Television channels are taking a leaf out of YouTube’s book and giving the audience a leading role.

Launching today, fans can use the MTV Bumper Builder to create and star in animated advertisements for the television channel. MTV will select the best ads (known as bumpers in TV-land) to be aired at 5:00pm on weekdays.

Deepend Managing Director Matt Griffin said “Our television clients realise that for their audience, creating content for YouTube, blogs and social networking sites, and even using movie editing and cartoon creation tools is second nature. This combined with the social web’s potential for content distribution means that fame is considered more achievable than ever. I mean, if the ‘Leave Britney Alone’ guy had his 15 minutes – anyone can! Our Bumper Builder allows television to tap into this cultural shift and expand it to broadcast media.”

The Bumper Builder, a Deepend product, was originally conceived for Nickelodeon to allow fans to create animated avatars for the online space which could be simply branded and broadcast on television. Deepend Technical Director Pip Jones said “The application combines a range of technologies to elegantly resolve the incompatibility of Adobe’s Flash with both broadcast video formats as well as Apple’s iOS platform upon which the iPhone, iPad and iPod run.“