For those of us who don’t like to see overlay ads pop up or stream while watching video, you won’t see any on the NBC Olympics coverage on MSN. That’s a mandate from the International Olympic Committee, which keeps tight control of the way the Games are presented.
Microsoft’s Eric Schmidt is one of the key executives in the MSN/NBC
Sports joint effort for online coverage of the Olympics in the United
States. He came by the Beet.TV studios on Friday to fill us in on
various technical and advertising-related topics around the Olympics.
The ad formats are much like on television, with pre-roll ads and
in-stream ads inserted between pauses in events.
All the ad inventory is managed by Google’s DoubleClick. This is one of the first insertions of DoubleClick ads
into Silverlight, the new Microsoft rich-media platform. The agreement to integrate DoubleClick and Silverlight was announced just last week.
— Andy Plesser, Executive Producer
