New video ad deal for MySpace, MTV Networks

A new kind of video advertising is coming to MySpace.

The company has partnered with a video advertising company, Auditude, and Viacom's MTV Networks division, to bring Auditude's video ads to MTV content on the News Corp.-owned social network's MySpaceTV video hub.

Here's how Auditude works: it can detect MTV Networks content if either MTVN itself or a MySpace user uploads it, and then it implements both targeted ads and "attribution ads," which provide data about the source of the programming. (For example: an "attribution ad" for Comedy Central talk show The Colbert Report could include information about when the program is broadcast on-air.)

Right now, according to a joint release, Auditude already has four years' worth of 100 television channels indexed in its database, plus 250 million standalone videos.

"As one of the leading providers of online video in the world, we give our fans the power not only to consume our content, but also to share and interact with it across the Web," Mika Salmi, president of global digital media at MTV Networks, said in a release. "With Auditude's solution, we can continue to give users the freedom to take our content wherever they go online, while ensuring that we can monetize it as well."

This is a bit of a surprise coming from Viacom, which sued Google's YouTube over the distribution of pirated content. MySpace has reason to feel jilted by YouTube, too--it's no secret that News Corp. had been interested in acquiring YouTube, which can credit a big part of its rise to embedded videos on MySpace profiles, before Google outbid it.

Auditude says that its technology is compatible with YouTube, as well as Veoh, AOL Video, Dailymotion, and others.

But despite Viacom's beef with YouTube, content from MTV Networks can be viewed on a number of partner sites, like Imeem and Veoh, and episodes of Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report are available on Hulu, the joint video venture between NBC Universal and News Corp.

MTV Networks also recently launched MTVMusic.com, a compendium of the longstanding pop-culture brand's music videos.

[Harrison912]

As a web site owner of safety and security products, I typically use MySpace and FaceBook for social marketing purposes. Thanks for bringing this new technology to my attention. I may be able to utilize it in some way to raise awareness for my products.