Thursday, September 13, 2007

Blinkx Links to Targeted Video Ads

Video search engine Blinkx has teamed up with U.K. video ad network Utarget to monetize its vast library of video content. The company is testing pre-roll, post-roll and overlay ads that are can be linked to top level categories such as news, sports, and user generated.

Suranga Chandratillake, founder and CEO of Blinkx told me that the overlay ads, which run around the video through the Blinkx player and are contextual, aren't in high demand from advertisers today as they are still new. The ads can also be linked to keywords that are associated with the videos, such as banks or credit cars, he said.

The focus has been on geotargeting to reach Blinkx' U.K. audience, but relationships with U.S. based ad networks are in the works, Chandratillake said. I asked him about making news videos searchable or easier to browse, and he said that segmenting news such as text-based search engines do is an area that the company is researching.

So while Google is shunning pre-rolls for overlay ads, Blinkx still thinks there is hope for the pre-roll. It will be interesting to see which company can turn their massive video index and traffic into a more profitable venture.

Posted By John Gartner at 07:15 PM
Permanent Link: Blinkx Links to Targeted Video Ads | Comments (0)

Post a Comment

Name:
Email:
WebSite:
Comment:
Remember Me
Subscribe