LiveRail offers an interesting model, but will it work? The company serves two primary groups: publishers and advertisers. LiveRail allows publishers to upload and serve their video content from LiveRail servers. LiveRail is using Amazon S3 for storage and delivery. When a visitor views a video, the visitor is also presented with two small ad video previews below the content. If a visitor selects one of the ads, it is displayed, and then they can return to the video content they were watching. Advertisers only pay for actual ad views, and LiveRail shares this revenue with publishers.

I question if this model can really work. We all know that visitors don’t like advertising. But publishers need a to generate revenue. Generally, advertisers pay per page view. Page views are not optional — if the visitor wants to see the content, they are going to see the ad (unless they block it, but let’s not go there). With LiveRail all ad views are optional.

Does opt-in advertising really work? LiveRail’s site says, “To make sure this opt-in advertising model works, LiveRail prioritizes which adverts to offer viewers based on a large number of very carefully balanced criteria, including the ad’s relevance, popularity, reputation and of course advertiser’s budget. This ensures that when a viewer is offered an ad, they can be sure that it’ll not only be relevant to their interests, but that the ad itself will have had the seal of approval from other users as being cool and worth watching.”

LiveRail is currently in public beta and I’ll be keeping an eye on this one.