Analysts from IDC to eMarketer are expecting the market for video ads to rocket to $1 billion or higher in 2008. AdSense for Video, (an extension of Google’s In-Stream Video Ads) started in beta on Thursday, the 21st February, 2008 with about 20 partners’ Web sites including eHow, Brightcove, YuMe, ExpertVillage, PinkBike, TheNewsRoom and Blip.tv.

Advertisers will have to choose between video or text ads, which will be overlaid on the video clip. The text ads will rotate every 20 seconds. Unlike the TV style Preroll ads, overlay video ads are non-intrusive. The overlay/InVideo ads are a semi-transparent video or text ad that pops up on the bottom of the screen in the first 15 seconds. When users click on the overlay, it pauses the video, so they can watch the ad. Once the ad is over, the video will resume automatically. If the overlay is not clicked by the user, the ad disappears in 10 seconds.

I personally believe that 2008 will be year when video will become ubiquitous and present in every vertical & domain. Now 2006-2007 was year of advent of video from user content perspective. 2008 will be marked by the fact that almost every popular site will have video content. I am not sure that ad sense is the best way to monetize video or the preroll ads. I would like to see more innovations on this front- interactive ad model or may be pay per engagement model.