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This Holiday Season, Video Apps' Purpose is to Sell Devices
It's no secret that consumer electronics makers have long relied on content to help sell their devices. After all, people buy devices because of what they can do, or consume, on them, just ask Apple, whose iTunes store is the linchpin to its iOS devices' success. However, as the all-important holiday season approaches, there's new evidence that video apps specifically are being embraced by CE providers (loosely defined) to drive their devices' value propositions.
Categories: Devices
Topics: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, HBO GO, Hulu Plus, Netflix, Roku, Xbox 360
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Taboola's Video Recommendation Widget Reaching Over 64 Million U.S. Unique Users Per Month
Taboola's video recommendation widget is now placed on pages of content publisher web sites reaching over 64 million U.S. unique users per month, according to Quantcast data. Adam Singolda, Taboola's CEO explained that the 64 million amount means Taboola's exposure is ahead of the uniques at popular sites like Bing, Pandora and CNET, and just behind Twitter, Wikipedia and Amazon, again, according to Quantcast data (see chart below).
Categories: Technology
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VideoSchmooze Early Discount Ends Friday - Sign Up Now and Win a Roku and HBO DVDs
The early-bird discount ends on Friday for VideoSchmooze: NYC Online Video Leadership Forum on Wed. morning, November 30th at the Harvard
Club of NYC. As an additional incentive to take advantage of the early-bird discount, and in the spirit of the holiday season, early-bird attendees will be entered a drawing to win one of two Roku players and an HBO DVD gift basket (thanks Roku and HBO).
VideoSchmooze is going to be an exciting morning of learning and networking with industry leaders from HBO, YouTube, Comcast, CBS, Roku, Yahoo and others. Each of these companies has launched successful online video initiatives and will discuss what they've learned about what works and what doesn't, as well as peer into the future for 2012 predictions. We'll cover all the main industry themes in 3 sessions, including multi-platform distribution, online video advertising challenges and opportunities, changing consumer behaviors, connected devices, social media's influence and more.
If staying on the cutting edge of online video is critical for you, then VideoSchmooze is a must-attend event.
VideoSchmooze is presented in association with FourScreen Media and is made possible through the generous support of lead sponsors FreeWheel, Irdeto and Tremor Video plus supporting sponsors Akamai Technologies, Innovid, One Touch Intelligence and TidalTV.
LEARN MORE AND REGISTER NOW!Categories: Events
Topics: VideoSchmooze
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AnyClip Licenses Warner Bros. Movies for Clip Library
AnyClip is announcing this morning that it has licensed thousands of Warner Bros. movies to be able to tag and create searchable clips for its library. Movies include select Harry Potter and Batman movies, Ocean's Eleven, Sex and the City, Dirty Harry, Casablanca and others. AnyClip tags each movie with over 5,000 unique elements to create a rich index. To date AnyClip's has been offering access to 50,000 clips from 12,000 movies sourced from Universal, Vivendi and others.
Topics: AnyClip, Warner Bros.
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AdoTube Unveils VidLogic Campaign Management Platform
Video ad technology provider AdoTube is introducing VidLogic this morning, a new video campaign management platform for in-stream video advertising.
VidLogic is a single campaign management platform with tools to plan, develop creative, manage, target, optimize and report on ads placed on virtually any ad exchange, network or publisher site. VidLogic is seeking to differentiate from other demand side platforms (DSPs) by leveraging AdoTube's core technologies and being an open platform that will work with any inventory source.
Categories: Advertising, Technology
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Digitalsmiths Rolls Out "Seamless Discovery" Platform for Video Recommendations
Late last week, video search and recommendation technology provider Digitalsmiths quietly introduced its "Seamless Discovery" platform, targeted to pay-TV operators, consumer electronics companies and content producers who want to deliver highly relevant recommendations to their users. The platform addresses the urgent problem that users are fragmenting their viewing over multiple devices where the discovery experience is inconsistent and lacking (I covered these issues in a webinar just last week).
In a phone briefing, Digitalsmiths' CEO Ben Weinberger explained that a key differentiator for Seamless Discovery is that it draws from multiple data sets in order to provide recommendations, resulting in improved relevance. At the core is metadata Digitalsmiths creates on the programming available from the pay-TV operator, CE device or content owner. For pay-TV operators specifically, this involves ingesting full schedule information from sources like Tribune Media Services. This metadata is mapped with contextual and behavioral data and "social graph" information from Facebook along with other inputs. The system learns over time from the choices the user makes which of these factors is most relevant, tweaking future recommendations accordingly.
Categories: Video Search
Topics: Digitalsmiths
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Video Interview: News Corp.'s Jon Miller On "Tensions" Content Providers are Experiencing
A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to do a fireside chat with News Corp.'s Chief Digital Officer Jon Miller (also formerly CEO of AOL) at Akamai's Edge 2011 customer conference. The video is now posted here (note it's not embeddable, but it's the fourth thumbnail from the left labeled "04: Evolution Digital Media: NewsCorp 2011-10-13.")
Jon provides candid and thoughtful insights on the various "tensions" he believes premium content providers are experiencing with the rise of online and mobile delivery. Given his role at News Corp. and that he's on Hulu's board of directors, Jon has a very well-informed perspective. The interview is wide-ranging; among other things we discuss are the pressures on the pay-TV business model including the prospect of a la carte, cord-cutting threats, important distinctions between "TV Everywhere" and "authentication," Netflix's recent stumbles and the concept of a "good enough" value proposition and how premium-quality content licensing now often serves distributors' larger goals.
I learned a lot from our discussion so if you're interested to hear from one of the most plugged-in executives in the industry, it's well worth your time. Note there are some periodic stutters in the video, but they resolve themselves quickly.
(Thanks to Akamai, which is a VideoNuze sponsor, for making the video available.)
Categories: People
Topics: Akamai, Jon Miller, News Corp.
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Google To Go Over-the-Top and Compete With Pay-TV Operators? Don't Bet On Success.
Is Google planning to go over-the-top and compete with pay-TV operators for subscribers? That's the tantalizing possibility the WSJ is reporting this morning, though its article is long on speculation and short on hard facts and on-the-record sources (as best I could tell, the only concrete thing
reported is that Google has hired Jeremy Stern - a former colleague of mine at Continental Cablevision - who's "spearheading talks with media companies"). Regardless, the possibility that Google could be looking to disrupt the pay-TV business, using its own high-speed fiber network in Kansas City and maybe elsewhere, deserves attention if for no other reason than the fact that its deep-pockets and robust ad model would potentially allow it to cause trouble for incumbents.
"Potentially" is the operative word however, because any subscription TV service Google would offer would only be as good as the channels it could deliver (see Sezmi's recent retreat for proof of that). As such, the critical question here is whether the most important cable network owners - Disney, NBCU, Viacom, Time Warner, Fox, Discovery, Scripps, A&E Networks, AMC Networks, numerous regional sports networks (RSNs) and others - would agree to deals with Google. Though they would no doubt be enticed by Google as another well-funded buyer, barring some huge unknown, I'd bet that most would say "Thanks, but no thanks," effectively stymieing the search giant's ambitions.
Categories: Cable Networks, Cable TV Operators, Satellite, Telcos, TV Everywhere
Topics: Google
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