Video platform Blip.tv announced today that the company will now host and serve past and future episodes of the long-running video podcast Rocketboom, as well as sell advertising on the show.

Talking up the partnership on the company’s official blog, CEO Mike Hudack, not only claimed that watching an early episode of Rocketboom was, in part, the inspiration behind starting Blip.tv — but also that, following specific demands from the show’s co-creator and producer, Andrew Baron, the company has pioneered Flash-like overlay ads that run in QuickTime. “We believe it’s the first of its kind”, writes Hudack. The result is that versions of the show that are created for desktop video players — including, and most importantly, iTunes, as well as the excellent Miro — will be able to feature the same interactive overlay ads found on their Flash equivalents. The first of the new overlays is for Comedy Central’s Sarah Silverman show.

As Marshall Kirkpatrick writes, over at our sister blog, Read/WriteWeb, whoever can lay claim to inventing or improving on the “overlay”, innovation in online video advertising “will be essential if video blogging is to prove economically viable.”

I’d also echo Marshall’s thoughts when he writes:

One thing’s for sure - the short era of video advertising relying on pre and post roll clips is over. Technology like these interstitial partial screen overlays is here to stay.

On the whole issue of pre/post-roll vs overlays, TechCrunch quotes Blip.tv’s Hudack as saying: “pre-rolls have the potential to turn off viewers and post-rolls don’t get watched.” Although that’s not something we weren’t aware of already, Blip.tv’s new offering, along with those from VideoEgg, Google, and others, clearly show that overlays are in.

Also see: Google unveils YouTube ads; they’re not that bad

Other posts that may be of interest

• Rocketboom goes mainstream, signs ad, distribution deal with Sony
• Weekly wrapup, 24 - 28 September 2007
• Video: GPhone Android demonstration
• Weekly wrapup, 4-8 August 2008
• Early reactions to Hulu are encouraging, if not cautious
• NBC episodes lands on SanDisk’s Fanfare service; Vudu adds TV shows from Fox

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