A carousel for ads was spotted by some folks at SEMrush spotted for new movie trailers showing in Google search on Thursday
The ad units (which have the “Ads” icon by them) features movie trailers hosted on YouTube in a carousel. The ads each have a thumbnail image from the trailer with the video length overlayed, the movie of the movie and the date it is coming out in theaters.
If this is something you as a marketer are interested in, it seems that for now, this is just a test. A Google spokesperson confirmed the test, but declined to share details, “We’re always testing new ways to improve our experience for our advertisers and users, but don’t have anything specific to announce right now.”
Chances are that this means that it is working with a select number of studios to include their YouTube trailers in this test format. At this point, you’re not going to see anything on this reflected in the Google Ads interface yet.
As usual, we know that Google is always testing new ad formats, and it’s a bit surprising that the company hasn’t leveraged YouTube videos as ads in Google search results. 2008 was when it first began experimenting with video ads and retail advertisers are now able to include video in Showcase Shopping Ads. It would make sense for movie trailers to be the start to trying to monetize YouTube content from search.