Monetizing MySpace's MTV Videos?

In what could be a milestone in the search for means to monetize videos on social network sites, MySpace has teamed with an ambitious upstart that claims it can insert ads into MTV Networks videos that consumers upload to the mega-portal.

While social networking has proven itself much more than a fad, or modern day match.com for a young demographic, finding ways to monetize the destination has proven largely elusive – and not for lack of trying.

Enter Auditude and video content giant MTV Networks. The former claims to possess a patented advertising technology that provides the opportunity for advertising to be inserted across a suite of MTV Networks’ most popular video content uploaded to MySpace, including clips from MTV and COMEDY CENTRAL, among others.

The trio of MySpace, MTV and Auditude claim this agreement enables all parties – publishers, content owners, advertisers and fans – to benefit “from the organic distribution of premium video on the Web.”

Part of that would come in the form of a revenue split for ads sold. That’s been the preferred business model for video on the Web.

MySpace is seeing green.

“Auditude is opening the floodgates for users to program video on MySpace and ensure copyright holders get paid,” said Jeff Berman, MySpace president of marketing and sales. “In one fell swoop, Auditude and its partners are empowering consumers and building a better business model. That’s a good deal all around.”

The social networking supersite explains that it’s using Auditude technology that pairs automatic identification of virtually any professional video uploaded across the Internet with an ad platform that enables content owners to serve targeted ads within that content.

The company claims it can tell the difference between video that comes from MySpace’s audience and video that comes from syndicators. Smaller Web video sites have leaned heavily on syndication deals with larger sites to stay afloat in a smaller-than-anticipated advertising market.

Auditude says its new “Attribution Overlay” capability automatically identifies content informing viewers about details of shows being viewed online. The attribution also enables the content owner to integrate information about the video clip being played.

Further, the vendor says the overlay scheme provides an opportunity for the viewer to watch additional relevant content or have access to what the company calls “commerce links” – for instance “buy show” – or merchandise related to that content.

Share this article: Email, Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Yahoo!MyWeb, Windows Live Favorites, Furl
Add this article feed to: RSS, My Yahoo, Newsgator, Bloglines