. Now, with the release of video ads, advertisers can pay to have their brand exposed to millions of users through video, without any necessary focus on the conversion rate to sales.

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