Every day I read about a new company willing to place ads near videos as a source of income. For some reason, video producers feel they can monetize their content with well placed ads. KeyStream are the latest offenders. According to Wired:
The new feature, called SmartAd, uses an algorithm that automatically identifies and inserts ads into portions of the video stream that aren’t exactly essential to the clip’s digestion. Think: put an ad on every square inch of a race car or baseball infield fence.
Every sqaure inch? That’s seriously bordering on spam. When will companies learn that if content is not popular enough, it will never reach enough viewers to have ads become effective. If a producer is streaming popular content, they are better off offering pay-per-view features. Let users pay a few dollars for content they can’t get anywhere else.
