Video search engine blinkx will launch a video ad targeting platform later this summer designed to match TV-style ads to Web content.
The blinkx AdHoc platform uses patented speech-to-text transcription and visual analysis — technologies the company already applies in its video search– to understand the content of a video ad. The platform won’t sell ads itself but will work with the ad syndicators that Web publishers have chosen, using contextual targeting to increase the value of the inventory they sell.
“Until now, online video advertising was a kind of Frankenstein’s monster — an attempt to cobble together technology that was built for text Web banner advertising and apply it to an entirely new medium, the video Web,” blinkx founder and CEO Suranga Chandratillake said in a statement.
Blinkx AdHoc will give advertisers the ability to choose from a flexible menu of ad timings and formats, including pre-, mid- and post-roll ads, dynamically selected banners, in-video mini-banners and a post-roll catalog view.
Blinkx is also reported to be planning a limited beta test later this summer of Blinkx Broadband TV, a Joost-style Internet peer-to-peer TV service showing full-screen videos from Web sites blinkx indexes, along with targeted advertising.
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