Pulse 360 Launches Text Ads for Video

Seevast’s Pulse 360 has launched a contextually targeted text link ad product for online videos.

The new ad unit will show one or two text ads as a post-roll clip, within the video viewing area. The ads can be targeted in the same ways as Pulse 360’s other text ads: contextually, geographically, demographically or behaviorally. Targeting will be based on metadata provided by the publisher.

“There’s a tremendous amount of video inventory that would benefit from this kind of advertising. We think sponsored links will be an appropriate way to monetize video content,” Mark Josephson, CMO of Seevast, told ClickZ.

Video text ads will be sold by cost-per-click (CPC), as Pulse 360’s other text ads are.

Pulse 360 has frequently adapted its targeted text links to take advantage of new technologies and new platforms, Josephson said. Examples include forays into RSS, desktop e-mail and behavioral targeting.

The company, formerly known as Kanoodle, split its search and contextual businesses and rebranded as Seevast in August. It retains the Kanoodle brand for search ads, and uses Pulse 360 for the content-targeted sponsored links side.

Video technology player TVEyes launched a targeting service for text ads in October, but it takes a different approach. The company has created audio and video indexing software, which it uses to capture content from TV and radio broadcasts. Last year, it struck a deal with AOL to index podcasts to make them searchable.

TVEyes’ new ConText Ad solution, demonstrated on their site, uses that index to target text ads from a third party provider, such as Google Adsense or the Yahoo Publisher Network. Those ads appear in their traditional form on the page near video content, instead of within the video window, as Pulse 360’s do.