Attention content producers everywhere, please refrain from cheering until I’ve finished my post… thanks. Today overlay.tv has come out of private beta and is now open as a public beta. Content producers everywhere should be excited about the possibilities overlay.tv, especially those that have a product to sell, and are looking to get into online advertising.

Traditional advertising models (television commercials, magazine ads, billboards, etc…) are becoming less popular in favor of the more viral campaign model of the web. Overlay.tv is aiming to make an interesting advertising model a seamless process. Content producers will have the ability to target specific areas of video clips with an overlay, this can be as simple as text or a click-able advertisement.

From the overlay.tv site:

“The idea for Overly.TV came when one of the founders’ partners was watching Television. As she watched the program she made comments about the items the actors were wearing, but became frustrated as she had no idea about where to purchase those items. The idea for Overlay.TV came from this desire to have more information about the products in a show.”

I believe overlay.tv will open up a world of opportunities for content producers and spur interesting ideas for rich media distribution systems in the near future.

Now you can cheer.