• by Shankar Gupta , June 13, 2006

Online ad network BlueLithium today will launch behaviorally targeted video ads on its stable of 1,200 sites around the Web. The new service, "AdRoll," aims to bring more affordable streaming video ads to lower-budget advertisers.

"One problem advertisers are having is the ability to get a lot of high-quality streaming video at a good price," said Dakota Sullivan, BlueLithium's chief marketing officer. "We're solving that problem for advertisers by aggregating and negotiating all the content up front and making it available as one big buy."

AdRoll also features a form of behavioral targeting called "retargeting" or "remarketing," which tracks users across BlueLithium's network of sites, and serves ads to them if they have recently left an advertiser's site. "In essence, an advertiser can target people who have come to their Web sites and either have purchased or not purchased, and then left--and we can serve them across all the sites on our network," Sullivan said.

The product has been in a closed beta for a pair of BlueLithium clients: a household goods company and a communications technology company, Sullivan said.

Other ad companies also are taking steps to incorporate video in behaviorally targeted ads. Tacoda last month tapped ad technology provider Tremor Network to power behaviorally targeted in-stream video ads.