Google's Video AdSense: Just the Beginning?

Google is launching an AdSense-like advertising service aimed at placing ads in videos. A video ad service that works something like AdSense -- which analyzes the text you're seeing on your screen and places relevant ads there -- has been missing from the Web. It's made it harder to monetize Web video. One of the challenges has been the ability to analyze video. Text is relatively easy. But using technology to "see" a video and know what's on it is tough -- and you'd have to know what's on the video to serve up a relevant ad.

At CES in January, Google media chief David Eun told me something interesting about this. Google has been working on technology that would analyze videos to find copyrighted content -- as a way for copyright holders to find and take down videos that shouldn't be on YouTube. But once developed, that technology could also analyze videos for advertising reasons.

If Google cracks this problem, it will likely grab a huge lead in selling advertising for the booming Web video business.