• by Shankar Gupta , September 6, 2006

ChaCha, a search engine that features human guides assisting users in their searches, launched this week. Unlike most other search engines, ChaCha serves video ads in addition to pay-per-click text links alongside its organic results.

The service allows users to enter their keywords as with a regular search engine, and then transmits those keywords to a paid guide, who uses Web resources to find results and posts those results on the screen. A keyword-targeted video ad unit plays while the guide is assisting the search.

Sean Black, CEO of ad agency J.L. Media's JL360, said he is in talks with ChaCha to run a video ad for an automotive client on the site. "It allows me to, while someone's doing an actual search, give them some sort of brand experience with the video ad," he said. Black, formerly a senior vice president at Beyond Interactive, added that J.L. Media has previously managed campaigns for Subaru. Other video ad campaigns running on ChaCha include American Express, Allstate, and Travelocity.

Greg Sterling, principal analyst of Sterling Marketing Intelligence, said that including video ads on the search engine results page will allow advertisers who want branding rather than direct response many more options. "I think it certainly has potential to get people's attention and be successful," he said. "If I really have a good experience on ChaCha and I'm waiting on search results from someone who's genuinely helping me, I'll watch a video ad."

But in order to offering the branding that big advertisers will be looking for, Sterling said, the first major hurdle is accumulating traffic. "If they don't have any volume, it's not going to be meaningful," he said. "It's all about scale."