• May 15, 2007

As adap.tv's contextual ad platform for online video gets set to debut at today's 10th Streaming Media East conference in New York, the San Mateo,CA-based startup announced its first partner on the selling side--the video-sharing site Metacafe.

At the same time, adapt.tv said it had formed a strategic partnership with thePlatform, allowing customers of the latter's media publishing system to use adap.tv's technology.

Emulating broadcast and cable's increased use of on-screen crawls to provide promotional, advertising and program information--and providing an alternative to pre-roll and post-roll spots--ads using adapt.tv's platform will stream in the video window itself without interrupting what's being viewed.

Other services said to be experimenting with in-steam ads are Adbrite and Google's YouTube. However, adapt.tv is the first to combine them with contextual, however.

Headed by CEO Amir Ashkenazi, former co-founder and chief technology officer of Shopping.com, adap.tv has developed proprietary algorithms that analyze video content, determine the most relevant ads, and serve them in real time by adapting to viewer behavior.