Do Video Units Pay?

I guess I haven't been paying attention.

[dataguy]

I've been seeing the option for publishing video units from my AdSense account. I don't recall any fanfare about this feature, I don't even have an idea how long it's been available.

Are many publishers doing this and are they making any money?

[ronin]

Yes, they do pay - both through a static text advert in the top left corner and from superimposed one line ads which rotate at the bottom of the video screen.

When all is said and done, the video units end up looking more like an advert for Google's YouTube than anything else.

Nevertheless, I think the exchange (free, contextually-relevant video content on your site in exchange for your promoting YouTube) is fairly reasonable and I found the page-specific contextual filter to be quite impressive.

You might even earn a little extra from the single adsense unit on the top left of the video player or the onscreen ads, though I don't think that's going to sway any publisher who otherwise didn't feel the player would easily fit on their site.

The one thing that bothers me - and the only reason why I will not be including the player on certain pages of my site for now - is that the player itself is huge.

There are three sizes available to choose from at present and the smallest one, at 400 x 425 pixels is enormous - it dominates over everything else on the screen by taking up a huge portion of screen estate both vertically and horizontally.

If Google Adsense and YouTube could see their way to introducing a new smallest size of 300 x 320 pixels I would definitely have the video units on some pages of my site.

[ecmedia]

I tried the AdSense video unit for some 4 weeks or so and the CTR was extremely low (naturally the CPM is awful). I decided to end my test and have replaced them with regular AdSense ads that perform just fine.

[ronin]

Yes, I don't think video units should be seen first and foremost as an alternative to normal AdSense panels. Instead they are an alternative to manually hunting out and then embedding a selection of YouTube videos on your page. (And you might make a couple of cents as well).

[dataguy]

Hmm, interesting. Thanks for your responses.

I have one site where video ads would work great, but I guess that it wouldn't be worth replacing the current ad blocks, especially if the player is so large.