This is shameless promotion since I am employed by Overlay.TV but I truly believe that this company has the holy grail to the next generation of online video. Having worked at a huge established portal, I understood all too well the challenges with monetizing video. Youtube is still testing the waters on this one. Yahoo! was still using pre-roll video and companion ads alongside of video and commanding high CPM rates that avertisers weren’t buying. What’s more: the monetization of video was limited only to the premium content on Music and News. The video channel itself ironically included only banner options. In all these cases, performance was poor for the most part because the ads were annoying and advertisers attempted to infer relevance to the video content where there was none.

Overlay.TV does a few things: It allows the user to create this relevance by empowering them to be the advertiser. The video also doesn’t have to be premium content but ANY content found on video-sharing sites. Now it’s super easy to be a publisher and add value to any video. On the consumption side, the user has the option to turn off the overlays and watch the video in its original form. Have a look at what I’m talking about: Here’s one I created of IJustine and American Eagle.

Vodpod videos no longer available. from www.overlay.tv posted with vodpod