Mountain View, Calif.-based Keystream is leaving the beta status behind and launching SmartAd today, an SaaS platform that enables publishers and advertisers with falling ad revenues to start inserting advertisement overlays into Web videos right into its ‘empty spaces’, meaning any area on the screen where the action isn’t taking place.
And who thinks inserting unavoidable, out-of-place logos and interactive ads in video streams (even live-streamed events) is a good idea, besides Keystream and hopefully a very small amount of desperate publishers and advertisers? Right, nobody does.
Sounds more like a DumbAd to me. If a video stream includes a scene featuring a big blue sky, a white wall or a grass field in the background, the maker probably put it in there for a reason. Who in their right mind would want to see ads placed right on top of those, even if that’s not where the ‘action’ is taking place? Annoying people with ad overlays that cover vital scenes or parts of a video stream is even worse, but not that much.
The company’s press release reads: “blank spaces are found on average once every two minutes, providing an ad insertion opportunity that increases video ad monetization.” So that means you can expect to be bothered about 15 times if you’re watching a 30-minute video stream.
And they still have the nerve to say SmartAd “offers dramatic improvement in user experience” and that the ads are “non-obstructive” and “increase audience engagement”. I’d say they have a good chance to increase gagging and uncontrolled outbursts of anger by people who are tired of being fed irrelevant advertising without the ability to turn it off, but maybe I’m missing something.
As NewTeeVee points out, the UK’s ITV is already trialling the technology, as are USswitch.com and Freesat in the USA. Let’s hope the trials fail. Obviously, there is a need to open the advertising spigot when it comes to Web videos, but this is not the way to do it.
Keystream raised $1.3 million in venture capital led by Voyager Capital and joined by a couple of angel investors at the beginning of 2008 and is in the process of looking for a second round. Any investors looking to support a rotten idea can apply now.
Robin,
I agree, but I don’t knock them for trying. Video has got to find a new monetization model or die.
I could see it work for “sports” videos where this is already done on TV. Not sure I see it for my family wedding video.
My 2 cents.
“Video has got to find a new monetization model or die.”
Somewhat agree, but Keystream is taking a step backwards.
Well you have to agree with JD. We’re really scratching our heads in the online media business at the moment. Everyone wants web-tv, we wanna make web-tv, but we haven’t found a proper way to pay for it yet.
I see several solutions, but they’re all far from perfect: pre-run commercials, pop-up bars with commercials OR pay-to-use-our-site. The last one is really risky and will definately cut the userbase drastically.
Keystreams solution isn’t the way to go though.
A little bit of privacy please; in the end they will come by and tattoo adds on your kids forheads; or what?
Movie makers will have to make movies with “empty spaces” labelled “Your Ad Here”. 8(
That is going to be annoying, how distracting! I’ve seen annoying ads on YouTube videos and it seems like others are following.
Oh great.
How many people here are expecting web video ads of the future not to be annoying? Raise your hand.
i’m not sure, but does the definition of “non-obstructive” include smack dead center? the publisher should have control over where the ad runs and the sizes permitted so at least they can try and accommodate.
just what every video-producer wants to think about, where am i going to fit an accompanying ad overlay into my masterpiece?
also, is the conversion rate on video text ads even that great? how often do you click out of what you’re watching…this needs to be a branding/influencing tool which would certainly impact monetization because are you building a brand by annoying your target audience?
Excuse me but businesses follow trends. The dot tv tubification of niche sites will only continue to explode, hopefully more if the yearly premium is dropped.
Folks might not be interested in seeing an ad on a YouTubed UFO, Ghost or Palin clip but that doesn’t mean there’s not room for another player. Besides innovation is innovation. On second thought folks may not mind an ad for cheese grits plastered over the mind numbingly retarded Palin clips.
bton: It’s a very relevant issue (how to get people to click the ad). A solution could be, that the window opened after the video was viewed? And of course, that the user would be clearly informed on this matter in the pre-roll/overlay ad.
The problem with branding-ads are that it’s very defficult to determine their effectivity – how do you measure one ads influence on the companys brand?
That’s why only huge companies like Nike and Coca-Cola run brand-ads on TV (here in Denmark anyway). So we need to find a way to display ads alongside video, and we need to find a way to get people to click them.
I hate ads as much as the next guy, but unfortunately their nessecary if you want the service to remain free of charge.
Another solution could be a pre-roll commercial, and then a follow-up commercial (for the same product) afterwards?
Great Idea just like this one
http://www.yout...te-to-over.html
I have an idea for a company and I’d like $11 mil from VC to try it out. Here is the gist: we create a technology that allows us to place ads where the video originally went. The original video is then airs on a completely different site not viewable by the consumer. The consumer then watches the ad in full definition completely forgetting why he or she was surfing on that page to begin with. We charge $100 CPMs and make all the VC money back within weeks of the initial investment. Who’s with me?
That’s why I love TechCrunch. You pull no punches. keep it up.
There you go, RickRolls as a business model. Call it AdRolls.
I find it odd that with the level of education and technical aptitude of the founders of this company none of them bothered to ask the advertisers or the producers what they thought of this idea? I am not sure what is more ridiculous and stupid – the demo or the fact that none of these founders did any market research to discover that very few publishers and even fewer producers were interested in this type of advertising experience.
This will be abused just like pay per click advertising already has been. There are already programs that run on websites that use the users browser to auto click on all the ads on a page while the user is visiting the site. I hate this abusive crap. Intrusive ads ANNOY PEOPLE they don’t like them when will these idiots learn?
As a few have said, there needs to be a way for people to make money off of long, and even short, form video and I guess this is one way of doing it. I personally prefer the model Revision3 is using with the occasional lower third that pops up every once in a while. If there needs to be ads in a video that I can’t get rid of, having them in a predictable spot that I can point to and say ad (instead of it floating in the clouds or wherever Keystream wants to put them) is the less of two evils methinks.
I think we’re going to see this kind of annoying advertising used to get low-volume video content creators to upgrade to paid services. The same way Vimeo recently introduced Vimeo Plus and encouraged adoption by crippling some of the features of the free accounts, I think we’re going to see Keystream ads used to force people to upgrade.
I’d like to know how they are able to accurately identify “white space ” or non occupied space in real time.
Full disclosure here, my name is Schuyler Cullen and I’m the CEO of Keystream. Robin, thank you for your post.
I want to take a minute and clarify two points about the platform and feedback we’ve received from broadcasters and Web video publishers.
First, although it’s the platform’s goal to identify as many potential ad insertion locations as possible, they are not intended to all be used during one viewing session. Different locations and different ads will be used for each viewer. The Web video publisher can control the frequency with which ads appear taking into consideration user demographic and geographic information and their monetization strategy. They also have control over the general location where ads can appear on the video, forbidding, for example placements in the center 9th.
Second, the publishers who are deploying our platform have seen a big increase in user interactions (roll-overs and click-throughs) as compared to pre-rolls and banner overlay ads and no negative feedback. As an example, ITV, in the UK hasn’t received any complaint from viewers about our ads, whereas in the past they received a lot of complaints about pre-rolls and banner overlays.
Anyone who expects video without some form of advertising is being unrealistic. The question is how do you make the video advertising less painful to the viewer as possible. Our customers believe that our SmartAd platform does just that.
Robin, since we didn’t get a chance to speak, I would be more than happy to discuss things further with you. Feel free to email me at schuyler@keystream.com.
- Schuyler Cullen, CEO, Keystream
If you could do a Mike Myers type wayne’s world parody and make it fun it could work.
Well, I think keystream has started something which might evolve into a niche monetization platform. Who knows ?
I think content generators or an amateur movie maker like me are looking for investments all the time. If I were to remake “Sex and the city” and make sure that Sarah jessica parker carried a GUCCI bag in a scene which can be clicked on and bought, that’s quite amazing for the viewer. At the same time I can get some money from GUCCI, maybe.
In the above situation, I am not sure how keystream can help though ? Schuyler ,any thoughts.
R..
“SmartAd” ? Hmmm… What a good name !
That reminds me that I still own the SmartAd.com domain name, and that I have some ideas to do better than just parking it !…
If any co-entrepreneurs or investors are interested in changing the Ad landscape, get in touch with me…
Before we rush to judgment, can we see a demo?
Also Robyn, from a professional stand point, I find it odd you didn’t reach out to the company before bashing them publicly on TechCrunch.
JD,
Please visit our gallery to see some short demos of what the viewer experience is like with our ad format.
http://www.keys...om/gallery.html
-Schuyler
Hi Schuyler,
On the demo page the player in Firefox grinds to a halt on OSX, the video is not smooth, and a popup says:
“A script in this page is causing Adobe Flash Player 9 to run slowly. If it continues to run, your computer may become unresponsive. Do you want to abort the script? [Y/N]”
You can contact me offline to pay for my qa services
Are you processing motion vectors on the client side or what? Nice blue bar showing the ad timeline, who’s idea was that?
Congrats on the launch,
-Jason
offering the Publisher choices such as frequency, location, delayed link, static ad (no link) etc…process of refinement….as in any new product…bottom line…Publisher’s starving for revenue…I wouldn’t count this out…any other thoughts?
The thing that I think Keystream and other click-type ad companies are missing is that I don’t go to YouTube (or similar sites) for the ads, so anything that requires a click is ineffective. If you want advertising to work for me, you have to:
(1) Get out of my way. No pop-ups, pop-unders, page-covering expanders, moving obstacles, or interstitials. Avoid moving, flashing, distracting ads, also. If you interfere with my enjoyment of the site, you’ve lost my business.
(2) Entertaining, humorous ads get a little bit of a pass. But this does not mean that putting Frank Caliendo between me and the content I’m there to see is going to work.
(3) Advertising is already pervasive and intrusive. If you want to improve my response to your advertising, choose sites that limit the amount of ads they carry. Compare this to morning drive time on the radio. Play five to seven commercials, then play one or two songs. Then let the DJ talk for a couple of minutes, followed by another five to seven commercials. Sorry, but the content gets buried in the advertising, and YOUR message gets buried in the fifteen other advertising messages I just heard.
(4) The only effective advertising is NOT instant-response advertising. When you open your newspaper or magazine, do you immediately go down to the nearest store to pick up the products advertised? No, you pick up a few of the many products advertised at a later time, when you happen to be at the store anyway. As long as Big G and other online ad purveyors portray this as an immediate-response advertising medium, they will mislead their customers (advertisers) and those customers are destined to be disappointed.
There are already plenty of sites I refuse to visit because of their ads. Either they have too many ads, or their advertising is intrusive, or their advertising misuses my computer’s resources (lots of “rich media” ads are like this, as are many JavaScript ads). Or perhaps their ads are deceptive. (”Spyware detected on your computer. Click here to scan.”) We all know that sites have to pay for themselves or close. We can all accept the need for advertising and other monetizing activities. What we cannot accept is the idea that putting more ads in more places is the answer.
If the Web advertising industry does not see this, they are doomed.
The thing is if they actually get this onto Youtube, there is going to be some sort of riot. That or Youtube will come out with a “Youtube Pro” option you pay for, and see no ads such as blogtv.com has done.