Robert Andrews
TV Apps Maker 24i Media Coming To America
AMSTERDAM — Content owners who want to get their content on new smart TV platforms frequently need technology vendor help. One such TV app maker, 24i Media of the Netherlands, is expanding globally on this quest. “We probably will start an office this year in the United States in order to be closer to our clients,” […]
Cracking Device Fragmentation High On IBC Agenda, Brightcove CTO Lai
AMSTERDAM — Speaking with multiple online video players at the International Broadcasting Convention, you get the feeling the industry has converged on one main challenge this year – how to deliver video to a burgeoning number of different devices. “We see device fragmentation,” Boston-based Brightcove media and broadcast services CTO Albert Lai tells Beet.TV in […]
Brightcove CEO Sees Fundamental Video Shift
AMSTERDAM — One of the biggest beasts amongst online video technology vendors says the space has never seen such change. “We are at a time of fundamental change in the way people are delivering video, and it’s all driven by consumers,” Brightcove CEO David Mendels tells Beet.TV in this video interview at the IBC show. […]
‘Near-Time’ Ad Bidding Rising in Programmatic Landscape, Magna’s Argyilan
SAN FRANCISCO – Just when many in the industry are excitedly committing to buying targeted ad slots using automated, real-time bidding systems, some publishers want to slow down the real-time clock – and one agency group is backing them. “Today, (real-time bidding) is known as being motivated by trying to drive prices down as low […]
Kaltura Finds Broad Adoption of Video Solution in Higher Education & the Enterprise
Online video technology provider Kaltura sees a growing business line in the growing movement to revolutionize education. The firm, which began by offering open-source software, has been offering its services to colleges for some time. But CEO and co-founder Ron Yekutiel reckons there is further promise in the “flipped classroom” movement, in which students would […]
Qualcomm To Put Adaptive-Bitrate Video Standard On More Phones
AMSTERDAM — Delivering adaptive-bitrate video streaming efficiently to smartphones could soon get much easier, with mobile chip maker Qualcomm pledging to use the MPEG-DASH video standard in a broader range of devices. “We believe it is the right direction for the video industry,” Qualcomm senior product manager Aytec Biber tells Beet.TV in this video interview […]
Adaptive MPEG Streams Gain Backing From Microsoft, Others
AMSTERDAM — At the International Broadcasting Convention, a video standard that enables high-quality live streaming from conventional HTTP servers took a step forward to satisfy content rightsholders. Microsoft announced the next version of its forthcoming PlayReady digital rights management standard would support the so-called MPEG-DASH standard in Windows 8.1 and Internet Explorer 11. “You can […]
HBO Nordic’s Backer Looks Beyond Scandinavia
AMSTERDAM — When US TV operator HBO launched a VOD service in to the Nordic countries 13 months ago, HBO Nordic, it was as a joint project with local digital video tech firm, Parsifal. Now the latter says it wants to pull off similar tricks elsewhere around the world. “We’re looking in a lot of […]
Irdeto Offers Multi-DRM Choice For Multi-Screen World
AMSTERDAM — In a world of competing technology standards, vying for lock-in, it can be tempting to back a favorite candidate. But one video tech firm is supporting multiple digital rights management standards, so as to not isolate any clients or potential customers. We take an agnostic perspective on rights,” says Irdeto Americas sales VP […]
Rovi tries to crack video compression’s chicken-and-egg problem
Six months after H.265, branded “High Efficiency Video Encoding (HEVC)”, was ratified as the successor to the widely-used H.264 video compression standard, there is lingering suspicion that adoption will be as rapid as its forebear. But video tech firm Rovi has given the new standard one shot in the arm by unveiling the latest version […]
LiveRail CEO: Holiday Quarter Will Be Huge For Programmatic Video
SAN FRANCISCO — Publishers’ behind-the-scenes ground-laying is bubbling up to make this winter a blow-out season in advertisers’ embrace of automated video ad buying, says one founder at the epicenter of the trend. “We’ve seen a lot of big publishers preparing for what they expect to be a very, very large Q4,” Mark Trefgarne, CEO […]
Rovi bets consumers will push Hollywood’s HEVC adoption
AMSTERDAM — The next-generation video compression codec to succeed the popular H.264 standard promises up to 50 percent smaller video sizes for cheaper online transmission – if the industry can ignite both consumer demand and producer inertia. To jump-start adoption of the so-called “High-Effiency Video Compression” (HEVC) – or H.265 – codec, video tech firm […]
Dailymotion’s Vine-like Rival Targets Amateur Creatives
SAN FRANCISCO — YouTube rival Dailymotion may commonly be thought of as a French video site – but that hasn’t stopped it hiring a Silicon Valley development team to build its recently-launched Vine competitor. “Mobile’s been a huge focus for us,” north America GM Roland Hamilton tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “We just expanded […]
Livestation Tries Brand Videos, Mid-Rolls To Make Live News Pay
SAN FRANCISCO — Live TV news rebroadcaster Livestation has spent the last few years building up its portfolio of 49 partner channels. Now it is trying to strike a balance between those conventional linear news sources and a new line-up of ad formats. “We have pre-roll advertising, we also have display advertising,” CEO Lippe Oosterhof […]
Nielsen’s Amit Seth: ‘OCR’ is Going Global
SAN FRANCISCO — It’s exactly two years since Nielsen attempted to bring TV-style audience measurement to online video for advertisers, through its Online Campaign Ratings (OCR) metric. Twenty-four months on, the metric is “Well under way to being the standard,” says Nielsen’s global media products EVP Amit Seth in this interview. “This last upfront season, […]
Magna Global NA President Argyilan: Media Buying Models “Will Fall Apart in Two Years”
SAN FRANCISCO – Hold on to your hats. The decades-old way advertising has been bought and sold could start to collapse in 24 months. “A lot of media companies have been good money with the old model,” IPG Mediabrands’ Magna Global north America president Kristi Argyilan tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “Our hypothesis is […]
BuzzFeed Videos Hit 350 Million Views As Outfit Reaches Profit
Irreverent publisher BuzzFeed’s eclectic approach to web content may be paying off. In a staff memo published on LinkedIn (via TechCrunch), founder Jonah Peretti says the outfit “booked record profit in August”. And Peretti opens up on BuzzFeed’s video strategy, too, saying: “Ze Frank has recruited a talented team of video producers who have created 570 videos, with […]
Bloomberg’s Online Video Investment Shows Promise
When Beet.TV filmed this video interview with Bloomberg’s video development head Chris Berend in April, he gave an insight in to how the financial news publisher was producing a whopping 200 online clips a day. Now Berend’s strategy seems to be paying off. DigiDay reports Bloomberg surpassed rival Dow Jones for global unique visitors and streams […]
AOL On’s O’Connor: Help Ad Buyers Avoid Sticker Shock
NEW YORK — AOL On operations VP Michael O’Connor used Beet.TV’s Video Ad Effectiveness Summit to call on analytics firms to give advertizers more insight about likely wasted spend. O’Connor said: “Sticker shock is driven by waste … metrics are still inefficient because they only measure a campaign after the campaign’s launched … the publishers hate […]
Nielsen Beet Summit: New Video Landscape Requires New Tech Tools
NEW YORK — One common thread to emerge at Beet.TV’s Video Ad Effectiveness Summit was how the new reality of online video consumption today is calling producers and measurers alike to reinvent their in-house toolsets. “Research used to be figuring out what worked and what didn’t work after something ended,” Nielsen client services SVP Andrew Feigenson told […]