Adify is an interesting new player in the video space. Underneath the heading of “Community Driven Ad Networks,” their blog states that:
At Adify, we are developing a business model that “wraps around” this emerging form of content creation with a unique set of services for supporting monetization. Our community networks are designed to enable any participant – publisher, advertiser or user / enthusiast – to benefit directly from helping in the advertising sales or support process. We think that this is a breakthrough model with the same potential to democratize the business side of online media.
Of course there are alternatives for anyone seeking to spread the use of their video in either a specific vertical or across many channels. Today, however, Adify entered into a partnership with vSocial to allow publishers the option of publishing, branding and spreading their user generated content.
vSocial is a social networking for video platform that enables content owners, site operators and online marketing organizations to custom brand, target, virally distribute and monetize their message via video, so this partnership makes for an interesting platform for publishers looking outside the Revver or YouTube models.
According to the press release, this partnership shows some differentiation from competitors by enabling the publisher to include advertising through ease of use:
“Enabling in-video advertising is the next logical step in the evolution of the online video space,” said Mark Sigal, CEO and co-founder of vSocial. “By integrating our vConnect video platform with Adify’s advertising platform, we are giving video publishers a simple way to create value around their content and their brand in a manner that harnesses the power of social networking to create greater reach than has been available in the past.”
The biggest problem I see with this new platform is the reluctance many publishers may have for turning over their content to serve ads which they have limited or no control over. Revver has done a decent job at confronting this worry by allowing some control of ad content, and by building up its own brand since well-known “vlogs” are using the service.
While attempting to bring some democracy to video generation, this partnership still has a few questions of ad-relevancy and long term vision to make clear before publishers begin signing up.
It will be interesting to watch consumer *tolerance* of video ads. The industry is already trying to find the ‘sweet spot’ in terms of video ad placement/insertion and (the biggie) length.
Also, the contextual placement thing is going to be damn tricky — even with helpers like tags. There are bound to be some ads/brands winding up next to video content that they do NOT wish to be associated with. The negative reaction (of advertisers) will be much stronger than what we see in the realm of fixed images and text.
I predict a lot of slop over the next few months. Ultimately it will sort out.