Google announced today that its AdSense for Video program is now open to publishers. Previously, the AdSense program has focused on serving (usually) contextually relevant text-only ads.

Google’s video pilot program originally was going to serve up video-in-video advertising. However, as it has evolved, the video part has been replaced by targeted, contextually-relevant CPM banners and CPC text overlays. Some web publishers see these ads as an alternative to the pre-roll and post-roll advertising clips that have become the industry’s default standard advertising format.

AdSense for video is now available to publishers who, at a minimum, serve one million video streams each month and are based in the U.S. with English language sites. Google has a site that explains their video ad options at http://www.google.com/ads/videoadsolutions/

Companies hoping to create the “AdSense for video” just got some major competition.

Google has announced that it is launching a pilot with a small group of publishers to test streaming video ads in their online video content. With this pilot, publishers control when the ads play in their videos and choose which videos get the ads.

Google has several video projects relating to AdSense:

• Click-to-play video ads: This is a video ad type on Google’s content network. Any publisher opted into image ads and using one of the supported formats may see these click-to-play video ads on their sites.
• AdSense video distribution and sponsorship: Google ran 2 pilots that allowed publishers to choose video channels (short-form video clips bundled with video ads) to display on their sites.
• AdSense for Video pilot: Google is extending AdSense to online video content. Publishers in this test will be able to define at what point in their videos that streaming video ads will appear.

Here’s Google’s details on the pilot:

This is a closed pilot, which means we’re unable to accommodate additional publishers for participation. However, we’re looking forward to gathering learnings from this pilot and gaining insight into what works best for ads in video. Just as AdSense adds value to the text content on your website and is useful for your users, we think these in-stream ads in video will add value to publishers’ video content and help to deepen engagement with users watching the videos. This pilot represents our continued efforts to address the challenges faced by publishers who want to monetize their video content, by advertisers who want access to quality video inventory, and finally by users who want ads to enhance their video watching experience, not detract from it.