Posted by Patrick Donovan on Mon, Mar 08, 2010 @ 03:09 PM
Last week, I read Will Richmond's blog post "ABC.com is now Achieving DVR Economics for Its Programs" and was struck by this section talking about his discussion with Albert Cheng, EVP of Digital Media for Disney-ABC Television:
"Further, Albert said that there's plenty of room for improving online's economics. One key focus is increasing the ad load, possibly to as much as double the current 5 ads per program. ABC.com has experimented with this and its research shows that neither the viewer nor the advertiser experience is diminished. As a result, ABC is inclined to increase the ad load to continue improving online economics further, but is somewhat constrained by advertisers' desire to minimize clutter and their own desire to remain consistent with non-ABC sites' ad loads."
There are two main choices for increasing the advertising load in a broadband video. First, the publisher could serve back-to-back ads in the existing advertising breaks. Or, the publisher could define new advertising breaks that occur more frequently in the video and only serve one ad per break.
On TV, viewers are used to 2-3 minute ad breaks with multiple ads per ad block every 7-8 minutes. As we wrote about in our whitepaper, Content is King, But Metadata Rules, translating this to the web has some challenges. The broadband viewer has a shorter attention span, with many more available choices. There is also an expectation of an ad countdown timer in broadband that does not exist on TV. If you saw "Your show will continue in 1:30..." while watching your favorite web video because of multiple ads, aren't you more likely to switch to an IM window, check out Twitter, Facebook or some other site?
Instead of showing two ads per break every 8 minutes, publishers could show a single ad every 4 minutes. For the viewer, they get back to the content more quickly. For the advertiser, they are not bundled with other ads so ad recall should be greater. For the publisher, the viewer is more likely to stay on their site watching video - driving user engagement and session time. The graphic below taken from our whitepaper shows this transformation in advertising inventory.
The challenge then becomes - when can an advertisement be called with the least impact to the viewing experience? Where are there logical insertion points that do not interrupt dialog or disrupt the flow of the current scene of the video? How can these points be identified quickly, reliably, and cost-effectively?
This is precisely what the Gotuit Video Metadata Management System does. Our metadata defines each logical scene within the original source video, with the ability to serve ads at those boundaries. Publishers now have more monetization options and controls. No longer limited to the original ad breaks, they can serve an ad (or multiple ads) after a specified number of scenes watched, or after a specific duration of video watched. The more precise ad insertion points and larger advertising inventory give publishers the ability to optimize their user experience with their content monetization goals.
So, is it better to show multiple ads per block, or have more advertising insertion points in the content? The good news is we support both and make it easy for publishers to try different approaches to see what is best for their content and audience.
Posted by Patrick Donovan on Wed, Feb 24, 2010 @ 03:59 PM
Sports Illustrated has utilized Gotuit for the past three years, to power multiple FilmRoomsTM for the NFL Draft, NBA Draft, College Football previews and more.
This week, we went live with our latest initiative with Sports Illustrated - processing The Dan Patrick Show. The Dan Patrick Show is a daily, three-hour sports talk show broadcast on DirecTV, and Sports Illustrated has the broadband rights to show highlights on www.si.com and www.danpatrick.com (an SI.com and CNN digital network site) after the show.
What makes this so significant is that SI integrated the Gotuit Video Metadata Management System with its own internal content management system and video workflow. This allows Sports Illustrated to use Gotuit's patented technology to identify each individual scene from the source content and author rich, structured metadata to be used for display, video search, and video advertising purposes. The metadata-defined scenes are then ingested into SI's internal system for publishing to their destination sites within minutes of the broadcast being completed.
Here is a sample from Dan's recent interview with Amar'e Stoudemire:
SI now has the ability to package, present, search, and monetize Dan Patrick content down to individual topics, players, teams, and guests due to Gotuit's structured, premium metadata. It is a terrific example of the flexibility of the Gotuit system and the openness of our APIs to allow for a direct integration into a customer's existing video workflow.
Posted by Patrick Donovan on Thu, Feb 18, 2010 @ 09:12 AM
Thanks to Brian Deitte and the rest of the folks over at Brightcove for putting together the first Boston Brightcove Developers meetup last night. We were invited to speak and gave an overview of Gotuit and our integration with Brightcove. Specifically, we showed how video stored in Brightcove could be enabled with Gotuit's rich, scene-level metadata to improve the presentation, navigation, advertising performance, and monetization of source content. We also demonstrated our work with our latest customer - Turner Sports and Inside the NBA.
The other presentations were excellent. ScanScout gave an overview of how their advertising platform works with Brightcove, and two presenters from Brightcove showed how to enable VAST advertising and how to enable "long-form ad cuepoints". Thanks also to ScanScout for hosting the event.
If you are a Brightcove customer, or Alliance partner, I encourage you to attend these meetups in the future to get a first hand view of the latest and greatest capabilities, meet some great people, and share ideas with others in the Brightcove ecosystem.
Posted by Patrick Donovan on Mon, Feb 15, 2010 @ 04:45 PM
Last week, we were thrilled to announce our latest customer - Turner Sports. For those of you not aware of the scope of Turner's reach, according to the latest ComScore press release, U.S. visitors to Turner properties watched over 366 million videos in Dec 2009, putting them #7 overall.
Similar to our work with ESPN, WWE and others, Turner is using Gotuit's patented Video Metadata Management System to unleash their original source video. They chose to start with Inside the NBA, the Emmy winning program hosted by Ernie Johnson, Kenny Smith, and the incomparable Charles Barkley. The Gotuit-powered site can be seen at http://www.nba.com/insidethenba/.
To show you a sample, here is the scene where EJ, Kenny, and Charles told the audience about the site:
As a huge NBA and Charles Barkley fan, this is my personal favorite out of all of the sites we have ever powered. Note how each scene with the original broadcasts are broken out with its own Title, Description and Attributes so they can be easily navigated to and watched. They look like separate clips, but in fact are accessed within the source content using Gotuit metadata.
The entire archive is organized in compelling playlists, to help convert visitors to viewers. Love the Celtics (like me)? There is a playlist for just Celtics' related scenes (along with one for each other NBA team). Want to just see the Game Highlights? Each game is broken out including this weekend's NBA All Star Game. How about you coaches out there who want to hear what NBA coaches say in the huddle to their players? Check out Inside Trax. (I am happy to hear that they often say the same things I say to the 4th and 5th graders I coach.)
Or, how about just Charles' Best Moments? To make it easy for you to watch it, here is an embedded player of just that playlist:
The point is that no matter what the source content, it can be better presented, navigated, searched, monetized, and enjoyed if there is an understanding of each individual scene. This Inside The NBA implementation with Turner is a terrific example of that, and we are looking forward to other announcements with Turner in the future.
P.S. Like many of the other sites we power, the metadata is generated live, while the shows are being aired, so it is published to nba.com and available within minutes after each show's conclusion, without any video editing. Is that true for your content?
Posted by Patrick Donovan on Tue, Feb 02, 2010 @ 02:32 PM
World Wrestling Entertainment’s Smash-Ups site has just been updated with highlights from Friday Night Smackdown and Monday Night RAW, featuring the return of Brett “The Hitman” Hart.
Here’s a quick sample smash-up of “The Hitman”.
Visitors to WWE Smash-Ups, powered by Gotuit, can access WWE’s huge library of video content and get directly to their favorite Superstars or Divas using Gotuit’s premium, scene-based metadata. It’s simple to create cool remixes / smash-ups and share them with your friends. Check it out here!
Posted by Patrick Donovan on Thu, Oct 15, 2009 @ 09:56 AM
Are you a premium video publisher going to the 2nd annual Akamai Customer Conference next week? Gotuit will have a booth again this year, giving demonstrations on how our patented Video Metadata Management System doubles a publisher’s available advertising inventory while significantly growing user engagement and session time.
We will be showing some the sites we power for live customers such as ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption and Around the Horn, CBS’ Big Brother 11, and World Wrestling Entertainment.
The conference starts on Tuesday October 22 and runs through Thursday October 24 at the Boston Renaissance Waterfront Hotel in Boston, MA. Send us a note if you plan to attend and we look forward to seeing you there.
Posted by Patrick Donovan on Wed, Oct 14, 2009 @ 04:01 PM
Going to Digital Hollywood in Santa Monica, CA next week? Gotuit will be attending and will participate on a panel. Gotuit CEO Mark Pascarella will speak on Wednesday morning at “Breakthroughs in Advertising, Technology and Content - Innovation in The Visual and Contextual Experience - Web, Video and Mobile”.
Wednesday, October 21, 9:00-10:15 AM
Track IV: The Advertising Platform, The DH Upfronts
Breakthroughs in Advertising, Technology and Content - Innovation in The Visual and Contextual Experience - Web, Video and Mobile
Michael Scherotter, Media Experience Evangelist, Media and Communications, Microsoft Corporation
Yahav Isak, Director of Interactive Production, JWT
Mark Pascarella, President & CEO, Gotuit Media Corp
Maurício Mota, Chief Storytelling Officer, Founding Alchemist, The Alchemists
Jay Seideman, Vice President, Vibrant Media
Bismarck Lepe, co-founder and the President of Product Strategy, Ooyala
Lauren Cole, President, Cole Media, Moderator
This is a diverse panel, with real-world expertise on how to best harness innovation to drive the most value from your video library. Drop us a line if you would like to get together and we hope to see you there.
Posted by Patrick Donovan on Wed, Sep 30, 2009 @ 02:07 PM
You are a video publisher and you want to drive more engaged viewers and better monetization. What tactics or options do you have to better present your video and make it easier and more fun for your viewers to watch it?
Here at Gotuit, we wanted to draw your attention to one of our latest innovations that is being put to good use by our customers such as ESPN, CBS, Sports Illustrated, and others. We call it “Mini-Nav“, a Flash overlay that displays each individual scene within the video that the viewer chose to watch. Simply mouse over the video, and it appears - showing the thumbnail of each scene and the title and description for each scene at the top. Move your mouse off of the video and it disappears. This is true in both the on-page player and off-page embedded player.
Check it out for yourself with yesterday’s episode of Pardon The Interruption at ESPN.com:
Did you notice how the Gotuit Mini-Nav is like the broadband equivalent of the Rundown that ESPN shows on the right-hand side of the linear broadcast? The big difference of course, is that you the viewer have the control to choose which scene to watch next. Instead of watching the show on your TV and having to wait for them to get to the story about your favorite team, you can go right to it.
Here’s another example, from Big Brother 11 that Gotuit is powering on CBS.com. In this one, notice how when you go and choose to watch your second scene, the player will show you an ad:
So, Gotuit’s scene-by-scene navigation not only engages and delights the viewer but also allows the publisher to serve ads in between the scenes. This is a unique way to deliver a superior user experience with superior monetization.
If you are interested in learning how we can enable scene-by-scene navigation for your video, drop us a line.
Posted by Patrick Donovan on Tue, Jul 14, 2009 @ 02:30 PM
Looking to cool off in the middle of summer? Check out Season Three of HISTORY’S Ice Road Truckers on Sundays at 9pm. This is HISTORY’S #1 rated series, and this season is its most dangerous yet. The drivers face fearsome storms, temperamental equipment, treacherous roads, and the pressure to deliver their loads 250 miles north of the Arctic Circle in Alaska.
To go along with the linear broadcast, HISTORY chose Gotuit to deliver Ice Road Truckers Video Mash-Ups, an interactive broadband video site where fans can define their favorite scenes and mix them together into a video mash-up that they can share with the community. The Most Recent, Top Rated, and Most Viewed mash-ups are presented for fans to quickly get to the library of mash-ups. Full video search is also available.
HISTORY’S #1 Series, Ice Road Truckers
Here is the page where you can easily create your own video mash-up. In addition to the full archive from Season One and Season Two, each week new content is added from Season Three. The video is easy to navigate and discover, with folders such as Driver, Accidents, Weather, Expletives, Rivalries, and more.
This season also has the first female driver, Lisa. Check out this Mash-Up made by one of her many fans showing just some of her highlights:
Ice Road Truckers Video Mash-Ups is another great example of how to extend your relationship with your audience, allowing them to interact with your video library in a way that supports your brand and drives deeper audience engagement.
Posted by Patrick Donovan on Wed, Jul 01, 2009 @ 12:52 PM
Our office is now located at the brand-new TradeCenter 128 building directly fronting Route 128 and Interstate 95 in Woburn, MA. The new mailing address is 400 TradeCenter, Suite 3890, Woburn, MA 01801. Our phone and fax numbers remain the same. Drop by if you are in the area!