What’s that? Contextual online video advertising you say…
June 25th, 2007 by Lloyd Gofton
A considerable leap in online video advertising has taken place today, and it may have come from a source that you were not expecting.
blinkx, the video search engine, has introduced AdHoc, a video advertising platform that reviews video content and places relevant advertising against it.
According to blinkx’s press release: “AdHoc leverages blinkx’s patented speech-to-text transcription and visual analysis technology to understand video content more thoroughly and effectively.” Got it?
AdHoc also offers options that include pre-, post- and mid-roll placement, (Ad placement at the start, middle or end of the video), and works with a range of ad systems including Google’s AdWords, which is a smart move to make the platform more universally accepted.
blinkx claims that the AdHoc platform will revolutionise video advertising in the same way that Google’s AdSense transformed advertising on the Web.
AdHoc certainly seems to be breaking new ground in contextual online video, and whilst I’m sure other providers have been working on similar advertising packages, blinkx has beaten the likes of Google, MySpace and Yahoo! by introducing the first contextual online video advertising platform. Hats off!
However, there does seem to be a slight draw back. According to a piece on the Register; “The video hosters, who allow the search engine to index their content, won’t necessarily get a say on what product their users are being associated with, which could see some interesting conflicts emerge.”
If this is true, comparisons will surely be drawn with blind networks where advertisers place adverts on a network, but do not have control over where the final ads will be served.
Interesting times are ahead in the online video advertising space, and as with all aspects of the online world, monetisation remains the focus.
