Google To Add Video Results in Search Pages?

In its attempts to woo the entertainment industry ad dollars, the search engine bellwether Google would now be letting the brands to show their popular videos alongside its paid search results, as it continues exploring interactive advertising techniques and move away from plain text ads.

Google is now promoting its “Video Plus Box” platform to entertainment a handful of the US entertainment firms, including Discovery and Travel Channel and Miramax studio, to let the advertisers incorporate video streams alongside search results.

Beta testing for the same has already begun with an Electronics Arts campaign for its latest “Need for Speed” video game, as well as with Miramax studio for promoting its latest movie “Extract”.

The beta test for the Google’s new platform was launched back in July, after a rather short alpha testing period last year. The search giant has been incorporating videos with its search results since 2007.

Web metrics firm Hitwise revealed that the entertainment industry hasn’t been a sizable spender in Google search ads, with only 2 percent of the traffic on entertainment websites come from Google’s paid search ads, as against 14 percent for gaming sites.

However, the company wouldn’t reveal that how long it is intending to run the beta testing, or if it is planning to expand the platform in the near future, to make it available beyond the existing “select and super-relevant set of advertisers”.