Vodpod Blog

One of the things we have wanted to do with Vodpod is to help you, our members and users, make a little money (if you want) with Vodpod.

We began experimenting with some ideas a few months ago, just as the economy began to deteriorate (that was by happenstance, not plan!). We steeled ourselves for mixed results given the conditions, but instead they’ve given us a wee bit of optimism.

Specifically, we’ve been testing running simple graphical ads in our widgets, adjacent to the video while it plays (we don’t touch the embed code or the video player or any advertising that travels with the embed code). You can see a screenshot below of what this looks like:

What have we found? With Google Adsense, we have seen eCPMs in the $3 to $8 range, and click-throughs on ads ranging from 2-4%. So far, in the past two months we’ve been testing these ads, ad rates have remained mostly steady, as have click-through rates (though we did see higher eCPMs for political videos and widgets just before the election). If you run Google Adsense, you can judge for yourself what you think about these numbers…

What does this mean (and why should anyone care)? We’d highlight two things:

First, our data is more confirmation if any were needed that online video — with the right form factor and ad presentation — can be a very engaging medium for advertisers. Something as simple as running simple 300×250 ads (mostly graphical units, occasionally video) works — credit due, of course, to Google for mostly good targeting of these ads based on the underlying context. We don’t claim to know where the online advertising market will go in the coming months, but the level of engagement we’ve seen with these simple ad units next to video should gives us all cause for hope in the longer run.

Second, you can create a video collection not only for fun, or to make your blog more interactive and interesting and compelling — but to make some money if you like. Indeed, if you’re a blogger, you might make more with our widgets than with a straight ad unit (and you’d make your readers and users more happy to boot)!

With that context, we are excited to announce today that we’re offering two ways for you to earn some money with your Vodpod collection. You can start your own video site, hosted by us, using our new Vodspot service and run ads. This is now live, today.

Or, starting next week, you can choose to use our advertising-supported widget on your blog (it should work on all blogging platforms that permit advertising — not all do, of course).

The basic version if free — just enter your Google Adsense code, and we’ll make sure ads credited to your account are shown 50% of the time. Or, you can upgrade to our premium service, and control 80% of the advertising inventory and use your own advertising platform or network.

This is all new, and we’ll learn a lot, and some details may change over time based on that. Right now, we’d love your feedback on how to make this new program work for you. Please feel free to direct comments to use on this post, or to come talk to us on the new Google Group we’ve just set up, or to send feedback more privately to us here.