Recently, we've all heard that Google is developing a form of online payment system similar to PayPal. Many people's first reaction was that if it's like PayPal then Google is going after EBay.

While this seems to make sense and is in line with the company's vision, I don't think that's the reason for this, at least not in the near future.

Others have speculated that they want their PayPal clone to be for subscription services, such as web hosting. While I agree with the subscription part, I don't necessarily agree with the hosting aspect. While I have no doubt that Google could, and likely will, get into the hosting game at some point, I don't see that as an immediate need for the company at this time.

There was also a rumor that Google was developing an IPod like service and would sell music via the aforementioned subscription service. To me this seems a little more likely but not the whole picture.

Finally, we know that Google has been steadily working on and improving video search and that recently there were thoughts that they'd offer subscription based video.

We are getting much closer to what I see this new service being. I do see a subscription service, but I see it serving both audio and video files. Further, I think the video service is going to be the bigger of the two services. This is the one they will want to promote more aggressively for a few reasons.

Remember when Google was looking for someone experienced in negotiating dark fiber? At the time people were (and still are) speculating that Google was going to get into the ISP game.

At the time I didn't think the sole purpose of Google's foray into fiber was to go the ISP route and I still don't.

By now you may see where I am going with this.

Google wants the fiber to help it serve media on demand; primarily video, but some audio as well. Maybe even games in the future.

Further, I see Google going a step further and perhaps offering two flavors of video on demand. In one scenario you pay a monthly subscription to get your video and audio uninterrupted, or for free you can get video and audio with streaming ads inserted into the media.

Think about that for a second. Google could be the first online company to insert streaming video ads into an online video on a massive scale.

Other engines like MSN and Yahoo! have begun experimenting with rich media advertising, but again they are geared to a more general audience. The Google ads could be tailored, to a degree, in that they will be much more relevant.

They could apply the technology they have developed for AdSense to determine what the message in the streaming media is and match it to a corresponding media ad. After all, they've been developing the ability to understand video for some time, so it's not much of a stretch to imagine that they could tie the two technologies together in some form.

In other words, if a person searches for a particular video, they will see mini commercials inserted into the video which is of a similar theme as the video.

Essentially each video becomes like a mini TV show - complete with commercials. The advantage Google will have when compared to the networks is that the ads will be relevant to the viewer of the media, as opposed to a blanket advertising that the advertisers hope will hit the right people at the right time.

And essentially this has been Google's model for some time. They assume (quite rightly in my opinion) that we will 'put up' with ads in exchange for free stuff. In addition, there will be those users who find the ads useful and click through to the site.

This is the premise behind Gmail, free web based email with a huge email inbox and the only thing you give up is exposure to targeted ads. Why couldn't they transfer this type of service to a media platform?

It could be a whole new revenue model for Google, in addition to AdWords and AdSense you now have an entire streaming media advertising option available.

In addition, because of the dynamic nature of the AdWords platform, you may not see the same ad on the same video, the system should be able to pick from a pool of matching ads and serve them in the video, and one ad could appear in multiple videos. All that would be required is a way to allow the user to click through to a website. But media players such as Windows Media Player and Real Player already offer that ability. So it isn't too difficult to imagine Google a having similar ability (think Gbrowser for this).

The same could be done with streaming audio. Advertising could be created targeting various demographics and the ads could be dynamically inserted into the stream. A mini browser (again, the Gbrowser) could open a corresponding web page ad.

My main thought behind this move into streaming advertising is because I think that's the next natural evolution of the online advertiser. In general humans become bored with the status quo, and right now the status quo is text ads, with a few banners thrown in to help 'mix it up.'

But banners and text ads have been the only source of online advertising since the beginning of search. It's time for a new form of advertising. If we draw parallels to non-search advertising, consider that we have TV commercials, radio ads and print ads, and within each there are many varieties, yet with search there aren't that many varieties.

Sure some online advertising providers try and mix it up with different ad layouts and formats but essentially we have text or image ads and not much else. Even the streaming radio stations use the traditional radio ad format, hitting as many people as they can with generic ads and hoping that some actually pay attention. The streaming radio ads aren't as focused as they could be.


Rob Sullivan
Head Organic Search Strategist
Enquiro Full Service Search Engine Marketing


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