Google Adds Video Ads

Bidding for placement on Google's partner sites is getting more complicated. Now keyword advertisers will also be bidding against video ads, per The New York Times.

I would expect that video ads would yield higher conversion rates, so Google will be lowering the cost of video advertisements while raising the cost of textual ads. Google expects small businesses to be active in video ads, but that may be an overestimation.

Do we really want to see more of the low quality ads from Joe's Furniture Emporium that are usually relegated to late night TV? Video ads will be an effective medium for the big brands and squeeze out smaller companies. The increased interest in video advertising will probably increase the amount of pre-roll ads for both video search engines and "premium" content sites such as Salon.