Viral videos, now with advertising!
November 8, 2006

Studios are uploading video clips and shows to viral video sites they own like crazy this week. Viacom-owned iFilm relaunched and I'm seeing ads tacked on to the end of every clip on the site I've viewed today. The clip from tonight's episode of The Office below has an AT&T commercial before and a Spider-Man 3 ad on the end, which feels like overkill for something that's only a couple minutes long.

NBC also launched its Dotcomedy site where it's including clips from its shows (though for some reason only joke PSA's from The Office and no actual clips from the show like iFilm and Yahoo! have.) No ads on the videos or embed links allowing people to post the video on other sites yet. Both iFilm and DotComedy allow users to post viral videos and are seeking to compete with YouTube. Meanwhile Sony is putting movie clips on Grouper.com, which it owns, with links to buy downloads or DVDs.

Presumably all those clips will make their way to YouTube, since they allow users to share the clips. Even while they make their clips available, the legal mess between copyright holders and new YouTube parent Google has only just begun, it seems. Google CEO Eric Schmidt said the company isn't trying to pay off media companies to avoid lawsuits over copyrighted content on YouTube. Meanwhile, the company disclosed that it expects lawsuits from studios once its YouTube deal is complete.