A stork, clearly while en-route to deliver the package to someone more deserving, mistakenly dropped an LCD flat panel Sony Vaio  PC (VGC-LT16E) on my doorstep a few weeks ago.  Rather than take the time to return the Vaio to its rightful owner, I hurried back inside the house cradling it.  Oh come on, it was really cold outside. 

It happens to be one of those computers that everyone and their brother are selling that is really a PC masquerading as a sleek flat-panel LCD TV.  Or is it a TV masquerading as a PC.  In any case, this particular one can’t be differentiated from a mid-range LCD HDTV.  It comes w/ a TV tuner, has a myriad of TV inputs, as well as the usual complement of PC paraphernalia.  So, is this really a TV with an integrated web/Internet connection, such that I can lean back in my easy chair and watch live or time-shifted TV, as well as watch downloaded online videos from NBC Direct, streamed videos from Microsoft’s Internet TV or watch big screen versions of youtube?

 Almost, but we’re not there quite yet.  From a user standpoint it looks like a TV and works like a TV, but switching between the TV usage and the PC/computer usage is fairly cumbersome and definitely not seamless.  It’d be great to have a Picture-in-Picture (PIP) capability where either the computer would be visible in a window while the “TV” was running, or vice versa.  Also applications that let the online videos (either streamed or downloaded) appear, as it were, on the TV or DVR scheduling would be a great addition.  And if weren’t for the fact that my home has wiring for cable, phone, and wired Ethernet in every possible location, I would have had wires everywhere and the installation wouldn’t have been politically feasible at all.  

Now that I’ve stated why it isn’t perfect, I must admit, it’s a fantastic improvement on a PC.  The aesthetics are great and since I have pre-installed cabling in my house, I wall mounted the PC (or is it TV) where I normally keep my desktop computer and had an electrician install a plug point behind the PC so that there are no wires showing at all.    None.  Zero.  It’s wirelessly connected to my Internet router, and plugged into the RF satellite receiver plug behind the TV.

So, now, I can lean back and watch both traditional TV, as well as Internet TV and sort of flip back and forth between the two.  I wonder whether streaming Jackass 2.5 from Blockbuster onto my TV/PC counts as using the PC or TV?  And if we had an advertising network and platform that could figure out that when I watched Heroes on TV and when I watch the trailer or the next episode on NBC Direct and react appropriately, it’d be just fabulous.  Hey wait a minute, that’s what our vision at YuMe is.

Jayant Kadambi

It is interesting being in an industry where you can wander the office talking about Jackass and not get the HR hounds frothing.  Since we at YuMe were bidding on part of the Jackass advertising campaign, it was free game, at least for a while.  And then, on the 19th of December, which strangely enough is a Wednesday, the sequel to Jackass 2 (or perhaps a massive PR campaign for Jackass 3) debuted.  And it debuted online.  Sure, the distribution rules are highly complex, it plays only until the 31st of December 2007 exclusively on http://blockbuster.jackassworld.com/, and then it plays on Joost, can be downloaded from iTunes, available on Amazon, and then in February, the satellite and VoD providers will air the movie.  I guess technically Jackass 2.5 is not a movie, since it’s only an hour, but the interesting thing is that they are streaming pre-roll and post-roll ads during the playback.  Now, I haven’t watched the whole thing to see if there are ads during it, but it does seem that this release of content is truly ad supported to start. 

Content owners continue to overcomplicate the distribution life of content so they can extract what they think is the maximum value from a piece of content.  Actually, my pet theory is that the distribution rules for content are clearly designed to be highly complex and require tons of lawyers as a BD and legal employment preservation act.  But, that being said, this is good stuff, and maybe a worthwhile trend is starting.  On December 10th, Warner simultaneously introduced the popular Robert Ludlum movie franchise’s latest movie blockbuster, The Bourne Ultimatum, simultaneously on Vudu and DVD.    Vudu is a service/set-top that allows people to watch high-quality, presumably theatrical movie stuff in their homes.

The fact that content owners are beginning to add broadband and online distribution strategies to their precious content monetisation is good.  Hopefully, they will learn to overcome their fear of new distribution models and that the more people that have access to good content, and the earlier they have access to it, the more people will watch.  And the more they watch, the more money they’ll earn.  They just need smart advertising to help monetisation.  Charging a Queen’s (OK, perhaps a Prince’s ransom) on a subscription or pay-per-use basis isn’t going to bring accretive revenue.   They’ll need to advertise.  And let’s stop with the human cry over advertising on theatrical content.    What is it that you watch for 8 minutes before a DVD that you purchased?  Those 3 trailers are adverts.  Wouldn’t it be great to be able to get relevant ads when you watch that 3-year-old Jason Bourne movie, rather than an ad for the next one?

Jayant Kadambi

Check out our staff video picks of what to watch online over the holidays. Enjoy and Happy New Year!

YuMe Team

Remember the Web-famous Frog in the Blender (FITB) bit from years ago? The obnoxious, back-talking frog – who, of course, is in a blender - mouths off and otherwise challenges (read: mocks) you into kicking up the speeds on the blender and, well, shutting him up by blending him.

Well, those wacky guys over at JoeCartoon.com, a YuMe partner, are back with a variation of FITB. This time, it’s the lineup of presidential candidates who get silenced by the red “BLEND” button on the blender. Called “Blender Poll 2008,” the online game gives us the chance not only to blend the candidates we don’t like but also throw a life preserver at the ones who we do like. And when it’s over, check the results to see who is getting blended the most and which parts of the country are doing the most blending.

Sure, it’s a crude and tasteless way of measuring the popularity of the potential future leaders of this country. But dare we also say it’s contributing to voter education about the candidates? The text on the screen is a quick bio. And the obnoxious frog from FITB is back with his take, as well: “Hillary Clinton. Voice that sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard. Democrat,” he says. So far, Clinton is the most blended candidate.

Still, bloggers are already starting to share a link to the game, calling it hilarious and encouraging others to cat their own “votes.” Ah, the viral nature of the Internet. Crude or not, the word is spreading – and people are watching and playing.

Jayant Kadambi

You’ve probably noticed that the majority of the pre-roll and mid-roll adverts on the Web are missing, sometimes annoyingly so, the fast forward button. Other ad units — post-rolls, video in banners, Flash-based expandable units, and overlay ad units, for example — allow us to stop watching. With post-rolls, you simply navigate away or close the window; with the others, just click on the close or dismiss icons. The supposition that pre-rolls and mid-rolls may be fundamentally different ad units just doesn’t seem to be reason enough to bypass this feature. Other interactive media (read TiVo’s and DVRs) allow us to skip ads.   

It seems to me that in cases where advertisers and agencies have multiple creative units, a good way to dip their toes in this water would be to ask that all the appropriate creative executions run and users be allowed to pick the best one, which will likely be the one that has been skipped the least. The theory being that the one that has been watched the longest is the most engaging. Better yet, if this optimization could be done automatically, during the campaign itself, and was based on user geography, demographics, and the content of the ad, maybe it would show that different ad creatives perform differently based on the circumstance. And then, perhaps, this data could then be used to improve the ads for the next campaign. A novel concept? Absolutely not. This kind of stuff happens regularly in the search and banner worlds, but not yet in video.  Perhaps it should.

Now, I’m not saying that pre-rolls should allow the user to fast forward through the advert in every instance. But, a cynic might argue that offering a fast forward button could reveal that some of the adverts in a campaign are not engaging the user while also offering a level of transparency into some inefficiencies that the industry would rather leave covered. But that’s the good news about market-based competition. It generally exposes these kinds of things. 

Jayant Kadambi

Is Nielsen really packing enough technological heat to be the long arm of the law? Can those TV ratings guys really be the video cops we’ve been waiting for, the force that has come to battle those Internet pirates and lead us down a harmonious path into a Watch-on-Web future?

Maybe.

There’s some early buzz among execs that Nielsen, the ratings giant that has long recorded the data that the television and advertising industries depend on, is just what’s needed to save the day. Piracy, of course, has been a major obstacle in the widespread rollout of online video. Nielsen plans to use a digital watermark/fingerprint technology developed by partner Digimarc that would identify the video clip and upload, block it or even tie a specific advertisement to it.

But the arrival of Nielsen – regardless of whether or not it’s successful - is an important milestone on its own. It validates online video as an industry, not just grainy 20-second clips of frat house antics or talents pets. This is Television 2.0 - real content by big companies with professional producers connecting a growing audience of viewers with a growing lineup of advertisers.

On so, riding in on a white horse, here’s come Nielsen, not just to save the day when it comes to this piracy issue but also to offer that affirmation that online video has arrived, as well.

Jayant Kadambi

There’s some interesting statistics in a year-end survey that looks at trends among viewers of television and online video. The survey, commissioned by a web personalization service company, looked at the habits of 824 respondents and came up with some findings that are encouraging to people like us who are placing their bets on the future of online video and advertising adoption.

Notably, more than half of the Web-connected TV viewers – 55 percent – said they also watch video on other devices, including their computers, mobile phones and devices such as iPods. Of those same viewers, 65 percent say they are watching professionally produced video. And a full one-third of them say they are spending more than four hours a day watching video on something other than traditional television.

What’s interesting to me about the survey was that, while everything seems to indicate growth of online video, the survey found that consumers are also frustrated because they have to spend “a few minutes” to find something worth watching. (This survey, again, was commissioned by Cambridge-based ChoiceStream, which offers Web personalization technology.) This was sort of funny to me because, as anyone who has ever channel-surfed a cable or satellite lineup of dozens and dozens of channels, the TV experience isn’t much better. And then the survey revealed that viewers weren’t any happier with the TV experience.

The survey goes on to talk about personalized guides to help you find something worth watching on the Internet. By then, I knew all I needed to know from the survey: people aren’t just watching TV on the TV anymore. They’re turning to other sources and other devices – and while they appear to be somewhat frustrated with the process, they’re willing to experiment with online video.

Jayant Kadambi

When advertisers launch campaigns, they tend to target particular demographics. To identify that demographic, they usually refer to the reach numbers of a particular Web site or ad network but also turn to research firms that track and measure such data, such as Comscore. In other words, Web sites – or specific pages within a Web site – are targeted for the campaign. And this passes as an acceptable proxy method to reach a demographic audience.

Well, I think for video, TV’s got it right. In addition to site demographics, TV advertisers use the content or content category as a proxy for the demographic audience. Based on years and years of experience, we pretty much know who watches the Super Bowl (everyone), Dora the Explorer (kids), and American Idol (18-34). Advertisers should insist on being able to target channels, or specific categories of content, on the Web much as they do today on TV.

When an advertiser says he is showing up on Discovery Channel or the Oxygen network or HBO, we have an instinctive understanding of both the content and demographics. We need to add this way of thinking to the online video advertising landscape. In addition to the Web sites or domains on which the ad will run, advertisers also should be asking the ad networks or Web sites to name specific content or content channels on which the pre-roll is running and use this as a proxy for the demographics.

It’s a bit easier with TV and it needs to get that way online. It’s easy to show the client that their ad is running on the third slot at 4 p.m. on Sunday on the Lifetime network. In the online world, it’s a bit more difficult and it shouldn’t be. It just doesn’t seem right to tell an advertiser, “Please click on www.domain.com until you see the ad… it’ll show up, just keep clicking.”

Jayant Kadambi

It’s almost like we’ve come full-circle – or at least someone has. MTV Networks has announced plans to make every clip of “South Park,” Comedy Central’s hit cartoon for grown-ups, available online – for free.

If you recall, back in the early days of YouTube, there was much squabbling over the free posting of video clips from existing shows on the Internet. In the end, some of the most popular clips – notably those from “South Park,” “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” – were yanked back-and-forth online, offline, back online to other sites and so on.

In the meantime, something funny happened: the TV ratings for shows that had been available on the Web started to go up. The Web wasn’t completely about competing with TV. It was a tool for further exposure of what’s already on TV.

Fast forward to today and you’ve got networks who are working to develop online video strategies, from re-broadcasting prime-time shows on the Web, to launching new Web-only shows, to building an inventory of shows that have been locked in a vault or available only via syndication in the past. Sure, we’re still working our way through the growing pains of building out this new way – the most recent example being the Writers’ strike. But, eventually, that will get resolved.

With our technology that enables publishers and content producers to safely distribute video content online, knowing they can now track and fully monetize no matter where it lands, we hope that others will follow South Park’s lead and take the plunge.

To Cartman, Stan, Kyle, Kenny and the rest of the South Park family, we offer a “Welcome Back” to the world of online video. You were ahead of your time. Thanks for paving the way.

Jayant Kadambi