• by Shankar Gupta , August 18, 2006

Aiming to help advertisers spread ads virally, Interep's Interactive Video Network has set up a network of video-sharing sites designed to show off video ads.

The sites in the network all have agreed to feature video ads in a prominent location, said Kevin Gianatiempo, president of Interep's video network.

Gianatiempo said that buys on the Viral Video Network will come with a guaranteed number of video plays, and sites on the network--including Photobucket, GoFish.com, Vmix.com and RedBalcony.com--will feature the viral ads in a high-profile 'editor's pick'-type location.

The network is designed to address the problems confronting advertisers when they must compete with viral videos on massive video-sharing sites like YouTube.com. "How does an advertiser break through that clutter?" said Gianatiempo. "What we're doing is reaching out to multiple, smaller niche sites."

Gianatiempo dismissed concerns that featuring marketer-produced content as an editor's pick" on a viral video site could be perceived as deceptive. "The users--when they visit a site like this--they expect to see a wide variety of videos uploaded to the site," he said. "We're not going to a New York Times or some other original content-rich site, and asking them to feature this as content."

Interep's video network is currently in talks with advertisers to run a beta test campaign for the viral video network.