Reuters Labs (U.S.) is now testing contextual ads based on what is being seen or discussed in a new video. In their words:

As words are spoken in the video the advertising can change to match keywords.

We watched several videos. At this point, the service has either few ads (our guess) or is way off. Technology comes from ScanScout.

1) We viewed a news video about the wildfires currently taking place in Greece.
Title: Wildfires threaten Olympia
The first ad, directly below the video box, was for Travelocity and then an ad for a video game based on the writing of Tom Clancy appeared. Link to Amazon.

2) Story title: Burmese protest in Thailand
++ A) Video Ad For Royal Bank of Scotland Group
++ B) Story begins: Ad for Travelocity
++ C) About 65 seconds into story, again ad for Tom Clancy Video game.

3) Michael Vick Suspended by NFL
++ A) Story begins: Ad for Travelocity

4) The Lookahead: Awaiting Bernanke
++ A) Video Ad For Royal Bank of Scotland Group
++ B) Travelocity
++ C) About 60 seconds into 67 second video, ad for Tom Clancy Video game

In October, 2006, we posted about TVEyes doing work with contextual placing ads near videos based on what is spoken in the video.

Next, Mark Up Reuters Video with “Popup Video.”

Add comments and subtitles to Reuters News Videos. The user can control where and when on the video the comment will appear. Comments submitted by user must be approved by an admin before others can see the comment. Very useful in subtitling videos for foreign consumption.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 27th, 2007 and is filed under Information Industry, Search News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.