Handing Google a sweeping victory, a federal judge on Wednesday dismissed Viacom's three-year-old copyright infringement lawsuit against YouTube. Viacom had alleged that YouTube infringed copyright because the site allegedly contained tens of thousands of copyrighted clips uploaded by users. But U.S. District Court Judge Louis Stanton in New York ruled that Google was protected by the safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which broadly state that sites are immune from copyright infringement liability for material uploaded by users as long as the sites remove the material upon request. Those safe harbor provisions have an exception for sites that know they are hosting unlawful material, but Stanton said that exception did not apply in this case. Stanton specifically rejected Viacom's argument that YouTube should be held liable because its executives were aware that the site was used for infringement. "General knowledge that infringement is 'ubiquitous' does not impose a duty on the service provider to monitor or search its service for infringements," he wrote in a 30-page decision granting Google summary judgment. "Indeed," Stanton added, "the present case shows that the DMCA notification regime works efficiently: when Viacom over a period of months accumulated some 100,000 videos and then sent one mass takedown notice on February 2, 2007, by the next business day YouTube had removed virtually all of them." Viacom said it intends to appeal "as soon as possible." "We believe that this ruling by the lower court is fundamentally flawed and contrary to the language of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the intent of Congress, and the views of the Supreme Court as expressed in its most recent decisions," the company said in a statement. "After years of delay, this decision gives us the opportunity to have the appellate court address these critical issues on an accelerated basis." YouTube praised the decision. "This is an important victory not just for us, but also for the billions of people around the world who use the web to communicate and share experiences with each other," the company stated. In his ruling, Stanton rejected all of Viacom's arguments against Google. In addition to rebuffing the theory that YouTube was liable because executives knew of infringement on the site, Stanton also rejected Viacom's position that YouTube was comparable to the peer-to-peer company Grokster. In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Grokster was liable because it intentionally induced copyright infringement. Stanton wrote that Grokster wasn't comparable to YouTube because YouTube removed infringing clips upon request. Stanton also referenced a 2006 email by Viacom's general counsel that said "the difference between YouTube's behavior and Grokster's is staggering." The judge also adopted YouTube's argument that a Web site has no way of knowing which particular clips are infringing, writing that sites can't readily determine "whether the use has been licensed by the owner, or whether its posting is a 'fair use' of the material, or even whether its copyright owner or licensee objects to its posting." Google had argued that it couldn't tell which Viacom clips were infringing and which were legitimate because the company itself uploaded many of them. In December Viacom withdrew infringement claims for around 250 clips -- including around 100 that were uploaded to the site by its agents. Earlier this year, infringement claims for more than 100 additional clips were dropped from the case. YouTube is at least the second video-sharing site to prevail in a copyright infringement lawsuit. Last year, a federal judge in Los Angeles dismissed a lawsuit by Universal Music Group against video-sharing site Veoh, ruling that the site qualified for the DMCA safe harbors. That judge ruled that the DMCA doesn't require sites to proactively police for piracy; rather, sites need only remove infringing clips upon owners' requests. Viacom's lawsuit against YouTube drew the attention of a host of industry players, including digital rights groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge, Web companies like Amazon and Yahoo and some content owners like NBC Universal. The digital rights organizations and other Web companies sided with Google, while NBC and some other rightsholders backed Viacom.
Video ad platform provider AdGenesis Digital On Wednesday named Jeremy Sterns as its new chief technical officer. Sterns comes from Send Word Now New York, a provider of on-demand alerting and response services for both emergency and routine communication where he had been CTO since March 2007. Prior to Send Word, Sterns co-founded ContextWeb, and is credited with helping to launch the company's ADSDAQ ad Exchange. Founded just last year, AdGenesis has been collecting brand-centric member-provided data through sister company Beezag -- which Sterns will also oversee as chief technical officer. From some 10,000 beta users, Beezag has secured over 200,000 opt-in data points that are made available in the aggregate to its advertisers to inform, alter or improve their marketing messages. Earlier this month, AdGenesis debuted a video ad platform that rewards consumers for watching ads with various deals and incentives. The white-label platform, which functions across media platforms, rewards consumers with savings and other marketing offers for providing information about their buying habits and brand preferences, after watching video ads that are relevant to their "lifestyle preferences." "We felt from the beginning that AdGenesis was unique in creating an experience where consumers want to watch branded content and entertaining ads," said Richard Smullen, co-founder and CEO of AdGenesis. The AdGenesis platform can run on any Web site or mobile device, allowing members multiple access points across the Web and mobile ecosystem. Going forward, the company plans to scale through the mobile interfaces of distribution partners such as PriceGrabber, Stylequest and Home Shopping Network. To date, AdGenesis Digital and Beezag have raised about $4 million from angel investors, including Michael Kassan, chairman and CEO of consulting firm MediaLink; Wenda Harris Millard, president and COO of MediaLink; and Gerry Byrne, former publisher of Variety and SVP of media and entertainment at Nielsen. Separately on Wednesday, AdGenesis named Tremor Media founder Andrew Reis to its Executive Council.
Brand-focused online ad network Brand.net has raised another $14 million in Series C financing. Led by Focus Ventures, with participation by existing investors InterWest Partners and Norwest Venture Partners, the funding comes as the company reports revenue more than doubling year-over-year. Brand.net's newest product offering, preroll video, generated over $1 million in sales in its first 90 days, according to Elizabeth Blair, co-founder and CEO of Brand.net. "The agency community has responded powerfully to our precisely managed campaigns," said Blair. This fall, Blair said the company is planning to debut an agency-facing application with a large agency partner. Last year, Silicon Valley-based Brand.net debuted what is called a "quality certification platform," which combines a grading system with proprietary page-level content filtering technology. To improve the process of targeting ads on specific spots and pages, Brand.net relies on IBM Proventia Web filter technology from IBM Internet Security Systems, which blocks unwanted Web content, analyzing both text and image content. The company's strategy follows a three-step process to ensure that ads serve up in the best spot. First, it evaluates each site on over a dozen attributes. Then, each site is assigned a control grade. Finally, during the ad-serving process, Brand.net's page-level content-filtering technology screens the content on the individual pages within each site where ads will be placed. The privately held company had previously raised $13 million in funding. Most recently, in 2008, it completed a Series-B round of funding worth $10 million. Led by Norwest Venture Partners with reinvestment from InterWest Partners, Brand.net used that investment to fund technology improvements. Also on Tuesday, Brand.net announced plans to open its first West Coast office, along with the addition of several online sales execs from Yahoo, Conde Nast and Time Warner. Vivian Ritondale will open and lead Brand.net's West Coast sales office. Ritondale comes from Yahoo, where, as senior director of Northwest Sales, she led strategic accounts including Chevron, Clorox, EA and Visa. Bernice Munk will lead the North Central (Detroit and Minneapolis) region for Brand.net. Most recently, Munk spent three years as Detroit Sales Director for Conde Nast. Meanwhile, Ashley Atiyeh joins Brand.net's New York based team to lead CPG and Beauty accounts as well as oversee Southeast Sales. Ashley joins Brand.net after five years at Time Warner's InStyle magazine, where, as Director of Beauty and Packaged Goods, she opened and managed the Alberto Culver, Estee Lauder, L'Oreal, P&G and Unilever accounts.
Video ad network Tremor Media on Tuesday named Matthew Corbin to the newly created position of vice president of global platform solutions. In this role, Corbin will be expected to lead executive strategy for the monetization of Tremor Media's video platform and network, focusing on the global scale of processes, systems, partner relationships, as well as product requirements and integrations. Corbin comes from Google, where he served as head of YouTube's global partnerships and revenue operations for North America, Latin America and EMEA. In this role, Corbin led strategy for media syndication deals on the YouTube platform, and was responsible for the overall global monetization of display advertising. Corbin originally joined Google through its acquisition of FeedBurner, where he was one of the initial employees and the senior manager of Global Advertising Operations and Client Services. Tremor serves in-stream and in-banner video ads across a network of over 1,700 mid-tier and premium sites including WWE.com and NYTimes.com. The company has increasingly sought TV ad dollars, which it believes will increasingly migrate online. In April, Tremor secured $40 million in venture capital funding led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson Growth Fund, with participation from DFJ and Triangle Peak Partners. Canaan Partners, Meritech Capital Partners, and SAP Ventures also participated in this financing. The company became profitable at the end of last year, doubling the size of its video advertising network from 2009 to 2010.
In the last decade online video has grown from an esoteric hobbyist activity into a multi-million dollar business built around a thriving ecosystem of content creators, publishing and monetization platforms, and various enabling technologies, services and devices. Like many industries born out of the mass consumer embrace of the Internet, online video continues to evolve rapidly. It was only five years ago that the first video was uploaded and shared on YouTube, yet a scan of industry news today reflects a growing conversation around the myriad devices and endpoints from which audiences consume video. Advances in broadband, computer technology and consumer electronics have ushered in a new era of Internet connected, video-capable devices (PCs, smart phones, gaming consoles, tablets, set-top boxes, etc.). Digital technology has also greatly reduced the cost and complexity of creating video content, resulting in the emergence of not only user generated video, but a greater output of professional and semi-professional video content from publishers for whom video was once cost prohibitive. These two trends combined (increased distribution channels and low production costs) have resulted in an explosion of Internet-based video. Media companies and marketers evaluating their video strategy need only to look to the news media to witness an industry that failed to innovate fast enough to meet consumer demand for digital content. As new online news and information delivery models (HuffingtonPost, CNN.com, ESPN.com, Craigslist.org) emerged, the ad dollar pool for local and regional print news outlets shrunk to a fraction of its previous size. Many smaller outlets have gone entirely out of business, and even larger news organizations (Gannett, AP, etc.) have begun to feel the pain. Publishers that fail to innovate and embrace online, mobile and social delivery mechanisms will surely experience the same fate. Digital has evolved beyond the PC. Online audiences are spending increasing amounts of time consuming media from multiple platforms. The introduction of the iPhone and now the iPad have established entirely new markets for the delivery and sharing of live and on-demand video content. According to Nielsen, mobile is now the fastest growing segment of video consumption. And connected devices like Boxee and Roku are meeting pent-up demand from consumers frustrated by the lack of freedom and control over how and when they consume professional broadcast and internet programming. Digital is social. The days of centralized, one-way broadcasting are over. In today's world of social media and transparency, video publishers need to create an authentic experience supported by the social dynamic of friends and like-minded individuals. Facebook and Twitter have become integral to today's media consumption habits, with Facebook poised to revolutionize online advertising (in much the same way Google did with search) through "earned impressions" based on intricate social connections and behavioral history. To be relevant today and engage audiences, publishers need to create video experiences that integrate the social graph and provide a rich interactive experience. These trends are amplified when video content is separated from static digital content. Video is commanding a much higher CPM than traditional display advertising, and advertisers are finding TV less effective as they shift dollars online. Combined with an avalanche of statistics that show more and more people are watching video programming online or on their mobile devices, media companies and marketers are faced with several compelling reasons to quickly determine how they are going to reach and engage with these audiences. While consumer choice and emerging platforms have created new opportunities for publishers, and in some cases entirely new industries, these trends are also the key contributors to growing audience fragmentation, resulting in increased technical challenges for publishers looking to deliver rich video experiences to multi-platform audiences. Adding to this, competing technologies and devices (and the companies who back them) are creating additional technical hurdles for publishers (the Flash vs. HTML5 war being the prime example). For any organization evaluating how to best publish, monetize and scale video in what is becoming an increasingly complex landscape, hare some decision criteria to help you get started: · Evaluate your video strategy through the lens of your broader marketing objectives. Are you already reaching core audiences across social platforms? How about mobile? How can you converge these efforts under a single point of control? · If you're considering working with an online video platform (OVP) provider, examine how different vendors provide mobile, social and connected device capabilities. Can they provide these services natively, or do they work with third parties to provide this functionality? How deep are their roots in mobile and social technology? · How quickly do you need to move? Do you need a partner with built-in native functionality across multiple consumption platforms, or can you handle longer development cycles? · What are your content creation needs? Do you plan to leverage live and on-demand video? How about UGC? Do you have a means of easily moderating this content?
What type of content will surround our ad? How many people will see our ad? As the 2011 upfronts grow nearer, and we see what is proving to be just the beginning of the massive shift of marketing dollars from TV to online video, these are questions that face all of us in the digital world every day. For years, content, and context for that matter, has been king, with mass distribution not being queen, but rather a very distant prince. The content being king argument is a powerful one. However, as marketers seek brand-safe methods of scaling out their message to the appropriate audience, making smart use of video ad networks is now more important than ever. So now, those questions become, how can I push out this video in a scalable manner to my audience, with knowledge of where my ads are, in a safe environment, and as efficiently as possible. A recent study by Forrester claims that 2010 will be the year that marketing spend in the online video sector crosses 1 billion dollars, and even more amazingly, found that 85% of U.S. Web sites accept in-stream ads. So it's crucial to have full transparency about what you are getting when you are purchasing an audience from an ad network. You will get the scale, which has become something of a commodity these days. You will get efficiency, especially as more video inventory is released, and CPMs decline, potentially endangering the delicate supply and demand balance. Simple Econ 100. Maybe you are being promised a solid number of the web's most premium content sites. Are you sure that you aren't just getting a "wish list"? Purchasing an audience can be just as effective to the back end ROI goals, if not even more so; just make sure that you get what you pay for. Ask if your video network partner offers site level reporting. Ask if your media placements are backed by a third-party media verification service. And if some of the sites on the site list seem too good to be true, ask for proof that a contract is in place. As the online video market grows and evolves, we are all responsible for protecting the brands' images. A safe environment CAN be had by using networks. Just be sure to ask the right questions, know what you are purchasing, and hold your vendors accountable.