Video search engine Blinkx has taken a new approach to video advertising with its "un-roll" format, in a move which leverages its technology for sorting videos for a project with a potentially much higher rate of return.

Instead of tag-based cataloging, Blinkx uses contextual cues such as speech recognition and video analysis to sort its videos. The service is now taking a similar approach to advertising.

Un-roll is meant to challenge the standard pre- and post-roll advertisements found in videos today by weaving contextual touch points and logo overlays into videos at appropriate times, rather than block off time before and after just for ads.

At launch time, Un-roll's clients are expected to include Shell, and Blinkx launched with examples from the petroleum firm. Unfortunately, as the advertisements are the central feature of these examples, the ads actually overshadow the content of the video. For example, the traditional pre-roll has been replaced by an "opening curtain," which draws open as the video is buffering. Across the bottom of the video are scrolling ad overlay cards like those surrounding professional soccer fields.

Blinkx already has its own AdHoc advertising platform to content providers which includes adding a brand on the embeddable player, pre-roll ads and neighboring banners, mid-roll opt-in ads, contextual pop up ads, and search sponsorship.

Interestingly, Blinkx says of the nearly 40 different formats it tested, Un-roll was actually the least annoying, and generated between two and 12 percent click-through rates. "These types of formats are the future of online video advertising and will become more ubiquitous than the traditional online 'pre- roll' ad, which affords no interactivity," said Stefan Bardega, director of Shell's digital media agency, MediaCom.