Google Gives Sneak Peak of New Video Ad Formats at IAB's MIXX Event

Yesterday, Neal Mohan, Google’s vice president of product management, and Barry Salzman, Google’s managing director of media and platforms, gave a keynote address at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s MIXX Conference in New York. And they used the event to give a sneak peak at some new video ad formats that they called “smart and sexy.”

One uses Google Goggles, YouTube and Teracent technology to let users take a picture with their smartphone to conduct Google searches. Specifically, they showed how a user could point his or her phone’s camera at an ad for a car in a magazine and have the car appear in 3D on the mobile device. They also showed how pointing Goggles at a movie poster to search for more information would run a movie trailer play on the handset.

Another new video ad format called TrueView, which lets users choose an ad to watch out of several or even skip an ad, which is a blessing when you encounter non-endemic ads. This means advertisers will pay only if a user watches their video ads.

TrueView will roll out later this year. Mohan and Salzman predicted 50 percent of ad campaigns will include video ads bought in this cost-per-view vein.

Another new video ad format leverages Google’s Teracent technology, which was acquired in 2009. Specifically, the technology uses signals such as geographic location, language, time and Website content to “dynamically alter” the creative elements of an ad in real-time to make it more relevant.

According to a post in the Media Decoder blog at NYTimes.com, there are metrics more important than clicks. Salzman said, “Whatever the marketing goal is, you should be able to measure it.”

Metrics more important than clicks?!? As Paris Hilton would say, “That’s hot.”