Gotuit Launches Broadband Video Portal

Cable video-on-demand content provider Gotuit Media has launched an ad-supported broadband video Web site that promises users better navigation and less waiting.

“The Gotuit experience is about a dramatically better user interface and user experience,” Mark Pascarella, president of Gotuit Media, told ClickZ.

What separates Gotuit from the crowd of video sites is its patented “tagging” methods, which use both automated processes and human oversight to categorize each segment of a video clip based on its content. That data allows users to search for content within a video clip, and it also allows advertisers to target ads more precisely as well, Pascarella said.

“Most of the video portals allow you to search for a video. We allow you to search in a video,” he said.

The metadata is accurate to a fraction of a second, so an advertiser could use it to trigger an interstitial ad at a precise moment within the video, rather than just buy pre-roll or post-roll ads around relevant content. Video and rich media ads on the site are being sold mainly through Advertising.com’s Lightningcast division, supplemented by an in-house sales team. The site is also testing Google’s text ads on the static pages of its site.

Unlike user-generated sites like YouTube, Gotuit is offering only licensed video clips from major content providers. It has struck licensing deals with companies in music, news, sports and entertainment categories to show their licensed content on its site. So far, Gotuit has content deals with Universal Music, Reuters, Associated Press, AccuWeather, and Planet X, among others.

Gotuit will continue to add content providers to its site, as well as sign deals to power video offerings on the providers’ own sites, Pascarella said. Deals with providers in sports and music categories are expected in the coming weeks, he said.

Gotuit has been providing its search and indexing application to cable operators Time Warner and Adelphia for their on-demand content since 2003. With this move to the online video space, it faces stiff competition for users and ad dollars from both established search players like Google Video, Yahoo Video, as well as video specialists like blinkx, Brightcove, Dave.TV and Veoh Networks.