Contextual Video ads are coming. We’re starting to see them show up in places like Vidsense.com and other like Dave TV. Contextual ads are popular now, and it looks like the major players who create video content are embracing it, too. Penn Media recently started a program called Vidsense.
Here’s the press release from Penn Media regarding Vidsense:
Penn Media Announces Vidsenseâ„¢
Penn Media announced its most ambitious advertising and content initiative to date: Vidsenseâ„¢. Vidsenseâ„¢ is a program whereby websites place a proprietary video player on their site and streamed content that matches the website content is delivered.
Mokena, IL (PRWEB) May 10, 2005 — Humor websites are delivered comedy clips, history websites delivered historical video clips, political websites are delivered topical news content. All content is preceded by a short 15 to 30 second streamed video commercial. Revenues generated from the video views are shared with the sites placing the player on their site. Penn CEO, Jaffer Ali stated,
“While we are still in beta, we believe the time has come for Vidsenseâ„¢. Penn built the largest network of e-zines on the internet and now we are building the largest video network online through Vidsenseâ„¢. This is a merging of all our management team’s collective experience. We all hailed from the video content world and then moved online in 1998. Creating and maintaining a video network will be a function of the quality of the content. As always, content is king – a cliché but a true cliché nonetheless.â€
Penn has secured access to over 100,000 hours of content ranging from George Carlin and Abbott &Costello to speeches of JFK and Ronald Regan. Ali continued,
“Vidsenseâ„¢ is much more than a revenue sharing platform for websites. Most sites cannot afford to license content, encode, stream and then sell advertising for their site. Most sites do not have the reach. The Vidsenseâ„¢ program takes care of all of this.â€
The sites put simple code on their site and Vidsense™ does all the rest. Vidsense™ benefits the sites in two ways. First, quality content helps build traffic because clips change daily and people will want to visit to see what new video clip will be playing on the website. The second benefit is the revenue share from national advertisers that require reach. Penn’s VP of Advertising, Jeanie Davis said,
“We have been running in-house advertising while in beta. We are interviewing ad rep firms that specialize in selling :15 and :30 spots. With broadband exceeding 55% penetration, the growth potential of Vidsenseâ„¢ is Penn’s new focus.â€
Vidsense™ is generating just under 1 million views per month on approximately 100 internally owned properties and is expected to exceed 25 million monthly views by year’s end.