I've got a few video blogs which have AdSense video units in them, usually between the 1st and 2nd video. I've been running these since the new ad type became available, which to my recollection was around October 2007. I have yet to receive any revenue whatsoever from the video units on any of the sites. On the other hand, the normal AdSense blocks on the sites have performed normally, even well. I'm about to pull the the video units out, as they take up a lot of real estate and are not converting. Have any of you had luck with the video units? If so, do you have any suggestions I should try to help the conversion rates? I'm considering adding them to sites which do not have any video content themselves before abandoning them completely. Has anyone tried this or have they mostly been mixed into video related sites? Thanks for any feedback. -George
Hi George, I tried a YouTube video unit on a dog grooming site. For the first few weeks it displayed a series of dog grooming tutorial videos. This unit did generate a very small amount of revenue compared to other ad units. I decided to leave it on the site because I felt the videos added value to the content, though the ads were not highly effective. Then I noticed the small amount of revenue dried up and checked the site to discover that the unit was no longer displaying related videos. Instead it displayed a series of videos that had some kids recording their progress in learning basic skateboard tricks. I tried every possible way to resolve the issue but never got it to display anything relevant. It would be nice if they get it to work. I suspect that they may be trying to phase it out in favor of a more conventional video ad unit that currently is being tested. These new ad units display a television style ad that displays a link after the video is played. A user must click to play then click again to visit the destination URL. Of course, this style of ad does not add potentially valuable content like the YouTube video units.
Thanks for responding dburk. Thats really too bad that they had the relevancy down and then lost it, I would expect the opposite. I think for the time being I'm gong to remove the video ads. I would like to see them come up with a new formula for videos ads though, because I could see them being effective. One drawback to the current format, in my opinion, is how large and obvious the unit is. Its hard to blend it into any pages. I'm glad to know that I'm not alone in my experience with the AdSense video units.
Sorry to hear than angilina. I knew when they were first released it was US only, but I assumed they had expanded since. Don't worry though, it doesn't look like you're missing much.