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IAB Approves New Video Ad Formats
In a long-anticipated and legitimizing move, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) today released its new approved video advertising guidelines, agreed upon by some 145 video sites and advertising companies.
Like those for other forms of online advertising, the guidelines should make new forms of video advertising compatible between sites, so publishers and advertisers have an easier time working together. They also protect consumers, to some extent, from obnoxious new styles of video advertising that would not be compliant.
Mark Cuban: Low-Budget Doom and SEO Gloom for Web Video
When all that’s worth watching on a network is one show, or all that’s worth watching in a show is one scene, or all that’s worth watching in a scene is one line, just take us straight to the good stuff, right? But Mark Cuban, in an apocalyptic blog post, says online video will be destroyed by its ability to cater to these a la carte watching habits, because the economics don’t support them. He seems to thinks this will lead to the eradication of quality content.
Inspired by a Bernstein Research report that’s not publicly available, the cranky Cuban (who’s often blogged about his dissatisfaction with web video) quotes Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett,
Five years into the video-over-the-Internet revolution, we have learned two things. First; consumers won’t pay for content on the web, so it will have to be ad supported. And second; it won’t be ad supported.
Moffett’s math: Even if web video got the same CPMs as TV, because online viewers will tolerate less advertising, “a 30-minute program on the web with two minutes of advertising yields approximately 1/8th as much revenue per viewer.”
Vusion Makes HD Web Video Accessible
A four-year-old startup called Vusion today comes out of stealth mode, launching a streaming video platform competitive with Move Networks. I was blown away by a demo over my dinky home Internet connection — the service is responsive, instant, and incredibly high quality (see showcase).
Vusion said it requires broadband download speeds of 1.5 Mbps for 480p videos and 2.5 Mbps for 720p videos, making it fairly widely accessible. Akamai, by contrast, told us last year it expects only 10 to 20 percent of end users to have good enough connections to have a good experience watching its own HD offering.
As usual for these services (other competitors include GridNetworks and Digital Fountain), end users will need to download a small piece of software to manage video delivery. On the plus side, Vusion does support Macs at launch.
Lycos Has Viewing Parties, Wants You to Pay
Now here’s some unusual logic: ask people to pay $3.99 for online video they may be able to see free and ad-supported elsewhere. Charge them more — $5.99 for two to five people, $7.99 for six to ten — if they want to watch it simultaneously with friends (on different computers).
That’s what Lycos, the aging search portal owned by Daum, wants to do with its relaunched Lycos Cinema product. The key technology here is for scheduling a time for a viewing session, and then text chatting during the viewing session. Real jaw-dropping stuff.
Chuck Ball, vice president of sales and marketing for Lycos, told us he thinks the future of online video is paid content. “Going forward we look at the ad-supported side of this business as the very early days of cable where the audience hasn’t shown up yet,” he said last week. I respectfully disagree, but that doesn’t mean this product isn’t worth a second look. See, for instance, its implementation with free episodes of ABC’s series Greek (screenshot above).
Amanda Congdon Returns to Web Video
Amanda Congdon, famous for hosting pioneering video show Rocketboom and then famous for making a big fuss about leaving Rocketboom, is coming back to online video on her own terms. She’s posted a teaser for what looks to be a new ensemble comedy show, Sometimesdaily.
Introducing Sometimesdaily from Sometimesdaily on Vimeo.
What has Congdon been doing in the last couple years? She made a splash by joining ABC News, but only stayed (or was asked to stay) a year. Since then, Congdon’s web video making, even on her own videoblog, petered out. Her last post was a full six months ago.
Sometimesdaily describes itself as “an off-beat, interactive variety show exploring life’s themes through the inquisitive eyes of Amanda Congdon.”
So what do you think?
Apple to Lose Money on Same-day Movies
Apple said yesterday it had finally scored deals to sell movies from almost every major studio on the same day they come out on DVD. What’s surprising is that the company will lose a dollar on every new release it sells, according to the Wall Street Journal.
New movies will cost $14.99 for consumers, but $16 wholesale for Apple, making them a loss leader for the retailer, the WSJ’s sources said. (iTunes sells most older titles for $9.99.) I’m not quite sure what the difference is between $15 and $16 — either one of them sounds like more than I would pay for a movie.
Bolt.com Comes Back from the Dead
Bolt.com, the popular video-sharing site that was taken completely off the Internet after both being sued by Universal Music Group and seeing its planned acquisition by GoFish fall through, is back online. According to a source familiar with the events, Bolt’s former president, Lou Kerner, purchased the assets for less than $200,000 from bankruptcy. The site is indeed up, though much of it is broken, with only about 100 newly added videos that work.
Click through to watch the “Bolt.com is ALIVE!!” video posted on the site for the occasion.
Hulu Brings NBC (and FOX) Back to YouTube
Hulu, the network-approved and operated online video service, was conceived as a “YouTube killer” — a way for big media to go to the Internet on their own terms. But now things have come full circle. Hulu, the launch of which prompted its parent NBC to pull down all its content from YouTube, has now started a YouTube channel of its own — with NBC’s (and FOX’s) blessing. The LA Times first posted about this last night.
The channel was put up on March 3, just prior to Hulu’s public launch, and contains clips from shows including Family Guy, 30 Rock, Saturday Night Live and The Office, all less than 3 minutes long. Hulu isn’t a formal YouTube partner, just a member like anybody else. The only ads are for Hulu itself (in fact, everything is liberally sprinkled and overlaid with Hulu logos and promotions).
But a little good content goes a long way on YouTube, a.k.a. the land of people pointing camcorders at their TV sets. The channel has about 4 million views (mostly for Family Guy clips), making it the 68th most-viewed channel on all of YouTube this month. And that’s with just 37 total videos.
ZeeVee’s Box Brings the PC to TeeVee
Connecting your computer to your nice HD TV screen can get kludgy fast. A company called ZeeVee has an interesting solution that uses the existing cable wiring in your home to display what’s on your PC on an empty channel on your TV dial. Instead of requiring an additional receiver, it uses the HD tuner in your TV. No new-fangled wireless HD or old-fangled screen-scraping required.
You need a ZvBox and remote receiver, which you’ll be able to buy for $499. Connect them both to your (Windows-only for now) computer, and you can then control your PC wirelessly and play your iTunes, Netflix, Hulu, Joost, BitTorrent content — whatever you can access from your PC — on any TV in your home. Except instead of being hunched over, you can sit back and relax and watch it basically projected onto your high-definition screens.
One True Media Launches Video Ad Maker
Online video editing startup One True Media caters primarily to MySpace kids and home-video making moms. It has 3 million registered users, 70,000 new videos per week, and 4 million video views per week. But after noticing an increasing number of businesses using its service to create how-tos and customer testimonials, the company is launching a new small business video ad creator called SpotMixer.
SpotMixer uses the toolset One True Media has spent years refining for the extremely non-technical user, along with business-specific templates for pictures, video, and marketing copy. It’s free to create an ad, then $79 per month to use it. I’m not much for highly simplified tools — they’re always missing exactly the feature I want — but one really nice part of the offering is that you can auto-submit your ad to your AdWords (or YouTube) account. And if SpotMixer can work out the deals, you’ll even be able to submit your ad directly to play on television.
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