Accipiter's Self Serve Ad Solution

on iMedia Connection
by Roger Park,May 18,2006

Accipiter Solutions, Inc. has launched AdMarket, an automated inventory management solution that helps web publishers create an ad marketplace for advertisers to bid for placement.

The self-serve AdMarket allows publishers to establish their own rate structures, placement categories, page and content areas.

"AdMarket is unique from other CPC solutions because it gives publishers direct influence on advertisers, the ability to control bidding rates, and importantly, full disclosure on revenue share. We are pleased to offer a self-service advertising solution with the features publishers need to create additional targeted advertising inventory and in many cases, reclaim valuable inventory they may have previously allocated to a non-personalized CPC network," says Brian Handly, CEO, Accipiter.

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How to Improve a Video Campaign

on iMedia Connection
by Nir Shimoni, May 16, 2006

Eyeblaster VP Nir Shimoni explains how to create a video campaign that gets eyes and clicks.

Although the opportunity to drive TV-quality advertising online has been hyped somewhat over the last 12 months, with claims that pixel-perfect repurposed TV ads can even be made interactive without long loading times and without a loss of quality, the truth is that the quality of online video ads that have run has ranged wildly, until recently .

Anyone in our business is familiar with the criteria that have driven this inconsistency: bandwidth, the user's screen resolution, the technology used to encode and serve the ad and the quality of the original source file, as well as multiple other variables. Seriously, despite the hype, how many cinema perfect video ads have you seen -- or for those of you in this business, how many have you run -- in the last 12 months?

Of course, we all know that video can be very powerful, and that the use of video goes a long way in boosting brand response and ad interaction rates, which we've seen go as high as 50 percent for video campaigns. This is one key reason why video has been hyped so much, and why it's on the rise on the business end. Last year, an impressive 40 percent of the ads that we served used video (up from 20 percent the previous year). According to eMarketer, online video ad spend will exceed $1.5 billion in just the United States by 2009.

Despite the past year's hype and these august projections, only now has the time come when video quality seems to be making meaningful strides. In small-to-medium banners, it can actually look like the real deal. So, how can we help our clients get there?

Your client's original asset will dictate the quality ceiling
The actual issues with the quality of an online video campaign start with the size of the video asset. Advertisers must realize that they can't expect TV quality online if they supply puny .mov, .flv or .swf assets that pixelate as soon as they're scaled. If you receive a video file that was very small and there is no room to replace the asset, advise the client of the potential issue. Especially if the client has seen the original video on their television at perfect quality and they expect the same online, they need to know that their results online will come down to the size of that original asset and its optimization.

Encoding counts too
Another common challenge with video quality is the way that the video has been encoded. Too many agencies are taxed with finding the optimum quality video level, though technology companies have recently come to their aid with new encoding tools that can automatically optimize quality levels.

How will it be served?
Of course, the quality of video is also affected by the way it is served. As a company that is serving more gigabytes of video streaming than any other rich media vendor, we are well aware of the several methods of serving video that eliminate the need to cache it, or load it all first before playing. Streaming allows the video to display as it is downloaded. The video player downloads the video in "packets," organizes it in a buffer and pulls data from the buffer to display the video frames. The buffer size is usually small, which means there is a short loading time. However, video play might be jumpy in cases when the buffer is not filled quickly enough (i.e., the user's bandwidth does not match the movie's bit rate).

With streaming, there is a two-way communication between the user and the server, which means that instructions from the user can be sent to the server; this enables advanced features such as "seek and stream" changes according to bandwidth.

Another alternative is Progressive Downloading, which falls between full caching and streaming. Progressive downloading (also known as http streaming) takes the video size into consideration when determining the buffer size. Buffering continues until the remaining download time is shorter then the movie play time. For rich media needs, progressive downloading is usually the best option because quality is ensured independent of user bandwidth.

All this technobabble is becoming increasingly important to creative agencies that need huge video assets so they can scale down and convert them for use online. Never has this become more important than with the arrival of full-screen video to the United States.

Considering interactive full-screen?
Our company can deliver full-screen video, so users have the chance to experience video in the most full and impressive way, sized up to 1024x768, which is obviously pretty cool. And 95 percent of computer users have this resolution, so for many users this can be true TV quality, providing the original video source file is of high quality and the video is encoded correctly. However, if either of these is executed poorly, the result is a terrible video clip that will turn users away from the ad.

The use of video, full-screen or otherwise, is a giant signal to the rise of brand response campaigns. Marketers often debate the web in terms of branding vs. direct response, but the use of rich media formats and features, and especially video, has eliminated this discussion. Even the old critics now have been forced to agree that video advertising -- and interactive full-screen video advertising -- makes brand response the most powerful digital marketing medium imaginable.

Quality issues may have been holding back the development of the brand response model online. But ad-serving companies have developed techniques and technology to counter. Full-screen video shows how far video online has come just in the past year. Now we can show Tom Cruise prancing about to a sixties television soundtrack and then engage the user into a direct response by letting them interact with the video-- they can push elements of the microsite into the full-screen ad. Or show more video, character profiles and gallery stills with competitions, newsletters and preview screening data-capture options.

Brand response works across all verticals-- car ads that show tantalizing curves in full beauty that also let users book a test drive and order a brochure. Airlines can immerse users into the luxury of full-size beds but also let them plan their journey and book their flight in the ad. Advertisers are even exploring the possibilities of video creative which is purposefully shot for the web, which can lower costs and be more effective.

The brand response list is endless within what is finally a substantial palate. Video technology and quality may finally live up to the hype of the past year, but only when the criteria herein are addressed as a matter of course. Be sure to address these criteria whenever engaging clients who want their video to look as gorgeous online as it did on television. You'll be glad you did.

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Winstar Releases Online Video Network

on iMedia Connection
by Roger Park, May 18, 2006

Winstar Interactive, a division of Interep Interactive, has launched Interactive Video Network (IVN).

IVN will serve as an online video ad network enabling advertisers to buy streaming pre-roll video spots. IVN will represent sites such as HistoryChannel.com, Biography.com, AETV.com and FHMus.com.

"Streaming video is the fastest growing segment of online advertising today. Fueled by broadband growth and the rapid development of online video content, marketers are quickly reacting to this seismic shift. IVN will specialize in representing and aggregating the streaming pre-roll media player video ad impressions of premium branded online content publishers into an online video ad network with a variety of targeting parameters for advertisers," says Kevin Gianatiempo, president, IVN.

eMarketer reports that internet video ad spending will grow by 71.1 percent in 2006.

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Delivery agent raises $11 million Series B bringing total funding to $16.5 milion

Series B Led By Bessemer Venture Partners Cardinal Venture Capital and Worldview Technology Partners Add To Holdings

San Francisco, CA – May 17, 2006 – "The opportunity for early stage investment with the industry leader that created the industry doesn't come along all that often," said David Cowan, General Partner with Bessemer Venture Partners. "Delivery Agent is a company which has identified an important business segment which could radically alter the media landscape."

In addition to Bessemer Venture Partners' investment in the company, Delivery Agent Inc., the leading interactive commerce provider for the entertainment industry, announced that both Worldview Technology Partners and Cardinal Venture Capital, initial investors in the company, have also participated in this round resulting in the company raising an additional $11 million.

"Delivery Agent is building a new business at the confluence of television and motion picture entertainment, online advertising and product placement," noted Bessemer's Justin Label, "The Company is the industry leader and our new round of investment will help them build on their successes."

Proceeds from the financing will be used to fund Delivery Agent's multi-channel commerce platform, facilitating transactions from virtually any media consumption system, including: wireless, IPTV and ITV; expanding Delivery Agent's market leadership position as the only company with a targeted solution that enables viewers to connect with and immediately purchase products seen within entertainment content.

The company's patent-pending platform has become the industry standard, currently adopted by major entertainment companies and consumer brands seeking to take advantage of this new revenue stream. Delivery Agent has interactive commerce agreements with best of breed media companies including ABC Entertainment, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, NBC Universal, and Twentieth Century Fox. With over 75 properties in their roster of clients, Delivery Agent is the leading e-commerce enabler for the current Network Prime-time Top 20 rated shows, according to Nielsen Media Research.

"A little over a year ago we announced our first round financing at $5.5 million," noted Mike Fitzsimmons, Delivery Agent CEO. "Today we are exceptionally pleased to announce that our second round is led by Bessemer Venture Partners, one of the industry's oldest and most respected firms. We consider this investment a strong endorsement in the vitality of our business and the underlying theme that we've only just begun to see the growth potential the field holds."

About Bessemer Venture Partners
As the oldest venture capital practice in the United States, Bessemer Venture Partners manages more than a billion dollars of venture funds, carrying on a tradition of hands-on, active venture investing that started in 1911. More than 100 Bessemer companies have gone public, including American Superconductor, Ciena, Gartner Group, Ingersoll Rand, International Paper, Maxim, Parametric, Perseptive Biosystems, Staples, VeriSign and W.R. Grace. BVP is located in Silicon Valley, New York, Boston, Shanghai, Mumbai, and Bangalore.


About Delivery Agent
Delivery Agent, Inc., is the leader in shopping enabled programming and measurement for television shows, movies, sports, and music videos. Delivery Agent created the market for shopping enabled programming by redefining how products SeenON!™, or related to entertainment content are cataloged, sold and measured. Since early 2002, through its patent-pending suite of technology applications, Delivery Agent has been facilitating profitable transactions between consumers and products. The company's roster of clients includes ABC Entertainment, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, NBC Universal, Twentieth Century Fox, along with movie studios like The Weinstein Company, Sony Pictures, Lions Gate Entertainment, and sports franchises including Ultimate Fighter and Ultimate Fighting Championship and several NBA Franchises.

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Eyeblaster Releases Video Studio

on MediaPost Publications
by Gavin O'Malley,May 18, 2006

ADVERTISING FIRM EYEBLASTER TODAY WILL begin marketing a simplified platform for the creation and execution of video advertising online. Shooting for ease of use without sacrificing ad quality, Eyeblaster's new "Video Studio" allows for auto-encoding of digitized files into multiple video formats, while supporting the newest video formats, including WMV and FLV8 along with the FLV7 player format.

The offering automatically detects bandwidth settings of individual computers and delivers the appropriate video file to ensure fluid video streams. In addition, Video Studio enables the use of file sizes up to 4.4mbs--and, in an effort to eliminate approval hurdles, automatically selects from a range of streaming methods based on publishers' specifications.

"The creation and execution process which used to take three days can be performed in minutes using the Video Studio," said Doug McFarland, Eyeblaster managing director, North America.

Having executed over 4,000 video ads in the first quarter, Eyeblaster is seeking to establish itself as a leader in the space. McFarland said the company is investing tens of millions of dollars to expand into other areas like search bid-management and in-game advertising later this year.

"I hate the overused term 'one-stop shop,' but that's what we're becoming," McFarland added.

Beyond the launch of Video Studio, Eyeblaster announced enhancements to its platform, including Flash 8 support and enhanced trafficking with Excel, so media planners can automatically upload media plans created in MS Excel directly into the Eyeblaster platform, as well as Macintosh support.

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Internet Film: Pirelli's The Call Showcases Future Direction For Online Advertising

on Robin Good's Latest News
May 17, 2006

"Many advertisers are worried that traditional ways of reaching consumers, including the 30-second television spot, are losing their power to persuade.

Television viewers have more channels and media to choose from, and digital video recorders and video on demand allow them to skip ads entirely.

To reach consumers today, you have to entertain them, marketers say, rather than approach them with a hard sell."

(Source: International Herald Tribune)

Thanks to Google AdSense ads on my own site, I just discovered a new online-only film just released by Pirelli (the Italian tire maker).

The 10-minute short movie starring former fashion model Naomi Campbell and popular actor John Malkovich is one key example of the new direction that major automotive brands are taking to further leverage the new media communication potential and distribution reach of the Internet. ...

The Call, like any other online branding movie, is a perfect content vehicle that other publishers can use to drive interest and attention to their sites. The more you chain that content to the mother company site the more you keep tacitly communicating that you, Pirelli, are above us and that the movie and its right to be viewed are under your domain: wrong.

Your movie, dear Pirelli, is one thousand times more powerful, more effective and more popular when you let us, the customers, the users, the independent writers asnd reporters out there take your content and showcase on our own sites. When you, BMW, or Volvo will finally realize that the power is in the sharing, then you will truly graduate to the online marketing paradigm.

For now it is clear, that while you have a foot in the future, you have solidly left the other in the past. ...

full article

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AOL to Release YouTube Clone

on TechCrunch
by Michael Arrington, May 16 2006

Prepare for the launch of AOL UnCut (currently in open beta), a near perfect clone of YouTube. The service is powered by Video Egg.

Videos of up to 5 minutes can be uploaded to the service, and they are then converted to the Flash format (same as YouTube). Like YouTube, videos are rated, commented and shareable. Also, any video may be embedded into another website via a code snippet. The only significant difference between AOL Uncut and YouTube is that YouTube supports tagging, whereas UnCut doesn’t.

This is right on the heels of the launch of AIM Pages, which is directly targeting Myspace and other social networks.

Look for a launch in the next week.

I am seeing an increasing trend of the big guys simply copying what successful startups are doing. AOL with this product and AIM Pages. Google with Google Notebook and a flurry of other projects, etc. The only large company that is even experimenting with unproven concepts at this point is Microsoft with its various Live.com ideas. I’d like to see more experimenting at the big company level.

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YouTube new feature: Video Responses

May 16, 2006 -We recently noticed that within many of the different ecosystems on YouTube our users are doing something really cool - they're communicating with each other through their videos. Text comments and messages are great, but our users have once again created something really innovative completely on their own - video responses. It's been amazing to watch our users create an entirely new mechanism for communicating with one another. However, one of the challenges with these video dialogues has been there is no way to 'link' your response back to the original video. To encourage and simplify this type of communication we just launched a new Video Response feature that will allow you to upload your own video reply while you're watching a video. Just look for the 'post a video response' link on any video watch page. All video responses will show up directly beneath the original video (just like text comments).

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Media Publisher Inc. Unleashes Benefits Of Enterprise Video Communications

on DV.com

Market-Leading EVC Solution Solves Challenges of Presenting Corporate Video

Berkeley, CA, May 16, 2006 — Enterprise Video Communications (EVC) offers companies the most efficient and cost-effective way to reach large audiences and distribute strategic corporate communications, training programs, and HR/benefit information — but to date, technical roadblocks have stalled adoption of the medium. Media Publisher Inc., the leader in the rapidly growing EVC market, is the first company to remove these roadblocks and allow Global 2000 enterprises to take full advantage of the benefits of corporate video, making it reliable, scalable, and easy to use.

"Most enterprises today recognize that video communications, such as live webcasts and on-demand recordings of meetings, executive presentations, training, and product information help build competitive advantage, maximize efficiency and increase the bottom line," said Sally Windman, industry analyst, Frost & Sullivan. "By using Enterprise Video Communications effectively, companies can greatly increase productivity and deliver a powerful ROI to the enterprise."

Top corporate and public organizations have confirmed the benefits of Enterprise Video Communications, and are partnering with Media Publisher to create technologies that improve and simplify the delivery of business video.

Media Publisher offers non-technical users a way to create and manage their own live and on-demand events through a user-friendly interface, and view those video events through a configurable Viewer Portal. In addition, Media Publisher offers tremendous value to IT by integrating with and managing the existing network video infrastructure via the Video Control Center, making it possible to centrally manage video events on the corporate network.

Media Publisher leverages other infrastructure components to accomplish central management, such as communicating with multiple remote encoders, syndicating content to multiple CDN distribution systems, and performing streaming server publishing point management. In addition, Media Publisher provides a fully fault-tolerant, redundant system with multiple levels of failover to ensure customers are able to scale the use of video to many thousands of simultaneous viewers — while ensuring the highest quality of video experience is achieved every time.

"Media Publisher provides our faculty a user friendly way to include video in their course resources for students," said Kim Allen, director of data, voice, and video networking at Lamar University. "Centralized storage of all video on-demand assets makes it easy for students and faculty publishers to manage and find the appropriate content. Media Publisher gives us the control we need to launch events whenever we need them, to capture the information to use it later, and to create classes that are as rich as the ones we present in person."

Media Publisher has innovated a complete Platform, Application, and Solutions product stack tailored to the unique demands of Enterprise Video Communications. The Media Publisher EVC solution interoperates with and leverages an enterprise's existing IT infrastructure, while delivering significant functionality and benefits to line-of-business users. Media Publisher offers a complete end-to-end solution, including a Platform and several applications for delivering and managing business video:

• MP Viewer Portal: provides a user-friendly program guide, with easy-to-browse video categories and customizable look and feel.


• MP Live EventPro: manages live video webcasting, and is scaleable to thousands of simultaneous viewers.


• MP LiveCaster: allows presenters to deliver enterprise video webcasts and capture and deliver slides, images, web pages and other documents, without extended assistance from IT.


• MP VOD Manager: allows business users to easily publish and manage their own video content, set access rights, and generate reports on viewer activity.


• MP Digital Signage: creates and update playlists remotely for LCD and plasma displays, and provides central management of content for all video outputs.

"The value of business video increases when companies can bring their messages to hundreds or thousands of viewers, archive the video, and report on its usage," said Rod Bacon, president and CEO of Media Publisher Inc. "Media Publisher makes it possible to maximize the value of Enterprise Video Communications, without the decrease in quality that often occurs when enterprises need to distribute their messages to wide audiences."

For more information, visit www.media-publisher.com.

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iMedia Podcast: Video Beyond the Box

on iMedia Connection
by Andrew Rosenman,May 10, 2006

Arise Communication's President Andrew Rosenmen leads a panel discussion on video programming and ad creativity in new channels.

The recent explosion of digital video content and viewership on the Internet is likely to be the single biggest force on media and entertainment in 2006.

Publishers are quickly expanding their original video programming and getting more creative in their collaboration with advertising partners.

For example, Scripps Networks launched HGTVkitchendesign.com last December, the first of six planned broadband channels featuring niche video content. Advertisers like Viking, Dupont and Whirlpool ran campaigns that included a variety of 15 and 30 second video ads and banners. And About.com recently added new content in its gadgets and electronics segments that features one-minute overviews of various personal technology decisions, from "Choosing a Gaming Console" to "Car Audio Options." Thirty-second spots for Microsoft Office were paired with the content.

Brand marketers are also jumping into web video programming. The Red Bull website introduced in February 2006 a monthly online magazine named "Bull's Eye Magazine," which features special reports of events produced and endorsed by Red Bull. The website also offers a news segment featuring sport highlights and it will soon add a Red Bull live events channel.

Other companies to watch as they drive video content growth are Brightcove, which distributes a platform that enables any web publisher or content creator to easily put ad-supported web video on their site, and Tremor Network, a video advertising network that offers video serving, content and ad sales.

This session from the iMedia Breakthrough '06 Summit in Lake Las Vegas, NV features panel members drawn from the content programming, technology, agency and strategy disciplines. They will discuss, debate and reconcile some of the "known unknowns" that marketers will increasingly have to address when leveraging new forms of video.

Download the show (Format: 55:15, 19.3 MB, MP3)

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Web Video Compression Could End Congestion

on Yahoo! News
by Brian Bergstein, May 14 2006

CONCORD, Mass. - With more and more video surging across the Internet not just to computers but also televisions and handheld devices, something that could relieve the congestion or improve the quality would be a huge breakthrough.

That is inspiring multiple efforts to chase a long-sought — and often unachieved — goal of better compression, the trick of shrinking a movie, song, picture or other large file so that it can be whisked over the Internet without anyone noticing a difference.

Some compression companies are making some eyebrow-raising promises, such as the ability to squeeze a video file tight enough to facilitate high-definition television over the Internet. Others say their compression schemes will enhance existing video applications such as medical imaging.

"We stand a tremendous chance of becoming a de facto standard," boasts Daniel Kilbank, who founded Bethesda, Md.-based compression-technology vendor Qbit LLC with former Apple Computer Inc. CEO John Sculley in 2003.

Qbit's compression system is considered "loss-less," meaning it can shrink a file without losing a detail from the original file. It uses pattern-recognition algorithms to spot recurring aspects of a scene rather than sending them multiple times.

In contrast, today's top method of video compression, MPEG-4, is considered "lossy" because some quality is sacrificed in shrinking the file. If you see fuzzy or pixelated images online, the faults could lie in the compression.

Consequently, even if Qbit merely matches MPEG-4's ability to shrink files but can do so losslessly, Kilbank argues that his technology "really creates a business argument" for new kinds of portable devices and Internet services with high-definition content.

Qbit figures to find its best success in "professional imaging fields" that generate huge files, such as medicine, defense, movie production and oil exploration, In-Stat analyst Gerry Kaufhold believes. Eventually, however, Qbit expects to be able to shrink files that already have been compressed with MPEG — potentially a boon to cable, satellite and phone-companies pumping out video content.

A different compression approach is in the works at Euclid Discoveries LLC, based in this proudly historic Revolutionary War town.

Euclid recently announced that it can dramatically improve on MPEG-4's ability to render faces, while also shrinking files up to 10 times more efficiently. By focusing on faces first, Euclid hopes to spur "talking head" services, such as news broadcasts or videoconferences, on portable devices.

The compression is not lossless, but Euclid founder Richard Wingard argues that mathematical tricks will make the loss essentially unnoticeable.

For now, it appears Euclid still has far to go. In an April demonstration for The Associated Press, the system presented clearer facial images than files compressed with MPEG-4. But the edges weren't smoothly integrated into the picture, as if the face had been glued on the background for a collage.

Wingard said those problems will soon be fixed. And he said rendering faces is one of the hardest aspects of image manipulation, so having already solved that puts Euclid close to essentially removing bandwidth constraints for high-quality video. Euclid pledges to eventually get a two-hour movie down to 50 megabytes — small enough to fit 20 on a portable USB drive, for example.

Indeed, In-Stat's Kaufhold believes that Euclid has "something valuable at its core" that might lead to delivering HDTV over the Internet.

But other observers are far more skeptical. For one thing, innumerable compression claims have been made over the years only to fizzle.

And while there have been notable compression advancements over the years from such players as Divx Inc. and On2 Technologies Inc., those technologies power niche applications.

One reason is that existing, lossy compression — such as the MPEG-2 format that encodes DVDs — is usually good enough for entertainment purposes, said Predrag Filipovic, an analyst with The Diffusion Group.

He also notes that a startup compression scheme always faces an uphill fight. It must attract the interest of equipment makers who are reluctant to stray from industry standards, and it has to overcome rival offerings from full-service providers such as Microsoft Corp.

"Is there a need for yet-better compression? Yes, you can argue that there is," Filipovic said. "The question is how much better somebody has to be in order to justify the huge cost of marketing this thing and the huge cost to the provider. Those equations usually do not end up in a revolution."

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A Guide to the Online Video Explosion

from WIRED
Issue 14.05 - May 2006

What do you want to watch?

The answer used to depend on limits - what day it was, what time it was, what channels you got. A handy little thing called TV Guide laid it all out. Television was a one-way medium - big broadcasters pushing content into our living rooms at a specific time and place.

Not anymore. Online video has arrived, unleashed from the networks, cable companies, and media giants. Thanks to growing bandwidth, easy access to the means of production, and cheap storage, it's exploding all around us and becoming a very real, very different way to experience news and entertainment.

Even the old guard gets it (sort of). From Desperate Housewives on your iPod to MTV Overdrive, the networks are racing one another to get their broadcast programs online, while also creating Web-only content.

But don't let them fool you. What's happening here isn't just TV online. Gone are the rigid 30- and 60-minute blocks; now the clip is it - be it 30 seconds or eight minutes, we're watching only the money shots. Gone is top-down broadcasting; instead, the network has been, well, networked, with thousands of creators and places to watch, from single-serving sites like Rocketboom to slick aggregators like iTunes and blinkx. And gone, too, is the at-this-time, at-this-channel programming; now we're not only time-shifting with DVRs, we're space-shifting as well, watching stuff on our laptops, iPods, and cell phones - even loading it back onto our TVs.

Missed Oprah squashing James Frey? No matter - you could catch the choice bits of the gotcha episode on YouTube later that afternoon. Want to see the best shorts by SNL's "Lazy Sunday" guys? You won't find them on NBC - try The 'Bu on channel101.com. Still watching Must See TV on Thursday nights? How quaint.

Sure, a lot of the material is junk: dorm pranks, nip slips, America's silliest home videos. But some of it is brilliant: House of Cosbys, Kevin Sites's hot zone at Yahoo! News, archives of cold war propaganda films. Some people look at the sheer amount of material and see a mess. But we see, amid the flood of content and competing delivery services, a new medium emerging, one with fewer gatekeepers, more producers, and - somewhere - something for everyone. And that's the point: The mess is the message.

That doesn't make it easy to sample. So we've created a Me-Vee Guide - a way for you to understand, navigate, and participate in the online video explosion.

What's on? Whatever you want.

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SelfcastTV - Video sharing platform allows you to publish videos and broadcast them from your website

SelfcastTV allows you to upload and share your videos, search for and download others. As a SelfcastTV user, you will also be able to embed your video files into other websites such has MySpace, eBay, Xanga and BritJournal. Users will soon be enabled to publish videos direct from their mobile as well being able to download content to their iPod or PSP. Free to use.

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Beyond Distribution: Content Producers Adapt to Context-Driven Value

on Shore
by John Blossom, 9 May 2006

The explosion of content from television producers bringing original content to the Web may look on the surface like a consumer content story, but it's really only a very visible sign of a broader story impacting all content producers. In a world with a limitless supply of content via a universal Web traditional content distribution is on its way to becoming a secondary business model. With the emphasis on getting the attention of audiences saturated with content options profitable publishing is less about controlling distribution and more about helping others to push content into its most valuable context without traditional distribution deals. Original Web-first content production is an important step, but without context-driven value the job is half done.

Last week was the week that television went wild on the Web. In a spurt of activity to catch up with the rapid migration of young TV audiences to online outlets numerous TV and online networks beefed up their video program offerings. From the new CBS offering Innertube, to the announcement of Microsoft's MSN Originals to ABC television's launch of next-day online viewing of their on-air program schedule (with ads) commercial television is racing to go elbow to elbow with the explosion of new and oftentimes original online video sources available from both professional and amateur sources. While widely available broadband service in the U.S. and beyond combined with mature video infrastructure makes these services possible in the technical sense, the real enabler is the changing attitude of video producers. Long locked in to relationships with local broadcast affiliates and cable outlets, television is feeling its way gingerly through these old relationships based on distribution to build new direct relationships with audiences through online access.

The shadow of controlling distribution as a key tenet of profitability hangs heavily on the content industry. From the first clay tablets in ancient times to Guttenberg's press to the age of electronics content producers have prized closely held distribution channels as the key to their riches and power. But then came the Web, where content flows with few controls on its distribution. This is not a business philosophy as much as it is an inherent design of the Web. The original Internet was designed in the 1970's by the U.S. military to overcome wartime communications disruptions between any sender and receiver automatically. In other words, the Internet by its very nature tries to overcome the distribution bottlenecks that content producers have coveted. No small wonder, then, that content producers wedded to long-standing proprietary distribution channels have been slow to adapt to the Web.

But now that potential substitute products are cropping up everywhere on the Web content producers used to controlling distribution channels have little choice but to adapt their marketing strategies to a post-distribution world. In doing so they move gently to maintain revenues from existing print, audio and video channels and to maintain relationships with the organizations that manage those distribution channels for them. It's not an easy balance - and one that can easily take one's eye off the ultimate prize. Original and exclusive content for their Web offerings helps to soften the blow to their existing distribution channels, but it's all part of facing a hard and uncomfortable truth: controlling distribution is becoming less valuable than enabling the most valuable context for content easily accessed by audiences that have abundant choices.

Be it video, audio, text or data, there are a few key rules that will emerge as old distribution patterns merge in with new context-driven capabilities:

• Separate your content user licensing from content distribution channels. Many media companies have jumped on proprietary DRM solutions to lock down premium content, in effect re-creating traditional proprietary content distribution relationships. While licensing controls remain important, there are far more potential channels for premium content than there are proprietary DRM schemes that users will find to be acceptable before they opt to bypass DRM schemes for less onerous controls. The emerging digital exchange standards being backed by Sony, Microsoft, Apple and others hint that a broadening of technology to support this concept, but it's up to content producers themselves to develop new standards for licensing in digital media that will make it attractive for users to play by the rules with licenses that can move to and from whatever devices and channels suit their fancy.


• Make it easy for content to go viral. NBC learned a lesson from earlier hacked distributions of popular clips from their TV shows and started making it much easier for viewers to view and share clips with people. This builds up the value of their Web site more effectively, but it limits potential content shares to just a handful of clips. In a post-distribution world content producers need to be able to leverage users as key partners in content propagation, allowing as many agents as possible to help content find its most valuable context. In an environment in which technology makes copying extremely simple and inexpensive globally, the fastest and most cost-effective way to implement highly valuable contexts for content is to make it easy for anyone in the world to distribute content in the right packaging that will ensure its producer appropriate recognition of its value.


• Package distribution options as value-add features for go-anywhere content. Though cries of "print is dead" still ring out now and again, for the most part publishers and audiences recognize that traditional media will be with us for a long while. The question that still hangs out there, though, is what should be packaged in these media and how. If traditional distribution channels are no longer necessary to service most audiences, then they can be packaged as value-add services for people who prefer other media and venues for content that they've licensed. We're probably a ways away from theatre-screen-rental-on-demand movies, but not far off from print-on-demand magazines and newspapers tailored for individuals and highly focused groups that leverage traditional distribution media as a custom service.

It will take a long while for most publishers and content producers to adjust to a world in which distribution is secondary to enabling content to find its own context as efficiently as possible. But it is an exorable movement that must respond to the fundamental economics of publishing in a Web-driven era. The world has an infinite supply of content and only a very finite amount of attention that can be gained from highly mobile and fleeting potential audiences. The content that can rise to the top of the list for that audience's attention most quickly and efficiently is the content that will ring up revenues most effectively. By pushing Web-first content traditional content producers have started to engage the post-distribution content model in earnest. But now comes the hard part - getting long-established business models to take the most advantage of that environment. Stay tuned for further developments.

Categories

• TV
• Advertising

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Advertising Search Becomes A Reality: TiVo Product Watch

on Robin

May 09, 2006 - Advertising search allows consumers to voluntarily seek and access personally selected commercial information (ads) on product and services they are interested in.

TiVo, the company that pioneered a brand new category of television-ads skipping products with the development of the first commercially available digital video recorder (DVR) which allows individuals to select and watch their favourite television programming when and where they want to, has just announced the launch of its new advertising search product named 'TiVo Product Watch' which offers advertisers an innovative new way to reach TiVo subscribers who are actively looking for commercial products and information.

We are in a new video/television era, where consumers not only expect to have greater choice and more control, but actually proactively demand it. Advertising search provides the means to place the user once again in the control seat, even when it comes to television advertising, a daily experience on which television viewers had lost all of their controls.

Search advertising, which means the ability for the user to select and watch advertising messages according to her preferences, allows advertisers to spend their money much more effectively and efficiently than traditional ads fired at millions of uninterested viewers could.

By providing searchable ads content in highly requested consumer categories, TiVo Product Watch leverages its strong television content search functionality to deliver highly relevant and very targeted advertising messages to those viewers who are most interested in getting them.

TiVo Product Watch meets the needs of consumers who can seek commercial information and advertising content relevant to them, and marketers benefit because they are serving highly targeted customers in a way never available to them before: with the user "asking" for the commercials!

More information..

Categories

• Advertising
• TV

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