An entirely new medium
by Levi Shapiro

Patrick Maurer is no techie. "I can barely work my toaster", says the lanky 29 year old sales rep with the self-described "tennis player" hairstyle. But Patrick may represent the most promising aspect of mobile marketing- mobile video advertising. While checking his mobile Yahoo account, Patrick watched a video from Jaguar that eventually led to a dealer test-drive. "I hadn't really looked at the Jag before that", he said. The opportunity for brands to tell their story with sight, sound and motion has agencies and advertisers eager to experiment with mobile video advertising. This nascent sector probably has the necessary technology to grow. What is lacking now are clearly defined business processes.

Continue reading: Mobile Video Advertising

I spoke with Dakota Sullivan, the Vice President of Marketing at Adap.TV. Adap.TV is a new breed of video advertising platform designed to leverage different ad networks for Publishers as well as Ad networks to reach their target audience. The system was programmed and designed to be intelligent, i.e. learn user habits over time and delivery more customized and targeted ads. One of the most well know placements is an in-stream banner overlay (max 468x66) which appears with a corresponding contextual link to an advertiser.

Audio Interview with Dakota Sullivan

Company Site: Adap.tv

Example of banner overlay:

I spoke with David Frigeri, General Manager & VP for Content Delivery at Internap about their CDN and managed hosting business. In addition to our conversation, I've listed some thoughts and issues in the marketplace also worth noting.
 

Adaptive Video Delivery seems to be an important trend for video distribution with next generation broadband video solutions and how it stacks up against true peer to peer delivery

Ad insertion models for media distribution are becoming vital, although there does not seem to be a lot of effort to target ads based on customer demographics

Recent activity in the CDN marketplace and who owns what intellectual property

Forward and store video is something CDN's do not seem to be talking about

Audio Interview with David Frigeri

Mirco Pasqualini, Developer of CrossCast Systems was recently in the States and stopped by our New York office to demo their content management and delivery system. Geared for media companies, CrossCast is as robust as any system I have seen, this including BrightCove.

Having said that, without significant funding and adoption by large media outlets in the U.S or Europe, I think the company, located in Northern Italy is going to have their work cut out for them.

Watch the demo and check out Exclusive screen shots of their soon to be released version upgrade on the following page. Demo of CrossCast Systems Platform

Exclusive screen shots of their new platform scheduled for release...significantly more robust and feature rich then BrightCove.

(click on image for larger view)

In a just released study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, Author John B. Horrigan, Associate Director, Research found a flattening of broadband adoption among the poor, those with annual incomes of less then $20,000 in addition to African Americans who saw a rise of only 3% over the past year.

Interestingly, households with lower-middle incomes between $20,000 and $40,000 saw an increase in the adoption rate of 24%.

Some other findings of note:

Home broadband adoption grew by 17% from May 2007 to May 2008, slightly faster than the
growth rate of the year before.

Only 10% of Americans adults use dial up Internet connections at home to go online.

Broadband growth was strong among older and lower-middle income Americans, as well as rural Americans. However, One-quarter (27%) of adult Americans are not Internet users, and they tend to be older (the median age is 61) and have lower-incomes.

Monthly broadband bills are 4% lower in May 2008 than at the end of 2005, but monthly dial-up bills have risen.

Non-Internet users represent a large pool of potential broadband users, but many are just not
interested in getting online.

One-third (34%) of all Internet users have connected to the Internet using a WiFi connection at someplace other than home or work.

"The flat growth in home high-speed adoption for low-income Americans suggests that tightening household budgets may be affecting people's choice of connection speed at home," said John B. Horrigan, Associate Director of Research at the Pew Internet & American Life project and author of the report. "Broadband is more costly on a monthly basis than dial-up, and some lower income Americans may be unwilling to take on another expense."

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Its Still The Economy Stupid!

With many Americans convinced we are already in a significant recession almost two-thirds of Americans surveyed in April 2008 say their households have cut back on spending in the last 12 months, according to the MarketTools May/June 2008 Insight Report on American Spending. The purchase of technology products has reportedly been cut back by 41% of consumers.

© 2008 MarketTools

What effects the recession will have on the deployment of new IPTV and ITV services, hardware and programming is unclear however, as equity capital markets contract and banks tighten lending policies the anecdotal evidence does not portend well in the near term.

As regards the flat growth of broadband adoption by low-income and African Americans, this is a troubling but complex issue. As Internet skills have become crucially important in business and education, perhaps the new administration in Washington should consider some assistance incentives for these groups to better afford broadband. After all if the One Laptop Per Child program is a laudable goal for developing countries, surely making sure Americans have equal access to broadband is equally important..

With the announcement today in Variety that Strike TV will soft launch over the weekend with a sizzle reel with 40 original made for net webisodes and other "content bits" coming later in July, some WGA members have decided to strike out on their own.

In the traditional Loss Leader approach, a product is sold at a price at or below cost to generate other more profitable sales, for example giving away razors so that people become hooked on purchasing replacement blades, where all the money is.

While ITV programs are not razor blades the goal appears much the same, generate revenue by pulling people in for a larger pay day. As the article mentioned, among the sites goals are to showcase the work of WGA members."the hope is that the site will become a buzz-generator for ideas and concepts that creators can adapt into movies, TV shows or other media."

Some of the programming Strike TV has in its cue includes:

"Global Warming," starring "Saturday Night Live's" Kirsten Wiig and "Daily Show's" Aasif Mandvi;

"Unknown Sender," penned by Steven de Souza and starring Timothy Dalton and Joanne Whalley;

"House Poor," created by "Office" writer-producer Lester Lewis;

"The Challenge," starring Bob Newhart and penned by sitcom vet Lloyd Garver;

"Five or Die," written and directed by horror movie vet Tom Holland;

"John's Hand," starring Garret Dillahunt and Kali Rocha.

WGA members hope to generate movies or TV shows because of eyeballs and advertising which has been the goal of Indie producers since ITV became a practical avenue for content distribution. It is fair to say that WGA members are putting some stock in their status in the industry along with connections to make the difference.

Continued from page 1

Also, are the goals simply to use the site to generate TV or Movie deals in lieu of creating compelling ITV programming that will attract a loyal following online?, if so people will see through this.

Peter Hyoguchi, the catalyst for Strike TV "held a daylong seminar in January at the Writers Guild Theater in BevHills that instructed guild members on how relatively cheap and easy it is to produce high-def Internet vids, now that high-def cameras and sophisticated editing software is widely available and affordable."

Not to be sarcastic here, I did not realize there were still industry pros that were not aware of this... Having said that, WGA members new found awareness of the economics of ITV production does not a hit make. To use Bill Clinton's phrase, "it's the content stupid."

I hope the site gains traction and is not only a Loss Leader for WGA members. At the end of the day compelling online content that can generate revenues will only serve to make the case for more ITV programming hopefully from Indies and not only from those already on the inside of old media industries, period, full stop.

Strike TV Promo Reel

www.strike.tv Teaser from StrikeTV on Vimeo.

   
Recently I spoke to John Edwards, President and CEO of Move Networks. We spoke about a variety of topics including the companies business focus, why he considers their delivery network superior to tradition open networks, why the company is not a tradition CDN or P2P company, but a vertical in the end too end content delivery space, plus other topics.

Some of the areas that might be of concern for the future in their space, include:

Since they use adaptive rate technology - Microsoft may want to bake it into their own platform at some point, which could offset the deal with Silverlight.

As I understand, analytics is a big draw for media brands who want easy to use, shrink-wrapped platforms, these technologies may not be IP protected and could be replicated by other players. Of course first mover advantage usually is a plus so these may offset.

Audio Interview with John Edwards

I recently tested the Netflix Player by ROKU. Since I've used a PC for this purpose for the past year, I was interested to see if the ROKU player had improved ease of use and functionality, this against my current pc configuration.