Voice recognition-powered video search index Blinkx is announcing even more content deals this week than it usually does. Amongst the eight press releases issued in the last three days…
It’s partnered with German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle and UK TV channel Five to take news and highlights throughout the day; with HIT Entertainment to take shows including Bob the Builder and Thomas & Friends; with culinary channels Cheflive, Kitchen Caravan and Savoury Cities; with comedy sites DailyComedy.com, Comedy Time, Comedy.com and National Banana to take their parodies and skits; with Zodiak International for such illuminating shows as “America’s Dumbest” and “World Of Stupid” and with Guardian.co.uk‘s nascent news video wing.
All the deals involve a revenue share from ads in Blinkx’s AdHoc platform. Guardian commercial director Adam Freeman said using his own paper: “We are looking to do a range of deals and though they will be a small slice of revenue each time, we are expecting those to add up. This is about going where the consumer is, and the days of expecting them to come to us have gone.”
Blinkx is trigger-happy with the announcements, but it’s steadily building up a large library of video deals. What it doesn’t necessarily have yet is a portal that effectively shows off all that wealth of material to visitors. That goes to the heart of whether Blinkx wants to be just a search engine or a video destination as well.