Earlier this week, I caught up with Shelly Palmer, president of the New York Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the organization that awards the Emmy’s.
Shelly was attending the Convergence 2.0 summit at the Museum of Broadcasting.
Shelly is a fan of the purple channel. He told me that in the area of niche video, "No one is doing it better than Beet.TV." Hey, I’m gonna frame this post and put it up over my fireplace. It’s not an Emmy, but it’s close. Wow! Thanks!
I asked Shelly about the business proposition for niche video publishers like Beet.TV. He lays it all out; the good and the bad, explaining the opportunities along with the limitations of scale in this "long tail" world of super narrow casting.
Beet.TV Doubles Streams and Lands First Sponsor
Well, as the industry is evolving, so is Beet.TV. Video streams and downloads have doubled over the last 30 days and are up to 100,000. And Beet.TV videos are getting around: Nearly three-times the number of views are coming through feeds and cross-posts, far more than viewers from the Beet.TV home page.
In a big development here, I am pleased to welcome our first major sponsor to Beet.TV in VeriSign. You might have noticed banner ads for VeriSign up on our home page for few days. Beginning later today, you will find very cool overlay ads inserted into the video stream. VeriSign is doing some very interesting things in the video space. Earlier this summer we reported on the company’s online video platform for the BBC.
Here’s a statement from VeriSign’s Jeff Richards on the sponsorship:
"We’re very excited to be promoting VeriSign’s Content Delivery and 3 Screen services on Beet.TV. We view blogs like Beet.TV as an increasingly influential source of information for our customers, partners and employees, and obviously believe Beet to be one of the leading sites covering digital media."
The dynamic ads are small and will stay up for 20 seconds. (See an example to the left) You will also see post-roll ads for VeriSign. In what I believe is an industry breakthrough, the overlay ads will be inserted into downloadable files on iTunes. While ads have been inserted into downloadable media for some time, this might be the first for overly ads. Comments?
In growing the video streams and managing the innovative insertion of these cool overlay ads, I want to thank Mike Hudack and his team over at Blip.TV for being incredibly helpful in making this happen. Also, thanks to Blip.TV for our beautiful new player!
Our traffic is also building nicely on our YouTube channel. Thanks to the crew out in San Bruno.
Grab the embed code of this interview with Shelly.
— Andy Plesser
Some Personal Updates from the Plesser Clan: I am pleased to report that Benjamin, who graduated Dartmouth in June, has been hired by a leading technology company as a systems consultant. Great job! Maybe he can help me figure out my my business some day? Kathy and I are thrilled. Kathy, who is one of the great women’s breast imagers, has finally started her own medical practice in Manhattan. And, special thanks to my daughter Becky, a sophomore at Colgate, who spent the summer interning for Beet.TV, organizing our library of 350 clips, getting them ready to be integrated with the new ads which launch today.
