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FreeWheel Unveils Version 3.5 of Its Ad Management Platform
Ad manager FreeWheel announced the 3.5 version of its Monetization Rights Management platform this morning, continuing to help drive online and mobile
video monetization for major media companies.
Included in the new features are an Android SDK, which allows great ad control within their Android apps, geo-based ad targeting to mobile devices based on current GPS coordinates, user targeting by mobile operating system, integration with 3rd party mobile ad networks AdMob and iAd and mid-roll/companion ads in HTML5 for iPhones and iPads. If you're interested in learning more about FreeWheel's online and mobile video monetization, come to the VideoSchmooze breakfast on Dec. 1st, where company co-CEO and co-founder Doug Knopper will be on the panel.Categories: Advertising, Mobile Video
Topics: FreeWheel
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VideoSchmooze:NYC Early Bird Discount Expires Next Friday
A quick reminder that the early bird discount for the next VideoSchmooze breakfast/panel expires next Friday, Nov. 12th. The event will be in New York, on Wednesday, Dec. 1st at The Samsung Experience, located in the
Time Warner Center, 10 Columbus Circle. As an added incentive, early bird ticket holders only will be entered to win a new Samsung connected Blu-ray DVD player (model BD-C6500; I have one and it's awesome).
The topic of our panel, which I'll moderate, is "How Connected and Mobile Devices are Transforming the Video Landscape." Panelists include:
- Charlie Herrin - SVP, Products and Technology, Comcast Interactive Media
- Doug Knopper - Co-CEO and Co-Founder, FreeWheel
- Olivier Manuel - Director of Content, Samsung Electronics
- Steve Robinson - CEO and Founder, Panache
- Jeremiah Zinn - SVP, Digital Products, MTV
Our panelists bring a range of perspectives to the connected/mobile debate which will be invaluable for helping understand the issues. As with past VideoSchmooze events, attendees can expect a high-impact, interactive, educational session.
The timing of our discussion couldn't be better, right in the middle of a holiday season where connected and mobile devices will be highly sought-after gifts. As these devices proliferate they are expanding the audience of users able to access video in fundamentally new ways, further fueling transformation of the industry.
There will be plenty of time for networking and audience Q&A. Samsung will also be hosting technology demonstrations of its connected devices for those interested. This VideoSchmooze breakfast is generously sponsored by Akamai Technologies, FreeWheel and Panache. It is being held in association with CTAM's New York chapter. The Fortex Group is providing marketing support.
I hope you'll be able to join us at this special event! Early bird individual and group rates are now available.
Click here to learn more and register for early bird discountCategories: Events
Topics: VideoSchmooze
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As DVD Sales Wane, Experiments With Movies' Digital Delivery Windows Rise
Yesterday brought more evidence of how digital distribution release windows and promotions are rising as DVD sales wane. First there was news that Disney had teamed up with Wal-mart to allow buyers of the Toy Story 3 DVD to get a bonus digital version of the film playable through the company's recently acquired Vudu digital outlet. That offer was quickly one-upped by Amazon which announced an increase from 300 to 10,000 movies in its "Disc+" program, which provides a digital copy to the user's Amazon VOD account when they purchase a qualifying DVD.
Meanwhile at the Blu-con conference in Beverly Hills, studio executives debated how to best calibrate digital, VOD and DVD distribution. Even emerging practices come with exceptions and debates about results. For example, while VOD has largely gained day-and-date release with DVD, exceptions are still made on a case-by-case basis, such as with Universal's "Despicable Me" which will have its DVD go on sale on Dec 14, but its VOD release not until after Christmas.
Topics: Amazon, Apple, Best Buy, Disney, EPIX, FOX, Netflix, Sony, Starz, Universal, VUDU, Wal-Mart, Warner Bros.
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Entone Introduces FusionTV To Help Telcos Blend OTT With Linear TV
IPTV vendor Entone jumped into the connected device fray today with a new managed service called "FusionTV" for telcos looking to offer a hybrid linear TV/broadband/online video package. Entone's CEO Steve McKay briefed me on the company's plans last week.
For consumers, FusionTV's appeal is that it brings together several value propositions into one user experience: linear HDTV, whole home DVR, online video and media sharing. As a result consumers don't need to buy and wire
together a DVR or connected device (or multiple of these for additional rooms), and also don't need to disrupt their existing video source, whether that be telco, satellite, over-the-air, etc. For the telcos (primarily tier 2), FusionTV is a new value added service to improve the competitiveness of their broadband service, while also helping bring online video under their roof, thus preempting over-the-top cord-cutting.
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Brightcove 5 Launches
Brightcove is launching the next version of its online video platform today, dubbed Brightcove 5. It is a free upgrade to existing customers and will be fully rolled out by mid-January 2011. Brightcove 5 expands on the themes of Brightcove 4 (released in Nov. '09): delivering video to more devices/places, enhancing the financial return of online video and improving publishing productivity. Brightcove's president and COO David Mendels walked me through the key highlights last week:
- YouTube distribution - publish video and metadata simultaneously to YouTube channels so that content on both owned properties and on YouTube remain in synch.
- Streaming support for Apple iOS devices - integrated multi-bit rate delivery for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.
- Updated mobile app SDKs for iPhone and Android - enhancements to those released in Brightcove 4, plus a new reference app for the iPad.
- Improved analytics - over a dozen new reports for tracking video playback.
- Integrated HTML5 and Flash analytics - in partnership with TubeMogul, reports now aggregate HTML5 and Flash video metrics into one view.
- High-quality live-streaming and DVR functionality - using Akamai's HD network, multi-bit rate HD live-streaming plus DVR rewind in live events and ad insertion.
- New "Smart Players" - single video player design for HTML5 and Flash video with browser auto-detection feature serving the right format to each user.
- Accelerated file upload - integration with Aspera for faster video uploads.
- Mobile video upload from iPhones - app that allows remote users to edit and upload video to their Brightcove accounts.
Brightcove separately announced that it will hold its first customer conference, Brightcove PLAY, May 23-25 in Boston.
Categories: Technology
Topics: Brightcove
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Sorenson Enters Cloud-Based Encoding Market for Enterprises
Sorenson Media is entering the cloud-based encoding market with the launch today of its new Sorenson Squeeze Server, targeted to enterprise users. The opportunity for cloud-based encoding has heated up recently as the number
of end-user devices and encoding requirements has exploded, dramatically increasing encoding complexity for content providers. Concurrent improvements in cloud infrastructure have made non-hosted solutions more attractive.
Sorenson Media's COO Eric Quanstrom explained to me last week that a key differentiator of the Squeeze Server is dedicated server instances, thereby avoiding potential slowdowns associated with shared servers and also offering unlimited scalability. Squeeze Server uses Amazon's web services infrastructure and guarantees 99.9% uptime.
Categories: Encoding
Topics: Sorenson Media
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Amazon is Now Selling Samsung's Connected Blu-ray Players For Lowest Prices Yet
Amazon is now selling two of Samsung's most popular connected Blu-ray DVD players, the BD-C5500 and the BD-C6500 for $109 and $132, respectively, which I believe are the lowest prices yet for these two products (note these
are new, not refurbished). The main difference between the two is that the 6500 has built-in wireless and 1GB of local storage, whereas the 5500 supports wired Ethernet access only. I've been tracking the prices on these two units for a while now and actually picked up the 6500 almost a month ago for what was then the lowest price I had seen of $190. The new prices put the Blu-ray players in close proximity to Apple TV and Roku in particular.
Just yesterday, Best Buy was advertising the 6500 for $160, which itself was probably the best price I'd seen to date (by comparison, Crutchfield and Walmart.com are both still asking $250). The move toward $100 brings both products well into the comfort zone for many millions of buyers this holiday season, helping drive Blu-ray penetration to new highs. This in turn creates many more connected homes accessing content from providers like Netflix, Vudu, Pandora, etc.
Categories: Devices
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Netflix's Revenue Per Subscriber is Steadily Declining While Free Subscribers Are Soaring
It isn't news that Netflix has been on a huge growth spurt; over the last 5 quarters the company has added an astounding 6.3 million subscribers, increasing its total subscribers by 60% from 10.6 million at the end of Q2 '09 to over 16.9 million at the end of Q3 '10. What's less well understood though is that as the company has shifted its focus to streaming and to adding subscribers at its entry level $8.99/mo tier, several of the company's key metrics have changed substantially. I sensed this was happening with each passing quarter, but I finally got some time to crunch the numbers and see how things have actually been playing out.
No surprise, Netflix's emphasis on the $8.99/mo entry tier is resulting in a steady quarterly decrease in its average revenue per paying subscriber, which has declined 8.9% from $13.30 in Q3 '09 to $12.12 in Q3 '10 (Note I calculated this by excluding average quarterly free subscribers, and by assuming a straight average monthly revenue per quarter. Since Netflix doesn't release monthly information, this is as close an approximation as possible). Netflix management has been candid in explaining that as $8.99/mo subscribers dominate growth (and even lower priced streaming-only Canadian subs are now added), average revenue per subscriber will trend down. At $12.12 in Q3 '10 though, and millions of $8.99/mo subs being added, further decreases should be expected.
Categories: Aggregators
Topics: Netflix
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