We are a Video Nation. A new research found that 54 percent of adult Internet users create their own video offline, but only 11 percent upload it to the Internet.

Interactive agency Sharpe Partners, who conducted this research, says that this margin represents a significant opportunity for software and system providers to help facilitate the migration of a burgeoning consumer generated video marketplace online. One of the chief reasons for the disparity between producing and posting video is the difficulty consumers said they have with the process.

The study also suggests a profound fragmentation of the video marketplace. It says than those who edit video are presumably more likely to share it with others, which will expand this market even further. However, according the study, two-thirds of those who create their own video found it difficult to edit their content due to the lack of consumer-friendly software.



Video is much more emotional, online ad search does not work
The future of online advertising is video. Paid search works but \"doesn\'t grab the heart and mind\". eMarketer senior analyst David Hallerman agrees that paid search is the gorilla of the market right now, but says it\'s essentially direct marketing tool, and does not engage people\'s emotions like a good video ad.

Hallerman also says that repurposed TV ads don\'t work either, and he recommends TV commercial producers take a few extra hours while they\'re on a shoot and create original content for the web. Check it out the interview in Beet.TV



Local radio stations will add video, and local TV sites will gain a competitor
Two hundred radio station websites in the U.S. will offer Reuters text and video stories. The radio stations are part of Clear Channel network, and will also be able to upload their own video to the service. It means that local TV sites are gaining yet another video competitor, both in eyeballs and sales.

The deal allows Clear Channel\'s website to offer a robust news on demand service that combines Reuters video and text feeds with radio stations existing coverage from its news network of local stations.

“The primary focus of this product is for News-Talk-Sports, but there are lifestyle and entertainment segments we can use with our music station Web sites,” said Evan Harrison, executive of Clear Channel’s online radio division in announcing the new alliance.

Advertisers can buy 5 and 15 second pre-roll ads

CC is paying a license fee to Reuters for the content and retains all of the advertising, allowing station Web sites to customize advertising opportunities for either local or national advertisers. Advertisers can buy 5 and 15 second pre-roll ads in video segments.

“We already have more than 12,000 of our advertiser customers partnering with us online so the next step is for them to buy audio and video advertising that goes along with their on-air ads,” Harrison said.



A longtime TV anchor shifts to the station\'s website
A very interesting development on the Internet TV evolution. A traditional TV station is devoting an anchor to their website.

At Boston\'s ABC affil, WCVB, longtime anchor Jim Boy, 64, with the station since it debuted in 1972, is leaving the TV airwaves and he is going to report on stories throughout the day on the station\'s website, thebostonchannel.com.



A political blog with $5 million evolves into a real news media
HuffingtonPost.com, which started last year as a political web for celebrity bloggers and now has 2.3 million unique visitors a month, is preparing to venture into original reporting, with plans to cover Congress and, already, the 2008 presidential campaign, the NYT reports.

Softbank Capital, a venture capital group, invested $5 million in the site earlier this year. Arianna Huffington, 48, who lives in Washington and had been a reporter for The New York Times and Newsweek, started HuffingtonPost.com about 18 months ago.

Now she is planning to hire investigative reporters as well as a multimedia team to do video reports and wanted to make the site more interactive. “Now is the time to generate our own original content,” Ms. Huffington said. “It was always our intention, once we had the money, to hire people to do reporting.” The site already offers a mix of opinion and breaking news from wire services and other sources.



Revver.com opens up its API so anyone can use their tools
Revver.com, the clean video sharing that monitors uploads clips for appropriate copyright issues and provides a revenue sharing model for content providers with advertising post-roll, has decided to open up its API so anyone can use their tools (but no access to the code; the API is a kind of software development kit).

The Los Angeles-based company has raised over $10 million from impressive backers like Comcast Interactive Capital, Turner Broadcasting, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Bessemer Venture Partners, Draper Richards and a personal investment by William Randolph Hearst III.

A new way to present video: see this \'Sherpa cam interactive video\'

See how cool is this video feature developed by the Discovery Channel. Three Sherpas were equipped with mini cameras and satellite transmitters on their helmets as they climbed the Everest. Two photographers shot video as well. When it was all over, they synchronized the five video feeds with audio, and they created an innovative player. The result is unbelievable.

You an select any of the three feeds and you can drag through the timeline and select different hours of the day to watch. Discovery.com says that this is a never seen footage from Mount Everest with a technological marvel called the Sherpa Cam.

\"Now you can climb the mountain from their vantage point\", explains. Sometimes the satellite signal faded in and out, so there is static, fuzz and total blackout at some points on each camera.

Selling ads that don\'t interrupt playback and turns users away
There is a big struggle with user-generated video in terms of advertising. The fact of the matter is selling ads that don\'t interrupt playback and turn users away. Egghead is developing new brand experiences moving beyond pre-roll and post-roll ads.

They have graphical tickers that animate on at a certain time and then disappear a few seconds later. Click it and the ad will play instantly in the same player. There are also text tickers that Egghead says can attract as high a 5 percent click through, and the have \"end caps\" that encourage people to click to watch an ad.

Pricing model is based in paying a low CPM for the invitation and a higher CPM for the ad that plays when they click. Egghead is showing some examples. Brightcove.com and others have been selling similar ad overlays.

Networks explore to launch a YouTube alternative site and sue Google
A YouTube alternative? The network are exploring this way. It seems that networks are in discussions to put together a joint venture to compete with YouTube, although the negotiations are tough.

The idea would be to launch a site (or buy an existing one, and the likely candidate is Metacafe) and sue YouTube at the same time, leaving the joint venture as the only legal place to watch the video. However, Google, owner of YouTube, is offering big payoffs to the networks. According Techcrunch the odds of a deal are now 50-50.

Google will give a small web to local business seeking generate leads
Another great idea of Google: landing pages for free. Suppose you are a store but you don\'t have a website, and you decide to buy some keywords on Google AdWords seeking traffic. That ad will be sent to a basic page with information about your company, phone number, address, a couple of pics, and even printable coupons.

There are not full-featured website, but are for free. This is how Google is lowering the bar to entry for local business to use its AdWords Starter Edition. Local online ad spending is expected to double in the next few years. It is clear that there are a lot of small local advertisers who just want a simple way to run one of those ads.

The Pentagon will use an on-Demand video system worldwide
The Pentagon will allow personnel to review broadcast television events worldwide. They will record live broadcast from numerous sources and make them immediately available for on-demand viewing. The Pentagon will use the system to provide access to training videos and to support other on-demand applications.

To achieve that, the US Department of Defense (DoD) has purchased a turnkey Video-on-Demand System and software application from SeaChange International.

We spend 3,500 hours with the media; web finally passing newspapers

According to a report from the Census Bureau, in 2007, for the first time, Americans will spend more time on the web than they do with the newspapers. Here’s the breakdown: TV: 1,555 hours (up from 1,467 in the year 2000); Radio: 975 hours (up from 942 in 2000); Internet: 195 hours (up from 104); Newspapers: 175 hours (down from 201); Magazines: 122 hours (down from 135); Books: 106 hours (down only an hour); Video Games: 86 hours (up from 64).

Web time usage has nearly doubled since 2000. We are in world of broadband TV, online gaming, audio books, newspapers that produce video and radio podcast. We spend a ton of time with the media: an average of more than 3,500 hours a year, and an average of 4 1/2 hours a day watching TV.

Internet video audience to number 157 million by 2010

More people than ever are watching more online video, but the medium is still nascent. By 2010, the US Internet video audience will have grown 45.8 % to 157 million, up from 107.7 million this year, according to eMarketer\'s report, \"Internet Video Audience\".

For all the clips playing, online video advertising currently comprises just 2.6 % of total Internet advertising spending ($16.4 billion) this year. Video still has a long way to go.

\"With the advent of improved video quality and robust video search that offers a 21st century version of the \'TV Guide,\' marketers will find a fair degree of receptivity to online video ads,\" says David Hallerman, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the report.

Free amounts of non-paying job on the Web is restructuring the economy

The free labors, whether it comes from open-source developers, obsessive fans, angry customers, or lonely Web addicts looking to express their egos, is restructuring the economy. Futurists Alvin and Heidi Toffler say this extra non-paying job will rework the way we make, measure, and manipulate wealth.

The movement encompasses everything from creation of software such as Mozilla Firefox browser, to user-generated advertising for a Doritos spot for the 2007 Super Bowl, to online sites such as Digg.com, Business Week says.

Letting users participate in the creative process not only brings in new ideas, it provides a natural incentive for them to spread the word and generate PR juice. For Web developers, releasing source code for outsiders to build on has become integral to maintain a competitive edge.

MySpace-like social networks go corporate

Managers are discovering social-networking tools: from MySpace-like professional networks for finding jobs or sales leads to network-mapping software. The range of application is endless. According to Business Week, Goldman Sachs uses a social-networking program called SelectMinds to track its alumni. Raytheon creates maps showing employees\' relationships to find its most connected people.

And IBM has an internal network, called Dogear, of company Web pages or documents that other employees have bookmarked as beneficial.

In 2007 Microsoft will be adding its own social network tool, a feature called Knowledge Network 2007 Office suite. Knowledge Network will collect data from e-mails and other Office documents to create a profile of a user\'s expertise.

AP Video Network improves their player, developed by MSN

AP Online Video Network has improved their video channels, which are driven by MSN technology. The new player features larger graphics and a \"top video\" tab, as well as an email sharing tool.

“We now have twice as many videos in each section,” said Jessica Arnold, AP’s director of online video operations. “We’ve found that people tend to stay on the tab they entered on, so we want to surface as much content as possible on that first page.”

Coming in January, AP will beta test a new feature that will allow affiliates to upload local video to their own player.

Amanda Congdon video blogger celebrity debuts on ABC News.com

Remember Amanda Congdon, former Rocketboom host and probably the most famous video blogger so far (then 250,000 downloads a day)? Last week debuted on ABCNews.com\'s new section customized for this Internet personality.

People say that her first post looks like Rocketboom with an ABC logo, and they wonder if the \"garage cool factor\" is gone now that she\'s part of a professional ABC News production. Well, on her first appearance she criticizes the ABC News.com\'s pop up video player and its technology (which is, yes, really poor). \"Javascript sucks\", says Amanda. Good start!.

The Venice Project, peer-to-peer technology to disrupt the television industry

The most awaited new application on broadband sector is called The Venice Project. It is a video site, currently in beta, launched by the two guys who built Skype and KaZaa, Janus and Niklas.

The idea is to allow users to upload and download full-length, high-quality video clips through a peer-to-peer network –with copyright protection built in, and with live chats associated with programs or channels. “We set out to try to merge the best of TV and the best of the Internet”, they said.

It is a disrupting technology. Some analysts think that the site lack quality content. However, for content providers –say the Disney and Viacoms of the world is a pretty good thing, because they free up from the carriage providers and gives them a global audience. Some screen shots have been published on the Internet.

Web-based video content is a vehicle to increase audience for old Media

Publishers are discovering that Web-based video content is becoming a major vehicle to increase viewership and loyalty, and to monetize it with pre-roll advertising and synchronized video ads. They see the wild popularity of video-sharing sites like YouTube as confirmation that consumers are comfortable with consuming video content online.

One of the latest deals was struck last week when Conde Net’s Internet unit CondeNet has teamed with New York-based The FeedRoom to fit video content into Epicurious.com, Style.com and men.style.com, three of its more popular properties. With this new web video environment, Conde Net will bring consumers latest food, and fashion news, features and information.

CondeNet can choose between The FeedRoom’s banner ad service service -24/7 Real Media- or its own third-party service.

The FeedRoom also provides technology to deploy an online video strategy for NY Times, USA Today, BusinessWeek and Meredith Corporation. According to CondeNet, the overall viewer engagement for its video content is high, with the average video session lasting more than eight minutes and over three video viewed per session.

YouTube is a great way to promote yourself and go viral

TV stations fear to share their video on YouTube and video sites. But not all of them have this view. NECN of Massachusetts understood that YouTube is a great way to promote itself and go viral. In fact, it’s the best promotion you may run.

So, they posted a video of Massachusetts politicians singing “The 12 Days of Christmas”. Take a look


A TV channel focused on wealthy communities using the Comcast’s AOL

New ideas come out taking a fresh look at television. Take Plum TV, an upscale TV network that broadcast on small stations in some of the nation’s most exclusive vacation spots. That includes, for the moment, the Hamptons, Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, and Aspen. Comcast has added Plum TV programming to its Video On Demand menu in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

Plum TV, a New York company, produces TV programs on travel, politics, real estate and other issues focused on wealthy communities around the country, and store much of that content on Comcast servers and deliver it to local customers who subscribe to its OnDemand service for free when they select it using their remote controls. It’s also available online, on Google Video and AOL Video.

Many big-name investors like former Viacom CEO Tom Freston (some who discovered the channel while on vacation) are investing $20 million in the network. Plum’s programming is targeted in the morning and late afternoon hours — when vacationers are most likely to watch — and focuses on local events, culture, politics, art, business and sports.

The advertisers seem to be happy, because the think that the watching environment is perfect, because is when the affluent people are relaxed and more receptive to advertising. “For visitors, Plum is part of your vacation, bringing good ideas for how to get the most out of your stay and more out of life,” the station says.

Video Trends for 2007

2006 will be looked back as the year broadband video broke up. But what can we expect in 2007? Will Richmond, a veteran of the cable TV, broadband and technology industries, has identified 7 broadband video trends for 2007.

1. Apple’s iTV box will likely succeed.
The TV is still the preferred viewing device for just about everyone, but if someone could make an affordable, easy-to-install box that unshackled users from their computers, allowing them to easily bridge the PC/broadband world with the TV, there would be a market for such a product, and it would set up Apple as a longer-term competitor to cable an satellite for all video services.

What content would be available through iTV is less clear. Many video content providers, including broadband channels, could be accessible on consumers’ TV.

2. All eyes on Google, since it is a company well-positioned for success in a broadband video world. Google had identified video distribution and advertising as big frontiers to be exploited.

They could attempt to create a \"long tail\" of video advertisers (beyond TV\'s traditional big brand marketers) and also apply the company\'s unique algorithmic ad system to monetize video content better than anyone else. Their intellectual and financial resources are immense, and if they succeed, the repercussions throughout the video value chain will be significant.

3. Ad-supported video dominates and is being embraced most enthusiastically.

4. Syndication grows in importanceas a true model for current web-based content. Syndication accelerates the distribution of specific video to a wide variety of web sites and blogs, enhancing the value proposition of broadband video to user, while scaling up the ad-supported model.

To date video syndication has happened mainly by web publishers manually embedding YouTube video clips.

5. Community-building around video goes mainstream, and media companies will incorporate interactive features and functionality around video offered on their own sites. Community building idea requires media companies to modify longstanding copyright control mentalities, to incorporate interactive features and functionality around video offered on their own sites.

One of the main things YouTube\'s success showed was that, if users are given the chance to interact around video, they will. The intense viral nature of compelling video launched more than one unknown amateur video producer into the stratosphere this past year.

6. Big brand marketers will embrace broadband video, moving it from an experimental pursuit to an integral part of the marketing mix. More and more brand marketers are realizing that broadband video offers a game-changing opportunity to reach their audiences in ways never before possible.

Marketers launching broadband video initiatives include Nike\'s JogaTV, Ford\'s \"BoldMoves\", Krups Espresso Shorts and others. This month Coke partnered with YouTube for a special holiday greetings video feature. Super Bowl XLI will debut numerous cross-platform (i.e. TV and PC/broadband) integrated campaigns, starting with Bud TV.

7. Legitimate, not illegal file-sharing tools, P2P gains traction, intensifying challenge of distributing high-quality video in a cost-effective manner, despite bandwidth delivery and storage prices continue to decrease. Broadband video businesses and mainstream video providers will adopt P2P approaches.

Criteria to determine who is doing well in broadband video

What are the key characteristics to determine who is doing well in Broadband Video ASP (Application Service Provider) market? ABI Research has considered a total of 12 different criteria:

Advertising support: this looks at how well the platform allows the customer a way to feature advertising. Scores also consider whether the vendor has its own ad-sales force and network.

Security: this score is derived from how complete the vendor’s content security component is, including not only support for third-party DRM solutions but also whether they include more complete solutions such as key management and encryption services.

Publishing: this looks at how well a solution supports content management and publishing of content to a broadband video portal.

Syndication: the ability of the solution for customers to syndicate their content across different channels and monetize the content through syndication.

Monetization Engine: this examines what the platform offers in terms of pay-content monetization.

Multi-Platform: This is a score representing how well as solution supports publishing to multiple end-user platforms such as Internet, mobile and broadcast.

The innovation score is derived from the following criteria:

Customers: The total numbers of customers launched is an important measure of the company’s platform penetration.

Channels: Channels supported is another important measure of success.

Vertical Market Wins: This is a measure of how well the Broadband Video ASP has done in winning business in business market verticals such as corporate, government and education.

Alliances: is a measure of a company’s ability to make alliances with key distribution chain enablers and technology enablers to round out their own solution.

Total Solution: looks at how complete the solution is in terms of offering publishing, security, content syndication, monetization, and advertising support.

Why we need international coverage

As Steve Safran from Lost Remote news blog points out, we need, here in the U.S., better access to international news channels. The American networks’ mere whisper of the execution of Saddam Hussein is exactly the reason why.

“Even our news channels, giving this story the time it deserves, are stuck quoting Arab news sources. We, as news consumers, should demand the ability to get news as it is reported from around the world. I would much rather be watching al-Jazeera right now than skipping through channels to see who is quoting it.”

Google is testing a new way for video ads

Google has started to test a new variety of video ads. Here is how it would work: Publishers upload video to Google, embed the players on their own sites and the Google-powered ads are embedded in the streams, currently as post-rolls. The revenue is then split. First tests have been conducting at BeetTV and MTV.

Now imagine using YouTube video clips and embedding them on your site. Google would have a huge video advertising market.

Best cartoons in 2006, featured online

2006 was a crazy year for cartoonists. Want to see the best of them? Daryl Cagle’s Professional Index has done a Year in Review web section. Take a look here.