Today marks the announcement and release of Brightcove’s Platform 3, the latest release of their online video distribution service. They’ve rebuilt the service completely and comes with the promise to “empower website producers to be successful in the era of pervasive video.”
They do look like they’ve got a bunch of interesting and usful new features. We’ll focus on that to start.
One of the most problematic parts of the Brightcove player in the past has been the slowness to load, something I’ve been particularly sensitive to personally since I don’t have the absolute fastest broadband connection in the world. Those like me will notice their new “dynamic delivery” updates, that automatically adjust the bit rate of the video streams so that the viewer will get the highest quality video stream their connection will allow.
For producers who use the system, they’ll notice a number of new updates that will hopefully work towards streamlining the production and distribution phases. As I’ve talked about before, the Brightcove system has always been one of the more advanced online publishing systems, with some of the most detailed media management tools.
The only problem that is systemic to any online publishing system like this is that the media management can sometimes get labor intensive and tedious when it comes to classifying and tagging every icon and clip in the system. Platform 3 includes new media management and publishing tools that hope to aide in this.
Additionally, they’ve made more extensible their media API, so that the player and content can be more seamlessly integrated with the producers text content and rest of the website.
These tools have appealed to a wide variety of producers, mostly those in the mainstream sector who don’t have the in-house technical teams to put together a custom solution or utilize some of the more common pro-sumer platforms out there, many of which have just as much customization options that Brightcove currently has even in this new release, and are quickly catching up on the production side as well.
When Brightcove first announced that they were coming out with their new platform, I wondered whether or not it would live up to the hype. Brightcove has lost a little bit of the magic for me over the years. They’ve been de-emphasizing a lot of their tertiary initial promises and slowly focusing more on tailoring the player for long form content. They’ve cut back on sales efforts almost entirely at this point, and have long since closed down their user generated content portal.
In their interest to tailor their service for mainstream outfits that seek to find a distribution method outside the established portals like Hulu, YouTube, iTunes and Joost, Brightcove has completely ignored a large component to online video distribution - media RSS. Granted, due to licensing and DRM concerns of current clients like Showtime, Time, Lifetime, and video on demand service FearNet, this isn’t probably a feature in high demand.
For veteran Internet content producers, though, podcast feeds are key to monetization and brand management. Distribution is key, and without the ability to lead folks into a central place to lock in viewers, all the viewers their branding and online marketing accrues will be transient at best.
In the end, Brightcove ends up being a great solution for mainstream outfits looking to have the look and feel of systems like Hulu while maintaining their own branding on the player. Those looking for a more robust solution that provides similar player customization might be interested in offerings from CastFire and Episodic.
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Joost, earlier today, debuted their Flash, web-only attempt this morning. This comes hot on the tails of the news that CBS, an investor in Joost, will begin releasing full length shows on the Google-owned video sharing network. The launch comes five days ahead of schedule, according to Gubatron this morning.
Previous to the launch, Joost was only accessible by way of a downloadable client that functioned a little like a PC based PVR, allowing mainstream content to be viewable on-demand. The project was almost universally panned by reviewers when it was announced, but truth be told, I always thought it was a good idea in theory, but lacked a great deal in its execution.
As it stands now, Joost is set to blend in with all the other competition on the web, competition that’s by no means thin and weak. As I’ve said for years, the problem with digital video is that the veg-factor just isn’t there in most systems, and for those systems where it does exist, it’s rather shoe-horned and antithetical to the rest of the user experience.
I explained the veg-factor a while back in a discussion about the state of modern DVRs:
To illustrate the veg-factor, think about the type of media consumption you do in the morning, while you’re getting the kids ready for school, or fixing breakfast in the morning while you’re getting ready for work. Morning show format news-ish programs are designed for this low-engagement, veg-factor consumption. They’re, in large part, designed to be background noise that delivers some entertainment and utility to your morning.
Likewise, in the evening, you come home from work, you switch on the TV and catch the local news or a Seinfeld re-run, and leave the TV on through Wheel of Fortune or whatever reality program du jour is on this season. Most people won’t even touch the remote until prime-time starts. That’s the veg-factor in action.
This is something Joost could have tackled, and in so doing made big inroads on tackling the living room Internet video viewing experience. Unfortunately, they created a piece of software that required far too much processing power for the average person to afford, at least in terms of what they’re willing to spend on their home entertainment unit.
At this point, with Joost fading into the scenery in terms of delivery method, their content not looking too much different from their neighbors at Netflix, Hulu and YouTube, it doesn’t look like they’ll be doing much to pull themselves into any sort of a leadership position.
The only thing that could save them at this point would be if they continue to pull in unique and noteworthy content producers from both the mainstream and the Internet. They look like they’ve been on this track recently, as just a few weeks ago they announced a content partnership with podcast giant Wizzard. They’ll need to be looking for many more partnerships like this to continue to compete with the likes of YouTube and Hulu.
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While some have slammed Internet audio ads as annoying, some marketers admit that having a bit of sound can be a good way to bring readers’ attention to one ad amongst half a dozen banners. Do you like audio ads? Would you consider putting one on your site or blog? Or would you prefer using an audio ad for your online ad campaign? Below are 9 audio ad networks for websites, podcasts, and beyond.
Tell us how you feel about audio ad networks in the comments.
Podtrac
Podtrac is a popular ad network for podcasters. It basically acts as a sales representative for podcasters to advertisers. It also provides demographic analysis and targeting, third-party measurement, content ratings, planning and purchasing, creative rotation, and multiple advertising delivery options. Podtrac boasts of hundreds of top podcasts in its network including many from the iTunes Top 100 list.
Kiptronic
Kiptronic positions itself as “the first and only provider of downloadable media ad insertion to offer built-in support for DoubleClick’s DART for Publishers and Microsoft’s Atlas Publisher Suite.” It insert audio and video ads on podcasts, which work online as well as offline on iPods, smartphones, Internet-enabled TVs, game consoles, and more.
RadioTail
RadioTail is another podcast advertising network that provides podcast stats through its service called Ripple. Some of the features RadioTail provides to publishers include insertion of ads at specific times during the day, automatic insertion and rotation of ads, customized podcast statistics reporting, and more.
VoloMedia
VoloMedia boasts of some of the largest media houses as its clients, such as MSNBC, Forbes, Newsweek, Fox News, etc. VoloMedia adds ads on video and audio content online and on portable devices while providing statistics on the consumption of media. Ad targeting can be done geographically, demographically, and by time of day. It also provides publisher plugins for the iTunes Media Player and Adobe Flash to capture usage metrics.
VoodooVox
VoodooVox says phone calls are the new page views. What it does is insert short audio ads in phone calls generated by its network, which consists of hundreds of call publishers including calling card companies, 411 services, call centers, radio stations,VOIP providers, and Web applications. Each of these call publishers generate “approximately 300 million calls monthly.” According to VoodooVox, inserting audio ads in phone calls is better for the advertiser than Web banners since the ads are “delivered directly into the ears of the intended audience.”
Audio ads are something we take for granted when we call up a company’s customer service, like our mobile phone operator, bank, satellite TV service provider, etc. But can these ads can be served without interfering much on our phone experience?
NetAudioAds
NetAudioAds claims to have more than 46 million participating webpages and that seems like quite an impressive number to start with. The service’s ads are short 5 second audio ads, known as adlets, that are played whenever a visitor opens a participating webpage. Listeners can be targeted by demographic and by location. NetAudioAds also says that its ads are measurable, and audited and verified by accredited third party auditing companies. You can run the ads on your blog or on your MySpace page as well.
Google Audio Ads
According to Google Audio Ads, “22% of Internet users make purchases after searching for something they learned about on the radio,” and so it might be a nice idea to run a radio ad campaign for your online business or site. Success stories include Gifts.com, which “received 23% more visits and a 34% higher conversion rate in markets which ran radio ads.”
To learn more, simply login to your Google Adwords account and choose the audio ads tab. You can choose to run ads on 1,600 terrestrial FM and AM radio stations across the US, choose the top stations only, or choose by location or time of day. You can also search for a specialist at the Google Ad Creation Marketplace to create a custom radio ad for your campaign.
TargetSpot
TargetSpot starts off where Google Audio Ads finishes. It lets you run audio ads, video ads, and banners across hundreds of Internet radio stations. You can select stations by location and format, and target your ads by time of the day, region, or specific market. Will running an ad on an Internet radio station be useful? TargetSpot quotes Arbitron and Edison Media Research that “33 million people tune into Internet radio each week, and the at-work audience has grown from 12% to 20% in one year.” Also, “57% of users reported listening to streaming radio while buying at a website, according to RAEL’s Radio and Internet: Powerful Compliments for Advertisers.”
LocalVocal
LocalVocal is an audio ad network that places audio ads across free directory assistance services, radio, Web telephony, IVR systems, and calling cards. Setting up an ad campaign is very easy from the LocalVocal site and can be as low as $5. You can choose to target locally or across the US and pay only when your ad is heard or when you receive leads.
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Mark Evans wrote a post a couple of days ago that asks a simple question that as far as I am concerned every single web service start up should be asking: “What’s In It For Me?”
While his central point was more about developers asking this question to see whether they were creating something because they could or whether it actually served a real need,I was struck by something else he said. In his post he notes that developers need to watch how people are actually using the site.
The reason for this is that in a great many cases what you thought would be the killer aspect that everyone would want to use the site for turns out to be exactly the opposite. Instead they find some other way that - as Mark says - resonates with them.
The best example of this of course has to be Twitter. Twitter was never intended to be what it is today. Where the company saw a mini-CMS application, the users discovered a dead simple real time communication tool and this almost killed Twitter.
The only thing that really saved them was that what they - or rather what the users saw was something totally new and they were willing to put up with all the problems that Twitter had as it made what turned out to be a massive transition. I don’t think that something like that will be repeated again as users are being geared to the idea that companies can basically turn on a dime and provide what the users want and have it work.
I also saw this same sort of thing happen on FriendFeed but they had the benefit of the Twitter Experience and very quickly added; or improved, features that the users wanted as they began using the service for something beyond what FriendFeed may have envisioned. Where FriendFeed had thought that a well featured personal lifestream aggregator with a very simple way for people to be able to leave comments on other members posted items, the users found something much more important to them.
What the users discovered was that FriendFeed was another communication community. While FriendFeed had thought the simple comment system would be enough the users suddenly began using the service as a meeting place where they could all hang out with friends and chat up a storm.
This wasn’t something I believe that the FriendFeed team believed that their service would be used for; but to their credit when they saw it happening they very quickly started reacting to feature requests that the users were making in order to make the service an even better communication hub.
However it is not just the new boys on the Web 2.0 block that can take this kind of lesson to heart. Even the companies that have been in the software business for as long as the web has been around need to listen and watch - maybe even more so. One company that many people might not expect to do this is Apple and before anyone starts laughing too hard, stop and think about their whole iTunes and iPod infrastructure for a moment.
When the iPod first came on the market it was meant as strictly a music player and iTunes was to be its supplier of those music files. However at some point podcast producers figured that this would be an excellent way to get their podcasts out to a wider audience and the users liked the ease by which they could keep up to date with their favourite podcasts.
Apple could very well have put a stop to the whole idea as quickly as it started. After all it’s not like they are known for anyone using their products for ways that Apple doesn’t want them used for. In this case though Apple went with the flow and now podcasts are an integral part of the whole iTunes/iPod ecosphere.
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Gendai Games has released a free drag and drop game development platform called GameSalad Creator that lets you create games that can be played on the Mac, Web and even the IPhone. They have plans for versions for the Windows and Linux platforms. Initially they will produce 2D games but the ultimate goal will be to create 3D games.
They are currently in closed Alpha and accepting applications from anyone that wants to become a test developer for their platform. The thing to keep in mind is that GameSalad is strictly for the Mac OS platform at this point in time. However, you can create games for the web which means players with any OS can play your game online. Also, you’ll be able to create games for the Iphone with the same drag and drop platform.
The ultimate goal is to establish a kind of “YouTube for Games” where members can upload and share their new creations much like YouTube members do with video. However, Gendai wants to help its developers make a little money in the process by allowing them to monetize their games online and on the Apple AppStore for the IPhone.
We got a chance to sit down with Yoshi over at Gendai during our Austin stop of the SummerMash tour. The full interview is embedded below (or you can grab the MP4).
As he spoke about with us in Austin, GameSalad Game builders will also be able to share their games on other social networks such as Facebook and MySpace. The cool part is that developers can actually share any part of a game, such as graphics or audio elements, with other developers, not just entire games! This modular aspect means developers can create and share a vasy library of re-usable components in an already easy platform.
Gendai’s game plan (no pun intended) is to allow their community to create only 2D games in the beginning in an effort to streamline and perfect the process. Eventually, they will allow them to start building 3D games for the Mac, Web and even the IPhone. They’ve already revealed that they can support 3D games today but will stick with 2D games for now until the time is right.
The timing is perfect for such an easy development system for games, especally for the IPhone or any mobile platform for that matter. Many have made the same ambitious statements about ease of use but Gendai Games appears to be the real deal. The real test will be when they launch their public beta. That’s when we’ll truly find out exactly how easy it is to create games on their platform.
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Sean and I were chatting the other day over IM, and though it’s been a few minutes since DEMOfall08, we were still talking about how cool we thought the PlasticLogic device was. Sean comes from, previous to Mashable, a number of traditional magazines (that is, the kind that are printed on actual paper), and I’ve been working with electronic magazine or some incarnation thereof since before the web was invented.
In the view of Sean and I, there’s been a collision course between what’s now being termed “heritage media” and New Media for a while, and we’re now convinced that eInk and digital readers are finally entering the stage where they’re becoming a viable device for regular media consumption, and online news sources are formatting their data in a manner both visually condusive to magazine stylings as well as making available full RSS feeds, which work perfectly in these sorts of digital devices.
In today’s Mashable Conversations, Sean and I spend a bit talking some of these trends as well as show off some of the video we’ve shot and collected of the relevent devices (the Sony Reader, the Amazon Kindle, PlasticLogic’s device and the Esquire 75th Anniversary e-Ink). You can see it all by watching the embed above or by downloading the MP4 directly.
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A couple weeks ago, I put out a list of questions that I imagined would be a good starting point for early adopters to begin with when looking over new offerings to evangelize. I imagined that it would not only aid in the ability to find more tools that are relevant to our respective readership but missed the mark a bit by starting a blog-fight by perhaps maybe too accurately pegging the stereotype of what an early adopter is percieved as.
Sean and I decided to take another stab at this topic and expound on this episode of Mashable Conversations. Sean’s in a particularly unique position to attack this issue, as well, because as a side project he runs a blog aimed at late-adopters, and has to think in terms of an audience that’s completely non-tech savvy, and how to present the sometimes convoluted concepts we in the Web 2.0 world take for granted.
Watch the video via the embed below or download the MP4.
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Podcasts have been around for a while - It was back in 2004 when they first caught fire. Since then, many unique and useful podcasts have risen to the top and consistently brought in audiences, most notably Diggnation and TWiT
Videocasting, on the other hand, is a new phenomenon, one that didn’t occur until the technology became available with the widespread use of YouTube, live streaming services, and better video and web cameras.
We hear less about podcasts and and more about video shows such as Epic Fu, Pop17 and even TWiT live (now streamed by StickAM). The trend seems clear - podcasting is going by the wayside and videocasting is taking the helm.
But then you’d be missing the bigger picture.
This past weekend, Las Vegas was home to the 4th annual New Media Expo, one of the top conferences on new media, podcasts, and video. Some of most interesting podcasters and videocasters gathered to talk about their work and exchange stories, as well as gauge some of the new distribution and recording technology available. I had the opportunity to be there and make some observations. Here’s the biggest one I made:
It’s about having more options.
If you take a look at Revision3, you’ll find that most of their shows have video and mp3 options. News-based shows tend to have both options the most. And this seems to be the overall trend for the podcasting world. As the pod chicks told me, “Podcasting is evolving.”
It’s an evolution towards choices. If you’re out to start a popular online show, you can’t just make an audio version - you’re going to fall by the wayside. But we’re busy people and can’t be at our computers all day, especially when we travel, so having the simple iPod audio option is essential as well. Hell, nearly every podcaster told me that a successful podcast needs a successful and consistent blog. That’s another medium of relaying information.
Being able to offer your viewers, listeners, and readers multiple options to take in your work, your opinions, your interviews, and your personality is becoming more and more apparent. You need to complement your video show with not only podcasts and blog posts, but live streams, twitter conversations, and even mobile video. Think about how many sources you have for your news - TV, blogs, newspapers, magazines, RSS feeds, and email lists just to start. Why wouldn’t podcasts and videocasts be the same?
So podcasting is far from obsolete - it’s just become an integral part of larger campaigns to reach current and new users. In the end, it’s about engaging your audience. But since users take in information from different sources and different mediums, the best podcasters and videocasters must do the same and spread their message across multiple platforms.
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The SummerMash tour is over, but the interviews keep on rolling out. We’re still rendering the Los Angeles interviews, and of the four or five that I edited last night, this one was particularly interesting and short conversation.
Aaron, our remote host at the SummerMash events sat down with Lisa Mazur-White of Ion Capital, an investment firm that’s looking to branch out into technology firms with their new office located in Los Angeles. In her description of the type of technology firms they’re looking to partner with, she casually dropped that she’s particularly interested in companies with $10 million in revenue or more.
It’s a bit of a shocking requirement for those of us that deal with startups on a daily basis. Your average Web 2.0 company is started on far less than $10 million and doesn’t have revenues to speak of (and those that do sit pretty in the $10 million revenue range generally aren’t worried about an exit, they’re looking to make an acquisition of their own).
Still, the discussion is an interesting glimpse into the new types of firms on the prowl in our space. To watch the interview, play the embed below or download the MP4.
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Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here (video feed).
Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here (audio feed).
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Wizzard Media, the podcast hosting and monetization giant, a couple of days ago released a letter to their shareholders that went towards explaining a bit of their corporate strategy:
In a very short time, Wizzard has surprised many people by becoming the largest distributor of digital media via RSS (podcasting). While many other companies took the route of launching online video websites and treating RSS distribution as nothing more than an add-on feature, Wizzard has focused its early efforts in this industry on dominating RSS delivery of media. Why you may ask? The quality of content and the reliability of podcasting publishers are head and shoulders above what you find on most video websites.
The letter goes on to list in great detail the numerous milestone achievements they’ve attained over the last year or so, some of which we’ve chronicled here at Mashable (you can find the full letter here).
Aside from the company’s achievements, they bring up an interesting question. In the world of online video, is RSS simply a feature or is it part of a central strategy. Personally, I’ve always viewed podcasting and RSS technology as central, but in the continuing production of Mashable’s ongoing video series, I’ve seen that validated as a matter of practice, as opposed to something to be thrown on as an afterthought.
We went through, in our search for a solid video platform, literally dozens of providers. Granted, due to our desire to monetize in specific ways from the onset, we had a much more demanding pattern of standards for what we’d accept, but it was amazing to us how many video hosting providers didn’t even offer anything close to conforming to RSS podcasting standards.
For instance, take Brightcove, the embedded video platform very widely used by media giants and tech pundits alike. It has probably one of the most customizable embedded video platforms I’ve ever worked with. The features in the player are second to none, and their ad serving capabilities are very impressive.
They don’t, unless it’s been recently added, have any ability to serve MP4 files via RSS though. For us at Mashable, we’ve found that this lack of ability can mean cutting out as much as 80% of your audience. Generally, we’ll receive hundreds and in some case thousands of video views of an episode through the website even when posted in off-peak hours, but very rare is it we’ll have less than a thousand downloads to a video we put out if it’s on the podcast feed.
Why is that? Well, part of it is that we’re generally fans of long-form content. A lot of our shows range upwards of twenty minutes, and rarely are shorter than ten minutes. Thus they aren’t the smoothest fit for someone who’s browsing through our site in search of a quick update on the news. They do have time to tag it as a download and watch it later or to throw the RSS feed on their iPod and subscribe to it.
When it comes to a corporate strategy, is it the best route though? I think if it’s coupled with a solid promotional strategy, the answer is yes. We view the web posts accompanying the episodes here at Mashable as your alert - that which lets you know that we have a new episode out (or that we have a series, depending on your level of awareness). Focusing on episodic content, though, very much improves the overall level of quality in the content - and if you need proof, look at YouTube’s new strategy.
A while back, when Robert Scoble was touting the fact that it was longform video that was inherently superior to shortform (and hence the reason why YouTube was raising the allowed length for YouTube videos), I put out a (shortform) video that talked about the quality level differences between episodic, targeted videos and the general UGC fare (at least on a commercial level).
Bottom line - if you’re working with video online: by all means have a web strategy, but if you don’t understand podcasts and RSS, be prepared to fight with one hand tied behind your back.
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