• by Shankar Gupta , August 1, 2006

Online weather news service Weatherbug has launched a new video offering that incorporates both editorially produced video and user-submitted clips.

The video site--which entered beta testing last weekend--offers a once-daily national weather overview streamed from the front page, and ZIP-code tailored daily local forecasts, with pre-recorded local talent voicing over streaming weather data. A separate section of the site also offers and solicits user-shot footage, and currently hosts clips of close-call lightning strikes, powerful storms, post-Katrina damage, and a dog cooling off in the pool during a heat wave.

The company aims to both draw more visitors to the site, and to offer advertisers the opportunity to stream video ads.

"Video is hot with our users," said Andy Jedynak, senior vice president and general manager of Weatherbug's consumer division. He added that so far, about 1,000 people have registered to post comments about the site's videos clips. "It's also hot with advertisers. Advertisers are very interested in putting their television spots around video content, and this is a way to meet their needs as well."

Pre-roll ads appear occasionally before both the user-generated and editorial content. The inventory is currently filled by public service announcement spots from the Ad Council, as well as paid spots from Sony and American Standard.

Other news sites have recently started to embrace consumer-created video. NBC local station sites are adding video-sharing services to their pages, and CNN recently unveiled an initiative to enlist citizen journalists in collecting newsworthy photos and videos.