Broadband Jungle Blog

Google Content Network rolls out Seth MacFarlane original series

In a novel approach to both online advertising and original content distribution, Google announced a new project with Seth MacFarlane, the creator of the animated series Family Guy. The web-only series entitled Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy will be distributed exclusively through Google AdSense.

An article by Brooks Barnes in the New York Times today outlines the innovative plan:

Google will syndicate the program using its AdSense advertising system to thousands of Web sites that are predetermined to be gathering spots for Mr. MacFarlane’s target audience, typically young men. Instead of placing a static ad on a Web page, Google will place a “Cavalcade” video clip.

Almost too subversive to be true: This could be a very effective way to get original content seen and monetize at the same time. Google calls the new service Google Content Network.

Advertising will be incorporated into the clips in varying ways. In some cases, there will be “preroll” ads, which ask viewers to sit through a TV-style commercial before getting to the video. Some advertisers may opt for a banner to be placed at the bottom of the video clip or a simple “brought to you by” note at the beginning.

Creator Seth MacFarlane receives a percentage of the ad revenue as part of his deal.

But the partnership with Mr. MacFarlane represents a bold step into the distribution business, one that, if successful, will surely send shock waves through the entertainment business. “Cavalcade” is not only from a high-profile Hollywood talent, but also carries a multimillion-dollar production price tag, by far the largest amount spent on original Internet content to date.

Internet Metering - Back to the good old bad days?

During peak times, 5% of Internet users are hogging 50% of the bandwidth?

How to reply if you're a service provider? Metering? Open access? Tiered plans?

Mark Cuban already cast his vote and kicked of a thunderstorm: Why Tiered Broadband is a Wonderful Thing and ASIVS.

'Leave and take your bit torrent client with you.'

While cable giants like Comcats and Time Warner and telecoms like AT&T are figuring out how to add valves to their pipelines to reign in some of their hard-core users, industry mags like Mediapost's Blogs have long been engaging in the debate.

Now the New York Times is weighing in with a clarifying survey from Brian Stelter.
His article from June 15 compares the potential of 'Internet metering' to the industry's clumsy business models from the early days:

'The Time Warner plan has the potential to bring Internet use full circle, back to the days when pay-as-you-go pricing held back the Web’s popularity. In the early days of dial-up access, America Online and other providers offered tiered pricing, in part because audio and video were barely viable online. Consumers feared going over their allotted time and bristled at the idea that access to cyberspace was billed by the hour.'

Stelter compares some of the plans in discussion and the perspective is grim: Bandwidth allotments appear to favor the very casual Internet user simply sending e-mail and reading the news.

Streaming an hour of video on Hulu, which shows programs like “Saturday Night Live,” “Family Guy” and “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,” consumes about 200 megabytes, or one-fifth of a gigabyte. A higher-quality hour of the same content bought through Apple’s iTunes store can use about 500 megabytes, or half a gigabyte.

A high-definition episode of “Survivor” on CBS.com can use up to a gigabyte, and a DVD-quality movie through Netflix’s new online service can eat up about five gigabytes. One Netflix download alone, in fact, could bring a user to the limit on the cheapest plan in Time Warner’s trial in Beaumont.   

What this could mean to our fledgling rich media loving industry is pretty obvious:

“We hate it,” said a senior executive at a major media company, who requested anonymity because his company, like all broadcasters, must play nice with the same cable operators that are imposing the limits. Now that some television shows are viewed millions of times online, the executive said, any impediment would hurt the advertising model for online video streaming.

Jane '08 campaign trailer # 2

Jane '08 trailer # 1 of our fake campaign ad series has been quite successfully stomping in support of 'Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict'. The viral clip has been picked up by bloggers everywhere and already reached more than 1000 views on YouTube and close to that number on Zannel.

We decided it was time to send installment # 2,'Jane '08: Leadership' into the running.
Decide for yourself.

Talking about campaigns:
Nice "Exercise your Emmy Rights" campaign-themed spread from Universal in the current Emmy Magazine by the way: Every Universal show in the running received the presidential campaign treatment. 

My favorites:
'Support Our 'Heroes,' 'Baldwyn * Fey - All the Way,' 'Get a Clue / Vote SVU' and 'D'Onofrio * Noth tough on crime'.

goGOOROO Video Embedding

Progressing towards branded hosting solutions as announced earlier this year, our own Internet video community goGOOROO.com recently added a video embed function for its users.

Channel and Video of the Day have moved to the homepage with embed video players prominently on display front and center. From here on, every channel and video added to goGOOROO contains embed code when available, pushing us closer to our next release: goGOOROO-curated  channels  with a revenue sharing model for  our content partners.

We've also modified our catalogue function and are editing a series of top links covering everything from the best online TV links to sports sites and movies currently in release.

Visit the GOOROO and come back often.

The Broadband Generation: The revolution will not be televised.

From an article I wrote for the current issue of Documentary Magazine:

The Broadband Generation
The Revolution Will Be Digitized, Webcast, Streamed, Vlogged, Podcast...

The broadband video age actually already started back in the 1970s with the invention of the VCR. Rewind, Pause, Record for the first time in the history of the moving image, viewers could adapt their viewing pleasure according to their lifestyle and not resign themselves to the limitations of "live" exhibition and broadcast.

The audience quickly rid itself of linear viewing habits and hungrily requested technological innovation from entertainment giants like Sony, Philips and Apple. The resulting digital development boom still ripples through to this day.

 

The only difference today is this: The consumer is in charge and dictates what, when, where, on which platform and in which type and file size the industry is allowed to serve up video and entertainment. Within 24 months, thousands of video portals have launched to quench the audience's insatiable thirst for short-form video clips, movie downloads and television programming delivered through the Internet pipeline.

On-demand, speed and portability are the new standard for the broadband generation, and the parallels to the early days of television are remarkable: Back in the 1950s, a new technology was introduced to the mainstream with the tube, spawning innovative ways of storytelling, distribution, advertising, financing and monetization--just like today.

The audience consumed moving images at home instead of visiting the neighborhood movie theater. Today, computers, iPods, game portals and mobile phones lure viewers through their ability to display moving images on the go.

Even if broadband video might not quite equal the lasting impact of the dawn of the television age, it's certainly comparable to the advent of cable television in the late 1970s and early 1980s. From one day to the next, a handful of trusted broadcast entities exploded into dozens of analogue networks, eventually leading to hundreds of digital stations.

Click here for the entire article.

Welcome to GoGooroo Blog

It took us 2 months into our public beta to finally launch the BIG blog. Go figure.
Anyhow--we've been more than pleased by the warm embrace we've received from the blogging community and trade journalists around the globe. Take a look.

A big shoutout goes to Kristen Nicole at Mashable to get the ball rolling. Looks like there really was something missing in the marketplace and a lot of video fiends out there were suffocating under the weight of all their bookmarks. I know we did.

So here's the goal: We're determined to create the most useful and user-friendly platform for all these great and inspiring broadband video channels out there. In spite of our efforts, a lot of them still get lost in the shuffle. We believe in niche programming, and we believe in monster blockbusters to keep the industry's momentum going.

Not so sure how we feel about television, though--it might be the golden age of TV writing, but the platform itself seems tired and stale. We'll just have to see how far the broadband revolution goes. Creatively we certainly are experiencing an eruption of visual content not seen since the advent of cable, maybe even television.

Don't get me started about the movies -- broadband video might be what independent producers have been waiting for since the creatively insane ran the asylum in the 1970s. I do believe that. It could also mean the end of distribution and exhibition as we've known it for the past century. If you're pumping HD on demand broadband into your home theater, who's going to drag their butt into a poorly run theater anymore?

GoGOOROO is clearly a company with a global mindset. It's no coincidence that we launched parallel in  the US and Europe, and we have big plans to add more localized portals as we build this community. We also have aspirations to take a leadership role when it comes to syndicating and hosting video content for our viewers.

While we're currently indexing every channel known to man, we're also determined to create and curate some of these great new channels nobody had thought of. We're big on collaborating with other video portals and aggregators, because we're all Davids in the same boat struggling with Goliath.

And that does include Michael Eisner, a recovering Goliath. He's new to it just like we all are and that's probably what he likes about creating Prom Queen with the skills he learned in the good old TV days.

Anybody who claims they have it all licked, whether it's production, advertising, distribution, finance or storytelling is simply telling a lie. Nobody has a clue and we're all learning and making it up as we go along, just like it should be.

Gary Carter, CCO of the company who brought us American Idol, expressed it extremely well at January's NATPE conference:

“Technological development is a story which runs through human history and which shapes and is shaped by it. And part of that story is the rise (…) of what we call ‘media.’ This is about us, in a very deep and a very profound way, and it’s about the way in which we as a species are driven by creativity.”

That said--follow the Gooroo and have a great time!

GoGOOROO—Internet Television Community in public beta.

From the department of shameless self-promotion:

Last year, we've seen how the Internet exploded with video content and gave birth to new models of distribution. YouTube and MySpace have become household names. But are you equally familiar with ZeFrank, It's Your Show, stickam, Galacticast, Singing Fool and LAT34.com?

In this new era, every type of video and film production stands a chance to be discovered and enjoyed by an almost unlimited global audience, including projects that would otherwise be disbanded or never produced. From here on, niche content will be king.

So far, there was only one thing missing: A capable tool that would bring order to the infinite universe of channels and videos out there, a system to help actually find stuff.

The wait is over: Last week we launched parallel public beta versions of a groundbreaking new and free online service in the US and Germany.

www.gogooroo.com (USA)
www.gogooroo.de (Germany)

We envision turning this portal into THE Internet television community destination on the web with one simple goal in mind: To cut through the broadband jungle and share the immense wealth of entertaining, inspiring and informative video programming available over the Internet today.

GoGOOROO is a guide, an index and a community all wrapped into one destination. Unlike traditional program guides, however, you, the user, are in the driver's seat here: Similar to the free Internet Encyclopedia Wikipedia, GoGOOROO is a user-generated online guide and every visitor can submit, review and rate channels and videos alongside the GoGOOROO team.

We painstakingly catalogue and describe both Internet television channels and online videos from countless sources. We've established categories such as art, lifestyle, movies, news, sports and viewer-created content and added even more sub-categories to create a searchable and useful database.

You can already find hundreds of broadband channels such as Super Deluxe, Atomfilms and Snowvision in our index, with thousands more to come. We are particularly thrilled by the arrival of small niche networks who co-exist with TV networks and major media companies on a level playing field.

We're still beta-testing, so please try as many functions as you can possibly bear, create a profile, invite friends, share videos with others and suggest new channels and videos. Most of all, if you like what you see don't be shy and recommend GoGOOROO to your friends.

We encourage you to make GoGOOROO your own and use the service for your very own purposes: List your music video, video-driven website, favorite standup, art performance or the indie feature you're promoting with us and reach a like-minded community of web-savvy enthusiasts.

Send me your feedback to this blog and if you're a blogger or have a site and would consider linking to us or filing a post, you'll know what to do.

Follow the Gooroo.

Forbes on YouTube

Your future’s so bright, you’ve got to wear shades? If anyone, that’s YouTube’s wunderkind-CEO Chad Hurley smiling from the cover of the October issue of Forbes. The old school flagship runs with seven (!) articles on the Internet video phenomenon.

Video Fixation is the cover story by Scott Wooley, and he recounts the fine line Hurley and partner Steve Chen have been treading on their way to becoming broadband revolutionaries.

You Tube for Grownups by Cesar Suero has all the stats and provides a map to navigate the site for the uninitiated. More than Words examines the fledgling video search industry, while Can YouTube Grow Up And Stay Cool? by Peter Kafka deals with licensing issues and upcoming solutions like the arrangements with Warner Music and NBC.

Broadband Brewers—Bud.TV & Man Laws

Something’s fermenting among America’s mainstream mega-brewers, and the full flavor would do a micro brewery proud: Miller is scoring big with its self-deprecating Man Laws round table TV ads that found a permanent home on Miller’s broadband player. It can’t hurt that the guys are wrangled by non other than Burt Reynolds, according to Miller “possibly the best loved Man icon of all time.”

Annheuser Busch wetted their broadband appetite during last season’s Super Bowl with a dedicated micro-site designated to ‘big game’ commercials and related branded content.

Rumors were flying high immediately that America’s favorite Lager would eventually roll out a branded multi-channel broadband player, but it took until September to follow up with a formal announcement.

Scheduled for the day after Super Bowl 2007, the brewer will launch a full-blown broadband network with 8 channels of original content. According to AdAge, this is how they intend to monetize their $60 million player:

“Bud.TV will be the largest piece of an online budget that will command 10% of the brewer's $607 million media largesse, said Tony Ponturo, VP-global media and sports marketing. He said the bulk of the spending would come at the expense of prime-time and late-night TV.”

DDB, Chicago apparently packaged much of the channel content that includes footage from the A-B sponsored Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy tour, viral clips and ads, collaborations and contests with Kevin Spacey’s Bud-sponsored TriggerStreet community and a Matt Damon / Ben Affleck created broadband version of Project Greenlight, billed as the world’s largest online filmmaking contest.

For the broadband era, Bud.TV would be the first time a corporate entity sets out to start a competitive network to package compelling content while peddling their ware. Modern day sponsors obviously left a lasting imprint on programming since the dawn of network television. A-B’s commitment, however, seems to be a watershed moment by bringing together a new generation of advertisers with content creators and in front of a hungry (and thirsty) audience at exactly the right moment in time.

Could it be that the brewers actually succeed and do a good job at it?

Brightcove, broadband factory

Some of the viral sites like YouTube and now Grouper may have been getting all the attention, but in my book another company is leaving the real imprint: Almost every time a commercial player launches, one company seems to be pulling the strings behind the scenes: Brightcove, brainchild of former Macromedia CTO and Flash pioneer Jeremy Allaire.

With a fierce determination to break down the barriers between television and the Internet, Allaire founded Brightcove in 2004. When last fall’s broadband revolution hit, the start-up had the applications package in place to professionally run and manage multi-channel broadband players. The Cambridge, MA company has since launched probably more broadband players than anyone else in the business.

In spite of being limited to uploads from PC’s only (a Mac version is in the works), close to 5000 users have signed up with Brightcove’s free (!) commercial preview that enables almost anyone to program and run a professional Internet TV platform with surprisingly little headache.

The informative BC Guide boasts of players for high rollers like the Discovery Channel Beyond, Bravo’s Outzone, Sony Musicbox, The New York Times and Sky Sports.

What’s even more interesting, though, is the eclectic list of the remaining 4900 niche channel providers who discovered Brightcove’s services: The Horse TV Channel, Deval Patrick TV—gubernatorial candidate for Massachusetts, travel service Kayak’s edgy comedy spots, and MomMe TV, a community site for moms to name just a few.

Brightcove seems to be determined to rule the broadband world one day, their services already include hosting your media on their servers, selling and running ads for a revenue share, syndicating channels through aggregators like AOL (a strategic investor in the company) and selling videos through custom digital video stores for all mobile devices.

Couldn’t be easier. So, to all non-profits, manufacturers, retail chains, web businesses, networks and anyone with a property that bears any resemblance to a brand: Now is the time to follow Brightcove’s motto and ‘liberate your video.’ Launch that spankin’ new channel while it’s still for free – according to the Brightcove sales team, the free preview will be available at least until the end of the year and will afterwards definitely remain affordable for niche programmers.

Niche is the whole idea behind ‘long tail economy’ conversion scenarios, and the people at Brightcove totally get that and how profitable it will be one fine day. It’s all about giving power to the content owners (and maybe a little bit of choice to the viewers).