TV is dead, long live the commercial, part two

Most everyone has been talking about the death of the commercial for years now, but with the boost of online video (which was bound to happen as everyone got broadband) things are not only looking up, new video channels seem to appear daily. See the video blimp and the video posters in the tube.

Mark Tutssel, worldwide chief creative officer at Leo Burnett is even touting youtube as a media channel, which I'm sure will cheer up the guys at youtube whom I hear burn through $12 million a month with no business model or income in sight.

Apart from similar services, such as google video and hundreds of lookalikes, youtube might find that users choose to upload their content where they get a slice of the ad-income-pie. An article in TV week "Gold rush in viral video" announces that Revver plans to come out of beta already in July. Revver shares the ad revenue with the video content creators, much like google adwords let a chunk of the income spill on to the sites that use it. One of the most famous videos released on Revver is the Coke and Mentos fountain insanity.

Revver's software lets video creators track their videos across the Internet, whether on MySpace, blogs, social networking sites, via e-mail or on Revver, said Steven Starr, Revver's founder and CEO. "Revver's [software] allows for dynamic ad insertion, so where the video is being viewed we are serving up an ad after the video is seen," he said.

Perhaps next time you film your cat crashing into a wall, your baby sister miming to Barbie Girl or your dumb neighbour nearly castrating himself doing a stupid bike stunt, you'll opt to upload said video to a place where you could not only track its popularity, but also make a buck or two on it. Youtube needs to watch its back. Video creators might also decide to hold on a little tighter to the content they create now that they can make money on their own funny films....