• by Laurie Petersen , February 28, 2007

Contextual pay-per-click advertising company Quigo will introduce video search capabilities to its network of Web partners later this year* through a deal announced today with Pixsy Corp., a multimedia search platform.

"We think it is the next level of contextually targeted ad, being able to combine private-label video search with private-label advertising," said Henry Vogel, Quigo's chief revenue officer.

Through the strategic partnership, Quigo and Pixsy will create private-label, location and topic-specific visual search portals that will include relevant visual content along with contextual performance-based advertising. Pixsy will also deploy a private-label version of Quigo's AdSonar platform on its network of sites.

Visitors to a regional newspaper site in the network, for instance, could search for videos and images of local topics and points of interest such as entertainment, hotels, museums, sporting events or restaurants. Targeted pay-per-click ads will accompany the multimedia.

Quigo is experimenting with adding video ads to its contextual product. However, said Vogel, these ads will take a user-activated approach consistent with pay-per-click advertising--meaning that the consumer will request to see the ad, as opposed to viewing a forced pre-roll or post-roll.

Quigo has attracted attention for bringing transparency to the contextual search ad buying process by allowing advertisers to specify where they want their ads to appear, and by providing a list of sites across their ad network where ads have run. Their success in attracting large media clients such as ESPN.com, Cox Newspapers and Forbes.com has been credited with causing behemoth Google to begin disclosing where ads have appeared for advertisers using its AdSense network.

Pixsy, which likes to characterize itself as the Google for thumbnail images, powers the multimedia search for such sites as Ritz Camera and Sonic Solution. It also has the capability to create within hours theme-specific sites such as Oscar images, Mardi Gras, March Madness or NASCAR that its partners can then monetize.

Pixsy CEO Chase Norlin says Pixsy is on track to surpass 13 million searches this year, which would rank it among the top five search engines. The Quigo deal is its first ad network deal.

* The timing in this sentence was changed after the original story posted.