But are advertisers or publishers happy about it?

Google announced that they are now offering video ads that play when the user clicks on them.  These ads are purchased through Adwords and distributed only throughout the Adsense network, not on Google’s search results.

I’m agreeing with Mike Arrington at Techcrunch on this one, I don’t think this is a surefire hit for Google.

From the advertiser perspective, I have more work to do to create a compelling video ad that actually works.  It’s not like text ads where you can easily create multiple variations in seconds and test them.  Video ads are getting easier to create, but they still require work, and if your ad doesn’t perform well, it’s much harder to test a new version.

It’s also not tied through as well to a direct click-through that leads to a conversion where an ROI can be calculated.  If someone just watches my ad what did I earn from that?  Brand awareness?  That’s great, but it’s much harder to measure in what’s been a very measurable direct-response medium.

Lastly, video advertisers only get to show these on the Adsense content network.  As most Adwords advertisers will tell you, they get far better results currently with Adwords by having their ads on Google Search results.  A lot of the time advertisers stop their ads from showing on Adsense altogether.  Apparently Google doesn’t believe enough in the unit to show it on their own results.

From the publisher perspect, as Jensense suggests it doesn’t look yet that a publisher can opt-out of these ads.  That seems like a horrible idea, and it seems like something Google will need to change to avoid angering publishers who don’t want these ads.  I think the bottom line with publishers will be if it earns them a higher eCPM, which it’s possible it could do, but not if it doesn’t get good advertiser adoption.

Bottom line, will this fade into the background like their pay per call ads?  Or wildly succeed like their text ads? My bet’s on the first option.