Occasionally you come across a little nugget like this; for all you clients who don’t know.

The New York Times blog, BITS broke the story last week that Google is now testing video ads in search results in order to offer even more diverse opportunities and media expansion for AdWords advertisers.

Google has been offering pay-per-click video ads on the Content, or AdSense, Network since 2006, but never has there been the option to show the ads in Google search results. With the advent of last year’s Universal Search index where videos, news feeds, and images were incorporated, attention has been further divided with images and videos winning and text ads leaving cooler spots in the heat map.

“The eyes of users automatically gravitate to the images more than the text,” According to Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience.

Traditional listings and ppc ads compete for attention in Google’s search results with video links from YouTube, MySpace Video, and images, so it is only appropriate, she argues, that their be corresponding advertising formats. Fortunately, Google has eased into being able to offer paid opportunities outside of 72 character text ads and this should be no surprise to users or advertisers.

How will the ads integrate? Apparently the video ads will be accessed through clicking on a plus sign (+) next to the corresponding company text ad, similar to Google Maps’ address plus sign seen in organic listings for brick and mortar companies. Still inline with Google’s philosophy to provide unobtrusive, highly relevant advertising, Mayer preemptively answers concerns that Google is about to go too far.

“If you search for golf clubs, you get ads for golf clubs, not a banner ad about Pepsi that you may drink on the golf course,” Ms. Mayer said. So far no screenshots have been provided to corroborate Google’s experimentation.

Some purists will still be remain opposed, some even threatening to use another search engine.

Here are some comments from the blogosphere:

The day Google launches this is the day I stop using Google. It is the duty of every American to avoid as much advertising as possible so that our economy has something to do.
— Posted by Walter

This is the last straw. I’ll never use Google again and their servers are going in my hosts file. Oh, for the days when they swore that they would NEVER be anything other than a Web search engine…

— Posted by Joe Dixon

Others feel more positive, or OK with the development.

If it’s done carefully & leaves the user in control it could be ok. It’s possible to do non-intrusive video ads as long as they don’t autoplay, don’t take up too much of the screen and are clear as to what they are. Here’s hoping it isn’t too bad, anyhow.
— Posted by imma

Watching a few ads is not a big price for Google’s superb services. Besides, those ads are context-sensitive.
— Posted by AB

What do you think?

Selling marketing to businesses in today’s online marketplace can be somewhat of a daunting task. The level of experience and knowledge that business owners and individuals have of the Internet can range from a client saying, “Now a browser is like Internet Explorer….right?” to a client saying, “I need a viral social online marketing accelerator to generate a boat-load of traffic to my site!”

More times than not, I deal with the first client in which I have to shift into education mode. Sometimes it’s easy to get bogged down with “selling the meat rather than the sizzle.” What I mean is that often times marketers spend a great deal of time explaining the “what we do” or feature selling, rather than focusing on the client’s needs and providing results that will produce real pocket jingling proof.
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This is by no means a definitive list. Here are just some straight forward tips that I have learned over the years from experience with pay-per-click, AdWords in particular, as well techniques I have learned from gurus’ books, blogs, and newsletters.

This is not merely a rehashed or repeated combined list. These are in my words, and in no particular order. I believe in all of these and am currently using or have used these techniques for multiple client accounts. Each are split into categories that should help for reference.
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I had to get your attention in order to make a point. I know this is blasphemy to suggest such a notion, but this statement is true for certain product and service sites. Google may be providing the most traffic, but might not be providing the highest quality visitors to your site. The other big three (Yahoo!, MSN, Ask) may be paying your bills.

Quality visitors can be defined as visitors likely to become customers or leads. In this post I will explain why Google might not be your best lead generator and show some real life examples. I will also explain what to do if Google isn’t your top business generating engine.
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LevelTen now has three individually Qualified Google Advertising Professionals on the team, and will soon be a Qualified Google Advertising Company. Congratulations to our marketing team for months of participating in the online tutorials, taking practice quizzes, reading the books, and scoping the forums. Visitors to LevelTen’s site will soon see an officially licensed logo from Google stating the certification, which will also lead a page explaining it.

In order to obtain the qualified Google Advertising Company, at least two individuals must be certified through testing, and the company must manage an ongoing minimum of $100,000 in ppc per quarter.
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It was rumored about last summer, and this spring it has become a reality. Pay-per-action (PPA) has officially been released in beta form for users of Google AdWords. Pay-per-action, or cost-per-action, as both names imply, charge only when a specific predetermined action has occurred on a website being advertised though Google AdWords.

Clicks & Impressions
As of now, there are a few other options an advertiser can choose to be charged by, the most popular being the pay-per-click platform. Advertisers can also choose to be charged based on 1000 impressions for text ads, image ads, and video ads, regardless of number of clicks.
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