Posts for 'Voxant'

1Cast, an aggregator of short-form news-oriented video clips from premium content providers, is announcing its commercial launch today, joining others in the personalized video news category like Voxant, ClipSyndicate, RedLasso (for local news), plus other online news aggregators. Following its year-long private beta test, 1Cast is also announcing today a redesigned UI, distribution partnerships with boxee and Clearwire, the WiMax wireless provider, and a new entertainment category anchored by E! Entertainment and Style. Yesterday I caught up with Anthony Bontrager, 1Cast's CEO to learn more.

Anthony explained that 1Cast users are now consuming 3.5 million video clips/mo, contributing to average session lengths of 14 minutes on the desktop and 36 minutes on mobile devices. With average clips running 2-3 minutes apiece, that means users are watching a series of clips back-to-back when checking the site. 1Cast gives users the ability to set up their own "casts" selecting from preset categories and networks. The casts are automatically updated each time new content is added by 1Cast. I've played around with the site and have found it very straightforward to find and organize content. My only knock is that sometimes content is not that current. For example, even though the Red Sox played until Oct 11th when they lost the ALDS to the Angels, a search for "Boston Red Sox" on 1Cast listed the first video result from Aug 26th.

1Cast obtains clips from news providers like AFP, Barron's, BBC, MarketWatch and Reuters. For these providers 1Cast represents additional distribution and revenue. 1Cast is completely ad-supported, and Anthony said that it is selling 80% of its own ads, with YuMe selling the rest. CPMs are in the $25 range. Ads are primarily 15 second mid-rolls and post-rolls, with bumpers at the beginning of sessions. 1cast revenue shares with its content partners, but Anthony wouldn't disclose what percentage. He did point to a recent 6 figure campaign Infinity ran on the site as a major validation of 1Cast's model.

1Cast and the other personalized video aggregators play well to the short-form consumption behavior of online video users. This is even more so the case with mobile consumption. The distribution deals with boxee and Clearwire will help 1Cast gain more visibility and usage.

As I said when I first covered 1Cast in Aug '08, I think personalized video news is a very compelling concept, but my concern with 1Cast and the others specializing in this area is whether they can build sufficiently large audiences and scale their businesses.

Pixsy, a white label video search provider made an interesting announcement yesterday about the launch of its new "Premium Feed" service, which I think is another example of the Syndicated Video Economy that I've been talking about for a while now. I talked to Pixsy CEO Chase Norlin about Premium Feed to learn more.

For those of you not familiar with Pixsy, it has been quietly building one of the largest video indexes since its founding in 2005. To date it has mainly focused on licensing the index to partner sites which wanted to offer easy video discovery to their users. As more content providers have offered embedding, Pixsy also enabled found videos to be played right on its partners' sites. Even though activity has grown well, Chase is pretty candid about monetization to date being difficult.

Premium Feed takes embedding to the next level by creating a subset of Pixsy's video index that is both higher-than-average quality and has accompanying pre-roll and overlay ads. Then Pixsy is developing an economic relationship between the content provider and its publisher network by signing redistribution and revenue-sharing deals with both. Chase says that to date the publisher network has 45 million unique visitors/mo and that 1-2 million videos are in the Premium Feed.

One of those publishers is EgoTV, and I chatted with founder/president Jimmy Hutcheson to find out how they're implementing Premium Feed. If you look in the lower right corner of their home page you'll see 3 new "channels," Ego Cars, Ego Comedy and Ego Travel. Each of these are constructed solely of Pixsy Premium Feed videos that are curated by an EgoTV editor. In another example at Ego People, the 300x250 ad in the right column is now populated with the Premium Feed. This is a simple "highest-and-best-use" real estate decision: Jimmy explained that Premium Feed is yielding 2-4x as much net revenue for EgoTV as it would receive if it sold rich media ads in this position.

Yet each of these initiatives has its own somewhat differentiated value proposition and underlying technology approach. As syndication grows in importance, sites with strong traffic and an interest in incorporating video will have many choices. As to how they'll decide, Chase makes a good point: simplicity and one-stop shopping are always valued by resource-constrained sites. Providers that can address as many of these sites' potential needs will be in a strong position.

What do you think? Post a comment now.

Welcome to October. Recapping another busy month, here are 3 key themes from September:

1. When established video providers use broadband, it must be to create new value

Broadband simultaneously threatens incumbent video businesses, while also opening up new opportunities. It's crucial that incumbents moving into broadband do so carefully and in ways that create distinct new value. However, in September I wrote several posts highlighting instances where broadband may either be hurting existing video franchises, or adding little new value.

Despite my admiration for Hulu, in these 2 posts, here and here, I questioned its current advertising implementations and asserted that these policies are hurting parent company NBC's on-air ad business. Worse yet, In "CNN is Undermining Its Own Advertisers with New AC360 Live Webcasts" I found an example where a network is using broadband to directly draw eyeballs away from its own on-air advertising. Lastly in "Palin Interview: ABC News Misses Many Broadband Opportunities" I described how the premier interview of the political season produced little more than an online VOD episode for ABC, leaving lots of new potential value untapped.

Meanwhile new entrants are innovating furiously, attempting to invade incumbents' turf. Earlier this week in "Presidential Debate Video on NYTimes.com is Classic Broadband Disruption," I explained how the Times's debate coverage positions it to steal prime audiences from the networks. And at the beginning of this month in "Taste of Home Forges New Model for Magazine Video," I outlined how a plucky UGC-oriented magazine is using new technology to elbow its way into space dominated by larger incumbents.

New entrants are using broadband to target incumbents' audiences; these companies need to bring A-game thinking to their broadband initiatives.

2. Purpose-driven user-generated video is YouTube 2.0

In September I further advanced a concept I've been developing for some time: that "purpose-driven" user-generated video can generate real business value. I think of these as YouTube 2.0 businesses. Exhibit A was a company called Unigo that's trying to disrupt the college guidebook industry through student-submitted video, photos and comments. While still early, I envision more purpose-driven UGV startups cropping up in the near future.

Meanwhile, brand marketers are also tapping the UGV phenomenon with ongoing contests. This trend marked a new milestone with Doritos new Super Bowl ad contest, which I explained in "Doritos Ups UGV Ante with $1 Million Price for Top-Rated 2009 Super Bowl Ad." There I also cataloged about 15 brand-sponsored UGV contests I've found in the last year. This is a growing trend and I expect much more to come.

3. Syndication is all around us

Just in case you weren't sick of hearing me talk about syndication, I'll make one more mention of it before September closes out. Syndication is the uber-trend of the broadband video market, and several announcements underscored its growing importance.

For example, in "Google Content Network Has Lots of Potential, Implications" I described how well-positioned Google is in syndication, as it ties AdSense to YouTube with its new Seth MacFarlane "Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy" partnership. The month also marked the first syndication-driven merger, between Anystream and Voxant, a combination that threatens to upend the competitive dynamics in the broadband video platform space. Two other syndication milestones of note were AP's deal with thePlatform to power its 2,000+ private syndication network, and MTV's comprehensive deal with Visible Measure to track and analyze its 350+ sites' video efforts.

I know I'm a broken record on this, but regardless of what part of the market you're playing in, if you're not developing a syndication plan, you're going to be out of step in the very near future.

That's it for September, lots more planned in October. Stay tuned.

What do you think? Post a comment!

This morning Anystream, a leading digital media management and production company and Voxant, a content syndication network, have announced their merger. The deal marks an important milestone: it's the first M&A transaction that I'm aware of which is predicated on the Syndicated Video Economy dominating the future broadband video landscape.

NewCo's combined capabilities are noteworthy on many levels, one of which is its potential to disrupt the competitive dynamics of the video content management and publishing space by providing fundamental new value to content producers. There has been a lot of capital invested in this space, and by my recent count at least 18 companies are playing in or around it. With the broadband gold rush underway, there's been enough business to go around. Competition for new business has mainly focused on features and pricing/business models.

Anystream has traditionally (and somewhat quietly) focused on digital media transcoding and workflow for more than 700 companies around the world. It too has moved up the stack into content management and publishing, lately handling  the video management for NBC's Olympics on-demand distribution, and prior to that announcing deals with Hearst-Argyle Television and others. On the other hand, Voxant has been a mid/long tail syndicator, having built out a distribution network with 30,000 publishers gaining rights-cleared content from 400+ providers. These publishers generate 35 million video views per month, making the Voxant network #15 in video views according to comScore.

NewCo's belief is that the bilateral syndication deals we've seen to date (e.g. CBS-Yahoo, ESPN-AOL, Next New Networks - Hulu, among many others) has whetted the market's appetite for this emerging business model, but that there is still far too much friction for syndication to really take off. That fits with what I hear from even the most aggressive content syndicators, one of whose CTOs said on a recent panel I moderated that his company is overwhelmed just trying to fully implement the handful of deals its already done.

So, much as I've considered the Syndicated Video Economy solidly into its first phase of development, I've been sobered by the reality that the operational overhead of negotiating deals, implementing them through distributors' often heterogeneous sub-systems, and monitoring their performance requires so much human intervention that the whole syndication concept could end up collapsing under its own weight. (Side note, this is why the Google Content Network which I wrote about last week also has so much potential).

First, these new revenues could put NewCo in a position to cross-subsidize its technology platform, thereby altering some of the fundamental economics in the platform space. This could trigger possible price-cutting by others solely dependent on platform revenue. Given the vast number of players in the space, and everyone's hunger for market share, this scenario isn't unreasonable to imagine. Second, NewCo could create steep switching barriers for its media customers. Upon getting a taste for turnkey NewCo-driven syndication revenues, content producers would almost certainly be less enticed by new platform-centric features that other competitors may offer. Combined, these disruptions would create a markedly new competitive dynamic.

Yet don't expect competitors to stand still; many of them are examining how to capitalize on their own distinct advantages to alter the dynamics still further. NewCo's abundantly strong management team must now execute on its vision and help its media customers realize syndication's real value. The Anystream-Voxant merger is a bold and possibly game-changing bet on the Syndicated Video Economy being fully realized over time. If that happens, NewCo will surely be among the industry's long-term winners.

What do you think? Click here to post a comment.

(Disclosures: Anystream is a VideoNuze sponsor and I also provided very brief "sounding-board" reactions to this merger prior to its closing.)

Personalized online news is as old as the web itself. But personalized online video news is a nut that has yet to be fully cracked - although by all rights it should be. This was Redlasso's goal, until broadcasters, which hadn't given permission for their content to be ingested and shared, put an end to the young company last month.

Now comes 1Cast, a company seeking to be a legitimate Redlasso successor. Today it is announcing first round funding from wireless king Craig McCaw's Eagle River Holdings. Yesterday I got more details from 1Cast CEO Anthony Bontrager.

Anthony has correctly realized that gaining deals with video news partners is an absolute prerequisite to success. To that end he says the company will have "no shortage" of content, and also has a particular focus on "repatriating international content." Though for now he's not disclosing any details, based on conversations I've had with broadcasters, my sense is that credible companies, even when early stage, can get deals done.

Yet there are other key success factors for a personalized news aggregator like 1Cast to succeed. Three that are high on my list are user experience, audience growth and revenue generation. Miss on any of these three and I think the model fails.

From a user experience standpoint, Anthony says creating a new personalized "micro-cast" is a simple three step process. That sounds promising, though since the beta won't open till later month (with full launch late in '08), I can't judge the specifics yet. And the wildcard is how content providers will ultimately react to having their videos mashed together with competitors' videos in a single micro-cast.

Growing an audience is a more daunting. As we all know, the web is incredibly noisy, and users have well-entrenched news-gathering habits. Yet there is white space in personalized video news. Anthony said that while 1Cast will be a central hub, he's focused on "channel partners" as well, and portals in particular, to grow traffic. Deals with majors like Yahoo, AOL, MSN, and others would be a huge win, but are notoriously hard to clinch for startups.

Last, but not least is revenue. Even assuming an audience can be built, optimally monetizing it is a challenge. Anthony said they're working with an undisclosed ad network and will also build their own sales team. Direct sales are important as living primarily off an ad network's splits will not produce sufficient revenue for 1Cast.

Yet even a direct sales team isn't a panacea; Anthony mentioned that some content providers want to sell any new impressions 1Cast generates. That's consistent with how I understand other Syndicated Video Economy deals like these work as well. But like other aggregators, that leaves 1Cast with a swiss cheese inventory situation that is complex to sell. Then factor in that some inventory will be essentially local in nature (i.e. generated from local video news) - which really requires a local sales orientation to fully monetize - and complexity grows still further.

The trend toward widespread video syndication to small-to-medium sized web sites continues to gain momentum.

Two recent initiatives - plus others I expect are still to come - point to the increasing likelihood that broadband video's eventual distribution model will look far different from traditional, tightly-controlled approaches. I'm becoming more convinced that "syndicated video economy" concept I sketched out in March is where the market is heading.

Now instead of distributing ads, Google is looking to take the AdSense model a step further by distributing video content (along with ads) to myriad web sites hungry for video, and cash. First up are comedic webisodes from Seth MacFarlane (creator of Fox's "Family Guy"). Google's proposition to small, and even larger sites, makes sense: we'll give you free high-quality video content, all supported by pay-for-performance ads. You get great content and can make money at it. What's not to like? Not much in my opinion. It seems like such a compelling model that one wonders why Google hasn't done this earlier. In fact, they did. Back in August 2006, Google announced a test with MTV to do exactly the same thing (the ensuing YouTube-Viacom litigation no doubt scotched the test). Hopefully this time around Google will have more luck.

Meanwhile, hyper video syndication is not just for the mighty like Google. Consider Jambo Media, a two year-old company with 12 employees which has built out a syndication network now generating over 2 million video views per day. Web sites like BestCelebGossip.com, Epigee.org and MensTech.com may not be household names, but, as Jambo's CEO and co-founder Rob Manoff explained to me, they are representative of virtually unlimited long tail web publishers eager for video, but unable or unwilling to create it themselves.

Rob and his team of ex-affiliate marketing and advertising veterans have created the Jambo Video Network by licensing video from sources such AP, iVillage, Ivanhoe Broadcast News, and then packaging them into "channels" for distribution in a Jambo video player. Of course ads come along with the video content (though Jambo has a separate ad-free "JamboCast" white label solution in the works too).

Affiliate sites can login to their Jambo account to select which channels to receive while customizing the look and feel of the video player. Over 100 sites have affiliated, which Rob believes will grow to several hundred by the end of '08, driving a projected 5 million views/day. Rob said that sites earn $2-4 effective CPM with revenue per day ranging from $10-30 on the low end all the way up to $1,000/day on the high end.

Jambo is pursuing a space that syndicators like Roo, Voxant, ClipSyndicate, Newsmarket and others have been in for a while. All of these players, along with now Google, are doing what Rob articulates well: creating video ad inventory where none previously existed. Such is the power of syndication in the frictionless Internet environment. And why smart content providers - from startups to established TV networks - are recognizing that increasingly, syndication is where the broadband market is heading.

As a refresher, Magnify is the ultimate Long Tail of video enabler, allowing individuals to create branded personalized channels from video that is publicly available on the net. To date over 37,000 of these channels have been created on virtually every niche subject imaginable.

Magnify Publisher is another example of a tool to advance video syndication. Publisher inverts Magnify's usual approach though, offering bloggers the chance to start building video channels inside their blogs, but without really knowing it. The blogger begins by downloading the Publisher app (today WordPress and Movable Type are supported) and can instantly start searching for relevant videos for specific posts and embed them. The over time, as they've grabbed more and more videos, a channel starts to organically take shape, which itself can then be exposed at some point to users.

All of this is predicated on Magnify's belief that blogging is increasingly going to be multimedia, but only if access to video is easy and well-integrated. My quick reaction was that Magnify Publisher feels close to syndication sites like Voxant, ClipSyndicate and others. Steve suggests that Publisher's differentiators are that a personalized channel can be built rather than just a collection of clips, and that Publisher offers access to content beyond news, which tends to be the others' focus. In fact ClipSyndicate's videos are available to bloggers through Publisher, and Steve sees others being integrated down the road.

I am ever mindful of the old adage about "missing the forest for the trees" as I try daily to understand the often minor feature differences between competing vendors or the nuances of startups' market positioning. As we all know, when you get too close to something, it's quite easy to lose the larger perspective. So periodically I think it's essential to take a huge step back to try to identify the larger patterns or trends that crystallize from the daily frenzy of deals and announcements.

As a result, I've come to believe that recent industry activity points to an emerging and significant trend: the early formation of what I would term the "syndicated video economy." By this I mean to suggest that I'm seeing more and more industry participants' strategies - in both media and technology - start from the proposition that the broadband video industry will only succeed if video assets are widely dispersed and revenue creatively apportioned.

For content providers the notion of widespread video syndication big change in their business approach. In the past year I think we've observed content providers of all stripes transition from "aggregating eyeballs", to "accessing eyeballs," wherever they may live now or in the future: portals, social networks, portable devices, game consoles, etc. Underlying this shift is the realization that advertising-based revenues are going to fuel the broadband video industry for the foreseeable future. The ad model requires scale and syndication is the best way to deliver it.

This shift by content providers has been accompanied by a loosening of traditional tightly-controlled, scarcity-driven distribution strategies, an acknowledgement that fighting newly-empowered consumers is a futile exercise. The evidence of this shift abounds. Consider the broadcasters like CBS, NBC and Fox, which through their affiliates (Hulu, CBS Audience Network) are syndicating programming to many portals/aggregators (e.g. Yahoo, MSN, AOL, YouTube), social networks (e.g. Facebook, MySpace, Bebo) and others. And Disney's Stage 9 digital studio, which premiered with YouTube and explicitly plans to tap into broadband video hubs. And cable networks like MTV Networks, which is pursuing a plethora of distribution deals. And traditional news-gatherers like local TV stations, newspapers and news services (e.g. Reuters, AP) which have stepped up their activity to scatter their video clips to the Internet's nooks and crannies. And the list goes on and on.

Taking their cue from the media companies' strategy shift, technology entrepreneurs and investors have ramped up their focus on this market opportunity. The prospect of the syndicated video economy blossoming drives news/information distributors such as Voxant, ClipSyndicate, Mochilla, TheNewsMarket and RedLasso, an ad manager such as FreeWheel, and a content accelerator such as Signiant, plus many others. Then there are more established companies guiding areas of their product development process by the prospect of the syndicated video economy's growth: Google, WorldNow, Akamai, thePlatform, Anystream, Maven Networks, Brightcove, PermissionTV and plenty of others (apologies to those I've left out!)

All of this suggests that the eventual "value chain" of the broadband video industry will look quite different than the traditional one (for more on this, I've posted some my slides from late '07 here.) As with all economies, in the nascent syndicated video economy there is vast interdependence among the various players, not to mention shifting market positions and degrees of pricing power and negotiating leverage. It is far too early to gauge who will emerge as the syndicated video economy's winners and losers. But make no mistake, lots of energy and investment will be expended trying to nurture its growth and exploit its opportunities.

Do you see the syndicated video economy forming as well? Post a comment and let us all know!

Red Lasso is a stealthy company that's been around for about 2 years, though only now coming up to the surface. I did a phone briefing earlier this week with Kevin O'Kane, President/founder and Al McGowan, COO. They also gave me access to the private beta and I've been playing around with it for the last couple of days.

Red Lasso's goal is "to help broadcasters extend the life of their content, legitimately." They're positioning themselves as "an anti-YouTube", allowing broadcasters to proactively contribute long form video and audio, which users can then search and clip for exactly the content they're looking for. The video can simply be watched or it can be embedded. Though they don't want to be seen as an "online DVR", it is tempting to see them as such. Monetization is most likely through advertising, though a licensing model is possible as well.

Red Lasso's playing in the same basic space as Voxant (note: a VideoNuze sponsor) and Clip Syndicate (see this for more), with a key differentiator being the long form content availability and clipping feature. Red Lasso is currently taking 150 different broadcast feeds from around the country, and their ability to get the industry to cooperate is helped by the fact that Al and Kevin are broadcast veterans.

Red Lasso is trying to appeal to at least 3 types of users: broadcasters seeking to flexibly publish specific video clips on their own sites, independent web sites trying to feature key segments of their own video (e.g. sports teams) and bloggers seeking to embed video. They believe this third group is the most fertile territory and I agree.

Bloggers across the spectrum (politics, entertainment, sports, etc.) have been hungry for video clips to enhance their sites. I believe this demand will only increase. If you're a blogger looking just for the "money quote", clipping from long form assets provides a lot of value. I did some searching and clipping (below is one result).

I found the clipping pretty straightforward, and I liked the fact that I could save mine, which I can also publish to the community for widespread viral use if I choose to. The searching is based on phonetic and closed caption text. It was not quite as accurate as I hoped, but video search is a very tough nut to crack, and so I'd expect room for improvement there.

At a strategic level, Red Lasso again demonstrates how broadband's influence is going to be felt in the broadcast TV industry. I think traditional concepts of appointment viewing, geographic constraints and local ad sales are all going to seem quaint as broadband allows quality video to fly around the net. I'd urge broadcasters to be looking closely at all the players in this space.

VideoNuze 1.0 accomplishes what I set out to do at launch - provide a high-value, user-friendly online publication and community for busy video executives seeking to keep up-to-date with the industry's vast array of news and better understand what it means to their businesses. The two primary components of the site, "Analysis" and "News Roundup", are already well-stocked with content and will grow rapidly over time. In addition, I have a full roadmap of features which will also be introduced in the coming months.

As with all online initiatives, VideoNuze is a work in progress and I welcome your feedback. Please have a good look around and let me know what you think. What works well? What's missing? What's broken? No comment or observation is too small, I invite them all.

Today's launch wouldn't be possible without the support of an incredible group of charter sponsors, so I want to acknowledge and thank them again. Each signed on when there was not so much as an official name for the effort. They made a bet on my concept - that an online publication that relentlessly focuses on informing and educating broadband video decision-makers would add real value to the market. I greatly appreciate their confidence.

These companies are all leaders in the fast-evolving video industry and I encourage you to take time to learn about how they can contribute to your company's success:

• Akamai
• ExtendMedia
• thePlatform
• Voxant
• Atlas Venture
• Digitalsmiths
• ICTV
• PermissionTV