The program is called Innovid, and it works like this:
In post-production, producers can add a 3D object into a video that matches the look of the movie. Because the object is 3D, producers can also manipulate it so it moves with the camera and fits into the overall backgrounds.
If a user interacts with the object — mouses over or clicks it, for example — they'll be presented with a pop-up description of the object and the option to visit an external site.
Innovid CEP Zvika Netter said that his company has no plans to release the product yet, but blogger Mark Hendrickson of TechCrunch.com had a chance to use the new application. He speculated that it would make it easy for webmasters of YouTube-style sites to add interactive ads into their user-generated content.
OC Cash Vice President of Marketing Jay Quinlan is no stranger to innovation, having added YouTube-style viral videos to his affiliate network. He told XBIZ he tries to keep an eye on companies like Innovid.
"I like to keep looking at mainstream marketing and see what ideas I can bring over here [to adult]," he said, and even though he said he might want to try Innovid when it became available, he suspected it might have a major drawback.
"It sounds like this software will need a lot of action-scripting," he said, referring to the common programming code that governs interactive applications. "That code's pretty gnarly. I imagine that the people who know how to write it [for Innovid] will ask for a lot of money."
Online guru Brandon Shalton told XBIZ that Innovid might be put to more nefarious purposes.
"The use of this technology would probably be for tube sites to take stolen content and put in an ad for a different company," said Shalton, who founded the traffic analysis service T3Report.com.
