A few weeks ago some Google AdSense users started to notice a ad unit: YouTube videos. Now Google has officially announced the new video advertising system with a really boring video on the AdSense blog.In a nutshell, AdSense customers can sign into their accounts, select the new video units, and set up a YouTube video channel with advertising. In other words, visitors to your site will see a video with an AdSense ad unit at the top of the player. OK, that's a bit distracting, but we'll live. Then once you start playing the video a new unit will pop up within the Flash video player and it won't go away unless you click something.
In other words, the new ad unit gives web publishers a way to trick their users into thinking there's exciting new multimedia content on the site when in fact the publishers are just trying to make a quick buck (and share it with Google and the video creator).
Oh yeah, the new ad units are only available to US customers, and even US customers might not find a video option in their AdSense Setup tab. When we went looking this morning we couldn't find it.
[via Google Blogoscoped]
