A new online video advertising network and technology unveiled by Podaddies ensures that behaviorally targeted ads will be able to play, track and pay whenever and wherever the media is consumed. Using the Podaddies ad network, advertisers can reach highly desirable markets they’ve been unable to reach while creators and publishers can track and monetize their video and audio content not only on web pages, but also after it’s been downloaded, shared and distributed through email, blogs, peer-to-peer networks and Apple’s iTunes.

Podaddies’ dynamic, in-stream video advertising technology inserts video ads into video content, whether pre-roll, mid-roll, post-roll or any combination, in real time as the video is viewed. It serves these ads both inside and outside Podaddies’ growing network of select sites without the need for plug-ins or other client software. All transactions are tracked and reported for clients, including post-download viewing and sharing. Podaddies’ proprietary ad-serving technology enables new ads to be inserted post-download, and ads can be targeted in many ways. Podaddies supports every video advertising format, can work on any standard advertising cost basis and has already been integrated into several third-party ad serving solutions.

“Podaddies is on the forefront of online video advertising, enabling publishers to monetize their video content without being tied to the web page and continue to earn revenues as their video files travel around the Internet,” said Mike Hudack, CEO for Blip.tv, a member of the Podaddies Advertising Network. “We launched with Podaddies in December 2006, and since then have been ecstatic with the service level, technology and solution.”

According to researchers at eMarketer, Inc., spending on online video advertising in the U.S. is expected to experience exponential growth from an estimated $640 million this year to nearly $4.3 billion in 2011. At the same time, eMarketer expects spending in the U.S. alone on podcast advertising to quintuple from $80 million in 2006 to $400 million in 2011.

“There’s tremendous power in a video ad that stays with a video download and can be changed at any time while continuing to be tracked when emailed, posted on a blog or shared over a P2P network,” said Nate Pagel, renowned video artist and CEO and founder of Podaddies. “Podaddies’ growing network of high-quality content publishers enables advertisers to target their video ads for more than 500 million views per month.”

Pagel believes several factors have converged to set the stage for the explosion in online video viewing. Besides increasingly affordable, high-bandwidth Internet access, low-cost and even free high-bandwidth hosting services and higher quality video and audio codecs, Pagel points to the lesser discussed trend in the increasing availability of inexpensive mass storage.

“You can buy a terabyte of storage today for about $200, making storage almost free and encouraging people to download all kinds of video without worrying about where they put it,” said Pagel. “Mainstream video podcasts didn’t exist before the summer of 2005, but right now online video, including user-generated video and downloadable video like podcasts, is growing more quickly than anything else online.”

Podaddies’ In-Stream Video Ad Technology

While today’s web sites can track the number of visitors and views they receive, they cannot track media after it has been downloaded, viewed one or more times on a PC or other device, shared with friends and colleagues, posted on a blog or distributed over a P2P network.

The Podaddies solution combines several facets of proprietary technology, including unobtrusive code inserted into the media file before it is downloaded. Inseparable from the media, this code enables Podaddies to track whether the ad has been played or not, viewed in full or stopped mid-stream. Ads can be targeted based upon who is watching, the type of content being played, when and where it is being played and other variables. Ads are served dynamically, enabling them to be changed, even after downloading, and ads can be viewed and tracked anywhere.

Availability and Pricing

The Podaddies Advertising Network is live. Publishers and advertisers can visit the Podaddies web site at www.podaddies.com for more information.