After testing this for close to a year, Yahoo is set to formally announce Rich Ads In Search — a service that places images and videos into paid ads in Yahoo’s search results. The New York Times says the service will be announced formally on Thursday.

A search for Pedigree dog food brings up a video in the primary paid listing:

Other additions include images and search boxes inside paid ads. The NYT article says Yahoo is charging a monthly fee for Rich Ads In Search, and only “large, brand-focused advertisers” can use the service at this point.

If you’re thinking you’ve heard about this before, you probably have. We reported seeing videos in Yahoo paid ads as far back as last March, when it was apparently only being tested on a limited basis. In December we wrote about images and a search box in a paid ad for eBay.

In the interest of being complete, we should mention that Google has also tested video ads and image ads within the last year. And, almost two years ago, we reported that Microsoft was looking into mouseover image ads, too.

There’s more discussion on Techmeme.

Postscript Barry Schwartz: Yahoo’s blog post is now live at the Yahoo Search Marketing Blog.

Video is becoming an important part of local search marketing campaigns, and this week’s SMX Local Mobile conference features talking about how small and medium businesses can use video to be more effective with their online marketing. Video solutions providers to these panels are Jared Simon, VP of Business Development of TurnHere, and Anupam Gupta, President and CEO of Mixpo. I caught up with Gupta earlier this week and asked for a preview of what he’ll be presenting at the conference.

To summarize, Mixpo is a turnkey video marketing solution geared specifically for SMBs (small-to-medium businesses), which combines a self-service platform including hosting, an interactive video player, and online editing that allows clients to simply and quickly repurpose their video.

One of the notable SEO benefits: Multiple videos can be developed from a single original client video, allowing for an easier assembly of video content applied for both search optimization and video advertising.

“This is an exciting time for online video advertising. More advertising dollars and marketing budgets are moving towards video. Big brands and big advertisers jumped into video first. Now there are millions of small brands and advertisers that are just starting to get exposed to online video,” says Anupam.

He explains that SMBs are in an ideal position to take advantage of video marketing and video SEO. “Video is a powerful mechanism for communicating what your business is all about,” says Anupam. “Video drives more qualified leads and conversions, all in a way that is measurable and where we can show accountability. Measurability and accountability is what made search marketing successful, and that’s what SMBs and SMB advertisers need to be all about to succeed.”

Adding to the benefits of video are interactivity technologies for direct customer engagement. In the top-right hand corner of each Mixpo video is an icon, which allows the viewer to choose from a series of calls-to-action any time during video play.

“We’re already seeing a lot of interest from the SMB industry. Video is in the early stages where we’re going to see a lot of ramp in even just the next number of months to come,” says Anupam.

He explains that Mixpo has two constituents: The actual advertiser (client) who wants to be more effective in their online marketing, and the aggregator, who already has a relationship with these customers. Mixpo refers to “aggregators” as interactive agencies, directories, publishers, etc.

“What we hear from agencies – including firms involved in search marketing and SEO – is that they need more effective tools and capabilities to serve their clients in a better way, and show them how they can drive measurable results,” says Anupam. “What we hear from advertisers, is what they’ve been traditionally doing online hasn’t necessarily worked, or they can’t really measure the effectiveness of all of their marketing programs.”

Both of these constituents do understand search as a measurement tool, “and really love the ability where they can measure things on their own” says Anupam. “Everything Mixpo provides is backed by a very solid measurement platform,” which allows for optimization of both performance and visibility online.

As for Mixpo’s business model, it’s rather simple: cost-effective opportunities for SMB advertisers, and sharing advertising revenue with their aggregator partners, whatever their sharing model may be. “Their success is our success,” says Anupam.

As for a sneak preview into his presentation, Anupam shared with me that people attending his session can expect to learn about Mixpo’s recent partnership activities and how they will benefit search marketers involved, or looking to get involved, in the local video space. He also mentioned that their own solution is a good complement to fellow video speaker TurnHere, which concentrates more on the creative agency side of video production compared to Mixpo’s focus on their self-service platform. Mixpo does offer their own creative agency services, but Anupam looks at TurnHere as a technology and marketing ally for the emerging local video space, and not really a competitor.

Grant Crowell is the CEO of Grantastic Designs, a web design and search solutions provider specializing in new media strategies for B2B and B2C companies.

According to comScore, U.S. Internet users watched 11.5 billion online videos in March, 2008. The average viewer watched nearly three hours of video online. These statistics make video an attractive means for advertisers to reach their audience, and in turn, a potential windfall for online video hosts such as YouTube and Google. So far, however, online video sites are finding that users want to be entertained with online video and not necessarily watch commercials. So how do small business advertisers effectively tap into the online video craze and relay their messages to target audiences? Well, that opportunity is here but is not always easy to figure out.

Here are some things that advertisers will want to consider as they ponder their first—or next—online video advertising campaign.

Understand how consumers use commercially-oriented videos in their search and buy process. Consumers watch non-commercial videos on YouTube for entertainment. Unless your video is funny, informative, or entertaining in some way, it’s unlikely that people will simply want to watch it. However, when consumers need a product or service, they are active and more willing to view content like video to help in their buying process. Consumers typically will watch online videos when they are trying to finalize a vendor selection or purchase decision. That is why local search and IYP sites may offer the best opportunity to get in front of the right audience that has the “right” mindset.

Know who to target and where to reach them. Is the audience local or national? If national, advertisers will obviously want to take a broad-based approach and focus on some of the larger search sites. For many small businesses, however, local targeting is more important. If this is true, the advertiser will need to find ways of getting their video to display where the local audience will see it, including local media sites, newspapers, and local search sites, such as Internet Yellow Pages (IYP) sites.

Decide on the appropriate type of video and determine the cost. Most small businesses will be starting from scratch and need to have video produced, either by an ad agency, video production house, or web site publisher. Costs of production will vary based upon a number of factors, including production time. Some publishers offer certain packages that include video production, hosting, and distribution of the video beyond their own site to a network of others, including YouTube, Yahoo! Video, and more. Many of these publishers will also place restrictions on how and where the videos can be used.

Determine the best site(s) for the video. Consider that social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook were created as places for people to gather and share interests with their network of chosen friends. Users of such sites may not immediately be accepting of advertising, but they may be open to viewing ads from small businesses that cater to the interests of their social network– a local coffee shop or store that deals mainly in specialized interests, for example. So, these types of businesses should consider running their ads on social networking sites. Other sites, such as YouTube, Google, and others, can be more effective for advertisers that specialize in more generalized products and services or are looking for brand exposure or buzz (and remember, having an entertaining ad helps a lot here). However, businesses seeking to attract local buyers are likely best served by going with a local search or an IYP site, where customers are generally searching by city, neighborhood, or ZIP code.

A caveat: IYP sites may be the best place for local businesses interested in creating and publishing online video ads, but advertisers should find out if the IYP plans to distribute it to other relevant video sites on the advertiser’s behalf. If they are not or will not, they should. That will take a significant burden off the advertiser to have to manage their video in various formats and figure out how to distribute it to various online sites.

It should be noted that while the small business advertiser can certainly take it upon themselves to post video on many sites across the Web, many of these businesspeople lack the time to do this and the in-depth expertise to know which sites would be most appropriate. For them it could make sense to work directly with a firm or publisher that specializes in search local search marketing and can advise them on and manage their video advertising campaigns.

Understand that the business model for video-online is evolving. Local search sites have mistakenly focused on video as a premium service in the past. As local search business models evolve to be more pay-for-performance, this too will change. More and more companies are planning to drop their premium-priced video offers and allow advertisers to link their own videos for free from their online profiles. All of this is in preparation for the day when local search sites charge advertisers on a pay-per-view or pay-per-action basis.

Above all, the advertiser must:

Remember that consumers aren’t shopping for videos; they’re shopping for products and services. When consumers perform online research they are primarily interested in first finding general information about businesses that suit their needs. Consumers begin by looking at things like types of services they offer, proximity to a particular location, peer reviews, etc. Only when they have a good idea of where they might like to buy do consumers typically view a business’s video; it’s one of the last stages in the buying process. This makes video extremely valuable for the small business, as it can help to visually “sell” the business to a prospective customer and help the customer decide that the business is right for them. If a consumer clicks on a video ad, it usually means that they are very close to contacting a business—yet another point of reasoning that is driving publishers toward investigating pay-for-performance models.

Make no mistake—there is money to be made through the use of online video ads. To take advantage of this, however, the small business advertiser needs to understand how people are using the ads, where they should be placed, and what type of options publishers are both currently presenting and considering implementing. Armed with this understanding, small business advertisers can surely monetize the power of online video ads.

Jeff Porter is a vice president and general manager at R.H. Donnelley, where he oversees the development, implementation and marketing of DexKnows.com, one of the leading local search sites in the United States.

A few minutes ago, I posted screen captures of Google’s new video ads in the real, live, and wild search results. These were announced back in February but only now appear to have really gone live.

Searches that triggered this result for me included cell phone or smart phones or phones. It seems like BlackBerry and AT&T are testing the new AdWords video ads. Here is a screen capture:

Here are some screen shots of BlackBerry’s ads as shown on the right hand column:

For more screen captures, see the Search Engine Roundtable.

Advertisers pay for these ads on a CPC basis — watching the ad counts as a click. For more on this, see our past post, AdWords + Video: Video Ads Come To Google Search Results.

Postscript: Google Operating System posted screen captures of examples of video ads for a search on laptop by Intel. So there are more examples, we just need to find them all.

Here is a video of it in action:

More discussion at Techmeme.

As expected, Google announced another push to get advertisers and publishers to utilize video ads. Yes, Google did a pilot video ad program back in May 2007 and then another video ad push in October 2007. But from these, Google said they’ve learned much and have made changes to the new program.

Google said they will sell both “InVideo” ads, where a video ad appears at the bottom of a video, as well as text overlay ads that put text below a video. The InVideo ads are paid on a CPM basis, while the text overlay ads are paid on a CPC basis. To see demos of both formats, click here.

Google also posted a detailed video explaining all of Google’s video ad offerings. They include advertising on video ads, while publishers can display AdSense for Video on their sites and movie producers can utilize the YouTube Partner Program.

For more information, visit Google Video Advertising Solutions. Video ads are now available to publishers who, at a minimum, serve one million video streams each month and are based in the U.S. with English language sites.

As a test, I am posting a Google AdSense Video ad unit below this line. It should match somewhat on ads for this site. We will see:

Informational videos are an excellent way for local businesses to get positions with the natural search engines, through the trend toward blended or universal search results which mix video in with traditional results. Videos are also becoming an attractive way to bring in leads, sales, and new customers from viral and social marketing. While most search engines and marketers have adopted a “wait and see” attitude with local video products, the major internet yellow pages have taken the initiative, offering some interesting opportunities for search marketers to jump in early when competition is relatively scarce.

Superpages.com has already done a nationwide rollout of its video advertising products to help their advertisers reach local shoppers online, and YellowPages.com has rolled out their own video ad program in 28 states, nearing completion for the rest. Yet while the IYPs may be best suited for taking the lead in the local video space, many questions have been raised about IYP video advertising. Are the videos findable? Are they search-friendly and conversion-friendly? Do they bring in more traffic, leads, sales, customers? Or should there be less emphasis on search criteria over branding and social/viral marketing strategies?

The situation right now is that even after a good number of months into local video promotion, the IYPs do not appear to have executed a strategy to make their video content findable in their own on-site search results, and much less the mainstream web search engine results or specialty video search engines like YouTube. Considering that the video production quality is certainly of professional standards, it is a huge missed opportunity that the IYPs have not done anything with the organic search space.

Over the past few weeks, I interviewed the customers participating in the IYPs’ video advertising programs and learned about their experiences, and found the results a mixed bag (which, in fairness, is expected with any new marketing technology). But of the customers I interviewed who expressed positive results, very few attributed those results to an increase in their search traffic. This was peculiar, since the IYPs say they give better placement in their directory listings to advertisers who feature video.

What appeared to be a much more telling factor in a local advertiser’s success with the program was if they took the initiative to promote the video on their own.

Keith Larsen, Property Manager for Abington Woods Luxury Apartments in Massachusetts and YP.com video profile advertiser, received more leads from featuring his video (which YellowPages.com produced for him) in the online classified advertising space Craigslist. Michael Baez, Chief Manager of the IT/computer repair company Lucky Gorilla, says that although after one month into the program he hasn’t yet gotten enough leads from the YellowPages.com site to cover the cost, he has been getting more business from “going viral”—sending the video to his friends who put it up on their MySpace and Facebook pages. “The viral marketing and social marketing I’ve done more than pays for the video itself,” says Baez.

Is that to say that local video is more suited to social/viral/word-of-mouth marketing than organic search? Not at all. The problem is, the IYPs still haven’t leveraged the organic search space and leave their customers to handle their own social marketing activities. Those customers who rely solely on their IYP are more likely to find themselves with less than stellar results. A fair number of customers I talked to even said they were discontinuing or had already discontinued the program—and that was from the client list provided to me by the IYPs themselves!

When I had the opportunity to talk with one of my IYP contacts at a recent search engine marketing conference, I asked why there was no push to get all of their quality video content out into the organic search space. Her response was that they didn’t yet have enough video inventory. That answer demonstrated a lack of understanding about how video search optimization works. You don’t need thousands—or even hundreds—of videos to build a video SEO program. Even a single video can generate sizable traffic, including targeted customer traffic. The fact that these IYPs have at least dozens, if not hundreds, of videos they are promoting in national press releases but not doing anything organically with, is a huge missed opportunity for the IYPs and their customers.

For IYPs to jumpstart interest in the local video space, they need to make their own video content fully indexable and optimized for web search results. The first place they should start is with their own site, and here are some recommendations:

On-site optimization. Since the web-based search engines still rely primarily on text for optimizing video content, IYPs should build a separate video directory and site map. Every time a new video ad is produced, it could dynamically be added to the site map and directory, along with a title, description, and tags. This strategy covers the search engines who spider the web for video content, such as Google.

Video RSS feeds. The IYPs can start off with a single Video RSS (aka Media RSS, or MRSS) feed for all of their video content. When it reaches critical mass, they should start specialty video feeds for the categories more popular with video advertisers. This strategy covers the search engines which accept RSS feeds into their databases, such as Yahoo and AOL.

Automated distribution. IYPs should include a basic video SEO submission program as part of every video ad package—especially since every popular video place you can submit to today is still free. Programs such as tubemogul offer a single point for deploying uploads to the top video sharing sites, including YouTube.

On-site search results. The IYPs need to implement at least a basic means of being able to find business listings that feature video content on their own site. Right now, if you added the word “video” in your search query for a business on the IYP sites, you will be no more likely to turn up results with video content in them. By including “video” as an indexable tag for advertisers with video ads, that would greatly improve the quality of their own search results, and with minimal effort.

Online marketing videos. Simply doing in-house SEO won’t be enough for the IYPs to truly take advantage of the local video search space. And the reality is, they can’t count on their sales groups to train their customers on how to market their video content online. By producing their own training videos on SEO and social/viral marketing, they can directly educate their customers and empower them on how to distribute and promote video content to the web search engines and popular social media sites for local establishments, such as Facebook and Craigslist. Considering that customers have full redistribution rights to their video, teaching them how they can best serve as their own sales force is a win-win situation.

It is ironic that the best opportunity for some IYP customers is not how their videos are currently being promoted by the IYPs, but how those customers take the initiative to promote their own videos themselves. The IYPs still have a wide open opportunity to truly capitalize on the local video market—they can start by learning from the experiences of their own customers.

Grant Crowell is CEO and Creative Director of Grantastic Designs. The Video Search column appears on Thursdays at Search Engine Land.

AOL is introducing a new video advertising format: ticker ads. It’s the latest video site to move away from pre-roll, which the Online Publishers Association suggests is a good model but otherwise is roundly rejected by users as delivering a bad experience.

According to the AOL press release, the new ads were developed in conjunction with Gannett-owned PointRoll. Here’s how they work:

Rather than overlaying an ad and obstructing the view of a video, AOL’s video ticker ad appears at the bottom of the video player 10 seconds into the video stream. When clicked by a user, the ad expands while the video pauses. If the user does not interact with the ad, it will dissolve after 15 seconds leaving the branded text link. Clicking on the branded text link, located at the top of the video player, will relaunch the ticker.

Below is a screenshot:

The new AOL ads are similar to those recently integrated by YouTube on the site. However, none of the video is obscured in the AOL ads, as the release excerpt says above. Yet the approach is similar to the YouTube (and Brightcover and VideoEgg) approaches. It suggests a new standard may be emerging for online video advertising, which avoids pre-roll entirely.

NBCU and News Corp. video destination HULU has also said no to pre-roll.

Local search and directory provider Superpages has announced video advertising on a national basis after a several-month test in selected U.S. markets. All the major U.S. yellow pages advertisers are now offering video advertising, though all are in early stages of rolling it out. To my knowledge, Superpages is the only performance-based model where bidding would be involved.

Superpages is charging advertisers a one-time $990 production fee and a small monthly recurring fee to have a video icon associated with their listings. For each consumer stream/click, advertisers would also be charged a fee — pay per stream — based on competitive bidding on a category basis. Category level bidding is the same way that Superpages’ clicks and calls products work.

Advertisers can also pay a one-time fee for the rights to use the videos on their sites or distribute them elsewhere — on or offline. Superpages is also considering various syndication options for the video, similar to the way it syndicates calls and clicks. Syndication from yellow pages publishers (and other local sites like Citysearch) will likely be the way that local and SMB video gets into search or local results at Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft.

Here are a number of examples of Superpages video in different business categories.

Video is popular with both consumers and advertisers, as lots of empirical work already shows. A recent online survey from Opus Research and AllBusiness.com of 653 U.S. SMBs found that 33% of respondents said they were evaluating developing video ads in the next 12 months.

There’s some additional discussion of the particulars of the Superpages program on my personal blog, Screenwerk.