Posts for 'Jambo'

Jambo Media has moved video syndication another step forward with the official release of "Jambocast," an all-in-one video syndication platform. Jambocast, which is available for white-label licensing, essentially allows vertically-focused web sites to build out their own private video syndication networks. For web site that either don't have their own video, or want to augment what they do have, syndicating video into their sites is a great option. Jambo's CEO Rob Manoff recently explained to me how Jambocast works.

Jambocast follows on the company's success with its own video syndication network, Jambo Video Network (JVN). According to comScore, JVN ranked #18 in March '09, with 9M unique visitors and 37M video streams (U.S. only). As Rob noted, JVN has taught the company a ton about what's required to build and run a syndication network, lessons it has incorporated into the development of Jambocast.

First and foremost is the importance of offering a comprehensive solution. Rob explained that what he sees as unique about Jambocast is that it offers each piece part of what a syndicator would need - a "video syndication network-in-a-box." Customers get a customizable video player, ad management (which is also integrated with 3rd party ad networks), publisher/syndication management, content management and tracking/reporting. Jambocast's goal is to make it easy to get up and running and start making money. As Rob says, "we're a bunch of ad network guys building a video network with an ad network mentality."

Jambocast also responds to what content providers have been telling Jambo for a while: they want full control of where their content resides. Though embedding has become highly popular, Rob sees Jambocast as the "anti-embed alternative," for content providers who want hyper-distribution, but without risk of their brands ending up in undesirable places. Jambocast's syndication management features give web sites the tools to offer 3rd party content providers comfort.

Jambocast is getting quick traction - customers on board include Mondo Media (adult animation), KidsTube (video aggregator for kids), a large pet-related site (undisclosed for now) plus 6-8 others signed up, but also not yet disclosed.

Jambocast is a classic example of how syndication is continues to permeate the broadband video ecosystem. Though it's distinct, I'd put Magnify.net and KickApps in a somewhat similar orbit, with the former placing more emphasis on UGC and the latter more on social media features. Yet all are part of what I refer to as the Syndicated Video Economy, which continues to grow in influence. Having already made its own syndication network profitable, Jambo is now also going to help others do the same.

What do you think? Post a comment now.

(note: Jambo Media is a VideoNuze sponsor)

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.