Does video + video = money?

Our thanks to Steve Gunn of The Charlotte Observer for making us aware of this item. Steve writes:

A couple of students at Stanford are looking at ways to put videos within videos, which the newspaper industry could adapt to put ads into videos online -- even those not on their own website. Whether this particular thing is the answer or not, this is a very interesting idea and raises others, including simply embedding advertising text on the bottom of a video put up by a newspaper -- even when its not on their site. It seems to me a small paper might find this really something to think about trying.

Here is a video from Stanford University about the process.



The technology is indeed cool, but I can foresee a huge ethics debate on this for newspaper Web sites. Most every newsroom would agree that adding elements such as those shown in the video into still photography is a huge taboo. What about when it's video?

I'm thinking papers could find a way of incorporating this technology into videos while making it clear that what you are seeing is a paid advertisement, not a part of the news video itself. Confining the ads to a space that is consistent on every video, such as across the bottom, might be one way to do that.

Certainly newspapers should be interested in beginning the discussion and finding a way of marrying the advertising with the news content without sacrificing our reputation and trust.

Thanks again, Steve!