• The Evolution of Video Chat
    When people think of online video, many think YouTube. But before YouTube was even a twinkle in the eyes of its developers, online video was already in full force, just in the form of video chat. Ever since the early days of video chat, there were ideas in place to enhance the technology, taking text + image to text + image + voice, and so on and so forth. So, why might you ask, isn't video chat a bigger phenomenon than it currently is?
  • What's Your Video App Strategy?
    I recently moderated a panel focused on the intersection of apps and video (it was the video part of an app conference). It gave me the chance to meet some new people and more deeply consider what's unique about building an app to support content distribution and monetization when the content in question is video. For the panel, we focused primarily on the value of an app strategy to publishers in terms of how they produce, promote, distribute and monetize video content. Here are the key takeaways:
  • Scale Vs. Sizzle: The Online Ad Sales Conundrum
    Online advertising is suffering from a fundamental flaw in its sales process. Put simply, products with sizzle sell but rarely scale. So what do I mean by "sizzle"? In the early days of rich media, it was creative like Superman flying across the page or pop-up research studies, and today it is interactive pre-roll or full-page interactive ads. I call this the scale vs. sizzle conundrum and it is causing a wide-range of problems for clients trying to reach measurable campaign objectives. Let's take a closer look at the problems inherent in this scenario.
  • Upload It And They Will Come
    For television historians, it used to be that the only way to view long-gone television shows was to venture to university libraries, the Museum of Television & Radio, or, if you were lucky, buy or rent a video. For more obscure programs, you might have to track down a private collector (think Comic Book Guy on "The Simpsons"). Biographical information was culled from books, in libraries, sometimes through inter-library loans. The horror! From a preservation and dissemination viewpoint, the recent online availability of historic television content is a good thing for all of us.
  • Are Publishers Doomed to Fail in Age of Video Content?
    hy did Blockbuster fail against Netflix? Why did Barnes & Noble stumble while Amazon thrived? Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen's focus on innovation in commercial enterprises led to his first book, "The Innovator's Dilemma," which articulated his theory of disruptive technology. In the book, he argues that existing franchises are fundamentally frozen to adapt to new disruptive or emerging technologies because they're getting rich from existing systems.
  • 'Honey, Have You Seen My Glasses?'
    With all of the recent hype surrounding 3D, a number of questions have arisen about the need to wear glasses while viewing 3D programming. Where will people get these glasses? How many will be needed in the marketplace to meet demand? What type of technology works for which type of glasses? Well, here are some answers.
  • Curb Your Video Enthusiasm
    Video is becoming more vital to online publishers to engage users on their site, earn higher CPMs and even tap into growing mobile business ($1.34 billion by 2014). There are more than 20 million Web sites on the Internet, and there are many ways to enrich your site with videos and participate in this video economics. What is the right way? Robust CMS? YouTube as platform? Content licensing? Create your own content? This post will discuss some highlights/tips as well as my own personal style: make things work, and then make them better.
  • The Endless Season: How The Web Can Help TV's Biggest Shows Stay Relevant (And Earn Revenues) Every Day
    According to recent Nielsen research, Americans spend nearly a quarter of their time on the Web on social-networking sites and blogs. Therefore, understanding TV viewers' habits online and creating campaigns that can be accessed and shared through social networks are key to extending the life of a programming brand during the off season.
  • Today's Entertainment Drivers Are Watching Online Video
    We are in the midst of a fundamental shift in which everything we know about content sites is changing. Just as television rose to rapid dominance in the traditional media world, online video is now rising to dominance in the digital media world. Increasingly, the Web is about video -- not text, not pictures.
  • Devices Will Add To TV's Advantage
    Last week Dish announced that starting in September, subscribers will be able to watch television content on their iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch. On the same day, Motorola and Verizon FIOS kicked off an effort to bring TV to a new digital tablet. Cablevision also recently stated that it is developing video applications so that subscribers can access content from their iPads (and related devices).
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