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Let me start this by saying that many startups have tried to make a funny infomercial, but these guys actually succeeded. The fellow's phony hair and thin mustache, the oldschool computer equipment, and the recognizable 70ies yellowish tone of the video - well, it made me laugh a couple of times. See the video below, and don't forget - it's just that simple!
Overlay.TV enables you to place various text, graphics and animations over a video. The platform enables you to stream videos from popular video sharing sites like YouTube, MySpace TV, Google Video, Yahoo! Video, and College Humor. It's somewhat similar to Ooyala, and it is also partly aimed at advertising, but it also adds some interesting features in the mix. One of them is shopping; for example, you can mark an item on a video and create an online shop out of it; a viewer that clicks on it will be able to buy it directly from the video. Another very interesting feature is a very simple one: if all those stuff on the video starts to annoy you, you can turn all of it off. It all works in both IE and Firefox; Safari isn't mentioned anywhere, though. After the publishers are done with the video, they can share it via email or embed it on a website, blog, or a social networking profile.
Overlay.TV has done its homework and signed deals with over 600 marketing affiliates which at this time accept user click-throughs from Overlay.TV, including Amazon, iTunes and Wal-Mart.
And now, some marketingese for you:
“By linking publishers, viewers of online video and marketers, Overlay.TV is transforming user-generated video content from a passive vehicle for entertainment or education, into an interactive vehicle for commerce,” said Rob Lane, President and CEO of Overlay.TV. “We’re empowering a whole new generation of publishers – a group we call ‘Generation P’ – with a user-friendly platform that will help them discover entirely new business models. The advertising industry has significantly shifted from traditional channels to web advertising. With the ubiquity of social networks, consumer-created advertising has more power and influence than anything produced by industry professionals.”