Jason Dowdell of Marketing Shift recently posted an interesting article called Video Ads Go Contextual. According to the post, “Contextual advertising company Vibrant Media now links video ads to in line text. The IntelliTXT service uses the double green underline that you are doubtlessly familiar with from blogs and news sites.”
I’ve never really liked the IntelliTXT service, as I personally think it’s rather annoying to have a double green line under some random text throughout your content. I like to use the cursor as a pointer when I read, and when I mistakenly mouseover the text and get a popup it’s rather annoying.
But, let’s discuss the technology: the technology of linking video ads to the in line text is a great setup in leading up to real contextual video. I’m surprised that Google hasn’t done anything with this yet, but maybe they just haven’t bought the technology yet. I’m sure someone must be working on or have a patent on the contextual video technology?