We’re part of a small group of online newspapers that began deploying this week an inline player on our site for the AP Online Video Network.

It’s a beta test for the next couple months. We’ve implemented it in our story pages on the right. Here is an example story (on the right under the box ad).

The player has a playlist of four videos; for more, you have to click into the full OVN player.

AP and partner Microsoft keep improving this product. A local channel was added earlier in the spring (we’re close to 300 local videos in the system since then) and tests of local ads in the player are wrapping up (I believe). Backend improvements are on the way, too.

Interestingly, no embed code is planned so videos can be posted into blogs and other sites. Apparently, advertisers are leery of that one.

It’s not YouTube, it’s a pretty good and it’s run pretty much like a tank for us.

What’s your react? AP on the right track?