• by Daisy Whitney , Op-Ed Contributor, July 3, 2012

Google knows just a wee bit about display ads and a wee bit about video ads. But how do the two mediums play together?

In its recent report, Display Business Trends: Publisher Edition, the search giant analyzed “tens of billions” of impressions across its publisher products including DoubleClick for Publishers, the DoubleClick Ad Exchange and the Google AdSense network. With video in particular, Google found several trends that may be useful for publishers to keep in mind as they peddle video ads.

For starters, video advertising is one of the fastest growing segments in digital advertising, the report said. Google’s not the first company to note the rapidity of video’s growth; but corroboration from the Web behemoth on what countless other reports say is a good thing for the video ad business. Specifically, in the second half of 2011, the number of video impressions across the DoubleClick for Publishers platform grew nearly 70%, and ads were watched to completion 72% of the time, and to the midpoint 79% of the time.

The most eye-popping stat is in the growth of impressions running in wide-screen players. Google saw nearly a tripling in the number of impressions on the 640 x 360 ad unit within wide-screen players.  “Conversely, we’ve observed a decrease in standard aspect-ratio video player impressions, indicating that they’re phasing out,” the report said.

Google also found that about half of the video ads in its network register between 15 and 30 seconds, with 36% clocking in at longer than 30 seconds and 13% running less than 15 seconds.