Google Moves to Sell Space for Video Spots on Network of Web Sites

By SAUL HANSELL
Published: May 23, 2006
GOOGLE is taking its first steps to go after the huge market for television advertising this week with a new service that will place video commercials on the many Web sites where it sells advertising.
For now, Google isn't placing video advertising on Google.com or the other sites it runs, but it says it is considering doing so in the future.
Google's move expands the online advertising space to the network it has established for text and graphical ads — a group of sites whose number it will not disclose, though it is estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands.
Google's announcement came a week after AOL said that it had acquired Lighteningcast, a company that sells video advertisements on about 150 sites, including Space.com and Nascar.com.