• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, January 6, 2010

Online offers company gWallet last month introduced video ads on behalf of 10 big brands and is touting impressive results from the campaigns.

The San Francisco-based startup ran branded videos for companies including Best Buy, Coca-Cola, K-Mart, and The History Channel that people could watch in return for gaining points for virtual goods in games and other applications on sites such as Facebook and MySpace.

Partnering with gWallet on the effort was Web video promotion and analytics company TubeMogul.

In just one week, gWallet said the campaigns received more than 480,000 views and users watched videos for 2 minutes on average. Publishers running the ads in apps also had significant revenue gains, according to the company.

In one example, Tubemogul found people watching a video trailer promoting the season premiere of "Ax Men" on The History Channel were engaged longer than viewers who saw content on comScore's 250 sites. And viewers watched the JCPenney video 17.4% longer than a typical Web video.

The company believes video ads will help attract more major brands to the social offer space because of the high engagement levels they deliver. "This year, we will continue to drive additional innovation through a new set of products that brings brands into one of the fastest-growing sectors of digital media," said gWallet founder and CEO Gurbaksh Chahal, in a statement.

The startup last month announced raising $10.5 million in first-round venture funding and has said it has adopted strict ethical guidelines for advertisers in the wake of the scandal that broke late last year around online offer networks. gWallet has also said it works directly with brands rather than affiliate networks to fund its social offers.

While gWallet has provided many details about the video campaigns, Inside Facebook noted that the information it has disclosed jibes with what it's heard independently. "Many offers advertisers have told us that engagement with offers is much higher than with normal Web ads, and the data provided matches with that trend," it stated.

If so, branded video could help gWallet carve out its own niche in the increasingly crowded virtual currency and social offers business.