Who did the video ads first? Who cares?

The fact is, it doesn’t matter who did it first. YouTube is the biggest shark in the pond, and they did it before everyone else.

When I wrote a post earlier today suggesting that YouTube was not the first to use a Flash overlay advertisement for online video, I didn’t realize I’d be getting so many emails and comments disputing exactly who first invented the unit.

VideoEgg has certainly been doing this for a year or so. In a comment to that post, though, an (unconfirmed) ex-YouTuber says the idea was “discussed long ago inside the company” and follows up with:

All other video sharing websites that came out around the time YouTube emerged were still using Quicktime or Windows Media. YouTube might as well accuse VideoEgg of stealing the idea of using a Flash video player.

Next up was Adbrite founder Philip Kaplan, who emailed me to say that Adbrite has had their own overlay product for nearly a year. He also pointed out that I wrote about it. The ad unit is less sophisticated, but it is certainly a Flash video overlay ad unit.

And finally, Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire sent me a long email saying they’ve been doing this as far back as October 2005. He also says the ad units are not particularly popular with advertisers: