Internet Communications

IVT MediaPlatform 4.1 Sets New Standard for Enterprise Video Communications

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Wed, 06 May 2009 20:22:00 +0000

IVT released its latest upgrades to its MediaPlatform software.

Click to view the announcement.

Obama Saves on Gas

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 04:28:00 +0000

On March 26, President Obama took questions in East Room of the White House, but there was a twist. The East Room is usually the scene of press conferences where the President submits to questioning from the White House press corps. But in this case, President Obama took questions directly from an internet audience as 67,000 viewers watched a live stream of the event.

There are many interesting implications: the bypass of the media filter; the virtual town halll; the modern fireside chat; the 21st century version of participatory democracy.

But on a very basic level the event contains a significant lesson for corporate America.

An Associated Press article cited in the dailycamera blog quotes presidential spokesperson Robert Gibbs:

"It's not a whole lot different than were we in California doing the meeting," Gibbs said. "It's just we'll have people hooked up from a lot of different places all over the country, but he'll be able to do all that from the East Room."
"It's a way for the president to do what he enjoys doing out on the road, but saves on gas,"

IVT's client NEC, a leading provider of IT network integrated solutions, documented annual savings of $250,000 replacing road shows with webcasts.

How much can the White House save by using webcasting to bring the American people to the East Room of the White House rather than traveling around the country to take questions in local town halls?

Has any politcal town hall been held in a venue that could hold 67,000 people?

Webcasting versus Internet TV

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 02:32:00 +0000

President Obama's recent press conference on March 26 was available for online viewing.

According to an article written by Chris Lefkow on Yahoo, 67,000 watched the webcast live. Of course, millions if not tens of millions watched the press conference live on broadcast television so what is the big deal about another 60,000 or so watching on the web?

I wrote about the democratizing effect of using the internet to bypass the Washington press corps and taking questions from the people in my last post.

But there is at least one more point of interest. The Obama press conference exemplifies how video can be used to great effect in the enterprise.

The internet will never supplant television's ability to broadcast to tens of millions of people. Why pay for the bandwidth to replicate the scale and quality of a broadcast platform that already works very well?

But the internet does scale rather well to the needs of the enterprise: an audience of tens of thousands. And there are several "internet television" services that are emerging to deliver video across the corporate network to the employees.

But this begs the question: why should a corporation or organization invest in a network able to deliver video across its enterprise and then settle for pre-recorded video with no interactivity?

It was not the video feed that made the Obama press conference so noteworthy. It was the 104,129 questions that were submitted by the American people. Enterprise video is much more effective when it is combined with interactive rich media features like live questions and answers, live polling, surveys, testing and certification, synchronized PowerPoint, whiteboarding, registration and reporting, etc. Choosing to merely deliver the video - live or on-demand - is choosing to ignore the strengths of webcasting and get the least bang for your buck.

Why invest in servers and hubs and routers and content engines and then settle for a video platform that does not enable interactivity?

According to research done by Steve Vander Haar that he shared in a recent webcast, 68% of executives polled believe streaming video has measurable value only when it is combined with a registration system that enables reporting about who watched.

Registration and reporting adds accountability to internal communications and adds measurable results and lead generation to external communications. Internet television gives that capability away when it simply loops pre-recorded video in a window on one's website.

President Obama's press conference is a template for the effective use of internet video in the enterprise. Just as the televised Nixon vs. Kennedy debate serves as the defining example for understanding the difference between television and radio in politics, I believe this press conference will be regarded similarly for its effect on politics and on business communications.

There are plenty of corporations out there who are already doing a great job with rich media. Some of them are my clients. But the nature of corporate communications is that much of the content is for an internal audience, so there is not an obvious opportunity for organizations to learn from the successes of others. But the Obama press conference lays the formula bare for all to see.

President Obama Webcasts Press Conference

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 04:39:00 +0000

Last week President Obama held a press conference and took questions from a virtual audience in a video webcast.

According to an article written by Chris Lefkow on Yahoo, 67,000 watched the webcast live. The White House website was open for questions for 36 hours before the press conference. 3,607,837 votes were cast for 104,129 submitted questions.

The President answered seven of those questions. One of them was about the legalization of marijuana. Some groups banded together and used the opportunity of this process to submit a high number of questions about that topic, and the despite the fact that vetters tried to avoid that issue, President Obama weighed in with a firm no.

My point has nothing to do with the politics of marijuana.

If I can be so bold as to be self-referential, my first post on this blog was to equate the power of webcasting technology to that of the printing press. The printing press broke the monopoly of a relative few (for example, monks) who had the ability to publish the written word and decide which books were worthy of reproduction and distribution (most often, the bible). The printing press made publishing accessible to the masses.

Regardless of one's politics regarding the issue, I think everyone would agree that those who favor legalizing marijuana are not in the "main stream" or among the more influential interest groups in this country. Yet the President of the United States specifically addressed their question.

The Washington DC press corps is not going to ask that question - rightly or wrongly. But the webcast by-passed the traditional media filter and brought the concerns of this group of people to the attention of our country's chief executive.

How does that translate to the corporate world? Well, what is the value of getting real feedback from the rank and file? What corporation would not benefit from taking their executives out of the bubble on the 40th floor and exposing them to the concerns of the people at the sharp end of the spear?

What is the value of a corporate culture? Most companies do a poor job of communicating and maintaining a corporate culture from the top down. But the best companies leverage webcasting to enable communications from the bottom up and include that feedback in the corporate culture.

There are perhaps a few hundred journalists with access to the President. These journalists are the only way 300,000,000 Americans can hold their leadership accountable between elections. That is, until last Thursday when webcasting allowed the people to submit questions to their President and their President decided to answer them.

March Madness in High Def

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 12:39:00 +0000

Ryan Lawler notes in his Contentinople blog that CBS's high definition stream of the NCAA men's basketball tournament has been a great success.

CBS Sports reported that traffic to its NCAA March Madness on Demand site on the first day of the tourney increased 56 percent year-over-year, to 2.7 million unique users yesterday from 1.75 million uniques a year ago.

If there is a conclusion to be drawn, I do not think it is that internet video can or should compete with television. In this case, I believe the draw is a combination of the fact that watching television on Thursday afternoon is not an option for people with a day job, and that there are many games going on simultaneously and CBS television does not always cut to the game that the individual user wants to see.

I think the focus should be on the success of delivering a high quality video experience to a large audience, many of whom were at work. This is just another step in the direction of enterprise video becoming an essential element of the workplace experience.

CapEx versus OpEx

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 12:09:00 +0000

Dan Rayburn writes in his "Business of Online Video" blog that video hardware vendors are struggling in this environment.

While most of the vendors in the online video industry has fared ok in
these economic times, vendors selling broadcast video based hardware are taking
a beating. While many of these vendors said they saw a big decline in sales in
Q4, the real impact has been taking place nearly all of last year. Combined with
the aggressive-competition driven pricing pressures, companies like Sony,
Panasonic, Avid and Thomson are really feeling the pinch.

Rayburn notes that capital expenditures are difficult to justify.

While the retail price on many video based hardware units has come down, it's
still a big CAPEX expense that many companies simply can't afford with the
smaller budgets. This is not only the case for broadcast video hardware, but
also for webcasting based hardware, video conferencing gear and many other
pieces of hardware in the video ecosystem.

One of the great advantages of a SaaS software solution is that it provides flexibility in the pricing. A buyer can structure the deal to license the software annually and call it an operational expense.

IVT has entry-level price points for its software that allow a media department to begin webcasting across the enterprise for less than $7,000 for an annual subscription.

Of course, a buyer with a strong cash position that would rather make a significant investment upfront in a solution it can amortize over a period of some years, then the provider can structure the deal for a larger upfront commitment and smaller annual maintenance costs.

Another point: software scales, while entry-level "black box" solutions can become obsolete when needs / volumes evolve.

187 Billion Served

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 06:51:00 +0000

According to Forrester Research, 187 billion videos will be streamed over the Internet in 2009, up 24% from last year.

In a USA Today article written by David Lieberman, he says entertainment-related internet video, as seen on sites like YouTube and Hulu, is being challenged by business-related video.

He writes:

"Businesses, colleges and institutions are leaping into online video production as the audience for clips soars and production and distribution costs plummet."

Internet connections are getting faster and costs for content delivery, high-end production equipment, and video editing software are getting lower every day.

Video communications are within the reach of many corporations, non-profits, and universities.

The Webinar: Poised for a Face Lift

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 22:55:00 +0000

There are a number of reasons why the webinar format has not advanced in close to a decade.

A webcast is at its essence a "few to many" broadcast experience. Like radio, it is designed for a small group of content creators to communicate with a large audience. Live Q&A via text, polling and surveys can create some interactivity, but true collaboration with an audience of hundreds or thousands is impossible - both technologically and practically.

There have also been some technology limitations placed by encoding formats and user bandwidth that has kept the audio webinar in a predictable "audio with slides" box. But in my opinion the biggest reason for the stagnation of the webinar is the prohibitive cost of the next logical step: video.

With an audio webinar, slides are uploaded in advance and converted to the correct format. Speakers then simply have to dial in to a telephone bridge and access the webinar software with their computers to advance their slides. The webcast provider will connect the telephone bridge to a hybrid audio device for encoding in the right format for streaming. In short, the production costs are limited to the cost of a conference call.

Speakers can be anywhere with a telephone and a broadband connection. That portability is what has made the audio with slides webinar a relatively inexpensive yet effective lead generation tool.

With a video webcast, the production requirements go up dramatically: lights, cameras, onsite encoding, etc. Speakers have to be in a studio, or production equipment has to be brought to the speakers' location. Either choice is expensive.

And while having multiple presenters with an audio webinar is as easy as having another participant join your conference bridge, having multiple video presenters in different geographies is a significant technological challenge.

The statistics out there vary from 60% to 90%, but I think we can all agree that a majority of communication is non-verbal. Video is always preferable to audio-only, and the video webcast market is growing. But the standard "webinar" format has remained video-free because until recently the cost increase from audio with slides to video with slides has been as much as tenfold.

Even if the cost increase is only five-fold, a video webinar would be a richer experience for the audience but the audience would not grow by five times. There would not be five times as many qualified leads generated. The sponsor would not pay five times as much for the sponsorship. So, the webinar remains firmly entrenched in audio.

But this is about to change. The webinar format can now easily and affordably include live video - with presenters in multiple locations.

My company, IVT (Interactive Video Technologies), has a webcasting software that allows users to easily accommodate video from multiple locations. You can input video from a high end capture card or a simple plug and play webcam. The administrator can switch between multiple video feeds with a click of a mouse.

With our software, the encoding is handled by the Flash Player that is already loaded on the remote speaker's computer so the encoding process for a remote speaker in an office or a hotel room is transparent. As a matter of fact, the administrator can remotely control the settings of every camera or capture card connected, so technical people do not have to be on site with the speaker to make things work.

This brings the cost back in line with the audio webinar. In this new model, a speaker needs only to plug in a webcam to be a video presenter in a webcast; a process just as easy as calling a phone bridge. In both cases, speakers would have to also access the webcasting software with a broadband connection to flip their slides.

IVT software also makes it easy to combine pre-recorded video with live video, share a desktop for application demos, white boarding, etc. I am sure as encoding formats continue to advance, even more innovations will follow.

Another important tool I believe future webcasts will utilize is the ability to embed an IFrame right on the media player. In the past, webcasting software limited the ability to customize the audience experience. With our software you can embed active code right on the player. For example, instead of the common text Q&A experience, you can embed a popular IM program like AIM right on your player and enable the audience to instant message (IM) the speakers and each other throughout the webcast – enabling a running commentary.

This is a significant advance over the standard text Q&A interface, where viewers can submit questions but cannot see the questions submitted by others in the audience, nor can they communicate with others in the audience.

Admittedly, this ability might scare off many content creators who do not want to allow a running commentary and cross-talk that they cannot control. But the point is that the conditions are ripe for the "webinar " to undergo a significant face lift.

Quality Over Quantity

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 15:48:00 +0000

Concepts like "mind share" and "ambient awareness" can make intuitive sense, but can be hard to measure.

But think of it this way: which is more valuable: 100,000 impressions or 1,000 loyal Twitter followers?

Would you rather have 100,000 impressions or the names and contact information of 1,000 people who attended a webcast about your topic?

Lead generation on the internet is about quality over quantity.

How To Add Capacity for Online Multimedia?

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 17:29:00 +0000

Recently saw a survey of about 300 senior IT executives at companies that want to add network capacity to handle added data traffic resulting from the expanded use of online multimedia.

It seems most IT executives would prefer to add capacity by expanding their internal corporate networks. Good news for Cisco.

Of those willing to explore outside options, there is about an even split between expansion via CDNs and via P2P alternatives.

The data shows that preference for P2P skews younger, which may indicate that old stigmas (Napster) may not be a concern for enterprises that are newer to the adoption of online multimedia.

68% view rich media valuable when coupled with registration / reporting

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 21:42:00 +0000

In the most recent QuickCast from Interactive Media Strategies, Steve Vonder Haar discusses the role of registration tracking in influencing the perceived value of online multimedia marketing.

In general, most respondents have a positive view of online multimedia marketing, but primarily think highly of the technology when it is implemented in combination with the tracking of user registration information. The ability to track viewing usage is a unique advantage of the online environment. This presentation segments survey response to illustrate the industry sectors that are likely to be most receptive to the idea of registration-driven online multimedia marketing events’

Here is the link to his webcast: http://ims.mediasite.com/ims/Viewer/?peid=9cd9a61f-4d74-483a-93ea-2ac77bea6b2f

NFL to Stream Football

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 21:59:00 +0000

SportsBusiness Journal reported on July 28 that the NFL will stream football action to the web.

The NFL will stream 17 regular-season games live this season, marking the first time regular-season action will be broadly streamed in real time in the United States.
Starting with the NFL Kickoff game on Thursday, Sept. 4, between the Washington Redskins and New York Giants, the league plans to stream NBC’s prime-time schedule on NFL.com and NBCSports.com...
The online video will consist of NBC’s broadcast feed, with the call by Al Michaels and John Madden. The league has not decided how to treat the ads, but the most likely scenario will strip NBC’s ads out of the broadcast, with the NFL and NBC selling new online ads and sharing the revenue.
The move is significant for the NFL, as it continues to ramp up its digital offerings and open its content on more platforms...
Now it will be interesting to see if America’s most valuable television sports property, already bringing in more than $3 billion a year from its television partners, can find value on the Web without harming its lucrative TV contracts.

ROI Revealed

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 04:44:00 +0000

Ben Comer from Medical Marketing & Media reports that Wolters Kluwer Health and Nielsen have joined forces to combine "de-identified patient prescription-related transaction data" from Wolters Kluwer Heath with "consumer purchasing, attitudinal and behavior information" from Nielsen (quotes from a company press release).

This will provide outstanding metrics to measure the impact of targeted medical marketing. The goal has always been to influence prescribing physicians; this gives the ability to track with great sophistication the results of drug marketing efforts.

Drug companies have to spend less and get better results. Webcasting has been proven to be an extremely effective marketing vehicle that provides data about audience views far beyond the capability of traditional media. With the ability to accurately track shifts in prescription behavior and cross reference with webcast attendance, it seems clear that more money will be spent on webcasting for medical communications.

Amazon Plans an Online Store to Stream Video

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 22:39:00 +0000

The New York Times reported on July 17 that Amazon.com will introduce a new online store of TV shows and movies Amazon Video on Demand.

Customers of Amazon’s new store will be able to start watching any of 40,000
movies and television programs immediately after ordering them because they
stream, just like programs on a cable video-on-demand service. That is different
from most Internet video stores, like Apple iTunes and the original incarnation of Amazon’s video store, which require users
to download files to their hard drives.

CinemaTech highlights this quote from the Times article:

The video store will be accessible through the Sony Bravia Internet Video link,
a $300 tower-shaped device that funnels Web video directly to Sony’s
high-definition televisions. That is an awkward extra expense, for now. But
future Bravias are expected to have this capability embedded in the television,
making it even easier to gain access to the full catalog of past and present TV
shows and movies, over the Internet, using a television remote control.

Secret Sauce of Viral Video

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 17:47:00 +0000

Kevin Nalts is a marketing director at a Fortune 100 company who moonlights as a YouTube comedian. He has posted more than 670 short videos on YouTube.

YouTube invited him to speak at conference about viral video. Here is a link to his presentation.

YouTube is a great resource: they will host your content for free, people are accustomed to going there - as it is the dominant provider of internet video content, and all you have to do to get people to watch your video is compete with the other content.

Of course, a webcasting service offers benefits that YouTube cannot. YouTube does not provide metrics about who watched your videos and for how long. It does not offer branding on the access page or on the player. Nor can they secure your video so it only reaches a designated audience. It does not allow the audience to complete a survey or take a test.

Pfizer Will No Longer Fund CME Through Med Ed Firms

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 02:30:00 +0000

Medical Marketing and Media magazine reports that Pfizer will no longer fund CME through medical education and communications companies.

This announcement comes days after the same magazine wrote about a letter Senator Herb Kohl (D-WI) wrote to ACCME chief Murray Kopelow about a CME event that recommended testing all pregnant women for herpes. Senator Kohl contends there is no medical evidence that supports this recommendation, which calls into question the motives of the event grantor, GSK, which is the maker of Valtrex (a herpes drug).

Since Pfizer alone spent $314 million on CME in 2005 - some of that on web-base streaming media - it is clear that this vertical will be undergoing significant change.

New Era of Medical Media

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 00:20:00 +0000

An article that appears in the May Medical Marketing & Media magazine called: "Report Indicates Shift in Strategy" shows that medical communications - Direct to Physician Marketing and Direct to Consumer Marketing - is experiencing the same trends and forces that we see in advertising as a whole.

There is more pressure on expenditures, and there is a greater focus on rich media to improve the ROI of these communications.

A follow up article in the June 2008 issue of Medical Marketing & Media magazine called: "Surviving the Shift" declares:

Heads are rolling on sales forces as the buildup of the detailing Cold War
years is abruptly reversed, and even many DTC channels are feeling the pinch.
Forced to do more with less, media planners and buyers are looking for ever more
targeted opportunities and pharmas are warming to online media (even if banner
ads are down). Welcome to a new era of medical media—one in which thrift and
creativity are rewarded.

Streaming Media East Old Media Embracing Online Video

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Thu, 22 May 2008 23:31:00 +0000

Excerpts from Streaming Media East Panel: How Old Media is Embracing Online Video and New Media as posted on Online Video Watch

Moderator: Peter Price, NATAS
Panelists:Isaac Josephson, ABC News Digital
Jordan Hoffner, YouTube
Vivian Schiller, NYTimes.com
Richard Glosser, CondeNet

Vivian: The challenge for legacy media companies is that people are coming and watching videos, but haven’t been able to significantly monetize it. We love our relationship with YouTube, but it needs to come to a point where it isn’t just “branding.”

Isaac: For ABC, there is more of a vested interest in producing their own video and hosting it and driving traffic to it. We can do an hour long interview with Ron Paul, that wouldn’t air in its entirety, but we can run it online.

Jordan: The important point is “not monetizing it in a meaningful way.” Traditional media used to be the only game in town. Now there is fragmentation, and plenty of places for advertisers to spend money. It needs to be looked at in a different way. The notion of ‘scarcity’ is gone.

Richard: the genie is out of the bottle. Content is being freely distributed around the web. When they put Desperate Housewives on iTunes, that should have been a clarion call to everyone. What access and unique insight can we bring to the table? You can’t force people to consume media only on your site.

Vivian: “Distribute or die.” There are plenty of ways to distribute content beyond YouTube. Bloggers post RSS feed links, and those drive traffic back to our site where we can monetize it. Some experiments work, some don’t. Video is not a big money maker for us right now. We have pre-roll and sponsorships and no regrets. But with YouTube, we have to consider what the long term strategy is, and how that works for us, as a content creator and owner. How is video distribution going to monetized?

Richard: There is more wind behind video than other products. We’re starting to see TV money move to the Web. And the ones leading the charge are the ones with the most to lose. People will go around broadcast networks if they can.

Jordan: We wouldn’t have launched overlays if we didn’t have a really good reason. We tested and tested and tested. We are doing lots of testing to figure out what the best ad formats are for different video. Pre-roll isn’t good for us, or our type of video. That said, it is important for people to remember that we don’t advertise on user generated content. We only monetize our professionally generated content.

Isaac: Overlays are good for now. But we’re asking advertising clients to come up with new creative. But the CPMs for overlays is a full order of magnitude lower than what we see for preroll. From a business perspective, they just aren’t the answer for us right now.

Content Creators Need to Know Who Watched

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Thu, 01 May 2008 20:46:00 +0000

Contentinople discussed highlights of its ContentinopleLive conference, complete with video clips. One of the topics was downloadable video.

Adobe Systems has a media player for downloadable content that can attach ads to downloaded content, deliver the ad content regardless of whether the viewer is connected to the internet, and generate metrics regarding who watched the ad and the primary content.

This is a breakthrough for online video syndication.

An advantage of streaming is that relevant audience metrics are easily generated to calculate ROI.

Gartner asks: Does Google Have a Video Strategy?

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 15:29:00 +0000

The Gartner Media blog writes a thought-provoking article about Google's video strategy.

YouTube clearly draws a lot of eyeballs, but Google still has to organize it and deal with copyright issues before it can get a full return for its generous hosting policy. The Gartner article suggests Google might ultimately offer two video content portals: one dedicated to the amateur/consumer content creator and the other for professional content creators.

Online Video to Generate $7.9 Billion in 2013

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 13:24:00 +0000

Informa Telecoms & Media projects that by 2013, US online TV and video services will generate revenues of $7.9 billion, as reported in eMarketer.

Revenues from US online TV and video services crossed the $1 billion mark in 2007 and are projected to surge to $4.7 billion by the end of 2008.

These numbers include download fees, but 63% of the 2013 number is projected to come from advertising revenue.

Marketing to Verticals

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 15:21:00 +0000

A good marketing campaign to a vertical can produce powerful results. If a horizontal marketing campaign is meant to be generic and provide safe results, then a vertical marketing campaign is meant to be specialized and generate specific results within the target market - hopefully with a higher conversion rate than horizontal marketing.

What constitutes a good vertical marketing campaign? It always begins with a message that speaks to the concerns of the buyer in the target market.

Information cannot simply be accurate and educational; it must also be timely and meet a specific information gap about which the target market is concerned. A successful vertical marketing campaign will provide answers to questions the target market already knows they must be asking. Timeliness and relevance is what will encourage the target market to respond to your campaign.

The information you are providing must be perceived as unbiased, so an effective tactic is to work with someone who is an expert within the target vertical. This person will understand the how the business works and what issues influence the purchasing decisions of buyers within that vertical. That person will be able to convey pain-points very clearly, and enhance the credibility of the message.

The next step is to align your campaign with a venue where the target vertical market is likely to look for information and education. Again, the more focused the venue the better. Remember you are targeting a specific vertical, and while there may be opportunities at venues which cover a range of topics, the more focused the venue on your particular vertical the better.

The webinar has been proven to be an extremely effective delivery system for this content, allowing the content producer to target very specific markets and measure exactly who consumed the content and ultimately purchased the product or service.

A great example of pairing a timely message with an efficient delivery mechanism is a webinar that addresses regulatory compliance. Any institution subject to regulation is going to be receptive to information that helps alleviate compliance issues.

Webinar as Part of a Broader Web Marketing Strategy

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 19:18:00 +0000

The American Marketing Association produced a webinar about how to use webcasting as part of the global marketing strategy: "The Webinar: An Integral Part of your Marketing Strategy, Not Just a Lead Generator."

In this webinar, my colleague Dan Roche, Vice President of Marketing at TalkPoint, discusses how webinars can fit into a broader web marketing strategy that includes blogs, podcasts, wikis, rss, etc.

You can watch the webcast on demand by clicking on this link: http://www.iian.ibeam.com/events/amaa001/25851/

No Need to Re-Invent the Television

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 19:57:00 +0000

As Dan Rayburn noted in his Business of Online Media blog, MSNBC's broadcast of the Ohio Democratic Candidates debate experienced some technical issues.

Oprah Winfrey's big webcast also had some technical issues, as more than 500,000 people tried to access the live stream.

Perhaps the lesson to be learned is to focus on the right tool for the job.

Just as you cannot ask a desktop sharing application to broadcast to an audience of hundreds without issues, the recent MSNBC and Oprah experiences suggest you cannot stream live video to hundreds of thousands without issue. At least not yet.

But is that so bad? Why should streaming video try to replace television - a technology that works extremely well? I imagine streaming video would be better off focusing on the things television cannot do, like providing custom branding and registering and reporting on viewers.

Webcasting for Learning Management

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 14:02:00 +0000

A Learning Management System (LMS) has three major components: 1) Course Development; 2) Content Delivery; and 3) Process Management (archiving content, measuring and managing results, etc.)

The disadvantage of an LMS is that it requires a big investment in hardware and software. This is a big ticket item, so once an enterprise commits to one it is stuck with it.

Webcasting with a streaming media provider is a completely modular alternative that is based on open standards and requires no investment.

What is the course development tool? Microsoft PowerPoint - a ubiquitous application. As the content creator all you have to provide is the expertise; you already know how to use Power Point.

The content delivery is handled by the webcasting company. The audience does not have to download anything to access the content. The better webcasting providers offer an ASP-based service and they stream content to the browser and media player that is already on the audiences' computers (Windows Media Player, RealPlayer, Flash).

The process management is handled by the powerful reporting tools and content management systems that the better webcasting providers have. Some webcasting companies have the ability to stream the content, have attendees take a test, grade it in real time, and send a custom certificate in PDF when they pass. This is why webcasting is utilized in the Continuing Medical Education field.