Watching Dara Torres on Jay Leno Let Me See the Future of Online Video Monetization
I have a sweet tooth for late night talk shows like Kimmel, Conan, Leno and Letterman. Since I don't have TV, I watch them online,
Yesterday, I was watching Leno on Hulu.com and Leno's guest Dara Torres an Olympic medalist swimmer showed me the future online video monetization.
Dara is 41 years old and headed to the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. It will be her fifth Olympic games since her first in 1984. You probably saw her all over the news two weeks ago when she reclaimed the American record for the 50m freestyle.
Back to the future of online video monetization. When Leno was interviewing Dara he asked her how she stayed in Olympic fit at 41 years old. In her response, she mentioned some superfood nurtrition product called Living Fuels. I'm a recent health nut, so I immediately paused the video and Googled "living fuels". After bookmarking the product's website I returned to the video and continued watching the interview.
My drastic pausing and Googling of the Living Fuels product surprised me. I never interact with pre- and mid-roll ads or banners ads when I watch shows on Hulu. My behavior was so unusual that it led to this Twitter, which in turn lead to the post your now reading. I'm sure your confused so let me explain in a clearer way.
Living Fuels isn't an official sponsor of Dara (yet). She mentioned the product because it is an integral part of her athlete training regiment. The same training regiment that Leno was asking her about. It wasn't planned product placement, but her unofficial product plug compelled me to pause the video and Google the product.
This is where the future of online video monetization comes into play. I shouldn't have to take drastic video pausing/open new tab/Google search measures to look up a product mentioned during a Leno interview.
The future of online video monetization will allow me to quickly find, research and buy products that are mentioned (or appear) in video content regardless of being official or unofficial product placement. It will be effortless. I'll be able to quickly browse the product during, before, or after the show without having to memorize the product's name, pause the video, open a new tab and execute a Google search.
I'm sure Google and a whole slew of startups are working on this killer video crawling/monetization technology right now. These startups would have no problem getting funding from VCs like Y Combinator (see #12 on "Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund").
Btw, I'm planning to order some Living Fuel Super Berry.
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All that to say, yes, this product purchaseability has to be extremely well integrated into video, and it's got to be everything mentioned or visible in every shot.
I'll be right back, I'ma go make that technology up, on a shoestring budget.
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I'm thinking something like AdSense running in sidebar of Gmail emails and
blog posts, but instead of pulling ads triggered from keywords in the
email/blog post text it would be triggered by products mentioned in the
video or triggered by product shape/size recognition. I'm sure Google is
working on this now.
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