Sometime in 2008, Google launched a new Adsense feature called Video Units.  The video units allowed publishers to embed video players of different sizes into their sites, to try and earn revenue from clicks on the video ads.

Today Google has announced that the feature is not performing as well as they had hoped, and they will be retiring it by the end of April.

This move doesn’t come as much of a surprise.  The videos in most categories were fairly poor, and I doubt became much of a draw on anyones site.  

As well, it was impossible to mix the Google video units with your own streaming video content; you had to embed a dedicated player for them.  Had the Google team worked on out this shortcoming, the adoption rates for the service would surely have been much better.