While paid search listings comprised of plain text remains its cash crop, Mountain Valley monster Google is looking southward to reap some ad dollars from major Hollywood players and add a little entertainment value to the mix.
According to Brand Republic, Google is pitching its “Video Plus Box” platform to studios like Miramax along with networks Discovery and Travel Channel. This will effectively let them embed trailers and such within paid search listings which users can access by clicking on a blue plus sign with a “Watch preview” call-to-action.
AdAge reports that Travel Channel was among the first to utilize VPB with a campaign for its Man vs. Food show. In turn, click-though rates tripled from 2.18% to 6.34% between January and June ’09, a 190% increase. With this success, Google is hoping to turn the tide seeing that just 2% of traffic to entertainment sites are the result of its paid search links as compared to 14% for gaming-related sites.