Google Syndicating Viacom MTV Video With Google Video Ads
Google will syndicate and distribute Viacom-produced content (MTV music videos and various shows) to third party sites across its network. The content will be ad-supported (from Wall Street Journal): Under the deal expected to be announced today, Google beginning this month will deliver video clips from programs including “SpongeBob SquarePants” and “Laguna Beach” to select Web sites and blogs that belong to its advertising network. Google now uses the network — made up of thousands of Web sites — to place paid-search ads on behalf of a vast array of advertisers.
Google will in effect be syndicating Viacom’s programming to the broader Web, allowing the content to reach a much bigger audience than Viacom’s own Web sites draw. The clips will be embedded with video advertising and the resulting ad revenue will be shared among Viacom, Google and Web sites that run the clips.with ad-supported premium content with Google’s “Click to Play” advertising (the Viacom content will motivate the click that will show the ad). How this gets tied into AdSense/AdWords isn’t yet clear but it’s probably the same rules/terms for “Click to Play” ads.
I had said previously that Google’s Click to Play ads were its first step into TV advertising. Here’s an evolution of that into something quite interesting. We’ll see if it “takes.”
Right now, videos that appear on YouTube can be “syndicated,” because it’s easy to post them to your site or blog. But this operates on a different level because the content will be pushed to hundreds, even thousands of known publishers. (There’s an opt-in from a “publisher” perspective I would imagine.) If there’s even a hint of success here we’ll see more such deals and a rapid expansion of the program.
It will be fascinating to watch – so to speak.
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Greg Sterling is the founding principal of Sterling Market Intelligence, a consulting and research firm focused on online consumer and advertiser behavior and the relationship between the Internet and traditional media, with an emphasis on the local marketplace.
