Considering how complicated some websites can become and the short attention spans of visitors, it’s only natural to think about providing a guided tour of your “property.”

With Rovion’s InPerson, you can add a “virtual host” to your website, providing an engaging, rich media experience for your visitors. We’ve covered similar products (see We the people… ), but InPerson builds upon the concept and refines it. With InPerson, you can be the virtual host or choose an actor or spokesperson connected with your brand, like this example featuring Emeril Lagasse on the Barnes & Noble website. Your virtual host plays on top of your content and can easily be paused, muted, or deleted by clicking on the actor. Virtual hosts can greet visitors, show them how to navigate your site, or inform them of special offers and promotions.

There is no need to alter your website code or content with InPerson or even download a special media player. The platform works on all browsers and automatically detects user bandwidth, ensuring that videos play smoothly and consistently throughout the virtual host’s presentation and never slows down your site’s load time.

InPerson counts AOL, Fox Interactive, and a host of big names as their clients. Are your site visitors in need of a little guidance?

Chances are, your sales presentations could use some help. Between the outdated technology (dial-in conference call, anyone?) and the Powerpoint assault, is it any wonder you can’t connect with your targeted buyer?

Now you can have a tool that makes it easier to integrate real video in your presentations. Kyte is a single solution for both multimedia content production and online distribution. With Kyte, you can record video with your cell phone or webcam and stream it in real-time on your website, blog, or mobile device. Kyte is a free platform and requires no prior media experience to work. Want to get credit for those pre-sales store checks? Maybe show that you’ve done your homework by showing what’s happening at your targeted client’s competitor.

To get started, create a user account and name your Kyte channel. Choose your media format (image slide-show, video, or live webcam), and upload the files to Kyte. If you choose, you can edit your materials or add a soundtrack. When your presentation is Steve Jobs-worthy, hit the broadcast button. Kyte provides you with a channel link and the embed code to put the Kyte media player and your channel on any site, even social networks like Facebook and Myspace.

Another cool feature is the ability to alter or add to your presentation as it plays live. Need to add a graph or chart after a key point? No problem. Kyte’s drag-and drop slideshow widget lets you insert text and images on the fly. Want to poll your audience on a topic or field questions? Kyte lets you do that too with an interactive polling feature and multimedia chat windows.

Online video is not the same as TV. It can be much, much more.

One way to make it more is to use a tool like YouTube Video Annotations to add interactive elements to video content. You can jazz up your movies with commentary bubbles, background information, and links to other videos or sites.

To get started, login to your YouTube account or create one (it’s free). Start playing your video and locate the annotations menu on the right side. Choose the appropriate button - speech bubble, note, or spotlight - and activate a pop-up editing screen. Type your text, then simply drag-and-drop the annotation on your video. YouTube provides simple editing tools to fine-tune the timing on your annotations or delete extraneous annotations all together. When finished, save and publish your creation as you would any other YouTube video. Check out this example to see Annotations in action:

Smart marketers have learned to utilize video as a selling tool, often putting real customers and brand enthusiasts in the spotlight. Here is an opportunity to strengthen that message and add an exciting interactive element to your video content.

While we all know that YouTube is the big dog in online video, it’s not the only member of the pack.

Thanks to TubeMogul, launching and tracking a video marketing campaign to multiple sites at the same time can be both feasible and easy. TubeMogul gives publishers a single platform for mass video distribution to all the top media sites. Upload (up to) 12 sites at once, including YouTube, Google Video, Myspace, AOL, Vimeo, and more. Then, monitor when, where, and how often a video is played through your TubeMogul dashboard.

Need more in depth analysis? With TubeMogul, personal analytics, as well as, industry research and trends come standard. Track performance and viewership levels for all your campaigns or gather intelligence on competing publishers to see where you stand. Look at the industry through a larger lens with TubeMogul Industry Analysis reports. Topics range from the top video sharing sites to the success and pitfalls of monetizing online video content.

Both the TubeMogul platform and the supporting data are free. So, whether you’ve got content locked (but not loaded) or looking to experiment with video marketing, TubeMogul offers a great jumping off point.

How can you capture some of the magic of animation without blowing a big hole in your budget?

Minivid is a simple animation solution that lets you create custom cartoon shorts and share them with the world. The site provides a demo for using all the features, but the drag-and drop functionality of this application makes it a snap to create and edit animations in minutes. Fuzzwich has preloaded Minivid with a stable of playful “actors”, multi-layer backgrounds, and music selections. Hit record and position your actors on screen by dragging them with your mouse. Add comment bubbles or choose from each actors available actions menu. For example, the ninja can throw a ninja star or use his sword; another character can grow a beard. You can even change the the scale of the actors or the timing of events by pausing your animation and manipulating all the ingredients in the editing bar.

Check out this nifty little animation we created on the fly:

Fuzzwich publishes and hosts all your animations on their site; animators are given a free portfolio space, where you can share your animations, launch mini cartoon campaigns, or embed your animations in your website or social media site (like Facebook or Myspace).

If you are looking to add something fun to your site or need a free tool for creating branded animations, check out Minivid. Though we warn you, be prepared to lose countless hours playing with this application.

Ready to make the leap beyond those old text and display ads? Maybe it’s time to dip your toe into video ads.

If you’re wondering where to go to place those video ads, YuMe, a broadband video advertising network, should be on your list. With over 400 premium video sites on tap and 120 million unique visitors a month, it’s the largest of its kind, and includes NBC, BitTorrent, and Microsoft among its providers. YuMe was designed exclusively to monetize and track video content. Advertisers can choose by programming verticals (like entertainment, lifestyle, news, music, and sports,) or target audiences based on geography or content popularity. And regardless of the delivery platform (streaming, download, mobile), YuMe provides real-time monitoring and analytics, so there’s no guesswork involved when measuring the success of your campaign.

Video ad production and placement doesn’t take a ton of money. Are your old notions standing in the way?

Anyone who sells anything from croissants to chemicals knows the painful truth of so many product-focused businesses. You end up giving away a lot of services for free.

Now, no matter the size of your business, you have an easy tool for selling your knowledge with MindBites. Here’s how it works. Sign up to become an author, create your short video, upload it, promote it, and then, ideally wait for your viewers to show up. Every time someone views your video, you earn $1. Viewers pay between 1.69 and $1.99 to purchase your small video. It’s early going in the sale of video content, so you’re not likely to make a fortune.

If you or your brand already have significant star power, let this serve as an example that you can apply in a site of your own. In any case, no matter what business you’re in, think about how you might be able to monetize all of the services that you currently offer for free.

We’re all used to reading text comments, but sometimes video can say a lot more. Up until now, adding video to blog comments has been almost impossible.

With Seesmic’s new WordPress blog plugin, now it’s easy. Click on the regular comments tab (found at the bottom of your blog post) and choose the video option from the drop down menu. Simply click the red recording button or the enter key to start/stop the recording. Then, save, title, and post, and ta-dah you have engaging reader content on your site, with no effort on your part or added expense. With up to 5 minutes of recording space, the floor is open.

And you never know, a customer might actually say something nice about your brand that you can reuse as a testimonial. You won’t know until you let them speak.

Now you can embed a YouTube video into a Google map. When your potential customers find you through Google, they can watch a video that describes your business. Here’s an easy to follow example for a San Francisco bakery.

Ideally, you have already gone ahead and set up your business in Google maps, so prospects can find you easily. If so, here’s what you need to do: simply upload your videos to YouTube and ensure that the ‘embed’ option is turned on. Then, associate your video to your business listing through the Local Business Center.

For the cost of a simple YouTube video recording, you can ensure that web searchers find your video that explains in glorious detail why they should buy from you.

Thinking about creating some great videos to share on your site? That’s a great idea. The tough question that surfaces . . . what sort of video player should you use?

When it comes to video publishing, Brightcove offers a service you might consider. It makes it easy for you to upload and manage your video library using a web-based video platform. With so many video players, it’s easy to think that they’re all the same. However, you should consider customizing the video player. Brightcove makes it easy to customize their video player templates, giving you the ability to control everything from the video player branding to the design of the user experience.

Check out CampJam videos for an example of what a Brightcove video player can do for you. Now you can go forth and video with reckless abandon.

Flickr video is a new service for premium Flickr account holders that lets you upload and share short video clips (no longer than 90 seconds). Short, yes, but certainly enough time to demo your products or include a video testimonial on your site. If you want to get fancy, you could even add a little music and a nice introduction- a handy feature that Flickr includes.

What’s really nice about Flickr’s video integration is that it lets you organize your photos and videos in one premium service. The service treats videos like “long photos”- they appear beside photos on your Flickr page and can be embedded in your website or blog. Flickr videos can show up on RSS Feeds and photostreams too. Start recording - not just snapping.

Ever experience the torture of watching someone’s vacation slide show? While we all love great images, we love them more when they’re put to music.

Enter Animoto. It’s a tool that lets you take images (maybe that you have on Flickr, as we discussed in Do these make me look fat?), then choose some music (either provided or uploaded by you), and then converts the whole mix into a widgetized video. These videos aren’t just the Ken Burns effect over and over and over again (enough already!). Each one is unique, timed to the music you’ve selected.

If you have photos of your products, your customers, or anything related to your business and want a mini “music video,” here’s the bargain basement way to make it. The 15-second version is free … and once you’ve created it, you can use their tools to post it just about anywhere (Facebook, Blogger, etc.).