We had a great chat with Kevin Sladek a few weeks back in San Francisco.  Kevin started VideoEgg two years ago with two classmates from Yale, just one year after they graduated. Smart chaps, indeed.

VideoEgg provides content producers the ability to upload and publish Flash video on the Web.  It also has some cool tools to edit uploaded video.  We understand from reading Advertising Age that they are serving some 14 million video streams a day.  Not quite up to YouTube, but that’s pretty darn impressive.

Kevin shares his views on the proper place for advertising in and around consumer generated content.  The new plans for "permission" advertising seem to fit his philosophy.

Advertising Age (subscription) reports about the new plans for advertising on VideoEgg, which are to be implemented in September. Here’s what Gavin O’Malley writes:

"Unlike Google – which plans to experiment with both pre-roll and post-roll ads in its syndication deals – VideoEgg is presently avoiding pre-roll ads in favor of post-rolls and permission-based video, which uses a small banner under the video box to ask users whether they care to see an ad or not. Depending on how those ads are packaged and sold, cost-per-thousand rates will range from $20 to $30, according to Mr. Young."   (Note: Mr. Young is Troy Young,  VideoEgg Chief Marketing Officer)

Kevin also talks about ownership of video clips. This a really important point for content developers to understand:  Uploading video is easy and cool but you don’t always retain ownership — and different sites have different policies. So read the fine print!  Kevin told me that he thinks ownership should remain with the content producer.  Amen to that!

— Andy Plesser

Apple Should Buy YouTube?  There’s been a lot of buzz in the blogosphere about the reasons for Apple to buy YouTube.  It started with a post on GigaOm and now it’s being kicked about by pundits at the New York Times. Hey Steve, whatcha think?

Video Propaganda – CNET has a really good piece about political propagandists using popular video sharing sites like YouTube to deliver their message to a huge audience.

YouTube’s New Ad Platform – hat tip to The Flack for alerting us to the launching of participatory video ads on YouTube.

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