Beet.TV

Brightcove, Ooyala Top Forrester's List of Online Video Platforms, Little Twistage Gets Attention

2009-11-06T13:22:32-05:00

In report released today, Forrester analyst Bobby Tulsiani writes that Brightcove and Ooyala provide the best end-to-end online video platform.

He writes, "Brightcove separates itself from the pack with leading scores in distribution and and integration while Ooyala earns its highest marks in monetization and analytics."

The report ($1749)evaluates six companies.

Kaltura and VMIX, come in second, getting high marks as offing "strong differentiated options. "Kaltura is the only open source platform in our evaluation and also offers a self-hosting version....." VMIX is noted for its "customized solutions for implementation, training, support, and pricing."

The last group is Fliqz and Twistage which "serve narrower" niches.

By evaluating six companies, Tulsani leaves out several strong companies including thePlatform, Blip.tv, Kyte, Metacafe, DailyMotion and others.

In his blog post, Tulsiani explains why list was limited to six. He writes:

"While the number of companies in the space is certainly larger than six, we decided to focus on a set of vendors that serve a variety of clients, regardless of size or industry. For that reason, some vendors that primarily focus on high end media companies, such as Digitalsmiths, The Platform, or Move Networks were not included."

We were pleased to see our neighbors at Twistage, a company a low profile, written up in the report. The report finds that Twistage's "open API structure allows it to power many third party aggregators behind the scenes." We have republished our interview with CEO and founder David Wadler.

On Monday, we will interview Tulsiani here at Beet.TV for much more on his report and trends in this sector.

Andy Plesser, Executive Producer

Disclosure: Brightcove is a sponsor of Beet.TV

Madison Avenue's Frustration with Online Video: Quality is "Complete Crap," top WPP Exec

2009-11-06T06:46:59-05:00

Despite the commanding position of YouTube, with 40 percent of video streams in the U.S., the quality of the environment for advertisers is not always acceptable, according to leading digital advertising executives.

Rob Norman, CEO of WPP's giant GroupM Interaction, the digital media buying group, says that despite the availability of high quality video ads to go up on the Web, the technical quality and environment of sites like YouTube is not acceptable. He says the current environment is "complete crap." (His comments come at the end of this clip.)

GroupM says it is the world's largest media buying company, with billings of $60 billion.

Ogilvy's Robert Davis and Digitas' John McCarus discuss the value of YouTube as a powerful distribution platform with value and limitations.

YouTube has recently increased the number of pre-roll ads and has expanded its relationship with many ad agencies.

This is an excerpt from last month's Beet.TV Online Video Roundtable held at the New York offfices of msnbc.com.

Moderating this section is Michael Learmonth, reporter for Advertising Age. Michael recently reported how consumer package goods are using online video advertising in a big way.

Andy Plesser, Executive Producer

Video Transcript

Michael Learmonth: Eric Smith said yesterday or the day before that YouTube is now doing business with 90 of the top 100 AdAge, top advertisers. What are your clients saying about YouTube? What, if anything, are they doing on YouTube, and do you think YouTube has figured out the scalable model that's going to work for them?

John McCarus: Well, I would say for Digitas and the Third Act, which is our brand content platform, that we're very much working with YouTube as a distribution partner. I think one of the challenges is they spent some time trying to dabble in the content business and I'm not so sure if that's an area where they can see a lot of sucess.

Michael Learmonth: Well, they had one big go with that, right? And they said they were going to do more and it just didn't happen.

John McCarus: Yeah, and look, they're a terrific distribution network and a terrific technology platform and what we have to remember on the web is that, unlike in broadcast television, we have the opportunity and challenge for packaging all of this ourselves as clients and advertisers. It is, with the right thinking, successful and many times the best solution. So we are putting YouTube together with the right content solutions and have actually some big programs that will be announced shortly.

Robert Davis: Yeah, I think, you know, not to comment on their business model, that's whatever they try to do, they try to do, right? Now, it's essential. They own so much of the market that it's essential for clients to be there, to be well represented. Are they the end-all, be-all? No, but they own 40% of the views, so you deal with them and then you deal with the other 60% as you can.

What I see as I look around at YouTube though, is that it's not being used to its fullest extent. I'm amazed at the poor quality of video that's being posted. And that's not YouTube's fault, that's the fault of the people putting up the video...

Michael Learmonth: Well it's their fault that they don't surface the good stuff, right?

Robert Davis: Well no, just even technical quality, forget even content. I'm just looking at it, going, "If somebody put that on TV looking that way, they'd be fired." Why is it acceptable? Full gamut. Why is that acceptable online? So I think there's things that we, as an industry, need to start realizing that YouTube is probably more powerful than we're making itself.

Rob Norman: So it's maybe ironic when you look at YouTube, and we've now got this host of HD delivery systems. If you actually looked up, it's possible that today is lower proportion of all video that's consumed is consumed at the highest possible quality that was available than ever before. Because, although we've got HD and we've got a whole load of ads in HD, we've also got millions and millions of pieces of video being consumed in a customer delivery quality that's complete crap. It's kind of interesting.

Msnbc.com's Evolving Embeddable Video Player, an update

2009-11-05T08:24:33-05:00

msnbc.com, which had the first embeddable video player among the major video producers in the United States, will soon launch a player which provides embed codes for specific segments.

The new player will also be resizable and will carry forms of advertising, deemed acceptable on off domain sites, meaning no pre-roll ads.

These are some of the comments by Charlie Tillinghast, president and publisher of msnbc.com in response to answers from Rafat Ali, editor and pubisher of paidContent.

Rafat was one of the co-moderators of the recent Beet.TV Online Video Roundtable which was held at msnbc.com's New York headquarters at 30 Rock.

Andy Plesser, Executive Producer

NBC Universal Claims 12 Million Unique Monthly Visitors for Local Sites

2009-11-04T14:46:37-05:00

NBC Universal's ten regional web sites, which are affiliated with local owned and operated television stations, has reached an audience of 12 million monthly unique viewers, according to internal numbers.

More on the results on Mediabistro's WebNewser.

Earlier this year, we spoke with Gregory Gittrich, Executive Editor of the sites and Brian Buchwald, EVP of Local Integrated Media at NBC. We have republished our interview today.

Local media is growing business for big media, tomorrow, the Wall Street Journal launches its Bay Area edition, Mediabistro reports.

Andy Plesser, Executive Producer

Disclaimer: Beet.TV has a content sharing agreement with NBC Local.

Microsoft Readies Silverlight for Offline Use: Adobe's Flash Heading to Smart Phones

2009-11-04T09:42:54-05:00

NBC Sports will announce plans today to use Microsoft Silverlight as the software for Web viewing the Winter Olympics Games in the United States.

We have been impressed with the latest use of Silverlight by NBC for Sunday Night Football. We look forward to watching the Olympics online. Although, we expect that due to the Pacific time zone many live competitions will be delayed.

Next for Silverlight is downloadable files, videos saved to the computers, according to Microsoft's Brian Goldfarb, who was a participant in last month's Beet.TV Online Video Roundtable. He explains in this video.

Although NBC is using Silverlight, virtually all the world's broadcasters will be carrying the Winter Olympics in Flash. (We expect that Silverlight will be used in a handful of other other countries -- quite possibly in France where the Tour de France online was a hit.)

The Next Battle: Video on the Smart Phone

Adobe, having achieved ubiquity on the the world's computers with Flash, will have Flash installed on nearly all smart phones in the United States, except the iPhone.

Speaking at the panel, and second in this video, is Adobe's Bill Rusitzky. Bill talks about Flash and its move to mobile devices planned for next year.

This section of the panel was moderated by Kevin Delaney, Senior Deputy Managing Editor of the WSJ.com

Andy Plesser, Executive Producer

Advertisers Demand Metrics around Online Video Usage

2009-11-04T07:29:43-05:00

Advertisers want to know more about their neighbors and brands want to know who they're running next to and whether their ads are live in safe online environments, said Jayant Kadambi, co-founder and president of online video ad network YuMe.

We caught up with him at the Beet.TV Online Video Roundtable last month.

As marketers seek scale online with online video, they also want data on where the videos are embedded, he explained. "As video goes from TV to online videos to live to widgets, we give them all the information required so they feel comfortable advertising at scale," he said. That includes data on whether an ad plays next to another ad and what type of content it runs against. Technologies like AdSafe and ad networks like Brand.net are also focused on managing the environments in which ads live online.

To deliver the right ads to the right consumers, YuMe relies on consumers' content preferences. "If this is 'Heroes,' based on the data associated with that content we know people 18 to 49 who like dramas watch 'Heroes' and we can use that to place the right ad," Kadambi explained. He added that YuMe doesn't rely much on cookie data and leans instead on user behavior.

In general, ad networks also rely on a range of data sources such as Next Action, Blue Kai, RapLeaf, and others to verify audiences and to deliver ads to the right viewers.

Daisy Whitney, Senior Producer

Disclaimer: YuMe was the sponsor of last month's Beet.TV Online Video Roundtable

How to Think Like a Venture Capitalist

2009-11-03T14:37:04-05:00

Advertisers and marketers can use the techniques of venture capitalists in evaluating new advertising platforms, technologies, and tools.

Online-advertising-executive-turned-venture capitalist Brian McAndrews of Madrona Venture Group spoke with me during the recent iMedia Summit for this week's New Media Minute. This evaluation includes assessing the market opportunity, the timing, and the management team of emerging advertising opportunities, she reported. This episode also includes the latest insight from interactive agency Questus on how young consumers are relying on social media to make purchase decisions.

Daisy Whitney

Editor's Note: Daisy's New Media Minute is produced and sponsored separately from Beet.TV. We are pleased to publish her segment regularly here. AP

Custom Video Creative Yields Three Times Click-Through, YuMe CEO

2009-11-02T20:29:14-05:00

Online video ad network YuMe is generating engagement rates that are as much as three to four times higher or custom spots than for pre-rolls. That's what YuMe's CEO Michael Mathieu told Beet.TV during a recent interview in New York.

The company served up more than three billion video ads through the third quarter of this year and custom spots are generating as high as a 5% click-through rate, or engagement rate.

That compares to pre-rolls, which generate a bit higher than one percent interaction, YuMe found. On average the engagement for customized spots is double a pre-roll. However, pre-rolls are still the dominant ad format in online video and account for 95% of the ads YuMe delivers. Some of the clients YuMe has served up tailored ads for include Axe, Dove, Vitamin Water, Universal Pictures, and LandRover. The company recently released a study detailing click-through rates for various types of video ads.

"We can customize so the ad envelopes the whole screen and you're not just watching within the player," he said. "We see up to 5% click yields when people really take the time to develop creative that is online-specific and have the opportunity to engage the audience versus taking a TV ad and sticking it in front of the content."

Because of the success with tailored ads, YuMe is exploring additional types of online video ad formats such as embedding ad units in the video. "If someone is watching Beet.TV there might be a white space to the right of you and there could be an ad there selling a product. We will see more embeddable ads within video that is contextually relevant and focuses on the user. Ads around the video player will start to disappear," he said.

Daisy Whitney, Senior Producer

Disclaimer: YuMe was the sponsor of the Beet.TV Online Video Roundtable.

The Trouble with Online Video is Scale, Time Inc. Digital Boss Vivek Shah

2009-11-02T14:27:23-05:00

The big challenge facing mainstream media with online video is scale; a lack of inventory of content and viewers, according Vivek Shah, head of digital news at Time Inc.

At the Beet.TV Online Video Roundtable, Vivek was questioned by paidContent Editor Rafat Ali, one of the event's moderators.

Vivek says estimates that the size of the online video advertising budget in the U.S. is just over $350 million.

Also bemoaning the small scale or the emerging media in this clip is Rob Norman who heads GroupM, the giant digital media buying arm of WPP.

Update: Just this afternoon, Rafat reports on paidContent that Vivek will be leaving his post at Time Inc.

Andy Plesser, Executive Producer

The Promise of Online Video is Beyond "Television 2.0," Experts Say

2009-11-01T20:28:57-05:00

Although pre-roll advertising, the 15-30 second ads seen before a video begins, is the dominate media form, the promise of online video advertising is much greater.

The opportunity is much more than simply re-purposing television ads , as a kind of "Television 2.0." It is incumbent on the industry to be more creative.

These were some of the comments in by panelists in this excerpt from the Beet.TV Online Video Roundtable.

This section was moderated by Ad Age's Michael Learmonth. Participants in this clip include Micheal Mathieu, CEO of video ad network YuMe, Rob Norman, CEO of WPP's GroupM, Robert Davis of Ogilvy and John McCarus of Digitas.

Update: Michael has a big feature up on Ad Age about how big consumer package goods companies are taking to online video.

Andy Plesser, Executive Producer