VentureBeat

Keystream is an online video ad startup coming out of stealth today, joining a pack of others trying to do similar things. It lets an online video publisher run an ad that appears in the empty part of a video. For example, in this picture of a Land Rover charging through a flooded road, there’s a sample ad that says “Want to make an impression?” If you click on the ad, the video pauses and a new page launches with more information from the advertiser.

This form of ad can appear anywhere on a video that Keystream’s algorithms discovers to be lacking in interesting content. Publishers can customize where ads will run within a video, such as only on the lower part or upper part within the screen — or where or when they shouldn’t run. It’s somewhat similar to overlay ads that run on the bottom part of videos, as seen on YouTube and many other video sites. Keystream says it typically inserts an ad every two minutes — although timing is also up to publishers. It claims it has been getting better click-through rates than “standard forms of advertising.” Its white-label ad video placement service is now open to publishers and advertisers, following testing its product out with the United Kingdom’s ITV and USswitch.com and Freesat in the U.S.

Robin Wauters over at TechCrunch finds this format pretty annoying, and I’m inclined to agree. I’d rather the ad run somewhere relatively out of the way; I’m even willing to deal with a pre-roll ad that runs before a video starts, rather than get my video-watching disrupted like this.

Meanwhile, other forms of online video advertising seem to be faring better. Revision3, an online video studio, has reportedly tripled its revenues to $3 million this year by selling sponsorships. For example, its flagship show, DiggNation, integrated a Michelob specialty beer campaign wherein its hosts drank Michelob beer. It got its watchers to drink more Michelob beer, too, the studio says.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Keystream has raised $1.3 million from Voyager Capital and angel investors, and is raising a second round.

When I got a chance to meet with events web site Eventful back in July to look at their iPhone application, the company informed me it was working on some interesting ways to incorporate advertisements. Today, it revealed those plans: It’s the first cross-platform partner of location-based ad-targeting service 1020 Placecast.

What this means is that Placecast will be in charge of serving up advertisements on Eventful’s webpages and on its mobile site — including the application built for the iPhone. The mobile element is important because Placecast will have access to the device’s GPS chips to serve up ads based on where a user is. Because of this, these ads will demand higher CPMs (cost per mille, or the cost per a thousand impressions) and should be more relevant to the user, the company says.

Since Eventful is all about local events, it makes sense that it would team up with an advertising partner that targeted local areas. This will work on the service’s website as well by utilizing elements such as zip codes and other page content.

The San Francisco, Calif.-based Placecast was founded in 2005. It received funding from Voyager Capital and Onset Ventures.

Two Seattle-based VC firms, Maveron and Voyager Capital, have recently brought on new partners to extend their reach to the south.

Maveron, which hit a homerun with an early investment in eBay, but has yet to match that success, has expanded its San Francisco office by making Amy Errett (pictured above) a partner. Errett is the former CEO of lesbian lifestlye and travel company, Olivia, and Maveron recruited her six months into her stint as an Entrepreneur in Residence at Trinity Ventures.

Meanwhile, Voyager Capital has made moves to the south, as well, bringing on a new partner, Diane Fraiman (right), to open an office in Portland, Oregon and adding another, Daniel Ahn, as a managing director of its franchise in Menlo Park, Calif. — home of the big Silicon Valley venture capital firms.

Maveron’s Errett comes with a solid track record but a bit of baggage. From 2002 through 2007, Errett helped grow Olivia from $5-25 million in revenues, but she was forced out. She subsequently filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the company’s founder, which is still ongoing.

Voyager’s new partners have backgrounds that are a little less colorful. Diane Fraiman is a long time marketing executive, most recently at JanRain, which runs myOpenID. Daniel Ahn (below) has spent the last nine years at Woodside Fund, and made several investments that look like they’ll be bought or go public at some point. We’re hearing Analogix Semiconductor, where Ahn was the early investor, is about to announce something soon. He also invested in Berkeley Design Automation, which we’re also hearing may announce something shortly.

Ahn wouldn’t comment on why he left Woodside, but we talked with various folks about the firm, and it appears it is strugging with a generational shift. Another younger partner, Tom Shields, the a capella singer of “Here comes another Bubble” also left recently. It appears the father-son relationship of Vincent and Tom Occhipinti is a strong influence at the firm. We’ve put in a call to the firm find out more, and will update if we hear more.

Seattle-based Yapta, a service that informs you when the price of plane tickets you want drops, has raised $2.3 million.

The company is one of many trying to provide ways for people to save money on airfare, but its approach is a bit different: Yapta lets you bookmark, or “tag” individual flights and will e-mail you immediately when any of them become cheaper.

Sites like Kayak and Sidestep let you search hundreds of travel sites for the cheapest flights. Farecast, however, is the closest to offering something similar. It lets you track specific flights you’re interested in, and make predictions about whether prices are headed up or down.

Yapta works through a downloadable plug-in for Internet Explorer (support for FireFox is on the way). Once it is installed, whenever you select a flight from Travelocity, Expedia, Orbitz, or one of the eight US airlines Yapta supports, a button that says “Tag with Yapta” appears below the price. Clicking this will add the flight to a list you can access later on Yapta’s site. Yapta then automatically checks the airfare multiple times per day for all of the flight’s you’ve tagged, so if any of prices drop, it will let you know before it’s too late. If the price goes down after you’ve made the purchase, Yapta will inform you of this, as well, and will tell you how to get a refund or travel voucher from the airline.

Yapta is aimed at the “value-conscious business travelers,” that book their own flights online, and says that its service has saved its users an average of $109 dollars over three months. It intends to make money through targeted advertising and, down the road, a premium service that will allow you to purchase your tickets without leaving its page.

The funding round was led by First Round Capital, and included investments from Voyager Capital, Swiftsure Capital and Bay Partners and brings the total invested to $3 million.