Online advertising has many different faces. We see the usual banner ads, to be sure, but they’ve since been joined by paid reviews, sponsored tweets, text link ads, in-text advertising, and all sort of other varieties. Video sponsorship is on the rise as well.

When considering the marketing possibilities for your business, offering to sponsor popular videos could be a very worthwhile venture. Think about the audience that you might be able to reach with a mention in a Dot Com Pho or iJustine video, for instance.

If you’re only interested in brand presence and brand recognition, a simple mention (usually accompanied by some kind of logo’d product) might be enough. However, you may want to take the added step of being able to track the number of referrals these video plugs are able to generate. To do so, you’ll want to provide a unique link, perhaps to a “special deal” page.

For instance, instead of getting the video producer to embed “yourcompany.com” in the video, you may want them to embed “yourcompany.com/deal” instead. If videos are the only place where you are sharing that specific URL, you can know exactly how many people found your site via the video. Gaining access to such metrics can be very valuable to your marketing efforts.