Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire gave a presentation at VON last week that demonstrated the use of contextual ads for its online television network of on demand content. Allaire used the example of its Jewish Television Network that includes an on demand clip about Passover, a holiday coming up soon. Within the clip, apparently, is a "contextual ad" for a site that offers Passover-related products for sale. Russell Shaw over at ZDnet.com opines that this is a workable revenue model for "IPTV," but I think he means online television. It doesn't seem like IPTV operators are considering such advertising options at this point, however. The focus, of course, is on subscriber growth and service deployments. No use in advertising when you only have 7,000 viewers.
For more on Brightcove's VON talk:
- see this article from ZDnet