Google Launches Video AdSense Units

On the Google AdSense blog there’s a new post introducing video adsense units. You can now add video to your site and make money. This is a very cool new feature, which will add more content to your site–and it also gets us even closer to real “true” contextual video.

AdSense isn’t just for ads anymore; it’s also a place to get video content for your site — and earn extra revenue at the same time.

We’re excited about the launch of video units — a new way to enrich your site with quality, relevant video content in an embedded, customizable player. Simply embed a snippet of code and have relevant YouTube partner content streamed to your site. You can choose categories of video to target to your site, select content from individual YouTube partners, or have video automatically targeted to your site content. Companion and text overlay ads are relevant and non-intrusive. To further blend the YouTube player into your site, you can also customize the color scheme and layout as well as choose from three different player sizes.

If you go here you’ll get a page on YouTube that has a few videos; so far there are three. I’ve embedded them below, feel free to check them out.

Meet the Team

How to get started with Google AdSense Video Units

If you have questions about the AdSense Video units then you should go here to check out the FAQ.

Here’s a common question about how you earn money using Google AdSense Video Units:

How do I earn with video units?

When you place a video unit on your website, you’ll earn revenue from two types of ad formats: companion ads, which sit above your video content within the player and can be either text or image-based, and text overlay ads, which appear in the bottom 20% of the video content area. Ads on video units can be paid on either a cost-per-click or cost-per-thousand impression basis.

Keep in mind that you’re paid based on a CPC basis (per click) OR on a CPM basis (cost-per-thousand impression basis), which means that you would be paid based on a thousand views of the video ad. This really depends on the Google AdWords advertiser, and whether or not they choose to pay per click or by CPM.

In any case, I’m pretty excited about this new feature being added to Google, and this appears to be one of the major results of the Youtube/Google merger.

There’s a bunch of other sites talking about this new feature, take a look here to see what they’re talking about:
Google Launches Video AdSense Units But Doesn’t Enable the Feature – Barry at Search Engine Roundtable is reporting that after the announcement he tried to log into his AdSense account and activate the feature (use it). But, apparently he couldn’t have access to it because it wasn’t enabled and didn’t show up yet on his AdSense account. I, too, can report that I tried to log in once I heard about this new feature and couldn’t find it on my account, as well.

AdSense Launch Video Units
Google launches AdSense video units
Google Launches YouTube Video Ad Units For Adsense
Google Launches YouTube Video Ad Units For Adsense
google.com/videounits – AdSense Video Units Launch Glitch

Techmeme has a lot more coverage here on the new YouTube-Google AdSense feature if you’re interested in looking more into it.

Update:
It looks like the Google AdSense team has now enabled the Google Video Adsense Units, as the feature is now live (about 24 hours after they announced it on the blog). I’ve signed up, linked my YouTube and AdSense accounts, and have embedded the code below to give you an idea of how it looks.

In order to get everything going, log into your Google AdSense account, select the Google Video Ad Units and agree to the terms…then you’ll need to have a YouTube account and you’ll need to get an email verification code from Google. Verify the account and you will then be able to go back to Google AdSense and choose the player options…then you’ll get the code. If you’re seeing the “Watch the latest Videos at Youtube” sentence below that means that the account is still in pending status, I believe that the Google AdSense folks need to approve the account before your code will be live.