Andy Plesser

Marking the  international the expansion of advertising for its slate of original video shows, GroupM, the media agency umbrella for WPP, has bought the entire slate of shows plus the Makers series about women. Last night at the AOL NewFront event, we spoke with Jack Bamberger, Head of Agency and Industry Relations at AOL, about […]

Microsoft unveiled a slate of new programs for its Xbox gaming console at its NewFront event yesterday and several of shows provide user interactivity.   At the event, we spoke with Scott Ferris, GM of Video Advertising at Microsoft about the new slate, its anticipated appeal for a gaming-oriented audience and the opportunities for advertisers. […]

Ze Frank, the pioneering video blogger and performance artist  who joined BuzzFeed 18 months ago, is running a Los Angeles-based studio that is producing videos that getting 150 million monthly views.   (That number was shared on stage at the BuzzFeed NewFront event by Jonathan Perelman, GM for video.) We spoke with him at the […]

New York Times media and culture and columnist David Carr has been in the forefront of innovative video creation at The New New York Times for about nine years. We caught up with him after The New York Times NewFronts presentation yesterday. He talks with Beet.TV about his approach to video:  keeping it simple and […]

The New York Times is expanding its video production  with some 30 series and has syndication relationships  in place with AOL, YouTube, NDN and Yahoo.  Now it is has a joint production project with a big partner in IAC’s Vimeo, says Rebecca Howard, General Manager of Video at The New York Times, in this interview […]

The two-weeks of presentations in New York of digital video offerings by publishers in what is called the Digital Content NewFronts, is emerging as “futures” market for video buying, akin to TV’s Up Fronts, says Scott Ferber, CEO of video ad tech company Videology, in this interview with Beet.TV He says both the TV and […]

Notwithstanding all the pageantry and hype around the two weeks of presentations by the digital publishers for what is called  the Digital Content NewFronts, there will be deals.  What had been an industry showcase, has become a marketplace, says Michael Kassan, CEO of powerhouse media consultancy MediaLink in this interview with Beet.TV We spoke with […]

Akin to the early days of cable when it a new medium, digital video is emerging as both a cultural force and business, says Randall Rothenberg, CEO of the IAB, the trade association for digital publishers, in this interview with Beet.TV He expects that the two weeks of digital video presentations, called the Digital Content […]

When the Digital Content New Fronts launched in 2008, the medium was Web original video for the desktop.   Fast forward to the revolution in multi-screen consumption —  now the medium is TV-like and that’s a huge opportunity for the industry, explains Erika Nardini, CMO of AOL Advertising, in this video interview with Beet.TV Monday […]

The vision of AOL video chief  Ran Harnevo of a giant, efficient marketplace for video publishers and content creators, which he first launched in Tel Aviv in 2007 with a company called  5Min, and was acquired in 2010 by AOL, has substantially expanded with the today’s news of Microsoft’s MSN becoming the newest distribution platform for […]

The percentage  of non-viewable digital ads has reached nearly 50 percent in the United States, says  Jonah Goodhart, CEO of New York-based Moat, in this interview with Beet.TV.   The start-up provides independent third-party data on ad viewabity to a number of major publishers and advertisers. At the BrightRoll Video Summit this week, the company […]

LAS VEGAS – Over the past four  years,  speculation has been rampant about the entrance of a new Apple hardware/software solution that will revolutionize the IPTV and gaming businesses. But it’s not going to happen, cautions industry analyst Greg Ireland, Research Manager at IDC, the this interview with Beet.TV While Apple can surely introduce an […]

LAS VEGAS  —   As part of Ericsson’s expansion into cloud-based video encoding with its “Virtualized Encoder Solution,” it has tapped Portland, Oregon-based Elemental Technologies, the companies announced at the NAB Show. We sat down with Ericsson’s Giles Wilson, Head of TV Compression, for an overview the company’s expanding role in video encoding and how […]

LAS VEGAS –  Semiconductor manufacturer Qualcomm is now shipping all Android devices with MPEG Dash implementations — and some phone manufacturers (OEM’s) are enabling the new video streaming standard, says Aytac Biber, Video Technology Product Manager, in this interview with Beet.TV Aytac says that Android devices powered by the Snapdragon chip using Dash, stream video […]

LAS VEGAS – Ooyala, the digital video services company, which has been expanding its offering as a “TV Everywhere” platform for big broadcasters including Univision, has entered an agreement with Microsoft for its Azure, cloud-based platform, explains Jonathan Wilner, VP for Products, in this interview with Beet.TV In this interview, he speaks about both the utility […]

LAS VEGAS – MPEG Dash — the emerging live video format for cross-platform streaming, has picked up considerable traction over the twelve months with the participation of major players including Google’s YouTube, Microsoft’s Azure, Adobe Primetime and Akamai, explains Will Law, Chief Media Architect of Akamai, in this interview with Beet.TV Also in the interview, […]

LAS VEGAS —  Microsoft’s global, cloud-based platform for delivering video, called Azure, is gaining momentum and customer wins in the aftermath of its successful streaming of the Winter Olympics, says Bob DeHaven, GM of Worldwide Communications and Media, in this interview with Beet.TV The media offering is also gaining attention in the aftermath of some […]

LAS VEGAS  — One of the top stories from the NAB Show was the accelerated support of streaming  video standard MPEG-Dash, perhaps  most notably with the announcement from Microsoft that it will support Dash with its media solutions. At NAB, we interviewed Iraj Sodagar, Principal Multimedia Architect at Microsoft, about the Dash initiative globally, its […]

SAN FRANCISCO – While measurement tools like Nielsen’s OCR allows TV ad buyers to identify online audiences to match TV buys, which are primarily for “make goods,” there are strong headwinds against changing the way that TV ads are sold via upfronts and other conventional means, explains Amit Seth, Global EVP of Global Media Products […]

LAS VEGAS – Elemental Technologies, the Portland, Oregon-based video encoding software company is powering the “the BBC iPlayer infrastructure,” says CEO Sam Blackman, in this interview with Beet.TV at the NAB Show. For the BBC and other customers, the video encoding happens increasingly in the Amazon “cloud,” he explains.  While hardware solutions had been the […]