During the month, Facebook moved up from the fourth position to the third position behind Yahoo properties, and of course Google properties at number 1. Facebook accounted for 46.6 million viewers.

Hulu generated the highest number of video ad impressions at 783 million in July. Americans viewed nearly 3.6 billion video ads in all. NewTeeVee notes that four out of five Hulu videos are ads.

84.9% of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video during the month. The average video duration was 4.8 minutes. The average duration of online video ads was 0.4 minutes.

Video ads accounted for 9.8% of all videos viewed and 0.9% of all minutes spent viewing video online.

According to Advertising Age, Nielsen is planning on making data available about the viewing of commercials that run in particular shows , whether they are viewed on TV or online. The data would start being available in September, and the publication says it will become the basis for ad negotiations next February.

"But here’s the catch: For Nielsen to be able to provide the commercial rating, shows seen online will have to have the same group of commercials that run on TV," says AdAge’s Brian Steinberg. "If this system were adopted en masse — and it’s not clear that it would be — online viewing might be crammed just as full of commercials as the more traditional TV-watching experience."

"Indeed, viewing programs on Hulu, the online video site owned by NBC Universal, News Corp. and Walt Disney, means encountering significantly fewer ads than one would see watching TV. And Disney’s ABC.com has met with some success by running ABC shows with just a few ads, often from a single advertiser," he adds. "But many TV executives say these methods don’t bring much, if any, profit — and therefore cannot continue."

Online video has enjoyed tremendous growth over the last several years. In December, 178 million Americans watched 33 billion videos online, according to data from comScore. About 40% of that was at Google sites (like YouTube). The second largest amount of market share went to Hulu, at just 3%.

YouTube isn’t necessarily the place people go to watch full episodes of television shows. Hulu is. If videos at sites like Hulu become more ad-heavy, the market share gap could just increase even greater. It could also have an impact on both paid TV show downloads and piracy.
 

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Flick Studio is making these trucks with the hopes that companies will be interested in purchasing them for their own advertising purposes. The idea comes from trucks that are already out there, which feature rolling ads. This takes the concept to a whole new (and likely expensive) level.

Information about FlickTruck is scarce. The FlickTruck site only shows a couple videos (which offer no real details) and a GPS tracker tracking the journey of one of the trucks, "Flick-2". However, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Vegas recently, WebProNews spoke with David McDonald of Flick Studio (FlickStudio.com or FlickTruck.com).

As you can see, it’s a truck with 3 big TVs built in. The displays are higher than 1080p. The are WUXGA and can be viewed easily in broad daylight.

Flick Studio began producing the trucks six months ago, and currently there are only two of them. Those are just to drive around executives who are interested in the technology. Who knows where they will go from there?

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The study found that video advertising increases engagement, doubling Dwell Time (the amount of time users engage with an ad) and increases Dwell Rate (the number of ad impressions leading to users engaging with an ad), by 20 percent.

In the last four years, the growth of video impressions has outpaced rich media growth by 60 percent. Eyeblaster’s data indicates that since the beginning of 2006 to Q2 2009, video impressions have increased more than seven times in the U.S. and tenfold globally.

Highlights from the report include:
   

• In-Stream video ads have the highest proportion of ads fully played compared to any other format.
• Creative decisions play a significant role in ad performance: Rollover user-initiated video performs best followed by auto-initiated video; click user-initiated performs worst.
• Weekdays from 9 am to 5 pm is users’ preferred time to watch In-Banner and Floating video ads.
• Relatively few users un-mute video ads; auto-initiated video has the highest un-mute rate.
• An increase of video length by five seconds reduces Video Fully Played rate by 2.8%, on average.

"When it comes to online advertising, savvy marketers are using video to work both ends of the consumer funnel to drive results," said Gal Trifon, CEO and Co-founder at Eyeblaster.

"Online video advertising provokes engagement and Eyeblaster’s data demonstrates that users are more compelled to play with an ad that contains video. A blend of In-Stream, In-Banner and Floating ads allows advertisers to engage their target audience regardless of where they spend their time online."
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"For the first time, mobile video is truly interactive as we’ve included customizable in-player action buttons enabling consumers to engage with Web content and more video content without leaving the video player," says AdMob VP Product Ali Diab. The in-player action buttons enable users to browse web sites, view additional videos, etc. while the video is playing.

As AdWords Senior Product Specialist Frederick Vallaeys discussed in a recent interview with WebProNews, you can expect to see a lot of new interesting mobile advertising trends in the coming year or so, particularly as a result from Google’s acquisition of AdMob.

Other iPhone units offered by AdMob include Multi-Panel Banner, Scrolling Canvas, and Search. The company says the new video ad unit will be sold primarily as an interstitial that will automatically play as an application loads.

"AdMob’s new Interactive Video Ad Unit brings together consumers’ love of watching videos on their mobile device with advertisers’ goal of providing an interactive, social experience for consumers," said AdMob CEO Omar Hamoui. "We are excited to create new ways for advertisers to engage with consumers on their mobile devices and for the developers behind the most popular and engaging iPhone applications to effectively monetize."

The first ads will begin running this week in select (but unnamed) applications across AdMob’s iPhone ad network. This network has reached over 20 million iPhones and iPod Touch devices around the world this year so far. A video demonstrating the new video ad unit can be viewed here.

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YouTube says that when it first began testing in-stream ads a couple years ago, abandonment rates on videos were as high as 70%. They found that users were much more likely to view and engage with overlay ads.

"But over time we found that different kinds of content provide different experiences for viewers, and that in-stream ads work pretty well on certain videos, like clips from TV shows or full-length movies," says YouTube. "We first launched in-stream ads last year, and we’ve continued to innovate and test different in-stream formats on YouTube (like user-choice pre-rolls)."

Users may find the skippable pre-rolls slightly annoying but tolerable, since they are still in control of whether they have to watch it or not. They may come off as a bit intrusive, similar to pop-up ads, but if they are easy to skip, people will probably be willing to continue on with the video.

Chances are, they will see enough of the ad to begin with to at least gain some kind of brand awareness. That’s really going to be all up to the ad though. Advertisers looking at this kind of spot may want to strongly consider getting the meat of the message in as early as possible.

"We know what you’re thinking: who would choose to watch an ad when they can skip it?" says YouTube. "Well, that’s what we’re trying to find out. In our previous research, we’ve actually seen that lots of users will watch pre-rolls. Abandonment rates are affected by several factors, notably length and creative. When a pre-roll is only 15 seconds, we see completion rates as high as 85%. Also, creative matters a lot: the quality and relevance of the ad itself seems to have 3x the influence on abandonment online as it does on TV. Viewers online tend to be much more active in making choices about what they watch."

Remember that these new ads are only being tested at this point, but YouTube seems quite optimistic that it may have found its best advertising solution yet. We’ll see if the tests confirm this, and if this becomes a normal ad-type for the world’s most popular video site (and 2nd largest search engine).

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"AdWords advertiser with video content — from a small business looking to promote a product, to a movie studio premiering a new trailer — can use Promoted Videos to make sure their videos find a larger audience," says Jonathan Goldman, YouTube Engineer. "This integration will provide a single destination for your overall Google ad buy, and will give YouTube advertisers access to campaign tools in AdWords."

Original Article: Google has decided to start including promoted YouTube videos in AdSense. This means that these videos are now an available ad unit that can be displayed on AdSense publisher sites.

YouTube promoted videos include a thumbnail image with three lines of text, and when clicked, they take the user to a video or a channel on YouTube, so it’s not like there will be full-sized YouTube videos in AdSense ad spots on publisher sites.

"Extending Promoted Videos to AdSense sites will enable these content producers to broaden their reach, while providing you with another way to earn from your ad space," says Arlene Lee of Google’s Inside AdSense team. "At this time, these ads are only available in English to US publishers, but we’re looking forward to expanding to additional regions and languages in the future."

The promoted videos are contextually targeted to AdSense publisher pages, and publishers will earn from them on a cost-per-click basis. They are available in the following formats:

- 300×250 Medium Rectangle
- 336×280 Large Rectangle
- 728×90 Leaderboard
- 250×250 Square
- 200×200 Small Square

"Just like other ads, Promoted Videos compete in our standard ad auction, so they’ll help drive up competition among advertisers bidding to appear on your pages," says Lee. "When a Promoted Video wins the ad auction, it’ll be shown alone in one of the eligible ad formats."

Videos of course have to meet YouTube’s advertising guidelines and terms of use, as well as community guidelines. Publishers can prevent promoted videos from appearing on their sites by adding "youtube.com" to their competitive ad filter list. This will block all YouTube content.

It should be noted that the addition of promoted YouTube videos to AdSense has nothing to do with Google’s video ads offering.

YouTube promoted videos could be a good way to increase AdSense clicks, because the very nature of them draws the user’s attention to watch a video, and at the world’s most popular online video site. Plus the videos should be relevant to the content of the page. This could be a big money maker for AdSense publishers. It should be big for people promoting their videos as well.

YouTube has tweaked its masthead to eliminate some clutter and do some "housecleaning," as Product Manager Shiva Rajaraman puts it.

"We’ve streamlined and simplified the design to focus on the primary experience of YouTube: watching a video," says Rajaraman. "The left side is dedicated to exploration: finding videos to watch through search and browse. The right side is all about organization of the videos that matter most to you: your subscriptions, your recent viewing history, and your own uploads."

With the search feature given a bit more prominence, it may start to give YouTube a little bit more of a search engine feel, and inspire more searches. With YouTube starting its AdSense-esque advertising program, it’s not hard to understand why they might do this.

If you don’t have items in your Quicklist or Inbox, they will not appear on the homepage. The country and language pull-down menus are also gone from the masthead, and have been placed in the footer.

YouTube is also working on making the masthead more personalized, giving users more control. We’ll have to wait and see to find out what this means exactly.

Last year, YouTube launched "Promoted Vidoeos." Now they are putting those on watch pages in the "related videos" section.

"If you think of the initial launch of Promoted Videos as similar to AdWords — a search advertising opportunity for marketers on YouTube — this new feature is a lot like AdSense," says a post from a couple of YouTube product managers. "For example, while Promoted Videos appearing next to search results are keyword targeted, those appearing on watch pages are contextually targeted based on the video and content of the page, so they are suited to your audience’s interests. Also like AdSense, revenue generated by Promoted Videos on watch pages will be shared with the YouTube partner. This is another way we can help partners make money on YouTube, in addition to the display ads we serve in and alongside videos themselves."

The world has been waiting for YouTube to become profitable, and there have been hints recently that it was coming. This might just be the ticket.

Meanwhile, YouTube has been working hard at making improvements and adding more appealing content. In recent months they have added feature films and shows, as well as movie trailers.

YouTube has also begun taking a special interest in news content. They recently invited publishers to become YouTube partners and launched the YouTube Reporters’ Center for citizen reporters. Now they have started including a "News Near You" section for local news. The point is, they’re expanding on the types of content they offer, and this will be good for a AdSense-like program.

A year and a half later, Yahoo is already ditching it. The company has said that it is planning to "wind down its customer base."

"This decision will allow us to focus our resources on the continued improvement of our core video offerings, such as enhancing the consumer video experience on Yahoo!," the company said in a statement. "Since Q4 2008, we have closed or announced our intention to close, nearly twenty Yahoo! services– such as Yahoo! 360, GeoCities, My Web and Yahoo! Briefcase. We continue to evaluate our portfolio of products and services on a regular basis, and plan to share details of further changes with people who use our products in the months ahead."

Maven has been integrated into both Yahoo’s video player and the Yahoo video advertising platform. It is unclear what will be used as an alternative at this point.

Yahoo’s video ad products include in-player video advertising (pre- and post-roll), In-banner video advertising, and original video content sponsorships. They also offer opportunities for publishers.

The company says that while video initiatives are still a priority for its consumer and advertising experiences, they are increasing investment in some areas while scaling back in others.

Other video-related products that Yahoo has parted with include Y!Live and Jumpcut.