Klessblog's Top 10 of 2013 (Part 2)

Well, the hangover has finally worn off and with the new year in full swing, I can continue this top 10 Klessblog countdown. I picked this top 10 list based on my best experiences of 2013. The last four covered the first part of the year and these top six will bring things up to date. It was a busy year for everyone, with some upheaval,  lots of change and a lot of things stayed the same.

Online video growth continues to skyrocket, as we've seen more brands shift their advertising dollars into online video, a new wave of short-form video creators arose from people are uploading their Vines and Instagram videos, the majority of marketers are jumping into the waters of online video en masse to tell their stories and sell their brands. According to comScore's most recent data of online video rankings, 188.2 million Americans, watched 52.4 billion online videos in December 2013, and video ad views totaled 35.2 billion. That's means 86.9% of Americans who accessed the Internet last month watched online videos, and the average video duration was 4.2 minutes. The average video ads viewed were 15 seconds and they accounted for 40.2% of all the videos viewed and about 5.7% of all the minutes spent viewing online video.

In addition, according to Pew Research, the percent of online American adult who have either created their own original content for viewing or download has doubled from 14% in 2009 to 31% in 2013, with many hoping their videos will go viral. Additionally, the number of adults who watch or download videos has grown almost 10% since in 2009, from 69% to 78% today, with the growth fueled mainly by rapid increase in the use of mobile devices and the growing popularity of social media sites.

But this isn't news to those of us who've been following these trends over the years. We all knew online video would grow and prosper. I could go on and cite countless sources that covered the trends, but again, I refer you to all the great sources I listed in my last post, on the side bar of this blog, including ReelSEO, Beet.TV, Fierce Online Video, OnlineVideo.net, Dan Rayburn's The Business Of Online Video, StreamingMedia.com, VideoNuze, and many more.

I started this blog in November 2007, to join the voices of the streaming media community as a way to share my knowledge, ideas and analysis of the online video industry. As I said in my 100th blog post and my 600th blog post,  I'm grateful for the support of my family, friends, followers, readers, supporters, community members, colleagues, and to the many of you who have contributed to this blog by sharing your time with me to meet and be interviewed by me, sent me press releases and kept me up to date on the latest news and information. I look forward to an even bigger year in 2014 and look back one more time to wrap up Klessblog's Top 10 of 2013.


6. My Google+ Hangout with Neil Davidson on, "The Core of a Successful Corporate Video"

As I said in my from July 1st,  had the pleasure of joining Neil Davidson, Founder and CEO at MyWebPresenters, in a Google+ Hangout to discuss, "The Core of a Successful Corporate Video". I had a great conversation with Neil and you can see the topics we discussed were focused on what are the commonalities that all of the good corporate videos share (hint: tell a story!), how should a business go about fitting a video production into their marketing strategy (hint: start with a good story and shoot video with what you have, either a prosumer camcorder or mobile phone, and try to get good video and audio quality), which businesses are leading the way in using video as a marketing tool (Zappos), what was the biggest video failure and what did I learn from the experience (always have a back up plan), and what are other opportunities for corporate video in 2013 (shoot live action video and don't rely motion graphics with a witty voice over to tell your story). My thanks again, to Neil Davidson for the great conversation. Watch our Google+ Hangout video here.


5. The Strategic Video Awards and Content Marketing Awards

Over the past four years, I've had both the privilege and honor of being as a judge for the Strategic Video Awards, a video competition "created for everyone who uses video to communicate for corporations, associations, non-profits, public institutions, colleges and universities, PR firms and ad agencies, and custom publishers. The Strategic Video Awards differ from other programs in that we judge the effectiveness of the message versus the technical aspects of the video." The Strategic Video Awards entries range from Flip-cam videos to highly-produced corporate documentaries, lighthearted executive vlogs and serious video news programs. Each year the entires get better and better and the 2013 winners will be announced this month. You can view entries from 2010-2012 on the Strategic Video Awards YouTube Channel and watch my favorite entry from 2010, Nationwide - The Musical, which was also the Grand Prize Winner.

Prior to judging this year's Strategic Video Awards, I was asked to be a judge for the Content Marketing Marketing Awards, presented by the Content Marketing Institute and sponsored by McMurry/TMG. According to Content Marketing founder Joe Pulizzi, "content marketing has gone from hot buzzword to a needed universal strategy for enterprise marketers. The Content Marketing Awards are a combination of two esteemed awards programs, the Magnum Opus Awards, honoring the very best in content projects, and CMI’s Orange Awards, honoring the best people and agencies in the business." Open to all companies, organizations, and institutions, this year's Content Marketing Awards had over 800 entries from all the best content marketers in the business in print, digital, publications, strategy, social media, mobile and of course, video.

My category was "Best Topic Specific Video" which had over 40 entries with a variety of styles and techniques. After viewing all the entries the ones that really stood out for me were real stories with real people shot as live action video productions. Many marketers rely just on animated, motion graphics and voice-overs which end up looking like boring animated Infographics that just leave viewers uninspired. So my advise is to actually shoot video to tell your story. See the winners of the 2013 Content Marketing Awards here. Thanks to Program Chairman David Murray and also Benjamine Knight from McMurry/TMG who did an incredible job organizing the competitions.


4. Streaming Media Magazine articles Part 1 and Part 2, "Best Practices for Live Events"

Thanks to the encouragement of my friend and Streaming Media Magazine, StreamingMedia.com, and OnlineVideo.net editor Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen, I wrote a two-part article for Streaming Media Magazine titled, "No Second Chances: Get Live Events Right the First Time".  Earlier in the year, Eric asked me to write a 2500 to 3000-word overview of production, lighting, audio, stage, talent, capture, and delivery, and by the time I completed my first draft I was well over 5000 words. So Eric suggested I turn it into a two part article for the June/July and August/September 2013 issues. The first part looked at the five core elements of a successful live event in the enterprise setting. It's a culmination of key learnings from years of producing live events and offers battle-tested advice to ensure live enterprise events come off without a hitch. The second installment looked at different ways to make the overall webcast experience engaging for your online audience using a variety of different video production techniques interactive tools.

Thanks again to Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen for the opportunity to write for Streaming Media Magazine, and contributions from Nick Balletta, Harvey Louie, Donn Kanagaki, Casey Wilms, Harvey Woo, Steve Dung and to the many people who I have worked with over the years to help me learn what works best for live events, and what doesn't work so well.


3. The 2013 ReelSEO/Liveclicker Video Summit

In July 2013, my good friend and online video superstar Mark Robertson, founder of  ReelSEO, joined forces with Liveclicker to co-host the first ever video marketing summit, held in tandem with Liveclicker's annual Video Commerce Summit. The sold-out event was Liveclicker's 5th annual and an inaugural event for ReelSEO and drew a cross section of over 300 retailers, brands, and agencies attending either summit. Over the last few years, I've interviewed attendees and speakers at the Liveclicker Video Commerce Summit, and I was there again this catching interviews but this year the tables were turned, when Tim Schmoyer asked me to share a video marketing tip for his weekly ReelSEO Creator's tips. The event was largest and only annual event devoted to all things video marketing and video commerce and it was a huge success and according to @JuliePerry, it's game on for #vsummit in 2014, so stay tuned for more awesomeness! A big thanks to Mark Robertson, Jen Fahey, Justin Foster and Dave Holland for putting on a great show and to Kevin Edwards for the video production support!


2. Online Video Conversations

I've been producing and posting short video interviews with online video publishers, producers, entrepreneurs, industry executives and innovators on this blog over the last number of years. But in November of 2013, I launched Onlinevideoconversations.com, as a new home to my many online video conversations. Over the years, I've shot my videos using the Flip Camera, Kodak Zi8, Canon Vixia FH30, with variety of microphones and edited them with Windows Movie Maker, iMovie and Final Cut 7. But just last month, I took the plunge and bought a new MacBook Pro and Final Cut Pro X (which takes some getting used to after years of editing in Final Cut 7) and I'm settling into a workflow. I already have a handful of new videos there, including Mike Folgner, SnappyTV, Tom Morgan of Net2TV and AJ McGowan, Unicorn Media (now Brightcove), and I'll be be cross-posting the videos there and here on this blog with more in-depth coverage. Look for more online video conversations soon and throughout the year.


1. Don't be Afraid to Let Them See You Dance!

I sometimes joke that when I write my memoirs, it will be titled, "Don't Be Afraid to Let Them See You Dance", which is my metaphor for believing in yourself without worrying about being embarrassed. I work with so many people at so many levels on a daily basis and it's always come easy for me, because I'm such a people person and I have honed my communication and customer services skills for the last 20 years. My daughter once asked me, how do I meet new people all the time and not be awkward. I told her that even if you're nervous, you can't worry about it and you have to work right through it and be yourself. Even though you may dance like Elaine from Senfield, don't be afraid to let them see you dance. So, thanks to my good friend and ever-faithful video director Dominic "Baby Dom" Bonavolonta, I'm now the star of my own Gangnam Style JibJab music video and you can see me in my natural habitat, working and having fun and of course, dancing... (or not!)



Thanks again to all my loyal readers, followers and supporters. Many thanks as well to Kris Drey at Vidcompare for the years of advertising and all the best to him in this ever-changing industry. As we move into a new year, we'll see continued growth and experimentation as standards and distribution models mature. I know I'll be busy as ever and even more so at both my day job and my own business venture with new clients, new challenges and always new adventures.

My best to everyone all in the new year!


(Editor's note: Sorry for the delay, but the year got away from me. Stay tuned for much more to come)

Klessblog's Top 10 of 2013 (Part I)

So, another year goes by in the blink of an eye and as we head into the new year, it's always time for reflection. I've seen many tech bloggers list the same top stories of 2013, with the general consensus that it wasn't a real big year of innovation and disruption as it's been in previous years. But obvious trends like adoption of mobile computing continued to rise, along with software subscription models, social media apps like Instagram and Vine, which sucked my data plan. Social media darling Twitter proved that its IPO was much more successful than Facebook. Online video viewing turned into binge watching, thanks to Netflix releasing full seasons all at once. Actor Kevin Spacey, star of the popular Netflix original series House of Cards, even went on record to urge studios to studios to revamp their distribution models. Video standards moved further to HEVC as the broadcast industry began rolling out 4K video solutions. There were plenty of MA's in the industry and leadership changes within many companies. Read up on all the news in any of the feeds I have on the side bar of this blog, including ReelSEO, Beet.TV, Fierce Online Video, Lost Remote, NewTeeVee, OnlineVideo.net, Dan Rayburn's The Business Of Online Video, StreamingMedia.com, VideoNuze, Web TV Wire, Tubefilter News, Nalt's Will Video for Food blog, MediaPost Video Insider, Vidcompare and the variety of Scoop.it feeds.

With all the movement in the online video and the technology space, many things changed but some remained constant. I actually lost track of things in a few months back due to my busy schedule and my blog entries dwindled to only a handful this year. But I have been busy and I thought I'd use this end-of-the-year post as a retrospective of Klessblog's Top 10 of 2013.

10. OTTCON March 19-20, 2013 - for the third year in a row I had the opportunity to attend and interview industry leaders at this annual Over-the-Top TV conference where top decision-makers and executives from the PayTV, Content Production, Distributions and Consumer Electronics and Technology ecosystems gather annually.
Special thanks to conference organizer and chairman Greg Fawson, President and Principal Analyst of X Media Research, Inc., for his support and collaboration over the last few years in working with me on recording the interviews. Look for those videos to be published on this blog soon.

Hear what are the innovators and industry leaders saying out the industry?  View interviews from OTTCON and get insights not found in the sessions or keynotes. (Here) OTTCONversations is produced by Larry Kless, President and Founder of Online Video Publishing [dot] com.


9. SnappyTV - Share clips from Kless Blog Live Interviews

I had the opportunity to learn about how cool SnappyTV is from my interview earlier this year with Mike Folgner, CEO of SnappyTV. SnappyTV offers a cloud-based suite of tools to create and share instant video highlights with friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter. Folgner created this animated GIF from the interview with the SnappyTV tools and commented that, "I said a lot of words, this is what I felt like in the interview."


8. Leveraging Women's Business Capabilities in Challenging Business Times - May 2, 2013
It's not often in my day job that I get the opportunity to work with an Academy Award®-winning actor, but this year I added Geena Davis to my list of clients. This event was sponsored by Kaiser Permanente in association with Deloitte and the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media and discussed how girls and women are reflected in media and the challenges facing women in the workplace. It was inspiring to meet Geena Davis and hear her speak at this event and she complimented that our sound was the best she had at any of her events. My thanks to my client and friend Jeanne Hughes for her partnership along with Elizabeth Sullivan in Event Marketing.

  Watch the video here: http://goo.gl/WXn0m
  Listen to the audio podcast here: http://goo.gl/d8auV


7. The Mass of Ordination and Installation of Most Reverend Michael C. Barber, SJ as Fifth Bishop of Oakland - May 25, 2013
In the same week I worked with Geena Davis, I was honored to be in the service of God, to produce several live webcasts for the Diocese of Oakland for the Episcopal Ordination and installation of the Most Reverend Michael Barber, SJ as the 5th Bishop of Oakland at the Cathedral of Christ the Light. This marked my biggest production for my side business, Online Video Publishing [dot] com, and I thank my clients Mike Brown and Jan Potts, my creative partners Pete Brown of PBA Media, Steve Dung of Visions Plus and Harvey Woo of Professional Sound Productions and my project manager Rachel Vaughn and all our crew who worked long hours to make the event an incredible success.

  Watch the Ustream webcast here: Part 1, Episcopal Ordination Mass
  Watch the indexed  video version here: Ordination and Installation, Bishop Barber — Oakland Diocese

_________________________________________________________________________

The countdown continues tomorrow with Part II of Klessblog's Top 10 of 2013 on this blog.

Until then, Happy New Years!!

Read my article on Streamingmedia.com, "No Second Chances: Get Live Events Right the First Time"

I just wrote a new article for Streaming Media Magazine titled, "No Second Chances: Get Live Events Right the First Time - Streaming Media Magazine", that looks at the five core elements for a successful live event in the enterprise setting. It's a culmination of key learnings from years of producing live events and offers battle-tested advice to ensure live enterprise events come off without a hitch.

A big thanks to the many people who have helped me over the years to learn what works best for live events, and what doesn't work so well, and to the many clients I have worked with who have trusted me to produce their live events. Many thanks to Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen and the people at Streamingmedia.com, for their support over the years and for giving me the opportunity to share my best practices in live event production with this article.

Here's a brief excerpt from the article:

The success of any live event is dependent on five core elements: the people, the plan, the technology, the venue, and the audience; they all intersect to either make or break an event. The added layer of virtual attendees creates an even greater challenge, because you have to produce the event for people both inside and outside the room. The key is to use the right technology to make it easy to reach the live audience and virtual attendees and provide them a quality and worthwhile experience. 

 And I can tell you from experience that it better be good!

 Over the last 20 years of producing live events, I’ve learned a lot about how things can go right and wrong, and from good to bad, and from bad to worse. Most problems stem from the things that fall through the cracks: forgotten tasks that didn’t make your checklist or that were not delegated. They can either creep up on you or blow up in your face, and we all know what’s at stake. As they say in the live event biz, “You’re only as good as your last show.”

 You can avoid most problems with proper planning and clear communication. The best shows are the ones where everyone knows what to do, so the show comes off without a hitch. Whether you are in the studio or on location, the same rules apply if you want to be successful. The key to succeeding is that you go in with a plan and strongly dissuade clients from disruptive last-minute changes. They may think it’s not a big deal, but you know better...

Continue reading the full article at: No Second Chances: Get Live Events Right the First Time - Streaming Media Magazine.

This view is of a video village with HD engineering, monitoring, switching, and recording. (This was set up inside a closet! Really, and it actually fit!)

I'll be following up with part two, that looks specifically at how to deliver an effective webcast, including interactive and social media elements, to the audience off-site.

This article appears in the June/July 2013 issue of Streaming Media magazine as "No Second Chances: Best Practices for Live Events in the Enterprise, Part 1."

Learn the five core elements for a live event, then follow this battle-tested advice to ensure live enterprise events come off without a hitch.

by Larry Kless

Stay Tuned... For More Online Video Conversations

Who hasn't noticed how fast the year has gone by so far? The first quarter of 2012 came an went before you could blink an eye, click on a link or even write a new blog post. I won't bore you all with the usual banter about why I haven't been updating things here on Klessblog. I did though want to provide a quick update to let you all know what's coming up on this blog. There have been a number of interesting developments within the online video space over the last few months, and I've been able to catch up with a number of industry executives to hear about how their companies are innovating in the ever-changing online video and mobile space.

Just last month, I attended the 3rd annual Over-the-Top TV Conference, at it's new venue in the Santa Clara convention center in Silicon Valley, and the interest in that event was indicative of the growing innovation within the the OTT space. The conversations at the conference were not just about set top boxes and the last mile of the network that leads to the living room, but discussions have shifted to how companies can adapt to new business models within the multi-screen environment. Everyone I spoke with agreed that while online video has reached a mature state for delivery over the web and mobile devices. But still, the overall industry of content delivery to any device, anywhere, anytime is still in it's infancy and there's a lot of debate as to how long this initial cycle of growth of growth will take.

I interviewed a number of speakers and exhibitors at OTT Con 2012 to get their insight on some of the issues within the OTT space, which I'll be posting here on the blog in the coming weeks. Here's a quick snapshot of some those upcoming online video conversations.

• Anthony Wood, Founder and CEO, Roku
• Sam Blackman, CEO and co-founder, Elemental Technologies
• Sean Knapp, CTO and co-founder, Ooyala
• John Gildred, CTO, SyncTV
• Andrew Kippen, Vice President of Marketing, Boxee
• David Dembitz, CEO Vidillion, Inc.

I also recently met with Stephane Roulland, CEO of DaCast, again at his San Francisco offices to get an update on his self-service, live streaming platform. I first met with Roulland a year ago when his company first launched its "Pay-in-Play" pay-per-view enabled player and live streaming on Facebook.

Look for these interviews along with several others I've previously mentioned coming soon.

As always, I want to thank you all for supporting me here on this blog. Stay tuned for more upcoming Klessblog content and more online video news and information.

Online Video in 2011: A Look Back - Part 4 (Conclusion)

I didn't plan to make this a four part series, but I guess 2011 was just one of those years that needed a little more attention. I think we would agree that it was an amazing year of progress, innovation along with many triumphs and failures. Either way you look at it, everything we did throughout the year moved us further along into the new year, and that brings about the new cycle, and the energy to put out new products, services and business models. When looking back on the 2011, what did we learn? What were the big stories and trends that caught on? It's pretty obvious that online video, mobile video, tablets, connected and smart devices, social media apps, video advertising and marketing were big, and of course, YouTube's domination of the online video market, will be even bigger in 2012.

And what will be the footnotes to remember online video in 2011?
Probably the biggest news of the year was the sad and untimely death of Steve Jobs. In an article on ReelSEO, I noted that Steve Jobs was a pioneer in bringing digital media to the masses with the launch of the Macintosh, which focused on making it easier to do create, curate and distribute our content. He helped grow video on the desktop from a postage stamp size video to a full HD video that can be produced entirely on a mobile device. Apple revolutionized the professional video editing industry and proved that thinking differently about how the computer could be designed – from the aesthetic design of the hardware and user interface, to the easy to use software tools – helped spawn a new generation of independent video producers that could compete with the Hollywood studios and big publishers.

Other notable news in 2011 focused on; more cord cutting, cloud computing, mobile video, numerous funding announcements, mergers and acquisitions and global online video spend was said to hit $3.5B in 2011. Ustream raised another $6M, Roku raised another $8M, Jivox raised $8.5M, Taboola raised $9M, Innovid raised $9.5M, YuMe raised $12M from Samsung, Thought Equity raised $25M, Qwilt raised $25M, Brightroll raised $30M, Tremor Video raised $37M, CNN bought Zite for approx $20M, 24/7 Real Media acquired Panache for undisclosed sum, Microsoft bought VideoSurf for $70M, Cisco bought BNI Video for $99M, Adobe bought Auditude for over $100M, Akamai bought Contenda for $268M, Google bought Admeld $400M and Motorola for $12.5B, Time Warner bought cable operator Insight for $3B and AT&T failed in its bid to acquire T-Mobile, Vudu came to the iPad, Hulu expanded to Japan and Netflix expanded into Latin America, Amazon experienced major network outages, AOL restructured again, Zediva shut down it's DVD streaming business, Adap.tv relaunched its buy-side service, Fox pulled its shows from the web, Ooyala won ESPN as a customer; got social with Facebook integration and raised an undisclosed funding round from Motorola Mobility, Vimeo got into the OVP business with Vimeo Pro, Brightcove filed for a $50 million IPO, MobiTV and Synacor each filed for a $75M IPO, KIT digital released its new social TV platform, Google+ Hangouts arrived in YouTube.

ReelSEO launched its weekly online video series The Reel Web, Justin.tv spun off Socialcam to simplify mobile video sharing, Apple pulled Final Cut Pro Studio out of the dead pool in response to Final Cut X's poor reception, Netflix and Starz went their separate ways, social TV and multi-screen experiences started to emerge, Hulu, Netflix and Yahoo! all got into the original web content business, foul-mouthed CEO Carol Bartz was ousted from Yahoo!, Zixi announced its cloud-based streaming service, Netflix's tried to break off its DVD business as Qwikster but backtracked after serious market uproar, WeVideo introduced its cloud-based video editing platform, SpotXchange announced full real-time bidding capability, Apple released the iPhone 4S, Verizon and Microsoft inked a deal to bring OTT content to the Xbox, Rimage acquired Qumu, Microsoft completed its $8.5 billion acquisition of Skype, Sesame Street's YouTube channel got hacked to show porn,  online video ads reached 50% of the U.S. population, Netflix's stock dropped 40% in one day after losing 800,000 subscribers and was downgraded by S&P.

Skytide introduced analytics for Federated CDNs, Amazon Kindle debuted to rave reviews, Livestream upgraded its platform to live events platform, YouTube took a swipe at cable by launching over 100 channels with celebrity partners, SeeSaw shut down, LG ad YuMe partnered on connected TV ad platform, Encoding.com teamed up with Roku on channel creation, Zencoder and Highwinds partnered on HTTP video streaming, Kaltura partnered with Gogo for online video in flight, Mixpo introduced Frameworks for interactive online video ads, Zediva was forced to shut down its DVD streaming service, the Boxee box got a live TV tuner, Adobe abandoned Flash on mobile and TV (see below), CDN pricing dropped 20%, tablets rose above desktops for 30% longer online video viewing, Netflix made up for past mistakes by resurrecting Arrested Development, MPEG DASH emerged as a possible online video standard, YouTube did major channel-centric redesign of the site, Dailymotion expanded its cloud video delivery service, Twitvid launched its new social video network, and finally for the first time the Super Bowl would be streamed live over the Internet.

While that wasn't all the big news of 2011, it's what caught my my attention and set the stage for 2012. So now, let's get back to what happened here at Klessblog...

In August, where I attended the 2011 Liveclicker Video Commerce Summit in San Francisco. I recorded a number of interviews with speakers at the two-day event for Liveclicker's VideoRetailer.org blog. Andy Stack, YouTube Product Manager, outlined the 5 things he has learned about successful online video campaigns in his experience at YouTube. Kenna Hurd, Video Content & Product Manager of PETCO, talked about the top initiatives of PETCO’s video strategy, specific examples of where the company is seeing success with video. Melissa Salas, Marketing Director of Buy.com and Co-host of BuyTV, shared some of the lessons she has learned about video commerce since she started hosting BuyTV in 2006. My good friend Mark Robertson, Founder and CEO of ReelSEO.com, gave his take on why retailers should explore beyond the product video. Justin Foster, Co-founder and VP of Market Development at Liveclicker, shared his thoughts on the emerging video commerce trends and predictions.

After that event, I followed up with a few posts of my own on this blog and on ReelSEO.com expanding on what Jen Fahey wrote on VideoRetailer.org.

Mark Robertson says online video is the swiss army knife of online marketing,  and social video can help eCommerce retailers move from conversions to conversations with their customers. In his keynote at the Video Commerce Summit Mark provided a high level overview of how social media has changed search, the state of V-Commerce and what tactics and tools eCommerce marketers can harness to move beyond product videos. Mark says that SEO has evolved over the last 10 years, and now social media engagement enhances SEO rankings, a lot. Universal video search is becoming less effective for e-commerce transactional queries, and that marketers’ must embrace social video throughout the customer life cycle and produce video that lends itself to social.

Online video is massive in its reach and scale with 6.9 billion videos watched in the U.S. in July and August of 2011, and has quickly grown into a major component of what people do online or how they consume information and entertainment. Andy Stack, Product Manager at YouTube says, online video is a valuable tool to drive brands, and is transforming the way consumers engage and conduct commerce. The use of online video in e-commerce is an opportunity you can’t afford to miss or not fully understand. His main message to the brands and retailers at the Liveclicker Video Summit, is to create content, not commercials. Stack says that it's important for retailers to develop a content strategy and not necessarily an advertising strategy, and sponsor content that matters to your community and spend money to promote content that's tested and works. As the world’s largest focus group, online video lets you know if the creative or videos that you are running on TV and elsewhere are making an impact when people choose to consume your brand and spread the word. Retailers can use video like a sand box to experiment and use the variety of tools available from YouTube to find the right mix, then rinse and repeat.

In October, I caught up with Marc Scarpa, veteran director and executive producer of live interactive media events, who had just launched the first of it's kind social TV network with Comcast Xfinity On Demand, called VidBlogger Nation, that brings popular local YouTube talent into the living room of millions. VidBlogger Nation is shot on location by local video bloggers in 10 key markets in the U.S. The episodes are short 3-5 minute narrative shorts by unique voices from across the country who share colorful stories of people, places and things in their city from a first-person perspective. Scarpa was in San Francisco where he met with several of his local VidBloggers, including Zennie Abraham (Zennie62), who joined Scarpa in the interview. See Zennie's article here: Comcast VidBlogger Nation New Video TV Network | City Brights: Zennie Abraham | an SFGate.com blog. Scarpa says that the overall goal of VidBlogger Nation is to have a new forum for very talented people, like Zennie and his fellow VidBloggers, who have a voice and help them extend beyond the web into a new market, and a traditional broadcast environment like Comcast provides access to 60 million homes.

That same week, I attended the TVNext Con 2011 conference in San Jose that brought together hundreds of media, technology and entertainment companies to explore the future of TV, video and multi-platform entertainment services and platforms. Experts agree that nearly every facet of the TV experience and TV business models will be impacted over the next 5 years. One of the main drivers is that more consumers are using IP devices to supplement linear TV viewing, and that by 2015 the average U.S. resident will have 7 connected devices. We're starting to see the decline of the stand-alone set top box with the rise of game consoles as the number one hub for digital entertainment and OTT content, and connected TVs and innovations just announced last week at CES like the Roku Streaming stick that makes a regular TV a smart TV. And don't forget Apple's highly anticipated iTV that is predicted to be the big game changer, due out later this year. We'll also continue to see big deals in the content industry as studios and networks create sustainable business models that don't cannibalize their existing services. I interviewed a handful of people at that event as well, including Joan FitzGerald, VP at comScore, Inc and Tim Street, VP of Mobile Video at mDialog, (to be featured soon on this blog), and Jim Louderback, CEO of Revision3 and Matt Smith, VP of Internet Television at Envivio, (see below).

I followed up with an interview with Suranga Chandratillake, CEO and Founder of blinkx, who I met earlier in the at OTTcon. Chandratillake founded blinkx in 2004 and has helped pioneer video search on the Internet. He describes blinkx as "the world's largest and most advanced video search engine" and unlike other search engines that focus on text web, titles and metadata, blinkx uses a unique combination of patented conceptual search, speech recognition and visual analysis to find and qualify online video. Chandratillake noted that the the online video and OTT space has come of age after so many years of video on the Internet. What's different, he says, is the momentum at which the idea is gaining. More and more of us are watching Internet video on our television sets or contemplating the purchase of a connected device to watch OTT video.


In November, I went to Streaming Media West in November to discuss Webcasting Tips and Tricks From the Enterprise, wearing my day job hat as a webcast producer for Kaiser Permanente, as I did years earlier when I first spoke at Streaming Media West. I shared some of the best practices that I had previously blogged about here, that address the technical and logistical challenges for webcasting, and how to put the right team and the right technology in place for a successful virtual event. The panel focused on best practices from enterprise corporations have adopted and implemented for live video across their organization.


With all the growth, it's also been stagnant, in regards to the ongoing video format wars, spurred on by Apple's exclusion of Flash on its popular iDevices and negative press it received from Steve Jobs' Thoughts on Flash. While HTML5 and H.264 encoded video have been gaining momentum as an emerging standard for online and mobile video, publishers have had to deal with the lack of a standardization, which has caused a great deal complexity and fragmentation. So we were all surprised with Adobe's  announcement that it would abandon future development of Flash Player for mobile devices following the next release 11.1, and will be more aggressively contribute to HTML5 innovation with key players, including Google, Apple, Microsoft and RIM. Adobe will continue to support its current Flash development. Adobe had developed Flash Player to run on Google's Android and other non-Apple mobile platforms, but its official statement from its blog post said,"HTML5 is the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms."

The news broke during Streaming Media West, and while Adobe was at the conference in full force, it was tight lipped about why it decided to withdraw Flash from the mobile market. I caught up with Jan Ozer, Video Producer, Writer, Publisher of StreamingLearningCenter.com and author of Video Compression for Flash, Apple Devices and HTML5, to get his perspective on the implications of the announcement for the online video industry, mobile developers and consumers.

Ozer told me Adobe made this move for several reasons. 1) They were fighting against the current, at least with Apple, and then with Microsoft's recent announcement about their tablet oriented operating system, and couldn't fight this. 2) Adobe wasn't getting then support it needed from Google and other vendors to make Flash work effectively on mobile platforms. 3)  As computers get more powerful people are building applications that require more power and faster CPUs to run smoothly, and Flash-enabled tablets and phones simply don't have the power to run smoothly and deliver a quality experience. Ozer says, this doesn't mean that Flash on the desktop is going away anytime soon, and that it will actually create a tale of two websites, with a web version that is completely immersive Flash experience, and the other more simple and targeted for mobile devices.

It was more than a year ago when I met Merton, the Piano Chat Improv Guy and I finally published his interview in December. The improvisational piano player, became an Internet sensation when he first appeared on Chatroulette playing piano and serenading the strangers he'd meet on the video chat website. His videos have attracted over 25,000,000 views on YouTube and he has performed in London, Montréal. I caught up with him at NewTeeVee Live where he spoke about his experience as a web celebrity and how he planned to further develop and evolve his improvisational social and musical style. Merton says that he's played piano and done improvisational music for a long time, but Chatroulette gave him the mass exposure to freestyle in real-time with random strangers and become a viral video phenomenon. He now has a live, interactive, webcam show that airs weekly on Wednesdays at 10:00 PM ET called The Merton Show.


I caught up with Jim Louderback, CEO of Revision3, at the TV Next Con 2011 where he talked about the changing video landscape and the great unbundling of services. Louderback says that we're in the end game of the of the great unbundling of video services, as next generation television channels shift from traditional models to IPTV video networks. Louderback says that within the next few years most of the video we consume will be delivered over an open IP network, ending the long monopoly of proprietary services delivered through cable, satellite and broadcast streams. But even though our favorite shows will be delivered mostly on-demand, we'll still have bundles of services - but it will just be offered in new ways.

One of the biggest stories of 2011 is, what will the future of television look like as service providers, consumer electronics manufacturers and content aggregators all jockey for the prime position in your living room. According to Todd Weaver, CEO of ivi, OTT has been an emerging market for some time and that market has been stifled by a number of issues, and today, those issues primarily relate to content. I caught up Weaver earlier this year at OTT Con in San Jose to get his perspective on what the PayTV operator and online video experience will look like in the OTT era. Weaver says, one fear that content owners are grappling with is the "cannibalization" of their existing cable TV subscriptions with their Internet subscriptions. As more content moves online, Weaver says, content owners will to figure out the pricing models and OTT providers are going to have to either educate or cooperate with content owners to set and adjust prices to help settle out the disturbance in that area. Weaver's company, ivi, has been embroiled in a lawsuit with broadcasters seeking to stop it from rebroadcasting their content online. Earlier this year in February, a New York federal judge ruled that ivi was infringing on broadcasters copyrights by not paying retransmission fees and ordered ivi to shut down.

To round out my online video conversations for 2011, I caught up with veteran webcasting executive Nick Balletta, CEO of Talkpoint to talk about the latest enterprise video trends. He shared the latest real world data his company had collected over the last two years, that showed a significant growth in both the adoption and expansion of video within enterprise communications. A year earlier, I had spoke with Balletta at Streaming Media East, where he told me that webcasting for enterprise communications may finally be reaching a tipping point. Talkpoint supports some 15,000 annual webcasts and it's data shows that the number viewers is growing along with the number of individual webcasts. So, what's driving the growth? Balletta says, media players are now built into operating systems, broadband is pervasive, computers are faster and people are comfortable watching video on their computers, and overall, watching video online has gotten much easier to do than in the early days. A few anecdotes Balletta shared were, self-service video webcasting is on the rise, Flash viewership is on the rise, and the battle for video standards creates opportunity. Balletta also says that social media and enterprise webcasting don't mix. He says right now all the agencies are making money helping corporations with social media, but in a couple of years it's going be the lawyers cleaning up on the mess created by social media.

In my final online video conversation, I got an education in Adaptive Bit Rate (ABR) streaming 101 from Matt Smith, VP of Internet Television Strategy & Solutions at Envivio. As the demand to deliver content to consumers on multiple screens continues to grow at a rapid pace, companies adapt their methods and means to meet the demand consumers want for any content on any device, anytime and anywhere. This is both exciting and worrisome for service providers and content owners – but new trends and tactics like adaptive bit rate (ABR) streaming is changing it all and making it easier to deliver content. ABR streaming is a new and dynamic approach. Smith says that with ABR, you're essentially creating similar number of streams, but in a different part of the network. You get significant scale gains and you should plan to deliver to every possible screen. The workflow not for every organization and where channel count is low, "old" models work, but ABR is emerging as a new standard for content delivery.

This concludes my look back into online video in 2011. With 2012 now in full swing and a lot of news already in the making, I have no doubt that it will be another amazing year for the online video industry. I want to thank you all for your continued support, and my best to everyone in the new year!

Editor's note: This concludes Online Video in 2011: A Look Back. Stay tuned for more Online Video conversations in 2012.

Related:

• Online video's 2011 story a bestseller in the making - FierceOnlineVideo

• MediaPost Publications Biggest Trend Of 2011 In Online Video 12/20/2011
• Online Video Trends in 2011: From YouTube Mobile to Major Redesign - Search Engine Watch
• A Look Back at 2011: Begun the Online Video Turf War Has

• A look back at 2011 - Google Mobile Ads Blog

• YouTube Blog: What were we watching this year? Let’s rewind 2011.

• Top 20 Online Video Ads Of 2011 According To Shares
• Relive 2011 With Amazing Google Video: Zeitgeist 2011 Year In Review
• Highlights Of 2011: The Year In Paid Content, By The Numbers | paidContent
• The 10 stories that defined tech in 2011 — Tech News and Analysis
• Three New Media Lessons Learned In 2011
• 2011 Year in Review | Home Media Magazine
• Google and Facebook are Nielsen's top online US destinations of 2011 | The Verge

Online Video in 2011: A Look Back - Part 3

As 2011 progressed, consumers became increasingly connected and mobile, and wanted video on all screens all the time. Video companies were challenged to evolve services faster, differentiate the experience, offer services on any device, any network, manage and monetize infinite content and manage increasing complexity in the home. Operators started seeing connected devices as an opportunity and not a threat, and began to partner with content owners and advertisers on social video and multi-screen solutions. The online video industry saw more roll ups and funding announcements, video companies pursued the OTT market with TV Everywhere solutions, Nielsen reported that while mobile video use grew 40% but growth rates declined, Cisco forecasted that video would comprise of half of the Internet traffic by the end of 2012, for the first time in 20 years US household saw a drop in TV set ownership, YouTube reigned as the king of video views with 3 billion/day and got even more serious about original content channels and live streaming for partners, Apple unveiled a controversial update to Final Cut Pro X, media buyers continued to warm up to video, second screen viewing Tubemogul rebranded as a video advertising platform, Brightcove made the news with its patent for digital content delivery and expanding beyond video into mobile 'App Cloud' development and its IPO announcement, Ooyala and YuMe partnered to deliver video ads, other OVPs like DaCast, RealGravity, Unicorn Media and LongTail Video diversified their offerings with live streaming, syndication, ad networks and monetization, Hulu was for sale and then not-for-sale.

And that wasn't all...

In May, I kicked off a series of interviews I had conducted over the past year at online video industry events. Within the year I attended Online Video Platform Summit, NewTeevee Live, OTT Con, Liveclicker's 2011 Video Commerce Summit, TV Next Con and Streaming Media West 2011, and met so many incredible people along the way who all great insight and advise to share. In 2011, I produced a total of 31 videos for this blog, several of which also ran on ReelSEO.com, and also 5 videos which I produced for VideoRetailer.org. I have a lot of videos still to post which I plan to get back to within the next few posts.

According to Internet marketer and professional musician, Austin Brooks, if you are a small business and you're looking to establish yourself online, you really need to start working on some kind of video strategy and figure out a way to constantly publish content on a regular basis. Brooks uses online video as a marketing tool because video is the best way to demonstrate his magic act and full range of what he can offer to potential clients. For Brooks, it was important to have a professional looking website to showcase his magic act and having high quality video was definitely a trick he wanted to have up his sleeve.

The explosive growth of user-generated content on YouTube has spawned a new generation of amateur video producers which has, in turn, made it more acceptable for lower quality productions. It's true that anyone with the right tools and know-how can shoot and edit video. And, to some degree we are all able to craft an interesting or even compelling story. But what about the art and craft of producing a professional video production? Does knowing how to use a Flip camera make you a video professional?

Bruce Alfred, Principal of Cobblestone Inc., is asked over and over, how important is it to create high quality video? Can I just use my consumer HD camera to make something and put it up on my business website? As professional video producer and web video consultant, Alfred's answered that question many times and his answer is no, that's not the best idea. Certain content requires high production value and other content may not. It all depends on your audience. But for brands, you want to make sure you're above the fray and not just another low quality YouTube video. While there could be places on your site where you have user-generated video, when it's your creation you want it to reflect well on your brand. Alfred says that a professional video producer is an expert that every brand should hire.

Curt Van Inwegen, VP of Client Services at LEVEL Studios, offered his insights on what you should consider for selecting the appropriate OVP for your business. Van Inwegen suggests that when you're choosing an OVP you need to look at several things. You're not just looking at the technology, you're looking at the ability to gather data on who is looking at your content, what devices they are using, desktop or mobile and what type of mobile, iPhone, iPad, Android or Blackberry, and can your content can actually play on those devices or can it be produced from those devices. With everything going mobile, Van Inwegen, notes that the ability to ingest that content and view it on a variety of different platforms is really what's critical, and an OVP will help you distribute your content to all those platforms and devices within the complex and fragmented video landscape.

I caught up with Blip.tv CEO and co-founder Mike Hudack who says the world has fundamentally changed since the early days of television, and that we've gone from an economy of scarcity where you can only put out one show at a time, to a world where you can put out any number of shows. There are more independent show producers today than there have ever been in history, which Hudack attributes to the less expensive production costs, and has given rise to a new generation of stars and producers. Blip.tv was founded in May 2005, by a group of five friends who love web series, and has grown to become one of the Internet’s largest independently owned and operated video properties. Hudack says that what they've doing all along is building the next the generation television network. (Blip has seen some changes recently with news that co-founders Mike Hudack and Dina Kaplan would be leaving the company. Hudack is taking a medical leave and will likely be back at Blip when his health returns, and Kaplan's departure is unrelated.)

Over the last several years live video streaming has become a powerful marketing tool for artists and brands. Max Haot, CEO and Co-founder of Livestream, says it's been interesting to watch the growing trend of brands adopt live streaming to market their products. Content brands like movie studios, use Livestream to market the release of a new movie within social networks like Facebook and Twitter through a live broadcast of the red carpet premiere. Haot says that working with brands and content owners drives content quality and revenue and is core to Livestream's mission to build a next-generation live cable operator. But the bigger goal of Livestream is to unlock every event around the world, from major events like red carpet interviews at the Oscars or the Royal Wedding, to prosumer events from a church, a small baseball game, or even a smaller conference.

Core to any good video content strategy is a blend of ingredients that compel and engage viewers to discover and share your content. You can have the most compelling content in the world, but if people aren't aware of it and can't find it easily, it won't make any difference. According to Patrick Starzan, Vice President of Marketing and Distribution for Funny or Die, its recipe for success is a combination great content, search engine optimization and social media. Starzan says that it's all about really having a comprehensive strategy. You shouldn't look at just one, search over social media, as two different things, or two different variations of what's important. They're both just as important as the other. Because at the end of the day, you want to have your content discovered as quickly as possible by relevant audiences.

As the current trends in online video continue to show massive growth, so does the opportunities for online video publishers and marketers. For businesses, there's no other tool more important than online video analytics to capture how your video content is consumed on the web. Dan Piech, Senior Product Management Analyst with comScore says, the best way online video publishers and marketers create and sustain value is through differentiation, and the way you do that is through your data. Piech says that it's not just about understanding your audience, but then putting together a pitch that sells that audience to advertisers. Piech says that online publishers will not have the reach of a television audience, and for small publishers it will be even harder. He suggests that publishers find that niche audience, develop it and sell that niche based on what you've learned about it from your metrics, because the agencies are not going to do that for you. He says that digital market intelligence services like comScore help you better understand your audience.

Content delivery continues evolve and it's been 10 years since Bram Cohen, Chief Scientist and Co-founder of BitTorrent, Inc. first invented the revolutionary peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing protocol for transferring large files over the Internet. While the P2P file-sharing protocol has long been associated with digital piracy, BitTorrent has worked with a variety of filmmakers, musicians and authors over the past year, to help distribute films using the company’s P2P technology. I caught up with Cohen at last year's NewTeeVee Live where he discussed BiTorrent's future in P2P live streaming.

When Wowza Media Systems first was conceived, Dave Stubenvoll says he and his co-founder, Charlie Good, saw a market need for a better media delivery solution which incumbent media server providers (Adobe, Microsoft and Apple) could not address. When Wowza Media Server 1.0 first came to market in February 2007 it was originally offered as a low-cost alternative to Adobe's Flash Media Server and had great success. But when Wowza Media Server Pro 1.5 was released in May 2008, it expanded its abilities by introducing H.264 video and AAC audio streaming support. Today, Wowza Media Systems provides a flexible multi-platform media software for streaming of live and on-demand video, audio, and RIAs (rich Internet applications) and is highly regarded within the online video community having recieved numerous awards, including multiple Streaming Media Readers' Choice Awards, Streaming Media Editors' Pick and 2010 and most recently, the best AV Over IP Distribution System by AV Technology Magazine.

One of the biggest pain points for video publishers is how to deliver video to every user on any browser or mobile device. As the fractured video landscape continues to grow in complexity and scale with no standard across platforms, cloud encoding start-up Encoding.com, created an innovative solutions to help ease that pain with a product called Vid.ly. Encoding.com released it in early 2011 as a beta version and after a successful launch and overwhelming market response, Vid.ly was released as a Pro version primarily targeting the tens of thousands of media brands, agencies, and application developers.

Vid.ly is both a clever and unique service that allows publishers to upload videos and get back a universal video url that will play your video everywhere, on any desktop browser or mobile device. Encoding.com's President Jeff Malkin says, Vid.ly takes on the heavy lifting that is usually done by OVPs by delivering important and basic functionality (transcoding, storage and delivery through partners) along with device and browser detection  all wrapped up in a single url. Vid.ly takes care of it all and when viewers click on the url, Vid.ly detects the device or browser type and delivers the correctly formatted and optimized video.

In between all the online video conversations, I paused to answer the question, Where's Klessblog? For many of you who have followed this blog, you may have noticed that things slowed down here a bit in 2011, and that was mainly due to an extremely busy work schedule at my day job. Outside of my busy work schedule, I tried to spend more time with my family and less time online. That trend continued through the rest of the year and my goal moving forward is to achieve a better work and life balance. Stay tuned for more details on that.


Editor's note: This ends Part 3 of Online Video in 2011: A Look Back. Stay Tuned for the conclusion, Part 4.