Advertising network YuMe has announced that it is to launch advertising within downloadable video content for the first time.The video network has said that the initiative will allow adverts to be placed inside content that is downloaded from the legal version of peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing network BitTorrent.
YuMe aims to provide a 'view-through' metric that relays to advertisers the number of times that their video advert has been watched by consumers.
"You should be able to take a video ad, associate it with a set of content and demographics and allow the advertiser to associate that regardless of where the content is being watched," said YuMe chief executive Jayant Kadambi, speaking in an interview with the ClickZ site.
Film studios and media firms have previously been reticent to provide content to P2P sites because of the perceived difficulty in retaining control of their copyrighted material. But increased usage levels and the transformation of previously illegal networks such as Napster into legitimate offerings have seen some content providers come onboard.
"We have been working diligently with a range of video publishers from the largest movie studios to the creators of independent video to advocate the role advertising can play in delivering their content to the BitTorrent community," said president and co-founder of BitTorrent Ashwin Navin.
Warner Brothers and 20th Century Fox are among the companies currently partnering the BitTorrent Entertainment Network site.
