IMPULSE Digital Media

10 Exciting New Gadgets Coming In 2009!

mandalan — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 08:58:52 +0000

With literally thousands of new tech products, cool gadgets, and online services coming, Digitpedia.com ranks the most exciting ones… including BigStage.com!

http://www.digitpedia.com/exciting-new-gadgets-coming-2009/2381/

Create your 3D photo-realistic avatar and put your digital self into the action with lots of great movies and show, including THE SPIRIT, opening Dec. 25 starring Samuel Jackson, at mycityscreams.com . You can also get into THE SPIRIT on your iPhone and share photos and videos of you in the movie, now available in the iPhone AppStore.

Facebook, MySpace, YouTube Banner Rates Down 45% since February

mandalan — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 06:40:06 +0000

Digital analytics firm PubMatic reports that banner ad rates on Facebook, MySpace, YouTube have fallen 45% since February, to 18 cents per thousand page views.

Media buyer Starcom is spending more on video ads within full-length episodes on Hulu.com (NBC and Fox), ABC.com, CBS.com and other TV network websites — buys that include branded channels with customized backgrounds and featured video.

YouTube and MySpaceTV allow individuals and professionals to build ad-supported branded video channels. Nestlé, Hanes, 3M, Procter & Gamble, and Hewlett-Packard are buying $200,000 channel sponsorships. YouTube charges $175,000 a day for an ad on its home page and along with $50,000 more on other Google or YouTube ads.

With pre-roll video ad abandonment reaching 70%, Forbes reports that short pop-up rollover banners displayed along the bottom of the video window after 15 seconds get 8 times more click-thrus as standard banner ads outside the video. Rollover companion banners displayed next to the video box receive click-thurs up to 46 times more.

http://www.forbes.com/technology/forbes/2008/0616/050.html

US video ad spending is projected to reach $4.3 billion in 2011.

YouTube delivered over 4 billion views in March 2008.

Web Video Jumps 13% in March to 11.5 Billion Views

mandalan — Mon, 12 May 2008 19:41:34 +0000

Web metrics firm comScore reports that web video viewership jumped in March to 11.5 billion views — up 13% from February and 64% from a year ago.

YouTube leads with 38% of the market (4.3 billion views), followed by Fox Interactive Media at 4.2% (477 million views), and Yahoo at 2.9% (328 million views).

Google Finds Web Video Ads as Effective as TV Ads

mandalan — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 21:48:58 +0000

Harris Interactive announced the results of a new study commissioned by Google to measure the effectiveness of 30-second ads on YouTube, on TV and embedded into web content.

The study found that ads embedded in YouTube videos perform just as well as ads on television, generating the same level of intent to purchase, engagement and interest in the brand.

The study also found slightly higher accuracy in correct brand recall with online ads, suggesting they are more effective at “communicating the brand”.

Gotuit Publishes Video Archives on the Web

mandalan — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 18:32:54 +0000

With a team of 16 people working double shifts, it reportedly took Comedy Central many months to create the clip library for TheDailyShow.com.

Software maker Gotuit offers an easier way, providing an indexing work flow platform that lets content distributors efficiently organize clips using metadata guidelines to power video discovery and monetization.

Gotuit recently helped extreme outdoor sports site XONtv.tv create channels with the sites existing video, organizing around 300 hours of segments into 13 channels on in about 1 ½ weeks.

Gotuit lets content owners publish many ‘virtual’ clips from a single video file. An archive of shows could consist of 30 hour-long video files and yet may appear to be published as hundreds or thousands of separate clips each with their own thumbnail, title, start/end time, etc.

Gotuit promises benefits such as “no buffering, full-screen option, embedding, bandwidth detection and sequential play-out.” The Gotuit service integrates with a number of broadband ad management/servers.

Technorati Tags: Comedy Central, Daily Show, TV, video, archives, Gotuit, XONtv

NBC to Sell DVR Ads, Use TiVo Viewership Data

mandalan — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 22:37:55 +0000

NBC Universal announced a deal to use TiVo’s TV viewership research and sell its interactive ad units, becoming the first major broadcaster to strike such a deal.

NBCU will sell TiVo’s interactive ad tags which allow an advertiser to still be seen even if the viewer is fast-forwards through an ad, and offer viewers the ability to click on the tags for more information. TiVo viewers can click on promotions for NBC Universal shows and immediately record the show.

TiVo offers advertisers second-by-second ratings of programs and commercials based on the viewing habits of its subscribers. TiVo recently added demographic viewer data such as age, income, marital status and ethnicity.

Premium Content, Social Networks Driving Surge in Web Video

mandalan — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 09:21:22 +0000

Though ad revenue is emerging as a dominant business model for Web video, the New York Times reports that marketers are still wary of online buys, and cites major advertisers such as Procter & Gamble spending only about 1% of their ad budget on the Internet last year. Such spending patterns are expected to change quickly, with online video ads projected to generate $4.3 billion a year by 2011 (10% of overall Web advertising), up from $410 million (2.4%) in 2006.

The shift in ad spending is largely benefiting online video services offering premium content, which advertisers are more accustomed to spending on than the user-generated content that put the You in YouTube. A new study found that web viewers are most interested in news clips, followed by movie trailers, comedy sketches, music videos, and TV shows. User-contributed video clips placed 9th out of 11 possible viewing categories.

Sony’s Crackle video service recently announced major ad deals with Pepsi, Honda, Epson, Sony Electronics, and Vodafone. The sponsor packages will feature advertising on Crackle.com and on video content Crackle syndicates in branded customizable video players to Bebo, AOL, hi5, Piczo, WordPress and other outlets. Pepsi is sponsoring Crackle’s Minisode Network channel, while Honda is underwriting the Shorts Channel and Sony Electronics will advertise its ‘HDNA’ high-definition TV campaign on Crackle HD content.

ManiaTV recently canceled its 3,000 user-generated channels when they failed to draw enough viewers (and ad dollars). 80% of Mania’s viewers were watching professionally-produced content.

Revver says it commands video ad rates ranging from $3 to $35 CPM (of which Revver returns 50% to content creators). Online video ad network YuMe Networks reports video ad rates ranging from $1 to $80 CPM, and that women viewers aged 18-34, receive higher fees then men in the same age group.

Though web video ad formats are often more effective than banners ads — with click-through rates averaging up to 5% on video overlay ads, compared to 1% average click-throughs on banners — web viewers can be less tolerant of video ad units than they are of traditional banners. A new study reports that 31% of US web viewers take a strongly negative view of video ads versus 18% with a strongly negative view of banner ads. The data challenges advertisers to adopt formats that are complementary and not disruptive to the viewer’s experience. The study found that 70% of web viewers would prefer to see a pre-roll video ad than watch a long ad in the middle of a news clip, and that viewers are willing to watch a longer pre-roll video ad before a long-form video clip (e.g., such as TV episode).

AOL recently revealed a new online video format called “video ticker ads” in a partnership with online video advertising technology firm PointRoll. The ticker ad appears at the bottom of the video player 10 seconds into a video stream and either pauses the video and expands the ad when a user clicks on the ticker, or disappears after 15 seconds if the viewer does not respond. The new format is seen as an effective alternative to pre-roll ads for online video, and will appear across AOL’s premium video content.

Shortly after Facebook partnered with Microsoft and unveiled a controversial social ad network placing offline consumer shopping transactions on public profile pages, Google announced its open source social-networking platform. Google plans to allow any social website to integrate with OpenSocial APIs and host 3rd party social applications. OpenSocial partners include Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING. OpenSocial is expected to give advertisers considerable reach by distributing viral, interactive widgets across multiple social-networking platforms.

Social network Bebo launched its Open Media platform in partnership with media companies including CBS, MTV Networks, TBS, ESPN, the BBC, Yahoo, Sony’s Crackle, Next New Networks, and JibJab. Open Media allows Bebo’s content partners to distribute video programming to Bebo’s Bebo’s 40 million users without requiring a fee or revenue split. Content providers can customize pages and stream video through their own media players and with their own advertising. Bebo alerts a user’s friends when a player is added to a user’s page. Bebo recently launched an interactive drama “KateModern,” and next year will premiere the drama “Sofia’s Diary” and reality series “The Gap Year” in a partnership with Endemol.

The social video web is emerging as source of new material for traditional TV networks, particularly as the writers’ strike begins to dry up traditional programming options. The Writers Guild of America determined that indy Web projects are not subject to the strike. NBC has announced it will bring the ‘Quarterlife’ Web series to its TV network. “Quarterlife” was developed for MySpace and other social networks on the Web by TV veterans Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick. Ironically, with NBC now a partner in “Quarterlife,” an order for more episodes could cross the picket the line, since the deal gives NBC rights to air the show on domestic TV, and on DVD and the Web internationally.

Technorati Tags: AOL, Bebo, Crackle, Facebook, Google, Honda, ManiaTV, Minisode Network, NBC, Open Media, OpenSocial, Pepsi, PointRoll, Procter & Gamble, Quarterlife, Revver, Sony Pictures, YuMe Networks

Akamai Launches Hi-Def Web Video Portal

mandalan — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 23:30:21 +0000

Akamai announced the launched of a showcase portal with a Flash-based electronic program guide for high-definition web videos from the BBC, NBA, MTV and others.

The “HDWeb” site is sponsored by Verizon Fios and will be up for two weeks, offering video files that may be downloaded and played back in Quicktime or Microsoft Media Player. Akamai is additionally working on support for Flash video players.

Akamai’s HDWeb is optimized for viewers with a recommended 7.5Mbps of available bandwidth, limiting the site’s reach in the US where average connection speeds range from 1.5Mbps in California to 5.0Mbps in Rhode Island — averaging 1.9Mbps nationally. Average connection speeds are much higher in other nations, led by Japan with average connections at 61Mbps.

The average broadband web video is encoded at 300Kbps and content owners have generally been reluctant to to increase web video quality by encoding at 750Kbps due to the additional cost required to deliver the bits. The delivery of “true” high-def web video (720p, 1080i and 1080p) requires an average 6-8x more bits than a 300Kbps file, requiring new economics to justify spending more to deliver web video in HD.

Competitor Limelight Networks recently announced the upcoming launch of an HD product on Fox.com. The site will stream the new seasons of “24” and “Prison Break” in HD.

Technorati Tags: Akamai, HDWeb, Verizon, Fios, HD, Quicktime, Microsoft, Limelight Networks, Fox, 24, Prison Break, TV, video

‘Daily Show’ Web site to Stream Archives

mandalan — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 23:52:19 +0000

Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” has launched a new Web site, DailyShow.com, that will present almost the entire nine-year video archive of the show.

The site includes over 16,000 video clips starting in early 1999 with Jon Stewart and the MTV Networks show. Earlier seasons starting in 1996 with host Craig Kilborn may be introduced in early 2008.

The site will not include uninterrupted full-length episodes, though viewers can largely piece together full shows from the clips. The site’s home page will feature the previous night’s episode, with clips posted by 8 a.m. EST the next morning — eventually
at 5 a.m.

Clips will be tagged and organized by subject categories and correspondent or celebrity names involved in the segment, and visitors can use a timeline to locate clips by date and with search tools powered by Google.

Dailyshow.com will be the only place to see the full library of legal “Daily Show” clips online, though selected clips may be syndicated on other sites, such as a recent agreement with Yahoo.com to feature clips from correspondent Rob Riggle’s reports from Iraq. Google’s YouTube has previously hosted many unlicensed versions of the clips.

The site will feature banner ads and video ads integrated into the clips, with a more consumer-friendly ad unit than preroll.

Other shows in the Comedy Central family will receive similar web destinations.

The South Park Studios website will launch in March with its own video archive, and “The Colbert Report” and the Comedy Central library of stand-up comedy may also get full-archived sites in the first-half of 2008.

Technorati Tags: Comedy Central, Jon Stewart, Daily Show, MTV, Craig Kilborn, Rob Riggle, Yahoo, Google, YouTube, Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert

EchoStar Scoops Sling

mandalan — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 21:45:29 +0000

Satellite TV operator EchoStar Communications acquired Sling Media, maker of the SlingBox, this week for $380 million — and announced plans to spin-off of a new company containing technology assets such as its set-top box design and manufacturing business, PocketDish, and satellite services along with some spectrum licenses.

The SlingBox device delivers content from a user’s home TV to any Internet-connected PC or mobile device. EchoStar currently offers subscribers a 30 GB PocketDish iPod-like device, which lets subscribers record TV shows or transfer photos or music to the handheld.

Demonstration of Sony Ericsson w950i with Slingbox

For its quarter ending June Dish increased its subscribers 9% year-over-year to 13.6 million.

Dish is expecting stiff competition in the coming months, with new and traditional rivals such as DirecTV and the cable companies; and telco giants AT&T, Verizon, and others rolling out ‘triple play’ packages of Internet-based voice, high-speed Internet, and TV services.

Technorati Tags: EchoStar, satellite, Sling Media, SlingBox, PocketDish