SearchForVideo Adds Sponsored Content
The video search engine is selling three levels of paid placement on its home page. HBO, BBC, Forbes.com and Atom Films are among the first publishers to participate.
SearchForVideo, a meta-search engine for online video, has rolled out a new advertising platform, allowing online video publishers to buy prime real estate on its home page to promote their video content.
The Seattle-based firm, which is run by FUSA Capital Corp., is hawking three levels of placements — featured publisher placement, featured video clip placement and keyword paid placement — mimicking the sponsored search concept popularized by traditional search marketing firms.
The featured publisher placement and featured video clip placements will allow an online video publisher to promote their brand and video content to a larger audience. SearchForVideo said the inventory of featured placements would range across several online video categories to provide a targeted audience for publishers.
At the time of launch, featured publishers included HBO, BBC, Forbes.com, Discovery Networks, Atom Films and iFilms. Featured video clips promoting “Borat,” the new movie from Twentieth Century Fox, were also visible on the SearchForVideo Web site.
The keyword paid placement option will let video publishers buy specific search keywords and associate online video clips with those keywords. The system is intended to showcase targeted online video clips for any given keyword search that is performed at the company’s home page.
Jenifer Osterwalder, chief executive officer at FUSA Capital, said the launch of the platform comes as the company’s search traffic is doubling each month. “It was the right time for us to roll out our new advertising platform…We now have a critical mass of online video publishers,” Osterwalder added.
SearchForVideo organizes popular video clips into various categories, including news, sports, entertainment, business, health and viral. The company also offers a one-click option for users to subscribe to video podcasts on Apple’s iTunes service.
These new ad options follow on the heels of another video ad platform launched this week by Brightcove. That model calls for short ads to run in pre- or post-roll form on other videos. Brightcove, like most other video sites, does not charge content owners to submit videos, but it does not guarantee placement of videos either.
Google launched its first sponsored video deal this week with a short video from Coca-cola and Mentos that followed a viral video earlier this year showing the explosive reaction between the two products.
