Did the World Cup Score for Web Video? by Steve Smith

Late last week Akamai announced that World Cup Soccer helped drive substantial amounts of Web access and especially video viewing across its massive content distribution network. While not the only CDN in the field, Akamai is the largest and it serves some of the biggest news and sports providers worldwide. Its 24 broadcast clients in 65 countries include ESPN, Televisa, and Prisacom. The company said that at peak usage it was serving 1.6 million concurrent streams. ...Read the whole story

  • Video Metrix Drills Into Online TV, Ad Data by Wayne Friedman

    Video Metrix 2.0, coming from Internet researcher comScore, adds to the complex environment of calculating online usage of premium TV shows. It focuses on more granular data of video content, delineating between online video content and online video ads. ...Read the whole story

  • Adap.tv Adds New Publisher Partners by Gavin O'Malley

    Adap.tv, creators of OneSource, a platform to help publishers better monetize their online video content, on Monday is expected to announce a slew of new client wins, including Dailymotion, Redlasso, and Videojug. ...Read the whole story

  • Hulu Gets Twice As Many Ad Views As YouTube by Mark Walsh

    Hulu has an audience less than 20% the size of YouTube's but generates more than twice the amount of video ad views, according to new data from comScore. In introducing a new version of its Video Metrix service Thursday, the Web research firm said Hulu had 556 million video ad views in June compared to just over 200 million for Google Sites (principally YouTube.) ...Read the whole story

Fear Sells by Matt Prohaska

A friend of mine from a major cable network recently told me, after his network completed its TV upfront selling for 2010/11, how amazed he was at how much selling could be done through fear and the perception of what defines premium inventory. We can visit the second part of that comment another time, but for now I'd like to focus on the first part, still common throughout TV ad sales: Fear sells. ...More

  • Hulu In Hand by Steve Smith

    "Ooh, look. Buffy!" Generally it is hard to get my partner interested in my iPhone and iPad. Like all gadget widows, I imagine, she has framed my collection of mobile devices as the enemy -- diversions that pull me away from attending to her during every waking moment. But she has discovered Hulu Plus on my iPhone and iPad and is marveling at their deep library of episodes of "the best thing ever put on TV," she insists. That is where Hulu Plus, even at $10 a month, first impresses. ...More