YouTube recently announced that they are now offering select partners the ability to incorporate “InVideo” overlay ads into their content.

The transparent, animated ads appear on the bottom 20% of the screen at set points in the video and are generally perceived to be a less intrusive form of advertising than “preroll ads” — which are the video clips a user is forced to watch before watching the main content.

The viewer has the ability to cancel out the ad immediately by clicking on an “x” in the top righthand corner of the ad, or the ad will go away by itself after a time. In the example video (see link below), the ad disappears by itself after 20 seconds. No word on whether this is standard or not. No word either on how many different ads will be allowed in one video. I would assume only one.

If the viewer chooses to click on the ad, the original video will be paused and a video ad will begin to play on top of it. If the user clicks on the video ad, or a link in the video ad, a new window will open, taking the viewer to the advertiser’s site. The original video will remained paused and ready to go from the point where it was left off should the viewer choose to return to it.

In addition to the above-mentioned control, there is also a yellow marker in the video timeline bar indicating at what point the ad will begin. While this isn’t really necessary, it’s a nice feature. At least you know that an ad is coming, and so it may lessen the “annoyance” factor to a degree.

All in all, this looks like a good move. The overlay ads have been around for a while now and have been used by companies such as VideoEgg. They do indeed seem a better compromise than sitting through 15 or 30 seconds of advertising before the main content even begins. They may also prove to be profitable for content creators in the end.

Interestingly enough, it seems the ads don’t appear when embedded on other sites (at least in the example I’ve found, they don’t). This is probably to control where the ads appear. Companies can understandably be picky about what content they’re associated with.

To see an example on YouTube, click here.

Tags: overlay ads, video overlay, youtube overlay, youtube overlay ads, OVER LAY, overlay ad, youtube overlays