VideoNuze Posts

I'm pleased to present the 184th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia. This week we discuss the cloud's impact on video delivery. First, I share thoughts on Comcast's X2 platform, unveiled this week, in which the cloud plays a central role.

Colin notes that with Comcast's approach, there is still a fair amount of client-side processing happening, so it's not fully capitalizing on the cloud just yet. Colin draws a distinction between Comcast's approach and that of ActiveVideo Networks (which I recently wrote about), whose CloudTV moves all the processing to the cloud, allowing services to run on older set-top boxes and newer CE devices.

It's still early days in the cloud's deployment with different models at work, but there's no question it's going to become a bigger part of the video delivery landscape.

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At the June 4th Online Video Ad Summit, audience targeting was a recurring theme. We had a dedicated session on the topic, led by Richard Glosser of Hilltop Digital, with panelists from Altitude Digital, Nielsen, Xaxis and Videology. Topics ranged included the role of Nielsen's Online Campaign Ratings, targeting across platforms, how programmatic fits in, the value of different types of data sets and more. (Duration is 39 minutes.)

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Next Wednesday, June 19th, I'll be hosting a complimentary webinar focused on the impact of social media and second-screens on TV experiences. By now, anyone involved in the TV industry is well aware that the content itself is one part of the overall viewing experience;  for a growing group of viewers the social aspect that surrounds it has become equally important. Still, social is a relatively new phenomenon for TV and much is not yet understood.

In this webinar, Michael Greeson, founder of The Diffusion Group, will share social insights from his firm's recent survey of 1,000 broadband users/TV viewers. TDG will also provide registrants with a complimentary copy of its accompanying report, a $1,500 value. Then, Kevin Wyatt, director of business development for Rovi, will explain how the company's entertainment-related social media can be incorporated into TV apps. There will be plenty of time for Q&A.

Register now!

At its Video Publisher Forum in NYC, LiveRail announced new features for its publisher-side video monetization tools. LiveRail has integrated Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings (OCR) into its LiveRail Publisher Suite, so that publishers can obtain Nielsen metrics on current campaigns each night. There is also an "OCR Planner" which lets publishers gauge the value of their inventory in Nielsen audience terms. This helps publishers better target ad campaigns to their inventory.

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At the Cable Show yesterday, Comcast's CEO Brian Roberts showed off "X2," the latest generation of its cloud-based X1 entertainment platform. Beyond a slew of UI improvements, X2 offers at least three things that are very important and I believe, indicative of key future trends in video delivery: cloud-based DVR, an inexpensive IP set-top box and a unified cross-platform experience.

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A new report from video ad solution provider Mixpo has found that 78% of ad agencies ran multiscreen campaigns on behalf of their clients in 2012 and 90% expect to do so in 2013. In addition, 81% of media companies ran multiscreen campaigns in 2012 and 96% plan to do so in 2013. The report is based on surveys and interviews with 300 industry executives at agencies, media companies, and ad tech providers.

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Please join me for a complimentary webinar on the impact of social media and second-screens on TV experiences. In this webinar, which I'll moderate, Michael Greeson, founder of The Diffusion Group, will share detailed findings from his firm's recent survey of 1,000 broadband users/TV viewers. TDG will also provide registrants with a complimentary copy of the accompanying report, a $1,500 value.

In addition, Kevin Wyatt, director of business development for Rovi, will explain how it enables entertainment-related social media to be seamlessly incorporated into apps, with supporting examples. There will be ample time for Q&A.

Register now!

Digitalsmiths is taking video metadata to the next level, unveiling its Unified Data Service, a one-stop shop for pay-TV providers to access multiple, pre-integrated data feeds.

Digitalsmiths CEO and co-founder Ben Weinberger explained to me last week that as pay-TV operators have rolled out their own on-demand services and video apps, they're striving to make them as rich as possible. This includes adding the kind of related data (e.g. actor, cast info, schedules, merchandise, etc.) and social tools (e.g. Twitter/Facebook feeds, etc.) that are commonly found in entertainment-oriented web sites and apps.

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