Session Description:
When will supply of premium inventory become outstripped by demand? What effects will this have on the online video marketplace? Some advertisers would argue there is a glut of quality, premium inventory online. Some would say there is almost infinite inventory. Who is correct? Can premium video actually command a premium on price? Are video ad networks killing the price and creating a low cost marketplace for video that hurts the chances for growth? These will all be discussed in this session.
Moderator:
Jason Glickman, CEO, Tremor Media
Speakers:
Steven Comfort, YuMe, VP, Advertising Sales
Carrie Kelly, VP Ad Sales, Funny Or Die
Christine Peterson, VP Digital Media Director, Carat
Shoba Purushothaman, CEO, The NewsMarket
Lewis Rothkopf, Network Development, Brightroll

A: Peterson: The question isn’t whether or not it was produced by a professional company, but whether or not there is a technology to alieviate their fears of being associated with pornography or inappropriate language. They don’t really care about the resolution of the video.

Q: If the content were determined to be safe, would that warrant a higher CPM?

Peterson: Sure. If we could have the same reach, then yes. A consumer may be even more passionate about that content.

A: We also need to look at things in the broader context. The super-premium content is usually a byproduct of a broader TV deal, and not really a true measure of CPMs .

Christine: Some of the models for super-premium content is built around purchasing a block, as opposed to the majority of digital content which is purchased on CPM or per stream basis. While that sounds nice, it most cases, they are just repurposing their TV spots. We’re seeing frequency of 7 exposures per session, not just when they come back. We’re looking for 1-2 impressions in an in-stream environment. Overall, those super-premium buys have a negative impact. As someone who tried to catch up on a season of 30 Rock, I hope I never see an ad for super scrubber again.

Glickman: Publishers need to balance the frequency capping with their ability to make money.

Q: From a supply and demand standpoint, there is a lot of noise that all of the video inventory is UGC. When you look at the volume of video inventory on tier-two sites, often times it exceeds what you can find on top-tier sites. What is the roll of video ad networks in a supply demand and value?

A: Brightroll: You can’t possibly overstate the value of video ad networks in this environment. The goal is to supplement what the publisher is doing on their own, and help the agency get the buys across a broader array of quality publishers while avoiding the pitfalls that comes with trying to do that. But you’ve got all of these different player types, formats for them to deal with. As far is the publisher is concerned, you get very competitive CPMs, but not what you’d get if they sold it themselves. But what often happens is “The Spitzer Effect.” You get a huge spike in traffic, and then you have a ton of unsold inventory.

Carrie: As a publisher, there is a need for ad networks. When we did the Paris Hilton video, we had a 16x spike in traffic. But nobody has the chance to pre-sell something like that. What we need to figure out is how to have something in-house that we can use to take advantage of that, and work together to increase the efficiency. We need to open up the dialogue on how the publishers and agencies can work together.

The behind the scenes is that we have to think about the end user. As a start up, we’d rather sacrifice some revenue to make sure that user comes back to us again. We want the right brands because we are building an audience as much as we are building the site.

Q: Are video ad networks hurting the CPMs?

Glickman: I think most of us would disagree with that. For standard ad networks that may be true, but not for video.

Brightroll: The people who run the video networks have been there before, and seen what happens. So we are determined as both former publishers to not go down that road again. We only sell on a CPM basis to make sure that CPMs don’t go down.

YuMe: We give our technology to the publishers we work with, and 99% of the time it is better technology than they already have. And that gives their sales team the ability to sell formats and analytics that they couldn’t deliver on their own.

Q: When it comes to formats, price and inventory, formats obviously play a role. How do we see the formats play into the conversation?

Carrie: On the day I started at Funny or Die, we said that there will be no pre-roll on our site, ever. We have to go back to the user experience. As Christine said, she was so annoyed that she’ll never buy a product. So we need to keep the user in mind and how we protect that experience.

Christine: Just to play devil’s advocate, the advertisers spend an enormous amount of money creating a :30 second spot. Not to say that it is the end all and be all, but they are still working. They still drive a brand message, equal to and above the performance on TV. Users are less annoyed than they are with TV, and we don’t see TV changing their ad model. When I say to an advertiser, “I need you to spend more money for the web,” they say “Forget it,” and spend the money where they know it is working.

Brighroll: One of the things that is really tense right now is the :30. In terms of branding and recall, they are the most effective unit out there. So you have the opportunity to do more than repurpose what you’ve got on TV. If you are targeting techies, they know the benefits of having more RAM, so you can exploit that opportunity to spend the time with them because you can deliver a much more targeted opportunity.

Christine: Coming from a media buying perspective, there’s only so much you can do and say to get them to test the waters in the space. Now we’re seeing interactive video, and we can create ad units for the space. But we need to create more case studies to prove that they work.

Q: How do we feel about formats as they pertain to the content? YouTube said they wouldn’t do pre-roll but would do overlays.

Christine: its less about who created it and more about length.

YuMe: The biggest problem is seeing a :30 second ad before a :15 second piece of content. But it is rare that we get more than one piece of creative. But technically we have the ability to do that.

Q: If you can create content that is an ad, but also something that is content and can stand on its own, is that something we see as the next big thing or is it a fad?

Carrie: It will continue, but it is really difficult. If you, the publisher, are doing everything from the script to the talent to the editing, then we are playing the agency, the producer and the publisher and then we need to go do the distribution as well. It’s a lot easier, like with the Dove campaign, where the agency did it, and seeded it. We can’t try to trick the consumer.

Brightroll: Trailers are a great example. They are entertainment, they are high def. There’s a burgeoning market for literary trailers, where they hire actors to create a commercial. Its entertainment that meets everyone’s need at once.

Q: Content doesn’t exist just on one site anymore. How does syndication, and hyper syndication, affect price?

A: YuMe: When you look at the widget world, where content appears on a blog or on facebook, the issue will become addressability. Can you tell who I am?

Q: Do top-tier sites warrant a higher rate than the same content farther down the tail?

Carrie: yes. If you can buy a targeted audience, if you can buy them in that bullzeye, then you should pay a premium for reaching them in a premium environment.

Brightroll: If you are having your content associated with premium, adjacent content, then you should pay for that association. But advertisers don’t necessarily see it that way.

Why?

Brightroll: One is safety. Advertisers pay to be associated with your brand.

YuMe: Demand and true scarcity will play a huge roll. Auto content, business and finance, travel, that will support higher prices across the board.

Q: With regards to TV, there is a comparison of CPMs. In general, people think that online CPMs are higher than TV. Should they be?

Christine: No. We don’t have the metrics to prove that we should pay higher prices for online. But you can’t compare them. Broadcast buyers buy cost-per-point.

Brightroll: Broadband should always be higher CPMs than TV. You have a lean forward audience. On TV, you have a cost-per-maybe. On the interactive side, someone is actively engaged.

Glickman: We’ve heard that the CPMs on TV have been watered down to address that cost-per-maybe.

Q: Is it an issue of education?

Peterson: Maybe, but what we hear from TV buyers is that they turn on the TV faucet, and the sales come in.

YuMe: When I worked in TV, we knew that we’d get exactly how many number of calls into a call center, exactly what time the spot will air. TV can be extremely precise. But when you are looking at an ad that is in a video player, you are waiting for that content to play, and you are very engaged. With TV, the push has been on to move away from show ratings and towards commercial ratings, and that cracked about two years ago. They are getting close to figuring out who watched the ad vs. who watched the show. But if you are on the Web, you are one click away from engaging with the advertiser. On TV, you have to get up, turn on the computer, etc., You are much farther away from that engagement.

Audience Q: What about convergence when TV and the Web come together?
Brightroll: All of the set top boxes run off of basic IP video. But there is no barrier to getting the same kind of ads and metrics off of the living room TV than off the computer. The technology is there. The convergence has happened. Its just a matter leveraging the data.

Audience Q: What goes into CPM rates, and why are they so much lower for UGC? What are the other inputs?

Christine: There is definite value to the body of content that we can trust. A lot of the established rates for the super premium placements happened because they were bought by broadcast buyers without being negotiated. They were set without any real rationale. There is also a lot of value added research that can help you prove whether or not something worked. With a lot of the premium content, you can do a lot more than with UGC. You can brand the entire environment if you’d like, which has a much longer impact than a UGC environment.

Putting your content anywhere and everywhere your audience may travel has become the mantra of publishing, but how true is that for video? As medium sized publishers watch Hulu, ABC and CBS pursue various flavors of hyper-distribution strategy for their video, should other publishers follow suit or establish more controlled distribution schemes tailored to their own particular content and partnerships? And what are the promising business models around syndicated video. Who controls the ad space when your video property leaves your site?

Moderator:
Gary Gannaway, CEO, WorldNow
Speakers:
Chris Allen, VP, Director of Video Innovation, Starcom
Mike Henry, SVP, Veoh
Eric Hadley, CMO, Heavy.com
Patrick Keane, Executive Vice President & Chief Marketing Officer, CBS Interactive
Rebecca Paoletti, Director, Video Strategy, Yahoo

Online video right now still smells like an online media buy more than a traditional or broadcast media buy.

Rebecca: We’re always up against TV budgets. eMarketer took their spending estimates down a few weeks ago. But we’ve spent the last few months focusing on helping TV buyers understand that there is a TV like experience online, and help them understand the metrics that we can provide. If we can get the TV buyers to move just 1% of their budgets over, they could make a dramatic impact on the industry without making too much of an impact on their overall marketing.

Q: Does the money need to come from TV?
A: yes, yes, yes.

Q: What are the challenges to convincing them to spend the 1%? And whats the solution?
Rebecca: Education about the online video experience. Is it porn, is it UGC, is it a well lit environment? Is it a quality experience? TV people still think the online viewing experience is poor. We also need to educate them about metrics and buying, which is very different to them. CPM, CPC, CPE, and what is the value for that engagement? Showing the value online to TV people is the challenge.

A: Scale is the one impediment that is going to change over time that TV people will respond to. Also, understanding what works is the most important thing. In a video rich environment, how do you have to think differently about marketing to them? Stretching the definition of what the video marketplace is presents a challenge as well. We can’t compare them to what the audience looks like in a linear world. On syndication, we have the opportunity to talk to marketers not just as media buyers, but as content partners. They are learning that they can target content the same way they can target advertising.

Patrick: Advertisers need to understand that online video isn’t just “dog on skateboard.” Cost is also an issue for TV buyers. We’re talking $15 CPMs vs $30 for premium online video. Often times you are dealing with a buyer who is looking at GRPs and simple costs. Advertisers also don’t want to buy the same audience three, four and five times. So measurement is an impediment right now.

Hadley: Explaining the CPM & GRP issue is critical. Helping them create advertising and content for the web, rather than repurposing TV is key. You need to understand that it is a different experience and different mentality.

Q: We are in a marketplace where we don’t have budgets. What needs to happen to get video to scale? Does everyone need to get together ala Walmart? Where will we be 5 years from now?

A: Users are going to migrate to the destination where they can find the broadest range of content and have the best experience.

Patrick: It depends on a lot of issues, one of which is navigation. If the economics are right and the partnership made sense, things could be different. But this isn’t “Free Lunchville.” At Google, we spent a lot of time figuring out how to help people find content. On TV, we’ve got a remote control. There needs to be much better navigation for discovery. But discovery of a great content experience with online video isn’t there. I’d love to see the metaphor of search apply to video on TV as well as the Web.

Rebecca: With video, we don’t see the same billions and billions of page views like we do with text based pages. When you look at where people watch video, they all have their favorite destination, and that is because they believe that they will be able to find the content they are looking for will be there.

Hadley: There are a lot of different ways to find things. If you ask a 10 year old, you’ll get a very different answer than if you ask a 30 year old. The phone will be a big part of it. Convergence. It is going to be a different generational mentality.

Chris: Reach, scale and measurement are the biggest barriers. People buy TV for reach. Until there is an easier way to get that reach, people will still buy TV. On measureability, I’d like to be able to buy by demo, like I can on TV. There is a complimentary effect with online to TV. If CBS skews older on TV, we can get younger viewers on CBS.com. Also, people expect a certain type of content from the providers. If you want to watch Grey’s Anatomy, you go to ABC.com. Swingtown didn’t do very well because it wasn’t a “CBS” type show.

First Point: There is a flood of content.

Second point: people obsess over quality. Walt Disney made sure that the theme parks were impecably clean. Disney couldn’t be as successful a park without keeping it pristine. Hulu is the same way. The want to make sure that everything about Hulu is about quality. “We have heated discussions over every pixel. We’re very odd birds, and we know that, but that’s our version of street sweeping.” The details – important, but subtle – tell the users that there is something different at Hulu, down to the 16:9 thumbnails. Hulu is obsessed with quality.

Their mission is help people find and enjoy the world’s premium content when, where and how they want to. The rallying cry is more casual in tone. They want to deliver a server that users, advertisers and content owners “unablashedly love.”

First time user from Chicago, in user feedback, “My first Hulu experience made my head explode in a brain spray of awesome.”

Currently Hulu claims 8 million uniques, 119 million streams monthly. PC World Mag named Hulu #1 product of the year, ahead of the iPhone. There is tremendous advertising demand that significantly exceeded their plan, and Fox, a content partner, has seen their overall online business more than triple since the launch of Hulu just 6 months ago.

For marketers:

Take advantage of the unique power of the environment. For example, Hulu allow users to pick from three different ads from a brand, rather than trying to target the specific user. Let them decide. For example, instead of showing an ad for a sports car in front of sports content, let the user decide. Jason is a father, and actually in the market for a minivan, so the sportscar ad is wasted on him.

For entertainment clients, Hulu offers user a choice. You can watch a trailer or preview of a show as a long pre-roll ad, or the user can watch programming with the normal commercial / mid-roll interruptions. Again, giving users a choice about their experience is very much appreciated.

Be a part of a strong user experience. For long form programming, they start with a :15 second branded slate. A very simple execution. They are finding that the branded slate, plus companion banner, provide higher recall among users. The “Ad Load” on Hulu is one-quarter of what you’ll find on TV.

Leverage the power of influencers. Take advantage of people who are embedding content into their own content.

To conclude: First, there’s a big wave. Second, obsess on quality. Third, marketing.

The Democrats have teamed up with Move Networks to offer an HD Silverlight experience at this year’s National Convention which unlike NBC’s 2008 Olympics player, showcases the power of Silverlight as a platform.

Above: DNCC Video Experience Homepage Player

While the excitement of the DNC may not rival the Olympics, the player offers an awesome full screen 16:9 experience, two camera angles and a separate spanish broadcast, (though that one taps into Comcast’s lower quality 4:3 feed) leaving NBC’s player in the dust. If you’re just looking to watch the convention, look no further.

Above: DNCC Move Networks Player - Full Screen in 16:9 HD

If you’re looking for commentary and independent coverage, all the major online video live broadcast companies are partnered with most of the new media sources that have sprung up over the past four years and are now offering their own live feeds. The democratization of media is pretty cool, PaidContent and NewTeeVee have pretty good lists, though there are almost more independent live streams than we can count.

If you haven’t yet seen Joss Whedon’s self described web-ministeries Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog and still want to you’re going to have to pay for it. After being streamed last week exclusively on DrHorrible.com delivered by Hulu, the three part series is now available as an i-Tunes download for $3.99 or $1.99 per act.

And buy it soon, the series is only available on i-Tunes until July 29th after which, “sometime later”, a DVD will be released with extra features. Some are already speculating that a sequel is in the works, more details  will be announced Comic-Con later this week in what should be a publicity shit show.

In his “Master Plan” Whedon writes that he is seeking to change the traditional distribution business:

Once upon a time, all the writers in the forest got very mad with the Forest Kings and declared a work-stoppage. The forest creatures were all sad; the mushrooms did not dance, the elderberries gave no juice for the festival wines, and the Teamsters were kinda pissed. (They were very polite about it, though.) During this work-stoppage, many writers tried to form partnerships for outside funding to create new work that circumvented the Forest King system.

Frustrated with the lack of movement on that front, I finally decided to do something very ambitious, very exciting, very mid-life-crisisy. Aided only by everyone I had worked with, was related to or had ever met, I single-handedly created this unique little epic. A supervillain musical, of which, as we all know, there are far too few.

The idea was to make it on the fly, on the cheap – but to make it. To turn out a really thrilling, professionalish piece of entertainment specifically for the internet. To show how much could be done with very little. To show the world there is another way. To give the public (and in particular you guys) something for all your support and patience. And to make a lot of silly jokes. Actually, that sentence probably should have come first.

And based on buzz alone it’s been pretty successful. AdRants puts it well: “Whedon knows damn well how to build a cult following…the ‘net may just prove his biggest cash cow yet.”

Yeah, the title’s pretty bad but I’m coming off of a vacation so give me a break. Microsoft which has already announced numerous content deals for XBox Live this year announced today at E3 that they will will soon offer access to the 10,000 + titles in the Netflix streaming library to existing subscribers.

The blogosphere has been quick to declare this a blow to AppleTV, but the deal is more a case of two companies that were already already in bed together getting a little closer. Netflix has reportedly spent more than $40 million on development to create its streaming service using Silverlight, Microsoft likely fronted a substantial portion of that. Netflix CEO Doug Hastings is on the Microsoft board.

Content will be delivered by Limelight, another company with close Microsoft ties. Microsoft plans to roll out the service when their upgraded XBox live interface is released this Fall.

The service will also have a unique interactive component allowing multiple users to watch simultaneously, useful for when all those guys in their parents basements get tired of Halo and decide to watch Star Wars together.

Pew Internet and American Life Project yesterday put out their annual home broadband penetration report. 55% of American homes now have broadband connections as of April 2008, up from 47% in March 2007.

Above: Pew Internet Home Broadband 2008 Key Findings

While in the U.S. and Europe, broadband has evolved as an extension of MSOs, in developing nations the cable phase has been skipped entirely and wireless penetration continues to outpace broadband growth. Daily Wireless points to a study from Gartner predicting wireless penetration in India will grow from 20% now to 60% in 2012.

Which means that as the world flattens, here in the U.S. we can expect to view a lot more online video shot on mobile devices in foreign countries. And when distributing content for an international audience we should plan to deliver it in a format accessible to the millions who will use a phone as their primary source of media consumption.

Google’s recently announced deal with Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane in which they will deliver original content across their AdSense network signals a new era in content distribution. It will no doubt increase the value of AdSense video ads but it lowers the value of content.

The project, dubbed Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade of Comedy will carry a multimillion dollar production price tag for 50×2 minute episodes delivered over what Google is calling the Google Content Network. For an additional fee MacFarlane will create custom animated ads.

What Google is essentially doing is using quality video to increase the value of what has been historically low CPM advertising. Despite relatively effective targeting AdSense still gets lousy engagement in the form of low click-through rates and while I can’t speak for all users, I for one, have become desensitized to them in the same way that I ignore banners.

It goes without saying that Google’s distribution reach is massive. Google’s targeting of text ads so far has been less than ideal but their massive network can be very effectively optimized for video because there is more to measure.

Google is turning its AdSense network into the vision of the thousands of IPTV channels people spoke of as the future, except video is served across millions of contextually targeted websites rather than thousands of linear networks.

What bothers me, is that while this is a game changing, entirely new type of content deal, I would argue that it is lowering the overall value of the content. For creators, if not for networks there has always been some sense of creative independence and value in storytelling.

You can’t do in a 2 minute clock what you can do in 22 minutes. With network ratings declining and reality shows taking the place of big-budget shows like Studio 60, one can only hope that there will be a place for both.

There are lots of cool companies, technologies and ad formats out there. But without metrics, “cool” ain’t worth much. So who is helping people figure out just how cool their ads are? Visible Measures is one of those companies. I’ve had the pleasure of chatting about the industry, and not the industry, with Matt Cutler, Visible Measures’ vice president of marketing & analytics, at the past few trade shows. Beet.TV grabbed a few minutes of Matt’s time at OMMA Video earlier this week, and let the MIT grad explain what’s behind all this engagement and metrics stuff. Watch……

Mobile video streaming company Qik today announced they will support video streamed from the iPhone (jail broken ones at least - though it will no doubt fuel rumors of a Flash-enabled 3G iPhone)

Competitor Flixwagon announced their support for the iPhone this morning.

Qik now supports more than thirty devices, just last week they announced the Alpha version of Qik support for Windows Mobile on the Samsung Blackjack and Motorola Q.

Above: Qik’s Michael Fortson Gives a ‘Qik’ Demo

This is a pretty big deal considering the ubiquity of the device - it will provide mobile video access to a huge of new field of potential producers.