Today I’d like to introduce RipCode blog readers to a new RipCode partner, Millennial Media, one of the leading mobile advertising companies in the US. Together we are working to provide advertisers and mobile content publishers with an integrated service featuring Millennial Media’s ad targeting and distribution system with RipCode’s On-Demand Video Transcoding and delivery technology.
Most of our frequent blog readers are familiar with On-Demand Transcoding and how this technology works. Now we’re extending VOD transcoding to the mobile ad space, enabling Millennial Media’s ad clients to easily integrate video into their mobile campaigns delivered across their premium ad network. RipCode clients will benefit through seamless inclusion of video advertising from top brands and the best possible user experience, ensuring a profitable model for providing engaging mobile video content to consumers.
Creating a compelling mobile user experience is especially important when monetizing content. Advertisers are paying for screen real estate and want to maximize their investment. With RipCode, video files are optimized for delivery on-demand based on the unique capabilities of a customer’s mobile handset including screen resolution, codecs and network delivery protocols; a critical feature for ensuring the best user experience. Combined with Millennial Media’s intelligent ad targeting, video ads are paired with contextually relevant video content then seamlessly delivered as a single stream with no re-buffering between the ad and the requested content; decreasing the abandonment rate and boosting an advertisers ROI.
Millennial Media’s senior vice president of products & marketing, Eric Eller, will be presenting at the ad:tech show in Chicago this week on a panel entitled “Making Mobile Work”. A fitting venue to launch our partnership. Best of luck to Eric this week at the show; we hope he’s seeing lots of interest in the joint solution!
Today we bring you the last video is a series of conversations that I had with Dr. Gerry Purdy, VP and Chief Analyst with Frost & Sullivan. In this session, we discuss encoding as a routable protocol and the growth in multi-format transcoding. Dr. Purdy also gives us his view of how On-Demand Transcoding will impact the future of the transcoding market and we wrap up our conversation with thoughts on monetizing video content.
I hope you enjoyed this 4 part series. We plan to keep bringing in special guests from time to time to share their thoughts and opinions. So, send us your comments, we definitely want to hear from you.
Research by Yankee Group suggests that revenue attributed to downloads and in-streaming advertising is forecasted to grow significantly over next five years. By 2011, in-stream advertising revenue is expected to reach $3.89 billion dollars and revenue for downloads will contribute $850 million. In this weeek’s video blog, we discuss the roll On-Demand Transcoding will play monetizing video content - especially for mobile video.
In many interesting blog posts from NewTeeVee, Contentinople, and Digital Media Wire to name just a few, have discussed the video advertising outlook for 2008.
Research by Yankee Group suggests that revenue attributed to downloads and in-streaming advertising is forecasted to grow significantly over next five years. By 2011, in-stream advertising revenue is expected to reach $3.89 billion dollars and revenue for downloads will contribute $850 million.
Two important metrics driving the growth of these revenue streams are the number of users who watch online video and the amount of time spent watching online video – both of which are on the rise. As the number of users and time spent viewing video increases, advertisers will bid up the CPMs thus driving higher the top line revenue attributed to in-stream advertising. IDC research also suggests that approximately 1,200 terabytes of data are consumed each day in the U.S. alone by users watching online video. This number is expected to grow to an astonishing 7,800 terabytes/day by 2011.
Pre-roll and in-stream video ads, whether online or mobile, represent a huge opportunity to monetize content. The opportunity also creates additional stress on existing transcoding resources, requiring operators to increase their transcoding capacity to keep up with the push to monetize more content in more formats. We agree with Jay Braage, that online video is the key to the media castle – but new approaches to video transcoding is what will help deliver video to wider audiences and thus giving operators new opportunities to cross-market content and open new advertising and revenue streams.
At the start of any new year we all take out our crystal balls in hopes of looking into the future and predicting the outlook for the year. And this year is no different. NewTeeVee came out with their list of online video predictions for 2008 and GigaOm has their list of 5 trends for the year. And of course there is all of the product news around mobile and IPTV as well as content deals coming out of the CES show in Las Vegas, leaving us to ponder and wonder what’s in store for 2008?
Here at RipCode, we think this will be the year that video takes a large leap toward realizing the vision of video ubiquity, gaining traction in becoming a viable choice for consumers on all “3 screens”. In particular we think this will be the year of the low resolution revolution. As handsets and networks improve, we’ll see more and more content creators, syndicators and UGC sites implementing mobile initiatives to move beyond the PC and package their video for the portable, personal mobile market. This gives them an opportunity to extend the reach of content that they currently have and opens up other revenue streams for monetizing that content.
Also, I personally believe that this is the year that you will hear transcoding and pre/post roll advertising in the same sentence. Operators are pushing the boundaries to monetize more and more online videos and pre/post roll advertising, although hated, is still the overall leader in revenue generation. This year you will see many announcements, some from RipCode, on unique applications in transcoding technologies and advertising strategies.
And finally, here are kudos to some new innovations like SlingMedia’s announcement to release SlingPlayer for the popular BlackBerry devices, the anticipated 3G version of the iPhone and the prospect of carriers like Verizon opening their networks to any device give us early hope that 2008 will indeed be a pivotal year for Internet and mobile video.
Today we’re bringing you the last video blog in a 3 Part interview series with IDC analyst, Greg Ireland. Greg co-authored the whitepaper Transcoding Internet and Mobile Video: Solutions for the Long Tail. If you missed the first two interviews, I encourage you to take some time to view those. Greg has some great insight into the Internet and mobile video markets that is well worth hearing. In today’s video blog, we talk about a variety of topics including how transcoding can better serve consumers and where it fits within online and mobile advertising. We also discuss broadband’s impact on Internet video and consumer’s viewing habits. And finally, we touch on the future outlook for video codecs including the movement toward H.264.
We hope you found this interview series insightful. For more information on this topic, you can download the complete IDC whitepaper from the RipCode website. We plan future video blog conversations with other industry thought leaders, so stay tuned.
Hi, I’m Mark Fears, Director of Product Management at RipCode and a new voice on the RipCode blog. This first post was inspired when I read an interesting news release this week from Maven Networks on the Streaming Media website, about the formation of a new Online TV Advertising organization that’s dedicated to researching technology to enhance the user experience for Internet video ads. The new organization features such heavy hitters as Microsoft, Maven, Fox News Digital, TV Guide and DoubleClick. While some may find online video ads an annoyance, you need to look beyond the typical 15-second commercial spot and think about the big financial picture. After all, online video sites have to monetize their content in order to create a financially viable business, and thus stay in business. So advertising is as necessary to online video as it is to television programming. But what I am pleased to hear is that one of the goals of this new organization is “creating engaging and appealing user experiences”.
Like anyone, I find that online video ads can be a barrier to the instant gratification that I have come to expect from my online experience. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t really mind sites funding their online presence with advertising but I don’t like being forced to watch advertising that focuses on something in which I have no interest.
However with the power of online video and the tools available to developers, there is no reason to have the same impersonal 30-second commercial that we suffer through during primetime TV. For example, I sat through an Adobe presentation at the IBC2007 show in Amsterdam and saw some interesting technology that they’re enabling through their new Adobe Media Player. There is a beta version available online at http://labs.adobe.com. These new tools allow you to embed a sprite in the corner of the video. On the surface, it may not sound like much, but it does allow me to immediately watch the content I selected without waiting for the advertiser to get their screen time. With this technology, the ad ran as a small image in a corner of the video allowing me to view the desired content immediately.
But the real power of this technology was that the ad sprite actually pertained to the video content that I was viewing. For example, if I was watching the weather forecast for an upcoming trip I have to Florida, the ad sprite could be promoting sunscreen or some other relevant product I might need for my trip. And, not only could the product relate to the video content, it’s also a click-able link that opens a shopping cart and allows you to drop in the product ready for an immediate online transaction.
Now that is making advertising a personal and engaging experience which is what online video is all about!
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