Viddler’s New Tag-Based Advertising System
Mark Hendrickson
24 comments »
This past Thursday, Viddler launched an advertising system that lets companies and individuals overlay advertisements at variously tagged points within the videos it hosts. The system is very similar to Google Adwords, except advertisements are within videos instead of search results, and advertisers sponsor tags instead of search terms.
Viddler’s embeddable player has always been unique in providing content producers and viewers with the ability to place comments and tags at various points within a video. If something is funny at the 1:39 mark, you can submit the comment “lol” and it will show up as a discreet overlay at that particular time during playback. Similarly, you can tag a video during playback with “bicycle” at a point where there’s someone riding a bike. As with other video services, you can also submit tags that describe videos as a whole, rather than just particular points within a video.
While CEO Robert Sandie says that these metadata features were not developed with monetization in mind, Viddler now provides a way for advertisers to run campaigns that take advantage of both global and timed tags (the former being tags that describe videos as a whole, and the latter being tags that describe points within a video). Anyone can advertise through this system by participating in a bidding process akin to Google Adwords. Viddler has also partnered up with Amazon, and is talking with the likes of Buy.com and Shopping.com, to serve up ads for products sold by those online retailers.
The bidding process involves the choice of particular keywords through which you want to advertise. It also involves the highest CPC (cost per click) that you are willing to pay for each keyword. If you are willing to pay more per click than anyone else who wants a particular keyword, you practically own that keyword, and your advertisement will show up as an overlay in any video hosted by Viddler that has been tagged with it. This will remain the case until someone else outbids your maximum bid threshold. Viddler will email you if this happens so you can up the ante if desired. As for Amazon, its advertisements will automatically show up as overlays for tags that have not already been claimed by bidders.
A note on so-called global tags: while the placement of advertisements for timed tags naturally occur at their respective spots during playback, advertisements for global tags show up 1/4 the way through videos. They are also represented as green dots in the timeline, whereas advertisements for timed tags appear black (and regular comments show up white).
Viddler has decided to split revenues 50/50 with content producers, and it has given them a good deal of flexibility regarding the service as well. Producers can opt out of the advertising system completely or sign up for multiple levels of deployment. For example, you can deem that only advertisements from bidders can be displayed, and only through timed tags that you as a producer have created. Or you can allow Amazon to advertise as well, and through tags that your viewers create in addition to your own. For bidders’ advertisements, you will only receive money when your viewers actually click on them (not just view them); and for Amazon’s ads, you’ll only receive money when your viewers actually end up buying something from them.
If you currently publish videos on Viddler, you can set up advertisements by first going to the “Revenue” section and clicking “Enable Revenue Share”. You’ll then have to provide a PayPal account email address and/or an Amazon Affiliate ID to get paid. From this revenue section, you can also manage the tags on your videos and track how many impressions and clicks you’ve experienced for each. You can also set the advertising preferences that will apply to all of your videos (per video settings are not yet available). Advertisers who want to bid on keywords can do so here.
Viddler’s new advertising system can be compared to Google’s Adsense for Video, which has yet to be rolled out fully on YouTube, or any other video sharing service for that matter. As you can see on YouTube’s advertising page, Google plans to deploy animated flash overlays and run video commercials once those overlays are clicked on.
Below is a demonstration video by iJustine for Viddler’s new ad service:
she’s hot.
Yes! I love the Viddler player. I’m stoked to see them getting coverage on TechCrunch. Those guys are workin’ hard on building out something unique. Way to go, fellas!
lol - marketing 101, use a skank to attract guys’ attention
Interesting idea, but I think the pop-ups are way too distracting and intrusive.
Show some respect, lawrence.
Nice technology! I think this would be great on cooking shows, where the chef recommends certain manufacturers ingredients for the right taste. Maybe at the end of the video …overlay a left and right column of all the links that popped up during the video. Chef says, “Make sure to check out the recipe linkage at the end of the video”
Well just a thought…..Ok, back to the alarm clock for me
Have you seen Fork You on Vidder?
http://www.viddler.com/explore.....videos/29/
As Sleep.FM says… a great opp for the ads.
@4,6: Respect? For her? Please. Lawrence is 100% right. Justine couldn’t think her way out of a CalTrain but she’s everywhere because nerds want to sleep with her.
Love seeing Viddler getting equal time. Their player blows much of the competition away. Youtube looks like VHS compared to viddler’s tech.
Holy moly, such white teeth and such an orange face. I agree with @4 & @9. I bet she even parades around a geek boyfriend to try and give them all hope. I do like the Viddler player, though. Bangs youtube out of the atmosphere.
@11 Actually, she says she’s single
I posted about this as well last week (click my name if interested).
I hate to defend people, but I have become more impressed with Justine - she did a good job at BWE in Vegas and I think she could become the infomercial girl for Web 2.0. I am guessing she is what Amanda wanted to be.
I use Viddler for CN videos because it just works better than YT. I have tried YT and it sends basically no traffic back to CN. I like the viddler player, the upload and the timed tags.
What I hope for in some video tool is a way to do overlays for the site that created them. For example, on a CN video, I’d like to start the video with an overlay that links back to CN. When a person views my video say on x blog, there is no linkage back to CN, only to viddler. I think this is a huge opportunity for some video sharing product.
I was just commenting on my blog last week that there are some interesting innovations going on in the video space and that these experiments are not directly about monetization but have the potential for adaptation. Viddler was one of those innovators that I called out. I have thought for a good while that Viddler’s tagging and text and video commenting had great potential for advertising monetization.
I agree Allen.
Justine does good work. She creates much more interesting product videos than I’ve seen on most corporate sites. Does every woman in tech have to be continually berated just because they put on make-up?
SEX SELLS.
This system mechanism is similar to http://www.nicovideo.jp/, which is popular video sharing and commenting site in Japan.
# BTW, is 16th comment, which is posted at “November 19th, 2007 at 9:15 pm”, spam?
Everyone loves to hate — regardless of that fact, I love viddler and I look forward to seeing how their monetization strategy will reward content creators for their work!
I’ve always been a big fan of viddler especially when they were among the pioneers of the “fast forward” feature in adobe flash video hosting sites. Perhaps this advertising system is the next step to monetise their site.
Viddler? I don’t even know her.
Inetgate, Carversation is a regular poster (AFAIR) and I don’t think her/his comment was derogatory or spammy.
I like Viddler’s concept; can’t get more targetted than that (except for some Video Maps).
If there’s one improvement I’d like to see in Viddler is a narrower advertising option which remains close to the timeline.
She wouldn’t be berated for wearing makeup, but when the makeup is probably contributing to global warming its another matter. Sure, shes pretty, sure, she’s not as talented as alot of girls I know who work in this industry. I think we can safely assume its her looks which have got her were she is. The bikini in snow video showed me she was using her ample physique to appeal to the geek masses. Maybe Tech Crunch can do a sexy girls of the web industry count down. Its all about the hits, huh?
Viddler rocks…just enabled revenue share last night…the adds that showed up were not very relevant. I am guessing that they or I need to tweak the settings a bit so that more relevant adds show up…thanks for article Tech Crunch, you rock as well.
The way those bubbles keep popping up is just too intrusive and annoying, it sorta spoils the video-watching experience, i do hope they have some system to limit the number of bubbles popping up.
Can anyone compare this to MetaCafe’s system of paying $5 for every 1000 plays? I think MC is a little better just because there are hard numbers you can rely on. Saying Viddler will split revenue 50/50 is kind of vague. I’ve had google adsense on my blog for years and good content does not always equate to lots of clicking on ads.
However, if the Viddler system is better, I’d love to know how–I’m looking for a single method for monetizing my videos.