VideoNuze Posts

There has been no shortage of stories in the last few days about the travails many people experienced when trying to watch President Obama's inauguration via broadband. While things worked flawlessly for many, for far too many others it was a frustrating and unfulfilling experience. As I wrote on Tuesday, the first "Broadband Inauguration" was a milestone opportunity for this new medium. Instead, it was a confusing flameout.

While I'm disappointed, I can't say I'm terribly surprised. Even as I was writing Tuesday's post, I found myself wondering if the Internet was really up to the task of handling this colossal and highly compressed live event. What I experienced personally that day, and have heard and read since, all underscore the massive inconsistency in users' experiences.

For example, Hulu worked fine for me. But when I tried to watch on CNN.com I couldn't even get the Flash plug-in to download (and btw CNN, talk about an inopportune time for a download!). I had no luck at NYTimes.com either. One person I spoke to this week said he couldn't get a stream at any of the major news sites and ended up watching at MLB.com of all places. Conversely, others reported no problems at all. No doubt you have your own particular stories.

So here's an attempt at putting all of this into perspective: no communications or transportation system is ever built to serve extraordinary peak demand. Instead they are built to serve typical demand plus an increment for periodic bursts. We don't have 15 lane highways so there's no congestion on Thanksgiving Day, while the other 364 days of the year 90% of the space is unused. Likewise, on inauguration day, wireless carriers were urging attendees to refrain from using their handsets for fear of overloading their networks. I can even remember back to the '80s when on heavy call days like Mother's Day, Ma Bell's gold-plated network would sometimes stymie me with an "all circuits busy" message.

And these are just a few examples. The reason things are this way is purely financial. It simply doesn't make economic sense to invest in so much extra capacity that's unused most of the time. No venture capital or institutional investor would tolerate capex budgets not supported by realistic use cases. The result is that on surge days like on Inauguration Day incremental available capacity is quickly swamped and many users expecting a flawless typical experience are disappointed.

If that's the sobering reality, then here's some good news. Tuesday's massive broadband interest, coupled with other heavily viewed live events, will likely spur further investment in all links in the Internet/broadband delivery chain. History shows us this is true. We may not have 15 lane highways today, but we often do have 4-5 lanes instead of old dirt paths because of cars' growing popularity 50-60 years ago. And we have 5, 10 and even 50 mbps broadband service now instead of pokey old dialup because Internet usage has soared in the last 10 years, demonstrating users' widespread willingness to pay and prompting huge broadband ISP investments.

What do you think? Post a comment now.

I'm pleased to present the third edition of the VideoNuze Report podcast, for Jan. 23, 2009. Once again Daisy Whitney and I are discussing select pieces we've written over the past few days to try to fill in between the lines a bit more. (And yes, in response to a number of requests, I hope to have the series available in iTunes by next week, so you're able to subscribe.)

This week we discuss:

"Does Text-Message Fever Indicate Burning Desire for Mobile Video?" - Daisy, 1/18/09

"Bloggers Find Space at NBC" - Daisy, 1/18/09

"The Broadband Inauguration and Beyond" - Will, 1/20/09

"Pixsy Premium Feed is Latest Entrant in the Syndicated Video Economy" - Will, 1/22/09

Click here to listen to previous podcasts (Jan. 16, '09, Dec. 23, '08)

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.

This is quite funny, but also very embarrassing. Yesterday I was watching coverage of President Obama's first day on the job at Politico.com, one of my favorite political sites. Politico eschews pre-rolls in favor of overlays which is great because most of their videos are short clips.

But look at the graphic below and note the overlay running while President Obama is discussing the serious matters of governmental transparency and senior staff pay freezes. It is promoting a diet technique, and includes the obligatory "before" (flabby) and "after" (flat) tummy pictures. Clicking through brings you to a faux-blog page which is in turn a promotion for Nature's Best Acai Berry weight loss pills.

Hey Politico: what in heaven's name is this ad doing running during President Obama's somber remarks? Did Obama get tagged with "fit" or "great abs" based on his recent Hawaii vacation, thereby mapping any ad with "belly" or "diet" to him? If so, someone needs to tweak the system. And by the way - this is the kind of stuff that really undermines your brand. If you're going to expand into video, make sure someone is tasked with knowing what ads you're running so they don't end up embarrassing you!

What do you think? Post a comment now.

• Albert Cheng, EVP, Digital Media, Disney/ABC Television Group
• Greg Clayman, EVP, Digital Distribution & Business Development, MTV Networks
• Karin Gilford, SVP, Fancast and Online Entertainment, Comcast Interactive Media
• Curt Hecht, President, VivaKi (Publicis Groupe)
• Tom Morgan, Chief Strategy Officer, Move Networks

Click here to learn more and register for the early bird discount

The event will be held at the gorgeous Hudson Theater, a historic gem on West 44th Street just off Times Square. I'm pleased to have NATPE, VideoNuze's partner since launch, on board for the event. And I'm extremely grateful to lead sponsor Move Networks and supporting sponsor ExtendMedia (and others soon to follow) who are making the evening possible. Note, additional sponsorship opportunities are still available, contact me to learn more.

As with the last two VideoNuze events, my goals for the evening are straightforward: to enhance attendees' understanding of the broadband video market's key drivers and to create a high-quality forum for networking with industry colleagues to discover new business and personal opportunities.

In particular, unlike many other events we've all attended, where a seemingly random collection of panelists are assembled for an improvised discussion, these panelists have been hand-selected based on their specific responsibilities and their companies' roles in the broadband video ecosystem. We will have a rigorous discussion of many of the key industry issues VideoNuze covers each day. As those of you who have attended previous panels I've moderated understand, all the panelists will be well-prepared and fully engaged. There will also be ample audience Q&A time. Attendees will benefit from a unique learning experience.

Similarly, the VideoSchmooze networking reception will be a premier, focused opportunity to expand your network and pursue business and personal opportunities. As with past events, I expect a strong mix of established media and technology executives, along with early-stage startups, entrepreneurs and investors. And while VideoSchmooze is not meant to be a job fair, I do hope it can play a meaningful role in getting together some of the really terrific people who have been dislocated recently with companies that continue to hire.

In short, I'm really excited about the Broadband Video Leadership Evening, and hope you'll be able to come. Early bird discounted tickets are now available. I've also created more deeply discounted "5-Pack" and "10-Pack" tickets for those of you who expect to come with multiple colleagues. Note also that the event is being held on the eve of the 2009 McGraw-Hill Media Summit, so if you're already planning to come into town for that, please book your travel plan accordingly so you're able to join us too (I've arranged a discounted room block at the adjacent Millennium Broadway Hotel.) And yes, since March 17th is St. Patrick's Day, please feel free to wear your green!

Click here to learn more and register for the early bird discount

Another milestone in broadband video's evolution will be marked today with the first "Broadband Inauguration." Like last summer's Olympic games, broadband will make it possible for millions of viewers around the world to experience Barack Obama's dramatic inauguration.

Last Thursday Mediaweek had a pretty good roundup of all the various news and entertainment web sites that are going to be streaming the proceedings live. Clearly there is going to be an intense battle for online viewers today, with various interactive and participative offerings planned.

The broadband inauguration is indeed a big milestone. I expect many more are yet to come.

Adap.tv and EyeWonder, two key players in the broadband video and rich media ad space are announcing a partnership today, meant to further streamline ad sales and monetization for video content providers. The partnership follows on the deal I wrote about last week between Panache and MTV also highlighting these points.

Particularly given the tough economy, video content providers are focused more than ever on maximizing the value of their inventory with the least possible amount of effort and cost. On the flip side, ad technology companies are trying to figure out how to cover more customer ground more cost-effectively. Inevitably these forces will lead to more partnerships, and likely some industry consolidation. Panache, Adap.tv, Tremor Media and others are among the companies driving the broadband ad market forward. I'll have more news on this front in the coming days.

What do you think? Post a comment now.

Today I'm pleased to introduce the "VideoNuze Report," a weekly 10-15 minute podcast that I'll be doing with Daisy Whitney. Many of you have likely read Daisy's work in TV Week, OMMA, AdAge and other publications, as well as watched her "New Media Minute." She covers the broadband video and social media landscape as closely as anyone and become a great friend over the years.

Daisy and I have talked about the industry's goings-on countless times, and it finally dawned on us that maybe we should record some of our musings and record them as a podcast...So here we are! We're still tweaking the format, but initially we're each trying to add a little more color and back-story to a couple of the articles/posts we've written in the preceding week. It's pretty informal and definitely a work in progress. So we'd love to get your feedback on how we can improve the format and make it even more interesting.

This week we focus on key impressions from last week's Consumer Electronics Show, discussing the following:

"CES Marks Year of the Touch Screen" - Daisy, 1/11/09

"CES Attendance Takes a Significant Dip" - Daisy, 1/12/09

"Netflix and LG Go Over-the-Top with New 'Broadband HDTVs'" - Will, 1/5/09

"Yahoo Gets Traction in Broadband-to-TV Market" - Will, 1/8/09

In our maiden podcast, from December 23rd, we discuss the following:

"Web Video Hurdle: Good Recommendations" - Daisy, 12/21/08

"International Market a Growing Opportunity for Web Series" - Daisy, 12/21/08

"Recapping 5 Broadband Video Predictions for 2009" - Will, 12/22/08

Enjoy and please let us know your reactions!