In May 2006, Google announced that it would be launching a new section of AdWords with click-to-play video ads. For anyone who's unfamiliar with click-to-play video ads, they are simply videos that are displayed in areas where you would normally see a text, Flash image or AdWords advertisement. These ads can then be targeted to both site and keyword campaigns.These videos typically appear on a website as a static image, and the user can click on the play button to initiate the video advertisement.
Click-to-play video ads for AdWords are Google's attempt to target some of the vast amounts of cash generated by television advertisements, but through an internet-based format.
Google, the world's leading search engine, is a forerunner in the fight to aid accessibility on the internet, and in the past has been involved in attempts to provide accessible web search for the visually impaired. The search engine also offers a speech friendly version of Google Maps which can be cleanly read by a screen reader or presented in a Braille browser.
How accessible are Google's: click-to-play video ads for AdWords?
Under their Accessibility Guidelines for Audio and Video, the W3C say, "a text equivalent should be provided for visual information to enable the understanding of the page."
Non-text equivalents are also advised to improved accessibility for people with limited access to visual information or text; this includes people with blindness, learning disabilities and deafness. A recent article by bigmouthmedia outlined the various ways in which it is possible to create accessible maps to aid search engine optimisation, and many of the key points from this article can also be applied to making click-to-play video ads accessible.
One way in which Google could make click-to-play video ads accessible would be to provide a collated text transcript. A collated transcript allows captions with text descriptions of video information, which could be used to describe the actions, body language and events of the video. If there was any audio information that included spoken words and sound effects, such as a gun shot perhaps, this information should be provided to aid users who are deaf or suffer from visual impairment.
This approach would also benefit users who do not have sound capabilities on their PC, offering an alternative to the audio and visual conveyed within the video.
However, there are limitations as to how Google will implement such accessible video ads. Google serves its advertisements via JavaScript, which doesn't aid accessibility and is usually a poor tool for search engine optimisation. This issue is certainly something that Google is aware of, and for which they will be striving to find the most feasible solution.
How does making video advertisements accessible aid search optimisation?
Search engines rank pages on how relevant they are to the users' search query. There are various ways to increase your relevance, but one of the most significant ways to do so is to have mentions, e.g. keywords, within the body of the page. These keywords will then count towards a search engine ranking for your website towards relevant search queries.
Search engines cannot read or take any value from a number of media platforms, such as Flash or videos, unless an alternative to the media file is presented.
By providing an alternative to a video ad or any video you have embedded on your website, as described above, you are adding further content and copy to your website. By providing this additional content, you are adding to the relevance of your webpage.
This additional form of accessibility should be applied to all embedded videos within a webpage.
What are the other benefits of accessible video advertisements?
In recent years, the internet has become accessible to users with hand-held devices, such as mobile phones or PDAs, so many people are able to surf the web while they're on the move. Many of these devices do not have the capability to play such video advertisements.
There are various other issues involved in handheld devices displaying such advertisements - for example, screen size and bandwidth. However, with the continual development of handheld devices, we could possibly see a new, unique type of advertising for handheld devices emerge sometime in the future.
