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Sunday, May 15, 2011

Creating Branded Video Experiences Using the Kyte Platform - Curt Van Inwegen, LEVEL

I caught up with Curt Van Inwegen, VP of Client Services at LEVEL Studios at last year's Online Video Platform Summit where he was part of a panel on the topic of how to choose the right online video platform for your business. Van Inwegen offered his insights on what you should consider for selecting the appropriate OVP for your business. LEVEL Studios is an independent digital agency based in San Luis Obispo, California with additional offices in San Jose and El Segundo, California that provides user experience, digital media, and application development solutions.

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. The other piece of it is, looking at whether 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. Those are but a few of the key factors he and his team at LEVEL look for in the solutions they provide to their clients.

Van Inwegen says:

"A lot of our clients aren't just looking to post their video up and generate a bunch of ad revenue, they're looking for what we call, branded experiences."

LEVEL's choosing of the Kyte platform was based on the idea that they can have complete control of customization of the video player. Everything that wraps around the video can represent the brand in way that he says isn't available in other platforms. This offers great flexibility in a white labeled solution for any viewing platform whether it's a TV, website or mobile device.

Van Inwegen spoke with Beet.TV last year about how on LEVEL has helped their client Monster Energy Drink create an interactive branded video experience for their loyal fans using the Kyte platform. He says that the flexibility of Kyte's 360° application is incredibly powerful for producing content, both professionally produced or user-generated, and distribution on platforms on mobile, desktop and the social web. Other key features that offer the brand more control and insight are with the moderation tools and analytics suite. Read more here: http://t.co/u3C9tS1

About Curt Van Inwegen

Curt Van Inwegen is the Vice President of Operations at LEVEL Studios, an independent digital agency headquartered in San Luis Obispo. With offices in San Luis Obispo, Los Angeles and San Jose, LEVEL has about 150 employees (more than 100 based in San Luis Obispo) and a client list that includes Apple, Disney, Cisco and Hewlett-Packard, among many others. Prior to joining LEVEL, Curt served as a member of the Orb Networks, Inc. executive team and managed strategic partnerships with companies such as Sprint, Intel, AMD, Hutchison 3 Group, Nokia, Vodafone and Virgin Digital. Curt earned his MBA degree from Loyola Marymount University and his Bachelor’s degree in Business and Accounting from the Loyola College, Maryland.

On a personal level, Curt, his wife Martha and daughter Cyprus live in Atascadero and enjoy all the region has to offer from outdoor activities to wine tasting to the various farmers markets. He’s an active cyclist and enjoys passing mountain bikers on 27-speed bikes uphill with his single speed. From a historical perspective, his Grandmother on his mother’s side was Melba Branch, of the long-standing Branch family in Arroyo Grande.

Follow Curt Van Inwegen (LEVEL_CS) on Twitter

About LEVEL Studios

LEVEL Studios is an independent digital agency that amplifies global brands by innovating across desktop, web and mobile environments. LEVEL provides user experience, digital media, and application development solutions. Its solutions include user experience design and research, brand promotion strategy, and marketing research and planning; enterprise application design, Web services development and integration, content management implementation, technology architecture consulting, and hosting and managed services; J2EE, .NET, PHP, and ColdFusion-based systems engineering; and intranet, extranet, and portal solutions. The company’s services also include brand and campaign development, social media, information design, and search engine marketing; and 3D design and development, Web and application interface design, video and post production, Web production, and database engineering. LEVEL Studios was formerly known as Web Associates, Inc. The company was founded in 1995 and is based in San Luis Obispo, California with additional offices in San Jose and El Segundo, California. As of September 20, 2010, LEVEL Studios operates as a subsidiary of Rosetta Marketing Strategies Group, Inc.

Why Every Brand Should Hire a Professional Video Producer - Bruce Alfred, Cobblestone Inc.

Video is well on its way to becoming the dominant medium for communication. In the past, text had been the main vehicle for communicating within the business, entertainment and news and information worlds, but that has changed dramatically in recent years with the rise of low cost video production tools and distribution platforms. 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.

Alfred says,

"When you're putting your own video on your site you want it to increase and raise your image. You don't want it to join the YouTube, user-generated, quickly shot and thrown up on the web type of video because there's so much of that. You want to rise above the noise. So, in short, make sure that you hire a video producer or a video production company that knows how to tell stories, that knows how to connect with any audience, that can learn your goals quickly and be able to interpret those goals into a message that calls people to the action that you need."

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.

With text, anyone can write, but that doesn't make you a great writer. Alfred says that a professional video producer is an expert that every brand should hire.

"Any good producer will really be a visual storyteller. They are going to know how to build your story and your story is how we as humans connect to others. What you want to do with your video is build some kind of loyalty, bring people into whatever your organization is. A professional video producer will help you reach that type of goal by using storytelling, by building emotion, perhaps by humor – all things that draw the users in."

On the Cobblestone Inc. blog Alfred answered The Top Seven Questions About Web Video, and expanded on why brands should invest in professionally produced video.

"Video is your public face to the world. Make sure you don’t have egg on it. The less cheeky answer is more nuanced: it depends on your goals and the expected shelf life of the video. If you’re producing video to build brand awareness, or generally promote your organization it makes sense to produce a high-quality professional video. In most cases, the same applies to any evergreen subject that you will highlight on your website for the foreseeable future. The video needs to not only convey information but your professional image as well.

If you are providing product details or how-to information to potential or existing customers, the production still needs to be professional. But in this case, viewers are looking for specifics, and don’t need bells and whistles. Here simplicity, clarity, and brevity are the elements that count most. When you want to create a community around your product, an event, or your business as a whole, it is worth asking your users to upload relevant videos. User generated content is an excellent way to deepen engagement, and allow users to inform others."

About Bruce Alfred

Bruce Alfred is an award-winning producer/director/writer, and web video consultant. During a career which has spanned 25 years, Alfred has produced non-fiction works for clients of nearly every size and stripe -- for broadcast, web, corporate, governmental, and non-profit. Alfred’s video projects have taken him from the operating room to the board room, from a Somali immigrant community to the south of France. Yet, all of his programs have one basic commonality: Alfred’s work speaks to his audiences in ways that are at once informative, understandable, and engaging.

One of his better-known documentary projects was a four-hour mini-series on the group of French impressionist artists. Alfred led all creative processes on The Other Revolution: The Impressionists, which became one of A&E Television’s most sophisticated and successful Biography programs. The series continues to sell well on DVD, and has been rebroadcast multiple times. Projects prior to his establishment of Cobblestone include his role as coordinating producer for Ken Burns' Baseball, the 18- hour series for PBS.

Alfred has long embraced emerging technologies when such technologies lower costs, increase efficiencies, or allow new opportunities. As streaming video on the web became practicable, Alfred saw the challenge and opportunity in delivering a highly satisfactory results-oriented web video experience. After in-depth web-video related research and much testing of software and hardware, Alfred now serves as a consultant to organizations interested in optimal video delivery to internet connected devices, as well as video SEO, monetization, and analytics. He also works with clients on instituting best practices for integrating video into websites, social media, and video sharing sites.

Related:

Online Video Marketing Basics Part 3 - Self-Produce or Hire A Professional?, Jeremy Scott outlines the pros and cons and key reasons why brands should hire a video producer.
The Top Seven Questions About Web Video | Blog :: Cobblestone, Inc.
Why Your Website Developer Shouldn't Host Your Video Files | Blog :: Cobblestone, Inc.
YouTube Has Its Merits, But... | Blog :: Cobblestone, Inc.
5 Reasons to Hire a Ghost Producer for Your Video Content | SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources
Should you create your own website video or hire a producer? | Senisi Multimedia
How to hire a Video Producer / Videographer | eHow.com

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Making Magic with Online Video - Austin Brooks, Professional Magician & Internet Marketer

Austin Brooks is vice president of an internet marketing company and moonlights as a professional magician performing for some of America’s top corporations such as Pepsi, Warner Brothers, IBM and Sony. He 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. I caught up with Brooks at last year's Online Video Platform Summit where he spoke on a panel about "How to Choose the Right Online Video Platform for Your Business", that comprised of a cross-section of online video platform users in entertainment, business, and education who discussed their decision-making process and the features they looked for to help them advance their goals speak and best fit their needs.

Brooks says:

"For a small business, if you really want to push your services you need to start working on some kind of video strategy. It's not just about shooting a video and putting it up on YouTube and embed it on your website, it goes much further into using it as a credible tool for your business."

Brooks uses Brightcove to power some of the video on his website, but the path to finding the right online video platform manage and distribute his videos took some time. Troy Dreier, spoke with Brooks about his search for an OVP which is highlighted in the post, Case Study: The Magic of Affordable Video Delivery on Onlinevideo.net.

After some experimentation with YouTube, Vimeo and several OVPs he came upon a Brightcove ad while leafing through an issue of StreamingMedia magazine and decided to give Brightcove a try. After about 5 months as a Brightcove Express customer Brooks noted on his blog,

"In my opinion, Brightcove is THE killer app for anyone wanting to market with video online. It has helped me increase sales in my business and made it easier to do so."

According to Brooks, Brightcove has several key advantages for small business video publishers, which he wrote in his own review of the platform. His favorite features include, smooth playback with no buffering, embed once and future updates are reflected, awesome analytics, professional grade video players, and the best customer support in the industry. Brooks uses analytics to grade the performance of his videos and as an editorial tool to both reshoot and recut his videos based on viewer engagement and drop off rate.

He has since moved to LongTail Video for his online video needs, with Bits on the Run as his OVP of choice to handle video management, transcoding, analytics, distribution, streaming and incorporated the JW Player 5.6 for a seamless cross-platform video playback experience on the web and mobile devices for Flash and HTML5. This solution has offered him even more flexibility as well as more affordable pricing for content delivery.

Brooks says:

"If I could pass on any advise I would say, if you are a small business and you're looking to establish yourself online, you really need to look at video and figure out a way to constantly publish content on a regular basis; and if you do that you'll start to get a lot of followers."

Read his review of Brightcove Express here: http://www.austinbrooks.com/brightcove-express-review
Along with this post: Austin Brooks Magic Touts Brightcove Express | Brightcove Blog

About Austin Brooks, Independent Magician, Austin Brooks Magic

Austin Brooks is vice president of an internet marketing company and moonlights as a professional magician performing for some of America’s top corporations such as Pepsi, Warner Brothers, IBM and Sony. He began his magic career at the age of 17 when he was accepted to the famed Chavez College of Magic. After two years of intense training, Austin was the youngest person to ever graduate from the college and ranked top in his class. At the young age of 19 Austin took his show on the road and performed all over the country. He performed for companies like Pepsi, Arm and Hammer, Virgin Records, numerous colleges and nightclubs and even spent 18 months in Las Vegas performing for various Casinos and Corporate events. While on the road he wrote his first book “Making Magic Art” and quickly sold out it’s first printing, becoming a must-read for magicians everywhere. The book was proclaimed the bible for “alternative thinking” in magic.

Always wanting to learn more, Austin set out to earn the rare title of Master Magician. To earn the title Master Magician is not an easy task. Not only must you master all of the styles of magic such as illusions, street magic, sleight-of-hand, comedy, and mentalism, you have to be able to perform your craft across all demographics and events. Austin Brooks is one of the few individuals in the world that have been given the title of master magician. Currently, Austin performs for America’s top corporations and elite parties. He develops products for other magicians and consults for feature films and television shows when they need a magic effect created for their project.

Updated 5/9/11 - Note on LongTail Video.

Monday, May 2, 2011

Online Video by the Numbers: Analytics, Reporting, and Metrics

Without detailed information on who’s watching—not to mention where, when, for how long, and on what devices—it’s impossible to prove the business value of your video communications initiative. The ability to measure video traffic beyond "views"-including audience dropoff, what sites and search terms are referring viewers, and audience geography-offers content publishers deeper insight into both the viewing habits of their audience and the extent of their video's reach. At the Online Video Platform Summit, this all-star panel that examines what is the important data you should be collecting and how to use that data to improve the effectiveness of your video and increase your ROI.

Paul Riismandel, session moderator, started the discussion by asking the panel, "What is the data that is most important for online video publishers? What drives ROI?"

Dan Piech of comScore, says that the most important metrics are the ones that differentiate you. What can you provide that is different from your competitors? You might have a different service, then prove it. What makes your viewers different from other viewers? Are they more engaged, in one thing more than another? That's where data helps show you those differentiation points.

According to Dan Berra of Unicast, engagement is primary metric they focus on in the advertising space. They are tracking how much are people interacting and spending time within that video environment to prove ROI to advertisers. AJ McGowen of Unicorn Media adds that the most important metrics are actionable, and helps you make good business decisions. It's not just about quality of service and did the video have a fast start of buffer, it's about the quality of the content and did people find it engaging – and for publishers it's about how to make the content better.

For Bismarck Lepe of Ooyala, it really depends on the business case you're trying to solve to define how you measure success. Brett Wilson of TubeMogul says that in general, publishers that sell ads should care about the metrics that their advertisers care about, which is reach, audience and performance. Brand marketers aren't as interested in the real-time metrics as much as they are interested attitudinal metrics – what's the brand lift, what's the purchase intent, or recall? – and the industry could do a better job at creating standard metrics they understand.

The panel all agree that while the industry has similar measures for engagement and reach, it still needs to come together and agree on true key measures of success, even down to what is counted as a view. Data has to be meaningful for publishers to deliver the best possible viewing experience, and at the end of the day it's about a creating that personal experience with great content. It's the social nature of online video that makes it uniquely powerful.

Watch the video below for more of the discussion and to hear where we are going with video analytics, and how publishers can better track their metrics across the different screens.

Speaker bios:

Paul Riismandel, Director of Curriculum Support, School of Communication, Northwestern University (Moderator)

Paul Riismandel has been working in online educational media for fifteen years, specializing in audio and video production designed for streaming. Paul is active in the educational media community as an advocate for online video and encouraging greater collaboration between the education vertical and the larger industry. He writes about these issues in the Class Act column for Streaming Media magazine. Paul is also a radio enthusiast, serving as advisor to student-run WNUR-FM at Northwestern University, and blogging about the future of radio at RadioSurvivor.com. He also blogs and podcasts about other media stuff at mediageek.net.

Brett Wilson, Co-Founder, CEO, TubeMogul

Brett leads the strategic direction for TubeMogul. He spent the first three years of his career as a consultant for Accenture. Next, he founded and led YouCanSave.com, a profitable e-commerce company that obtained over $69 million in revenue and was successfully acquired. Brett is undefeated at Risk, is the reigning Foosball champion at TubeMogul and a lousy (but aspiring) windsurfer, sailor and investor. He is also married and has two beautiful children. Brett received his MBA from the UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business.

Bismarck C Lepe, Co-founder and President of Products, Ooyala

As an Ooyala co-founder and founding CEO, Bismarck Lepe raised $10 million in funding and signed many of the company's early media partnerships before passing the baton to Jay Fulcher in 2009. Currently, as President of Product Strategy, he is responsible for marketing and driving Ooyala's product development vision. Bismarck sits on the Ooyala Board of Directors. Before co-founding Ooyala, Bismarck worked at Google as a Senior Product Manager, developing and managing new products for the company's AdSense network. He launched more than 25 different Google AdSense products, including Click-to-Play video ads and Google's Intelligent Ad Server, which brought the company over $1 billion dollars in new annual revenue. Most notably, Bismarck managed the early growth of AdSense display and video advertising. Business Week named Bismarck one of its Best Young Tech Entrepreneurs of 2009. Bismarck has a B.A. in Economics and a minor in Computer Science from Stanford University.

AJ McGowan, CTO, Unicorn Media

AJ McGowan is responsible for engineering the cutting-edge architecture that will deliver high-quality audio and video via a highly intuitive interface. Prior to Unicorn Media, AJ spent five years at Limelight Networks where as director of solutions engineering, he assisted the company's marquee customers with implementing their content delivery networks, developing best practices, and capacity planning. With a remarkable combination of intelligence and drive, AJ started his first company building high-end custom computers while still in the 8th grade. By age 14, he was an IT manager, and in between high school classes completed a highly technical token ring/mainframe to Ethernet/NT-Unix network upgrade and answered pages from distressed employees.

Dan Berra, Vice President of Business Intelligence, Unicast

Dan Berra leads Unicast’s Business Intelligence division focused on providing robust research, reporting and in-depth analysis of all Unicast-generated advertising campaigns. Under his leadership, clients gain greater insight into campaign results and the effectiveness of rich media and web video against other forms of online advertising As a respected industry veteran, Berra brings more than 12 years of experience spanning financial and marketing analysis at Dell Corporation and T3 (The Think Tank). Most recently, Berra served as the Vice President of the Customer Insight Group at T3, where he built media and search analytics teams from the ground up and created data integration process and databases tying together ad server data, web analytics and client-side data into one interface. Previous to T3 Berra served as transactional marketing manager, at Dell Corp, where he headed the development of segment-level online metrics, created forecasting models and managed transactional marketing. His expertise is in media and web analytics and measurement, rich media and online video, next generation web, online media planning and buying, ROI, online advertising and Third Party ad serving.

Dan Piech, Senior Product Management Analyst, comScore Inc.

Dan is a Senior Product Management Analyst at comScore, Inc. and President at Piech Productions. Previously, he was anInteractive Strategy Intern at McKinney, Project Manager at HG Media, Inc and Advertising Intern at Success Communications Group. comScore is a marketing research company that provides marketing data and services to many of the Internet's largest businesses.

The Online Video Platform Summit is a two-day event designed to help organizations of all t>ypes, not just those for whom video is their core business. Held on November 2-3 in conjunction with
Streaming Media West in Los Angeles, the Online Video Platform Summit is designed for video publishers of all types and sizes, whether small businesses looking to publish content for the first time, independent entertainment content creators, large media organizations, or anywhere in between.

Delivering Content to Mobile Devices

With the phenomenal success of Apple’s iPad and iPhone, and the increased adoption of Google Android-based phones, it’s never been more important to get your content on smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices. This session at the Online Video Platform Summit, features three industry experts in the field of mobile video delivery who discuss why you need to care about things like HTML5, Adobe Flash Mobile, and other video format-and standards-related topics, as well as provide an overview of how online video platforms can help you publish once and deliver everywhere. The session was moderated by Onlinevideo.net Senior Associate Editor Troy Dreier who introduced the session with data from Nielsen which stated 28% of U.S. mobile subscribers now have smartphones, and 41% opted for a smartphone over a standard feature phone, up from 35% last quarter. That number will continue to grow as consumers move away from the desktop and embrace the mobile experience. But of the 5.3 billion mobile subscribers (which is 77 percent of the world population) the largest growth is outside the U.S. and is led by China and India

According to Jeff Malkin of Encoding.com the growth of mobile has been fueled mainly by Apple's iDevices. Gannon Hall, of KIT digital says that mobile is important, because it's become the fastest growing video segment of video consumption and that they're seeing increasing demand from their customers to be able to make it much easier for them to deliver full featured, high-quality video experiences to mobile platforms. David Dudas of Sorenson Media agrees that the iPhone really was the game changer and with other devices entering the field, it's made video delivery to the various devices more complicated, primarily around video encoding. Dudas says if you're going to do it, spend your money wisely, hire a professional don't try to do it yourself. The complexities of device compatibility go far beyond the formats and if it's done wrong your encoded content may not play back, or it may look horribly compressed. Dudas says, "doing it right means your customers will be delighted rather than frustrated, captive rather than fleeting, which translates to more time and money spent with your business."

Malkin says that content producers are a bit shellshocked by all the complexity and says there's good new and bad news for the. The bad news is that it's going to get worse before it gets better – as far as having to prepare video the multitude of mobile devices, but the good news is that companies like his are getting better at making it easier for you. Malkin adds, "If there's any point I could make any more clear, it's something very complex that should not be done in house." Malkin admits that sound very self-serving and says, "Use somebody else then, don't use Encoding.com. The bottom line is that it takes a serious attention and focus to keep reinvesting engineering dollars into infrastructure to keep being able to prepare video for all these various devices. And from a content producer standpoint, I'd rather focus on content, the user experience, the community and not worry about the headache of transcoding video."

Watch the video below to hear more of the discussion on HTML5, H.264, WebM, Adaptive Bit Rate streaming and the growing format wars. Also, see my interviews with each of the panelist that followed this session.

Speaker Bios and Online Video Conversations

Troy Dreier, Senior Associate Editor, OnlineVideo.net

Troy is Senior Associate Editor for OnlineVideo.net and StreamingMedia.com, and is also a regular contributor to Computer Shopper, PCMag.com's blogs, Datamation, and Wi-Fi Planet. He writes a weekly consumer technology column which is published in the Jersey Journal newspaper. As a freelancer, he enjoys writing for many of the biggest magazines and Web sites in tech, and his favorite topics include online video, portable devices, GPS navigation, games, and all things Macintosh. He’d love it if you followed him on Twitter You can drop him a note here.

Gannon Hall, EVP, Global Marketing, KIT Digital

As Executive Vice President Global Marketing, Gannon leads KIT’s overall global marketing strategies. Gannon brings nearly two decades of entrepreneurial leadership experience within the emerging and established consumer Internet and enterprise software industries. Prior to joining KIT, Gannon was the COO of Kyte, a leading online and mobile video platform, where he led the company’s product strategy, marketing, business development and operations. Gannon also was a Principal at Horn Group, a premier technology marketing and digital communications agency. As head of the agency’s New York office, Gannon was responsible for client strategy, business development and operations. Under his leadership the agency won several industry accolades for their innovative approach to brand building through integrated digital marketing, communications and social media. Prior to Horn Group, Gannon led Hall Consulting, a pioneering San Francisco web design and development consultancy that he founded in 1994. Clients included a diverse set of software companies including Vitria, AvantGo (Sybase), Commerce One, and PlaceWare (Microsoft).

Read more: Connected TV: Why Google will succeed where others have failed - FierceOnlineVideo

David Dudas, VP of Product Management, Sorenson Media
As the vice president of product management, Dudas is responsible for defining and executing the online and desktop product strategies. He has more than 15 years experience developing consumer and enterprise product lines, including expertise in hosted digital media platforms and software-as-a-service. Prior to Sorenson Media, Dudas was co-founder and CTO at Eyespot, a cutting-edge technology startup that launched the world's first Web-browser-based video editing application in 2005. Under his leadership, the company filed for five patents and was granted numerous industry awards for innovation and usability. Previously, he was director of engineering at MP3.com, where his team developed the company's flagship product and helped build the company into the leading digital media service provider of its time. He has also held management positions at Universal Music Group and DivX, and holds a Bachelor of Computer Science degree from Michigan State University.

Read more: Sorenson Media Launches Cloud-Based Sorenson Squeeze Server to Enable High-Volume Video Encoding for Enterprises, Developers and Other Content Creators | Business Wire

Jeff Malkin, President, Encoding.com

Jeff is a fearless entrepreneur with a proven track record for launching technology startups. He has been the CEO / founder of two venture-backed companies for the past nine years. The most recent, Razz Inc. (funded $12M by Mayfield, Cardinal VP, Siemens Mobile Accelerator, and Garage Technology Ventures), is a technology company providing consumers in the mobile and social media space with entertaining audio and telephony-based applications. Razz services have been distributed by leading wireless carriers around the world including Telefonica Moviles, Orange, AT&T wireless, T-mobile and Vodafone For Razz, Jeff led all aspects of the business including business development, strategy, product development, operations and financing.

Prior to Razz, Jeff was CEO of FreeSamples.com, a research and analytics service provider for the consumer package goods industry (funded $17M led by GE Capital, Advance Publications, United Business Media). He grew FreeSamples.com to be the leading online sampling and product research company with clients including The Proctor & Gamble Company, Unilever and Ralston Purina. Jeff graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Music from the University of Michigan and remains an active musician in the San Francisco community.

Read more: Larry Kless' Weblog: Encoding.com Sees the Future of Video Encoding in the Cloud

The Online Video Platform Summit is a two-day event designed to help organizations of all types, not just those for whom video is their core business. Held on November 2-3 in conjunction with
Streaming Media West in Los Angeles, the Online Video Platform Summit is designed for video publishers of all types and sizes, whether small businesses looking to publish content for the first time, independent entertainment content creators, large media organizations, or anywhere in between.

Related:
Mobile Snapshot: Smartphones Now 28% of U.S. Cellphone Market | Nielsen Wire

Global mobile statistics 2011: all quality mobile marketing research, mobile Web stats, subscribers, ad revenue, usage, trends… | mobiThinking

Larry Kless' Weblog: Kyte Brings Its Online and Mobile Video Experience to KIT digital

A Simple Explanation Of The Huge WebM Versus H.264 Debate

How Will You Adapt To New Demands Of Mobile Video?

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Online Video Platform Showcase: STREAMOTOR by IMAVEX, KickApps

In this second of two sponsored Online Video Platform Showcases from the Online Video Platform Summit, this session features presentations by Steven Burzynski, STREAMOTOR by IMAVEX and Mike Sommers, EVP of Products, KickApps. Each of these providers have similar offerings, yet they differentiate themselves by their video publishing platforms, analytics and monetization features, scalability, integration, pricing, strategy and market presence.

STREAMOTOR is an easy streaming video solution that allows you to take a video in any format, upload it, organize and and publish into customized playlists. STREAMOTOR uses Limelight Networks and its global network as the backbone for all of the Flash and H264 based video streaming. Streamotor also partners with Kulabyte to deliver its STudio 360TV video platform. Kickapps provides an easy-to-use platform for creating interactive social video and web experiences. Core to KickApps' platform is its App Studio, which is a WYSIWYG web-based development environment that allows anyone to build customizable interactive players quickly and easily assembled and shared around the social web.

Watch the video below to and learn about their features and capabilities and visit their websites for more information and a free trial.

Company Profiles

About STREAMOTOR by IMAVEX

IMAVEX launched STREAMOTOR in 2008 and is a leading provider of interactive and highly effective Internet marketing solutions specializing in LIVE and video-on-demand (VOD) streaming as well as web site design and content management. IMAVEX helps organizations promote and generate new business through search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO) by utilizing a technique known as pay-per-click advertising and by optimizing Web sites and video for search engines. Imavex is a Google AdWords qualified company and utilizes the latest in tracking tools to understand and improve Internet marketing campaigns. Currently, there are more than 1,400 organizations around the world that utilize Imavex's Web site design, Internet marketing and video streaming media solutions.

STREAMOTOR by IMAVEX is a video content management system and streaming video solution that allows you to manage your online video content by organizing, customizing and publishing your videos. In addition, STREAMOTOR provides you real-time access to valuable usage reports and analytics. STREAMOTOR is intuitive and easy to use as it focuses solely on the management and delivery of your online video content. For more information, visit http://www.streamotor.com or http://www.imavex.com.
Follow Streaming Video (streamotor) on Twitter

About KickApps

KickApps was founded in 2005, and is a leading provider of customizable social software solutions consisting of a suite of hosted applications and services which are used by some of the world’s largest brands and recording artists including: NBC Universal, American Express, Live Nation, Scripps Network, Simon & Schuster, Viacom, The Washington Redskins, The Weather Channel, Madonna, U2, Kiss, Shakira and all the NHL teams. Its more than $12 million annual revenues are made almost entirely from recurring software license fees. On January 28, 2011, KIT digital acquired the privately-held KickApps Corporation, based in New York City. Its more than $12 million in annual revenues are almost entirely from recurring software license fees.

KickApps has added significant technology and product synergies to KIT digital. KickApps’ Open Source Media Framework (OSMF) App Studio has helped unify all publishing-layer technologies across KIT digital's family of products to deliver fully customized Flash and HTML5 experiences. KickApps' suite of self-serve deployable social solutions are created using an intuitive drag-and drop interface, ranging from full social website experiences to simple social widgets. The platform also includes KickApps’ proprietary WidgeADs ad format, that can be served in any IAB-standard ad slot and shared across the web. Follow KickApps (kickapps) on Twitter

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Online Video Platform Summit 2010 Keynote: Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire, "The New Video Landscape: Multi-platform Distribution, Monetization, and Fragmentation"

In his keynote address at the Online Video Platform Summit, Jeremy Allaire, CEO and Chairman of Brightcove discussed the broad themes involved in the complex and fragmented landscape for online video publishing and the strategies organizations need to have in place to achieve success with their video initiatives. Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen provided a great summary of Allaire's keynote in his post, Brightcove: “Everyone is an Online Video Publisher” on OnlineVideo.net, which highlights Allaire's view of the changing face of video and content monetization, as more and more publishers look to expand their video initiatives to all three screens.

Allaire pointed out the rapid growth of online video in 2010 grew to a staggering 30 billion monthly views, and is now more than 50% of Internet traffic in the U.S., and it's estimated that it will will grow to 90% by 2013. Some of the key drivers fueling that growth are ad supported online video, which continues to grow faster than any other area of online advertising, and also the brand marketing and retail applications which are really exploding.

eMarkerter predicts that online advertising spend will be $28.5 billion in 2011, and that almost $2 billion of that will be online video advertising. This is really exciting for the industry, says Allaire, because corporations and institutions are expanding and investing in video as a way to enhance their customer relationships and customer touchpoints.

According to Allaire:

“Everyone is an online video publisher. Retail, small businesses, foundations, non-profits, and of course media companies. The use cases for online video are now as many as the use cases for the web in general.”

He added that online video platforms have emerged as critical partners to publishers by creating solutions that help them navigate the complex and fragmented online video landscape.

“For businesses, it’s less about the technology—which should be invisible—but about the business value."

Allaire said increased bandwidth capacity and demand for higher quality video experiences have required publishers to render multiple versions of their content for multi-bitrate streaming. In addition, there is a tsunami of new connected devices consumers are using to access video which all use a variety of video runtimes creating a fragmented publishing environment. Allaire said that the recent release of Brightcove 5, the company's cloud-based online video platform, addresses many of the issues that publishers face in the fragmented landscape and helps expand their reach. The new features include: distribution and synchronization with YouTube, iPad reference app, Apple HTTP streaming for the mobile Web and apps, cross platform Smart Players, new advanced analytics for Adobe® Flash® and HTML5 video developed in partnership with Tubemogul, and wide-ranging productivity enhancements.

I spoke with Allaire at length about his background and the early years of online video in this post from 2009. I also caught up with him following this keynote to get a summary of his view on the fragmented video landscape in this post, Jeremy Allaire, Brightcove: Reaching Viewers in a Complex and Fragmented Video Landscape. I've reposted the video from our conversation below.

About Jeremy Allaire

Jeremy Allaire founded Brightcove in early 2004 with a vision for the transformation of television with the Internet. From his early days as CTO of Macromedia, where he was instrumental in evolving Macromedia Flash into a dominant platform for rich media applications on the web, Allaire envisioned that one day video would become as ubiquitous as text on the web. As CEO and Chairman of Brightcove, Allaire leads the company’s technology, marketing and business development strategy. Prior to founding Brightcove, Allaire worked as a technologist and entrepreneur-in-residence for Cambridge, MA-based venture capital firm General Catalyst, where he worked on companies and investments in broadband media, mobile content, e-commerce software and digital identity.

Before General Catalyst, Allaire was Chief Technology Officer of Macromedia, where he helped define and launch the Macromedia MX platform for Rich Internet Applications, helping to evolve Macromedia Flash into a dominant platform for rich media applications on the Internet. Allaire joined Macromedia with its merger with Allaire Corporation, where Jeremy was a co-founder and Chief Technology Officer. Founded in 1995, Allaire Corporation was a pioneer in using the web as an application platform, and its industry leading and award winning products power millions of websites, online services and business applications on the Internet.

The Online Video Platform Summit is a two-day event designed to help organizations of all types, not just those for whom video is their core business. Held on November 2-3 in conjunction with
Streaming Media West in Los Angeles, the Online Video Platform Summit is designed for video publishers of all types and sizes, whether small businesses looking to publish content for the first time, independent entertainment content creators, large media organizations, or anywhere in between.

Related:

Sunday, April 17, 2011

New Strategies for Marketing and E-Commerce

Businesses that sell product online can benefit greatly with an online video marketing plan. Studies show that video is more effective than any other medium for building brand recognition and generating sales. Although today’s consumers are savvier and more skeptical than ever, and will quickly click away from obvious pitches that don’t provide them with any intrinsic value. But according to Rico Nasol, Content Team Senior Manager for Zappos, "Online video is another way for the customers to see the product and the company culture.” The E-Commerce giant sells over 300,000 different products, and the company sells anywhere from 6-30% more merchandise when accompanied by videos. This session from the Online Video Platform Summit, "New Strategies for Marketing and E-Commerce", was moderated by Justin Foster, Founder of the non-profit Video Commerce Consortium, who was joined by a panel of retailers that are each using their own innovative strategy with video and social media to create brand awareness and loyalty, and to increase sales conversion rates.

Each panelist brought on interesting story to share how they are approaching the challenge of implementing social video. Foster shared some background on the state of video and e-commerce from a report by Forrester Research, Online Retailers' Adoption Of Online Video Content Is Ahead Of Consumers' Preferences, which found that 68% of the top 50 Internet retailers use video content on their Web sites, compared with 18% in 2008 – a 400% growth in one year. Sunday Sky's Quarterly Research Report, Q2 2010, "State of Video in E-Commerce" also looked on the same category of the top 50 North-American online retailers and found that more than 65% of retailers use videos.

BeautyChoice.com has a unique model of creating, or sourcing, user-generated content through YouTube. They find YouTubers with a lot of subscribers and sign them into talent contracts, and then do product placement in their videos. Beauty.com's Jordan Blum says they've generated over 340 million views from those YouTube videos alone, with practically no marketing budget. Laurie Williams says Zappos.com uses their "quirky" company culture to build trust with customers. They have been producing short videos featuring actual Zappos staff members who demonstrate and talk about the products in an authentic and relevant way. They have also been promoting, The Zappos Video Experience, which is a forum where customers can submit video testimonials to share their stories as well. Jimmy Healey says OnlineShoes.com uses a hosted ratings and reviews system that's embedded in the video to increase conversion rates. Watch the video of the session to see how these retailers are reaping the benefits of e-commerce video, social media and YouTube marketing.

Speaker Bios

Justin Foster, Founder, Video Commerce Consortium (Moderator)

Justin is Co-Founder and VP Market Development for Liveclicker, Inc., an early stage technology startup, where he is responsible for developing the overall market for video commerce in the e-commerce industry. Video commerce is a new paradigm for facilitating e-commerce through video content, leveraging both established and emerging online marketing channels. Additionally, Justin is President and Founder of the Video Commerce Consortium, the industry's largest trade group devoted to advancing the use of video in e-commerce. The VCC currently counts over half the Top 500 retailers as members. Justin has extensive experience in the online marketing industry, especially as it pertains to e-commerce. Prior to Liveclicker, Justin led the services practice for WhatCounts, Inc., an email marketing services provider, where he was responsible for all services revenue and management. He also founded the Email Marketing Roundtable, an industry discussion forum that represents over 1,500 email marketers worldwide including the majority of the largest online retailers in North America.

Jimmy Healey, Senior Manager Social Media, OnlineShoes.com

As the Senior Manager of Social Media and E-commerce Jim Healey leads the evolution of Social Commerce for Onlineshoes.com through the use of Social Media, Video, Blogs, PR, Community and Mobile. Including: the evelopment of campaign plans for Social Media as a channel within the overall Onlineshoes.com campaign calendar (PR releases, blogs, videos, and other content/events). Onlineshoes.com is the nation's first online shoe retailer. Profitable since 2000, it's also the only privately held Internet business among its competitors and continues to enjoy revenue growth rates in the high double digits year over year.

Laurie Williams, Video Product Manager, Zappos.com

Laurie helps make Zappos videos go. Laurie Williams is the Video Product Manager for Zappos.com, who she’s been an employee for since January 2005. Before that she served in the U.S. Army. Zappos.com was founded in 1999 with the goal of becoming the premiere destination for online shoes. Since then, Zappos.com has become much more than just an online shoe store.

Jordan Blum, CEO, BeautyChoice.com

Jordan is the President of BeautyChoice.com, a leading online retailer of beauty and personal care products. At BeautyChoice.com Jordan has helped build its pioneering "LaunchPad" marketing platform that takes advertising to the next level by seamlessly placing products in highly popular beauty and fashion related online videos that are being watched by millions of engaged users worldwide. These videos are produced by "BeautyStars" who are credible and proven influencer's. Collectively, their videos have been viewed more than 300 million times and they have over 1.7 million followers on Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. Jordan graduated from the University of Southern California with a business degree in Business Finance. Founded by beauty industry experts, BeautyChoice.com is trusted by consumers to carry only authentic, high-quality branded merchandise with a money back guarantee. BeautyChoice.com carries a complete line of premium and popular brands at the most competitive prices, including Andis, Babyliss, Chi, Barbar, Clarisonic, Conair, Elchim, Hot Tools, Helen of Troy, Mason Pearson, Oster, Solano, Wahl, Wigo, and others. Visit www.beautychoice.com for more information.

See this video: YouTube - Product placement on steroids with Jordan Blum, Beautychoice.com at SES New York 2010

Social video marketing for e-commerce: lessons from Streaming Media West

Following the session, I recorded this interview with Justin Foster by Grant Crowell which is posted on the Video Commerce Consortium. They discuss, "the new opportunities with video in for getting discovered and monetization, user-generated video innovations with retailers, and the different priorities around online video between marketers, talent, and producers." I've included a short excerpt of the transcript below. Grant also edited this video and you can read the full interview here.

Social Video Marketing for E-commerce from Grant Crowell on Vimeo.

Grant, ReelSEO: Justin, you had several notable panelists talking about new monetization with search and social media strategies. Tell me, how was that session like?

Justin: It was a great session. Each of the retailers on our panel is using their own innovative strategy to tap into social media using video. It was awesome to moderate.

Grant: What were some of the questions you asked the panelists about video marketing and video in e-commerce?

Justin: There’s been a lot of talk lately about the YouTube Promoted Videos program. So we were asking some of the retailers how many of them are actually taking advantage of Promoted Videos and understand the potential benefits of doing CPC buys with Promoted Videos. We found that it’s pretty early; we really don’t have a lot of retailers that are taking advantage of it yet. But you see a lot of people that are seeing a lot of opportunity.

Same goes for Facebook. I was really shocked that a couple of retailers on the panel really don’t make it possible to share a video that’s on their product detail page; but all of the panelists did think it was a good idea to enable sharing of their videos on the product detail page. So it seems like it’s pretty early. (more...)

Thursday, April 14, 2011

If You Publish It, Will They Come?

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. From search engine optimization to social media marketing, there are myriad strategies for getting your content in front of as many people as possible. At the Online Video Platform Summit, this session "If You Publish It, Will They Come?", assembled some of the brightest minds in online video search and discovery, social media optimization and entertainment to examine the art and science of getting your videos seen. Tim Siglin wrote a great summary of this session in a post on Streamingmedia.com, that captured some of the key points the panelists discussed on the importance of both video SEO and social media recommendation. The following quotes in this post are excerpted from his post.

ReelSEO's Mark Robertson moderated the discussion and opened the session with new data from TubeMogul which pointed out that while Google is still generates the highest volume of video traffic from search, "referral traffic from Facebook and Twitter is growing faster than traditional engines as a source of video views."

Frank Sinton, of MeFeedia added that, "The portion of video watched when it has been recommended by a friend is significantly higher than viewing times for content found by search."

Mike Sommers of KickApps noted that the problem with video is that Google's search engine bots can't understand what video content is about as well as humans can. He said that search engine optimization (SEO) is evolving into friend engine optimization, "which is building your website in way that makes it sharable, that invites people to take our content, notify your friends about it and then drive traffic back to your website."

Patrick Starzan of Funny or Die, said that search is a bigger factor when it comes to their content being played and but social media media gives them more engaged viewers. He said, "Our optimization may be driven by top celebrities we've worked with-Lindsay Lohan searches yield Funny Or Die as one of the top "found" sites-but then viewers spend a lot of time browsing and viewing other videos."

Adam Singolda of Taboola, agreed that search and social media are both important and that said that publishers spend time optimizing their sites, "and look closely at the anchor videos which bring viewers to your sites, but remember that most sites-including those with interesting videos-are primarily still not video-centric sites."

Read more of Tim Siglin's article here and watch the video below for more of the discussion.

Speakers for this session include:

Mark Robertson, Founder, ReelSEO (Moderator)
Mark Robertson is the Founder and Creator of ReelSEO.com, The Online Video Marketer's Guide, which provides news, tips and trends on the online video industry and video marketing. Mark speaks regularly at conferences, webinars and industry events sharing his extensive experience in online marketing, particularly in Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Mark was previously the Director of Search for Freedom Communications and has worked with many newspaper and broadcast stations for optimization online content. Follow ReelSEO Video News (reelseo) on Twitter

Frank Sinton, CEO, MeFeedia
Mr. Sinton is responsible for product development, communications, advertising and media functions at MeFeedia. Before founding BeachFront Media, LLC/MeFeedia.com Mr. Sinton spearheaded the strategic technology vision at Sony Pictures Entertainment and was largely responsible for the search engine that powered the successful startup of Business.com ($340 million acquisition). Mr. Sinton is also the founder of Gotkidsnetwork.com, a parents social networking site. He received his B.S.in Chemical Engineering from Tufts University. Follow MeFeedia (mefeedia) on Twitter

Mike Sommers, EVP of Products, KickApps
As Executive Vice President of Product Management, Mike oversees all of KickApps’ product management efforts. He has over 15 years experience building Internet products. Before joining KickApps, Mike was VP of Product Development for AOL Search. In his 7 years at AOL, he was also responsible developing a variety of rich media, search and community products. Prior to joining AOL Mike worked for a variety of Silicon Alley startups in New York City.
Mike has a B.A. degree from Columbia University. Follow KickApps (kickapps) on Twitter

Patrick Starzan, VP of Marketing, Funny or Die
Funny or Die, www.funnyordie.com, is an award-winning website that has become one of the top destinations for comedy on the web. The site has averages over 5 million unique video views per month. With hundreds of exclusive celebrity videos and a steady stream of huge viral hits, Funny or Die has become the "place to be seen" for comedic celebrities, and the obvious destination for a daily comedy fix. Funny or Die's founders are Will Ferrell, Adam McKay and Chris Henchy. Mr. Apatow is also a partner in Funny or Die. Follow Funny Or Die (funnyordie) on Twitter

Adam Singolda, CEO and Founder, Taboola
As the chief executive officer of Taboola, Adam Singolda is leading the company business strategy, execution, and business development, while maintaining a unique company culture of competitiveness, quantitativeness, and innovation. Prior to founding Taboola, Adam served as an officer in a mathematical elite unit in the Israeli National Security Agency (I-NSA) for almost seven years. Adam’s focus in the unit was data-mining and “unsolvable problems.” His background uniquely prepares him to lead Taboola’s efforts toward technological advantage that focuses on scale and quantifiable value to publishers, advertisers and users. Adam is an honored alum of the IDF's elite "Mamram" computer-science training program, and he finished first in his class in the officer's academy of the IDF. Adam's vision for Taboola is to change the way people around the world discover the videos they like no matter where they are. Follow adam singolda (adamsingolda) and Taboola (taboola) on Twitter

The Online Video Platform Summit is a two-day event designed to help organizations of all types, not just those for whom video is their core business. Held on November 2-3 in conjunction with
Streaming Media West in Los Angeles, the Online Video Platform Summit is designed for video publishers of all types and sizes, whether small businesses looking to publish content for the first time, independent entertainment content creators, large media organizations, or anywhere in between.

Related:

Larry Kless' Weblog