Google on track to dominate online video ads

In Broadcast, Michael Comish suggests that, following a new deal with Channel 4 and the launch of an auction-based sales model, Google is set to dominate the market for online video advertising.

At its core, Google is an advertising company and it has successfully dominated paid search advertising in almost every market where it competes. Going forward, it intends to dominate online video advertising as well. The strategy is all too familiar: build an advertising product where people bid for words associated with video programming by taking your existing, hugely successful search technology and modifying it to create a unique product for video ads. Build a large market share and you will not only drive up the price people will pay for the adverts, but also dictate the terms of how the revenue is shared with programme makers. By so doing, you will capture the majority of the value in an online video advertising market, which is estimated to reach £4b+ by 2013 in the US alone.