If advertising is going to be the dominant model for broadband video, how can advertisers make sure they're reaching the people they want to reach? One way is to use a "branded entertainment" approach like Cube Fabulous, where sponsors are deeply involved in the programming. But that doesn't really work for the long tail of user-generated video. An alternative approach is offered by adap.tv, which uses technology to analyze the video and audio streams (as well as the metadata, of course, but that's easy) and serve nonintrusive ads relevant to the content. Because the ads are clickthroughs, Adap.tv can monitor what viewers do in response, and fine-tune their algorithms. In this demo, a video of a movie review is overlaid by ads for the movie being discussed.

Metacafe, one of the largest video sites on the Web, has announced that it will use adap.tv's advertising platform.