Using its nearly ubiquitous AdSense network, Google is going to start delivering video ads from The Wall Street Journal, Life/Style Television and others to a small group of sites that choose to test the new program. Like their standard text ads, the video ones will be determined contextually. Of course, we can expect this relatively small-scale “experiment” to expand dramatically over the next year.
Via: Gizmodo
Maxim Magazine have released this video of their photo shoot with Lucy Pinder. Besides showing off her awesome body in the video, Lucy gave some insight on her favorite feature. “My favorite part of my body would probably have to be my boobs because they keep me working”.
Via: Kineda.com
iStockVideo has an interesting proposition if you are a pro or semi–pro shooter with some decent video content that might work well as stock footage. Built on iStockPhoto, this new site just launched in September and functions as a clearing house for those who make — and for those who need — great looking video. Credits are sold at $1 each and video clips run from 5 - 50 credits per download. A quick look through the latest upload section (nice mouse-over Ajax widget function) doesn’t seem to show that anything there has actually sold yet…
YouTube has created a new advertising concept called participatory video ads. Each day at YouTube’s home page, one video ad will be featured. It will rise and fall based on its own entertainment merits, judged by users. The participatory video ad, which visitors must click on to view, is one way the company is demonstrating how it plans to do Internet advertising differently.
To understand the power of the new medium, Kingdon points to this sample Sony commercial for its new TV, which has had more than 3 million viewers.
“How much money do you think advertisers would pay to get 3 million people to see and comment on your advertising?” said Kingdon, who declined to say how much. “Where else can advertisers get that immediate feedback? This starts to leverage the full potential of what is very new on the Web, which is a video community site.”
Paris Hilton has also launched a participatory video commercial advertising her debut album. People who click on it will be lead to her own channel which she will update with new videos and added features such as interviews and scenes behind making videos.. hmmm. They can subscribe to her channel and find out videos that she likes.. Hmmm! 
Via: Mercury News
BusinessPlanPosting.com recently unveiled their new digital video elevator pitch service which offers entrepreneurs a new approach to introducing their business ideas to investors over the internet. As part of the American Venture Network, the service allows SME’s seeking venture capital to upload and store, free for the first 30 days, a two minute digital video file to accompany their business plan.
Via: DV Guru
A certain dot com agency went (way) out on a limb and is taking a beating for what might prove to be one of the most lame, and comment thrashed, attempts at creating a ‘viral’ web video to-date. The real proof of any concept is in the pudding and this one def. did not deliver. So, now they are getting rightly slammed for an obvious effort to appear hip and cool (Warning; it’s like watching a traffic accident in slow motion). There are plenty of people flaming about it so we won’t pile-on anymore than that. It was actually this unsolicited response which ‘does work’ that prompted us to post the drama via Madison Ave.
What will be interesting to see in the coming weeks is the defamation law-suit from Subway.. unless they actually approved that file - with their brand front and center - to be uploaded and ridiculed in such a manner.
Microsoft Corp.’s MSN has a strong position in Web video ads, ahead of Google and Time Warner’s AOL and behind only Yahoo, in contrast to its almost non-existent market share in the pay-per-click and banner ad market. MSN spent heavily in recent years to acquire Internet rights to programming from major TV networks, and is strongest in news clips via a 99 year deal with General Electric’s NBC. Microsoft recently signed a deal to license episodes of the Fox comedy “Arrested Development” for the next three years.
Yahoo, in contrast, has focused on its own video content, while AOL carries content from Time Warner’s Warner Bros. and cable channels Nickelodeon and the History Channel. The popularity of YouTube, which doesn’t insert ads into video uploaded to its site but soon plans to, has forced its competitors to carry user-uploaded video on their sites as well.
Via: Seeking Alpha
The folks over at Texterity.com have been doing some good work migrating mainstream media publishers content into web ready e-zines. We just noticed they put together a Great Example for Sports Illustrated 2006 Swimsuit issue which includes several of their famous (and popular!) behind the scenes video clips. Tough job searching for cool video #_#
According to the site; Published Web Format (PWF) provides a flexible approach to presenting information using standard HTML and Javascript, with underlying SVG and XML data structures.
The future of rich-media digital publishing would seem up for grabs and we are looking forward to see what the Adobe absorbed Macromedia divison will finally roll-out someday soon.
About.com is making a bigger commitment to original video content and is offering new video ad formats through its new video player, developed by online video firm Brightcove. As video ad inventory demand increases, the new player gives About.com the ability to produce its own video content as well as to offer advertisers video ads with interactive components.
The new player will allow About.com to “significantly increase” the number of advice and how-to videos produced by its expert guides, according to About.com president and CEO Scott Meyer. Noting the system’s robust publishing platform, Meyer added, “‘This technology needs to scale to 500 or more guides all over the world.”
The publisher aims to produce at least 500 original video clips by the end of the year, featuring its current guides as well as “experts” with more television experience. About.com currently offers 56 of its own video clips and partners with Web video distribution company GoFish to provide thousands more videos. Video on the site is offered in the Style, Home and Garden, Gadgets and Health channels.
Via: Clickz
Online video has arrived with highly publicized and explosive growth over the past 18 months. That growth will continue unabated for the next two years while advertisers grapple with various methods to reach the audience that has adopted the channel so rapidly. A large number of business models and providers are emerging to serve and monetize a very complex value chain.
Internet video content has fragmented into three tiers that are defined by production value. User-generated content presents both the greatest challenge and the biggest opportunity for advertising and promotion executives.
Background
In 2004 Mitsubishi produced an ad called See What Happens. It turned into a remarkable success. “They cut off the end of the commercial so that the only way you could see it was to go onto their website,” remembers Ari Bluman, the CEO of 24/7 Real Media, an ad services network that brings video content and ads together.
Mitsubishi was targeting the sophisticated video consumers who took the time to research their auto purchases before buying. “They drove the users to one of the two places where they could do that research–the dealership or the web–to see what happens,” Bluman continues. “It was a phenomenal success and the sales followed.”
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