YouTube has been beta testing ad formats specifically for shopping over the last several months and apparently they believe them to be a big success. The ads, known as TrueView for Shopping, have moved out of beta and are being added to the list of options for all AdWords users.
The ads allow merchants to display their products within videos while the actual products are shown to the right. The products can be pulled automatically from a Merchant Center product feed to help make setting this up even easier.
This is essentially a step forward from the traditional product placement ads where brands would pay television or movie producers to user their products in the show. People would see it and hopefully want to make the purchase. With this, however, the video that is published can be displayed like normal and the different products used in the video can have a traditional display ad off to the right.
The ad can include a picture of the product, the name of it, the price and more. THIs makes it extremely easy for users to see something they like in a video and choose to learn more by clicking on the ad whenever they would like.
In addition to rolling this type of ad out to AdWords, they also are adding a CPA bidding option. This will give marketers additional choices when creating their advertising campaigns and will help many find higher success from their marketing budgets.
