Want to place your affiliate link on a merchant’s video? Want to place your website link at the end of a royalty free video you’ve acquired?

Now you can. Introducing Overlay.TV, which enables you to overlay such content as text, links, custom images, and clip art onto a streaming video.

To use Overlay.TV you must first provide the source URL of the video you want to modify, which Overlay.TV streams from the original host. After loading the video, you can add your own content as part of a new layer, which you can set to fade in or out at particular times.

Another appealing feature of Overlay.TV is the ability to add links from numerous affiliate programs that Overlay.TV has arranged. You get a 50 percent share of any commissions generated, with Overlay.TV getting the other half.

Despite some definite attractions, I’m not entirely sold on Overlay.TV. What concerns me is the ability for unscrupulous individuals to place their affiliate or other links over other people’s videos. While the video owner would have a basis to sue for copyright infringement, technological difficulties have, to date, deterred this from happening on a large scale. Overlay.TV may, unfortunately, make this a whole lot easier…

Source: Jason Kincaid, “Overlay.TV Helps You Customize, Monetize Streaming Video”, TechCrunch, September 4, 2008

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 16th, 2008 at 6:45 am and is filed under Affiliate Marketing, Digital Media, News and Comment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.