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Playwire Introduces Low-Cost Online Video Platform
Just when you thought the online video platform space was finally entering a consolidation phase, today a new OVP called Playwire Video is launching.
Playwire is backed by Intergi Entertainment, a gaming content provider/ad network. Jayson Dubin, president of both Playwire and Intergi recently briefed me on today's video launch.
Despite the range of current video options, Jayson recounted that his personal experience in trying to select a video platform left him feeling there were still significant technical/operational challenges for small-to-mid-size users and also inflexible pricing terms. Jayson thinks of YouTube as an easy on-ramp, but one that didn't offer great direct monetization options. On the other end he said more robust solutions still felt pretty techie to him, and with their pricing terms, hard to actually make money from.
Categories: Technology
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Announcing ELEVATE: Online Video Advertising Summit, On Tuesday, June 7th In NYC
Today I'm very excited to announce ELEVATE: Online Video Advertising Summit, a new, one-day conference, which, as the name implies, will focus entirely on the dynamic online video advertising industry. The date of the conference is Tuesday, June 7th, during Internet Week in New York City.
I'm equally excited to share that my partner in ELEVATE is Marc Sternberg, who until recently was the President and COO of AlwaysOn, the highly respected technology industry conference/networking company. Marc has a wealth of event and sponsorship experience from organizing over 20 executive-level events at AO. He also has deep entertainment industry experience from 23 years on the publishing side of The Hollywood Reporter and Variety. Importantly, we share a common vision for the ELEVATE conference and our skills are extremely complementary to one another.
ELEVATE will be a must attend event for senior executives from brands, agencies, content providers/publishers, technology providers and others in the fast-growing online video ad ecosystem who are eager to see it grow and mature. Marc and I intend to work closely with key industry thought-leaders to attract the right participants, create the most informative sessions and enable the best networking so that attendees have the highest-impact experience. We see ELEVATE as a joint venture with online video ad leaders who understand that a rising tide lifts all boats.
Categories: Events
Topics: ELEVATE
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Amazon is Still a Paper Tiger in Online Video Subscriptions
Since Amazon introduced a streaming video benefit in its Prime service almost 2 weeks ago, there have been plenty of people suggesting that the move was a game-changer in online video subscriptions. Eventually that may be the case. But for now, Amazon's streaming video strategy appears very underwhelming and is unlikely to change industry dynamics much at all. When compared to the effort and resources Amazon has put into the Kindle, for example, streaming video looks more like a side project than a high-priority company initiative.
As I wrote in my initial review, the pervasive problem in Amazon's approach to streaming video is the absence of a clearly defined video brand or value proposition. The fact that Amazon decided to staple video streaming onto the Prime membership program says a lot about how Amazon views video for now: as a supporting player to more important company revenue drivers like Prime, rather than a star in its own right.
Categories: Aggregators
Topics: Amazon
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5 Items of Interest for the Week of Feb. 28th
Happy Friday! Below is VideoNuze's end-of-week feature, recapping 5-6 interesting online/mobile video industry news items that we weren't able to cover this week. Enjoy!Categories: Miscellaneous
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Op-Ed in the L.A. Times and NPR Interview
I was very pleased to have an op-ed piece published in the L.A. Times this week, "Pay-TV's Full-Court Press" in which I explained how the recent Time Warner Cable deal with the L.A. Lakers is going to be very costly for pay-TV subscribers in the L.A. area, whether they are sports fans or not. The piece echoes points I made last month in "Not A Sports Fan? Then You're Getting Sacked For At Least $2 Billion Per Year."
Producers at the main L.A. NPR affiliate, KCRW noticed the op-ed and called for an interview on the "Which Way, LA?" program with Warren Olney which runs at 7pm weekdays. The recording is here, and my interview segment starts about 1 minute into the broadcast. I continue to believe that the huge cost for pay-TV's non-sports fans and casual fans to receive expensive sports networks they don't watch is ultimately going to cause them to re-evaluate the value of their pay-TV subscriptions. With the rise of lower cost and free over-the top options like Netflix and Hulu - plus the proliferation of connected devices - entertainment-minded consumers will be very tempted to save money by reducing their pay-TV service.Categories: Sports
Topics: Hulu, KCRW, LA Times, Netflix
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It's NCAA March Madness On Demand Season Again
Speaking of sports, Turner Sports, CBS Sports and the NCAA announced this week that March Madness on Demand will be back online and free to users yet again. MMOD is by far the highest-profile sports event offered live online and the NCAA and networks just keep on improving it every year. For the 2011 tournament, the big new drawing card will be an iPad app, along with new features like personalized channel lineups, social interaction and live stats updates.
Categories: Broadcasters, Cable Networks, Sports
Topics: CBS, MMOD, NCAA, Turner Sports
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House Republicans' Assault on Net Neutrality Begins Next Week
Republicans on Capitol Hill will start their long-stated attempts to overturn the FCC's net neutrality regulations next Wednesday, with the House Communications & Technology Subcommittee planning a hearing. House Republicans have made no secret of their scorn for the FCC's net neutrality regulations and seem committed to doing whatever's necessary to block them from taking effect. While I've often said that net neutrality is a solution in search of a problem, the FCC's rules are actually not very burdensome, and to the extent that broadband ISPs abide by them, it feels unlikely that they would be expanded any time soon. Still, Republicans view this as an overreach by the government. It will be interesting to see how strongly Senate Democrats and President Obama come to net neutrality's defense, given all the other things competing for their attention.
Categories: Broadband ISPs, Regulation
Topics: FCC, Net Neutrality
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63% of Online Video Now Available in HTML5
MeFeedia released some interesting research this week, reporting that the universe of online video it indexes (30 million videos at 30,000 sites), shows the percentage of video that is HTML5 compatible is now up to 63%. The key HTML5-compatible formats are H.264, WebM and Ogg. Video formats were already a confusing terrain before Google jumped into the mix by acquiring On2 Technologies and open-sourcing its VP8 codec as WebM. Then, earlier this year it announced that its Chrome browser would drop support of H.264, in favor of WebM. Meanwhile, the iPad, which doesn't support Flash has sold 15 million units in the past year, putting even more pressure on content developers to work outside of Flash. The 63% figure, up from 10% a year earlier, suggests that is indeed happening.Categories: Encoding
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