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I posted an article about Gamefly some time back, and have a Give Gamefly a try link over in the sidebar area as I like their service and feel that they are a bargain and provide great benefit for gamers (Buying console games just seems stupid to me in most cases, since they normally don't provide much replay value and drop in value so much after you play them for a while).
Anyway, I was off cruising around on Gamefly's site this evening, looking for a particular PSP game that I'm considering buying, and while there I encountered an advert/link over to an apparent new partner of Gamefly, that being BrightSpot.tv.
BrightSpot.tv is an interesting concept, but at the same time, it feels a bit like a scam and I'm just not sure how long it'll last and how much benefit it'll really pay for someone that takes a chance on it (like I have). The idea behind BrightSpot.tv is that someone (like me) will sign up as a member there and then subject themselves to short commercial spots that they'll view and then once they've viewed the spots, answer some questions about the spot and repeat for another few spots. No more than 6 in your que at a time apparently, with some predetermined value assigned to your participation in watching the spot.
For example, you may have to watch a spot about a movie is coming out on DVD, then comment about whether after watching the spot you feel inclined to buy the DVD or not. (All of which seems to discount the idea that you might already have been interested in buying the DVD, but that is a different story). Anyway, you slowly but surely provide comments and answers to BrightSpot.tv who apparently gathers up your reactions to the spots and provides feedback to the advertisers, and -- I suspect -- works on building up some targetted advertising to show you.
There's a value associated with watching the spots, so that in watching a spot about a video game you may get $0.50 credited to your BrightSpot.tv account. You build up the credits and eventually BrightSpot.tv dumps those credits back into 'provider accounts', with the providers being companies like Gamefly.
On Gamefly's page, the link over to BrightSpot.tv mentions getting as much as $10 a month in credits towards your Gamefly membership. Not bad at all really. In effect, you could sign up for the minimal Gamefly plan for a regular $15.95 a month, get $10 in credit from BrightSpot.tv and only have to pay Gamefly $5.95 for a month's membership. Not bad at all, assuming it all works as promised, and assuming that the credits you get for watching the spots aren't $0.10 here, and $0.05 there. If the credits for the spots remain in the $0.50 range, you can sit and watch 6 spots (on your 'puter, across the intraweb dealie-o) answer a few minutes worth of questions and earn $3.00 for your BrightSpot.tv account pretty quickly. Rinse and repeat at the next permitted interval (not sure how long between times that they restock your available spot que) and add another few $$ to your credit pool.
I assume that there's restrictions and limits on how many things will show up in your que in a week so you can't just spend say 30 minutes over 2 days earning the maximum credit. Perhaps you can, but I'm not sure on that. If you can, then I suspect that part 2 of BrightSpot.tv's evil plans for world domination will be that they'll suggest that you find another provider to partner up with so that you can put credits into an account there too. Eventually they'll hook you into watching many more ad spots than you had expected, and zoom, you're too busy watching ad spots to play the games you were earning the credits to help rent.
Anyway, it's an interesting model. How long it'll last I don't know, but I'm willing to give it a try for a little while to save a few $$ here and there. 
