Google has announced their much-anticipated contextual video ad program. Ads will be displayed as static images, but clicking starts a video with fast-forward, pause, and volume controls. A separate click takes the viewer to the advertiser’s site.

Now’s a perfect time to jump on those video podcast sites and download the tools you need to turn your ads into eye-magnets. You can bid for play in the same way as usual (CPC or CPM) and geo-target locally, nationally, or internationally. So, brush up on the version of English the other country speaks, too.

When you think about content, consider that teens are more graphically and video oriented than adults and they represent between 12 and 15 million shoppers in the U.S. alone. (James Maguire has some excellent tips for designing your site to attract and appeal to teens, here at e-Commerce-guide.com.) The one thing above all else to remember is: keep it interesting. Teens bore easily.

And what’s one of the top things teens buy online? Music, of course. With a cell phone in the hands of nearly every teen, you have an opportunity to direct them to a merchant that allows users to download their favorite tunes. And they’re more willing to pay to download to a mobile phone, than any other service. At $2-3$ a pop for a mobile download, the dollars can add up fast.

Online retail spending is expected to rise to $211 billion in this year ($138 B, excluding travel), and a significant chunk of that will be in music sales. Download some money.

Joel Comm always has something interesting to say about AdSense. So when I ran across this article by him called “Choosing Your Advertisers,” I wondered how I could have missed the significance of it when he first published it last summer.

What’s interesting is Joel’s take on the new �Advertise on this site� feature that started appearing in AdSense ads late in the summer of 2005. As he says:

“When the advertiser clicks on that link, they�re taken to a landing page at Google from where they can open an AdWords account. And here�s the thing: you can customize that page.

Now, I�m not just talking about the colors. You should certainly match the colors on this page to the colors of your site so that it looks like the advertiser is talking to you — the publisher of a site he trusts — rather than Google, a site he might not care a fig about. But you can also add a message, describing your site to encourage advertisers to sign up.”

If you’re putting AdSense code on solid, legitimate content sites, make sure you read Joel’s entire article – and consider ways to use that advertiser sign up page to increase your AdSense revenues.

And don’t forget to join Joel’s excellent AdSense Chat Forum while it’s still free.