Much hyped, much maligned video portal Joost is set to relaunch tomorrow, this time, sans download. Oddly, the logins from my previous accounts don’t seem to work, so I’m guessing there will be plenty of signing up again. Unfortunately, in my attempts to sign back up, I keep getting a “Something went wrong, please try again later” message.

Keep your fingers crossed for these guys. They can’t afford to botch another launch.

Searching for good content online can be a pain in the ass. If your friend doesn’t send you a link, or you aren’t trolling YouTube for hours, you’re more likely to find a podcast that is already dead than discover the next cool show. With the volume of new webisodes being created, and only increasing, what we could use is a trustworthy source to do all that trolling for us, find the best of the best, and make it nice and easy for us to choose from.

Enter TheWebisodes.com, a new portal for webisodic content. Consider them the new TV Guide of web programming. Not just a guide, The Webisodes has its own show, The Weekly Webisode Watch (hmmm, kinda crimping on our name, but we’ll let it slide), that features co-founders Gil and Oran Margulis chatting about their favorite shows.

For those of you with your own programming, TheWebisodes is syndication friendly, hosting shows on their site or delivering users to your own site. Got content, make sure you tell the brothers at TheWebisodes.com. Finally, a portal page for the videophile crowd.

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.

Coincidence? I think not. HBO’s web development division, HBOlab, is bringing a host of internet (semi)stars together for The Hooking Up Show.

Seemingly a LonleyGirl meets 90210, with a cast of online video personalities including Jessica Lee Rose, aka ‘lonelygirl15′ as well as Will Video For Food’s Kevin Nalts and Michael Buckley of the “What the Buck Show.”

What does this mean for original online content and its homegrown stars? This blogger isn’t so sure. HBO has said the first season will not be ad supported, so that’s sure to make it easier to aggregate the audiences that enjoy webisodic content but hate ads, but underminds the online video ad supported model that has so far dominated professionally produced web content.

What has me more concerned, however, is when you look a little deeper. HBO certainly has the chops for developing content, and has resources much deeper than most of the other independent web content producers. But is this ensemble cast really telling us that no one individual web-celeb can support a business model? This is the king of cross-pollination of content, and seems like what happens when competing high school cliques decide to have parties on the same weekend. “Well, if you bring your party to my party, then we’ll have a really good party.”

Kudos to HBOlab and everyone involved. We’ll be sure to keep a close eye out on this one.

Ben adds: I just have to point out the irony that a little more than a year ago we were discussing who would be the HBO of online video. I argued then that existing online video producers need to offer higher quality content. HBO seems to be offering an outlet for these guys to make this possible. It took them a year to come around, but maybe the HBO of online video will be HBO.

We said so. Seems like most people agree. Check the comments from Chris Albrecht’s piece this morning.

I tried to watch a few live streams and was only able to after telling the player that I had a different cable provider. The content was of fair quality, a bit stuttery, and overall, very difficult to navigate. I just wanted to watch some women’s team archery, damnit!

Andy Plesser, over at Beet.TV, seems impressed with the stats that Neilsen put out, though. To each their own, but I’m still disappointed so far. I’m with Chris. The navigation is a little clunky, and I’d really like to have set up Miro to download the events I wanted while I was at work or sleeping and watch at my leisure. When I went to the “Longform Rewind” page, and selected the RSS feed, I was greeting with a “Sorry, the requested page is unavailable” message. Bummer.

But to Andy’s point, there’s myriad videos to choose from, and probably satisfies most people’s needs. Damn us nitpicky bloggers.

What’s that got to do with online video? At least Comedy Central makes “The Death of Chef” availble to post here straight from their site.

When I clicked to “watch now” link to, well, watch now, I was greeted with this lovely message.

The Olympic online video version of “This game is blacked out in your area.”

Integrated Media Measurement, Inc. (IMMI) has issued a report showing that up to 20% of episodic content viewing occurs online, depending on the genre of the content and the amount of time the show has been on the air. In a some cases i is higher than DVR viewing of the broadcast content.

Download the full report.

Some of the more striking data shows that online viewing is flat out replacing TV, not just catching shows you missed or clips that you wanted to watch again. Another key difference showed that white, affluent, well educated, working women aged 25 to 44 were the dominant viewers of online TV content, compared to the male 18-25 demo that is typically associated with online video. To me, this signals the shift away from the UGC fad into higher quality, professionally produced content.