Online Video Advertising...

According to this Techcrunch article, Google AdSense is rolling out a video-based ad placement service. Apparently, "Google is finally opening up the advertising program to any publisher in the U.S. that serves one million or more video streams per month." That's a fairly big threshold to reach so clearly only top-rated streaming sites will be able to participate in the program.

Funny, but one of these sites is Google's very own YouTube, which means the 70 million videos available may begin to feature what are arguably minimally intrusive text/video banners (see the article for some screenshots). It will be interesting to see how this very rapid transformation of the YouTube viewing experience will be taken by its loyal user base. If it's successfully incorporated (which would make it instantly mainstream), then that could mean significant additional revenues for any number of video content sites (including Cutcaster) that find traditional site banners either too annoying or too tacky.