A shop what you see concept comes from product placement specialists Entertainment Media Works. Named plinking (meaning product linking), the method enables hyperlinks within video frames. These links are focused on visible objects or images in the clip and open up a web page for the product. EMW is claiming the new tool will revolutionise the user-generated content arena.

Entertainment Media Works’ StarStyle site is promoting a forthcoming series from the US abc network called Brothers & Sisters where viewers will be able to shop what they see.

Soon, users of YouTube and similar user generated video sites will be able to set up their own hotspots on video frames. This form of advertising will naturally develop a revenue share model similar to Google’s AdWords.

Viewers of video clips will also be able to tag video with their own hotspot links, and the business model envisages a proportion of revenue going to the taggers. This approach will develop tagging of video rapidly.

For all this to work, clip sites like YouTube will have to agree to the concept. But it’s unlikely they are going to reject a groundbreaking advertising based revenue model for long.