Google to sell display ads in Web videos

found via yahoo news / Reuters

Thu Feb 21, 1:35 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Web search leader Google Inc plans to start selling ads to appear in Web videos and has signed up 20 customers, as it aims to do for videos what it has done for text.

Partners include YuMe, an online video advertising network, Brightcove, an Internet TV platform, and comedy site MyDamnChannel.

Brightcove, whose customers include CBS Corp, Time Warner Inc and Discovery Communications Inc, will begin offering the technology to its clients.

YuMe, a Redwood City, California-based start-up, said on Thursday, it will serve InVideo overlay adverts as part of Google’s AdSense for video beta advertising program.

Google has traditionally used AdSense for text-only advertising but said the video program extends its offer to targeted, contextually relevant video graphical ads and text overlays.

Google has been working on ways of developing advertising revenue for online video since it bought YouTube, the video-sharing site, in November 2006.

As Internet access speeds become faster around the world more television and Hollywood-produced video content is moving to the Web on sites like Hulu.com, owned by News Corp and NBC Universal, and Fancast.com, owned by Comcast Corp.

YuMe said Google is one of the third-party feeds accepted by YuMe’s Adaptive Campaign Engine, which helps Web publishers in its network match each video ad impression with the best money-making ad placement in realtime.

(Reporting by Yinka Adegoke and Kenneth Li; editing by Greg Mahlich, Richard Chang)