Online TV and video to increase ten-fold by 2012

Online TV and video will generate global revenues of $6.3bn (£3.2bn) by 2012, according to Informa's report Online TV and Video: Beyond User-Generated Content.

The report found that revenues will increase by ten times in the next five years.

UK revenues will leap from $42m (£21.5m) in 2006 to $364m (£186m) in 2009 and $708m (£361.7m) in 2012, predicted Informa. The report forecast that the UK will remain the second largest market for online TV and video, behind the US which will have a market worth $3.9bn (£2bn) by 2012.

Broadcast companies will have to be aware of the internet impacting on their core businesses, the report concluded. It found that those involved in deals with online TV and video providers like iTunes Video and YouTube stand the best chance of success.

informamedia.com

Adobe and its P2P Ambitions

Excerpted from GigOM Report by Om Malik

Adobe Systems, owner of Flash multimedia technology, seems to be getting serious about spreading its tentacles into new product categories – from VoIP to P2P networking. But it is P2P that is at the heart of the company’s grand design.

In pursuit of this strategy, the company has acquired amicima, a privately held start-up founded in 2004 to “develop improved Internet protocols for client-server and P2P networking, and to develop new applications based on these protocols.”

Amicima’s publicly available product is amiciPhone, a P2P-based VoIP client that combines presence, text messaging, and file transfers with voice chat.

Adobe also recently announced a partnership with DCIA Member VeriSign, owner of the Kontiki grid content distribution platform. Earlier this month, VeriSign told us, “We will be collaborating with Adobe for delivery of Flash video including movies, TV shows, broadcast media, and user interface technologies.”

The two companies expect to work together to integrate future versions of next generation media technologies leveraging VeriSign’s Kontiki P2P technology and Adobe’s award winning Flash Video software.

Adobe could bundle Kontiki’s command-and-control P2P technology into a forthcoming version of Flash. Given the wide scale adoption of Flash, Adobe-Kontiki will be able to create an Internet-wide P2P cloud.

Publishers are expected to be able to lower their development, quality assurance, and customer support costs because the combined Flash/VeriSign service reduces the problems of deploying video on-demand applications across multiple platforms and browsers.

The Adobe-VeriSign combo could also help overcome some of the issues surrounding the current torrent-based content distribution systems.

Bill Gates: "Net to revolutionise TV in 5 years"

DAVOS: The Internet is set to revolutionise television within five years, due to an explosion of online video content and the merging of PCs and TV sets, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said on Saturday.

“I’m stunned how people aren’t seeing that with TV, in five years from now, people will laugh at what we’ve had,” he told business leaders and politicians at the World Economic Forum. The rise of high-speed Internet and the popularity of video sites like Google’s YouTube has already led to a worldwide decline in the number of hours spent by young people in front of a TV set.

In the years ahead, more and more viewers will hanker after the flexibility offered by online video and abandon conventional broadcast television, with its fixed programme slots and advertisements that interrupt shows, Gates said.
“Certain things like elections or the Olympics really point out how TV is terrible. You have to wait for the guy to talk about the thing you care about or you miss the event and want to go back and see it,” he said. “Internet presentation of these things is vastly superior.”

At the moment, watching video clips on a computer is a separate experience from watching sitcoms or documentaries on television. But convergence is coming, posing new challenges for TV companies and advertisers.

“Because TV is moving into being delivered over the internet — and some of the big phone companies are building up the infrastructure for that — you’re going to have that experience all together,” Gates said. YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley said the impact on advertising would be profound, with the future promising far more targeted ads tailored to each viewer’s profile.

“In the coming months we’re going to do experiments to see how people interact with these ads to build an effective model that works for advertisers and works for users,” he said. Advertisers are already racing to adapt their strategies to the growing power of the web, and more and more promotional cash is tipped to migrate from television to websites in future.

37 Percent of Broadband Consumers Are Interested in Having TV on Their PC

JupiterResearch has found that there is no industry consensus regarding business models or expectations for video delivered via TV, PC and mobile devices. Detailed in a new report, "Programming for Three Screens: Leverage PC and Mobile Video to Support Core TV Efforts," media company and consumer interest in broadband video continues to grow, but strategies for building a business out of broadband video remain elusive.

Media companies are increasingly jumping to offer video on an ad-supported basis, for sale as a download, via subscriptions, and as rentals. However, no clearly winning strategy has emerged, and revenues from all these models will remain modest for the next several years. JupiterResearch argues that the main benefit to Internet-delivered video lies in building the audience, or increasing audience loyalty, for traditionally delivered television programming.

"Broadband video nicely complements TV today, but this grace period won't last forever," said Joe Laszlo, Senior Analyst and Research Director with JupiterResearch. "Substitution of Internet video for traditionally delivered video will grow over the next few years, and media companies must account for this coming audience shift in their mid-to-long term plans.

Recommendations from friends and Internet search remain the two most important factors leading people to watch videos online.

"There are many tactics that media programmers should employ to increase interest in online video," said David Schatsky, President of JupiterKagan. "For example, by including an e-mail this video link on a page, or using URLs short enough to paste into an IM window, programmers can facilitate audience growth."

The complete findings of this report and recommendations for media programmers are immediately available to JupiterResearch clients online at http://www.jupiterresearch.com/. For details on JupiterResearch's methodology, visit www.jupiterresearch.com/bin/item.pl/methodology/A>

UGC video to dominate by 2010

by Shankar Gupta, Tuesday, January 16, 2007

USER-GENERATED VIDEO, WHICH MADE UP 47% of the online video market in 2006, will grow to encompass 55% of the market by the end of 2010, according to a report released Monday by media research firm Screen Digest. But despite the growth, video created by consumers will account for just 15% of overall video ad revenue by 2010, the report states.

Screen Digest predicts that ad revenue for user-generated video will grow to $900 million in 2010 from $200 million in 2006 compared to overall video ad revenue of $6.2 billion in 2010, up from $1.2 billion in 2006--maintaining roughly the same proportion over the four years of traffic growth.

Ads on user-created videos are expected to lag both because marketers will be wary of placing ads next to potentially racy clips and because they are afraid of consumer resentment, if the ads are seen as intrusive, said Screen Digest Senior Analyst Arash Amel.

"User-generated video is going to have a lot of issues to resolve before it becomes an effective advertising medium," he said. "There's how will people react to personal media with ads, and how will advertisers feel sitting around rude or offensive content."

At the same time, Amel said it's likely that technical issues surrounding the monetization of short-form user-generated video will be resolved--especially given search giant Google's entrée into the space, with its purchase of YouTube in October. "If Google can't make this ad model work, nobody can," he said.

He added that the broad array of user-generated content sites will have to diversify, in order to separate themselves from market leaders YouTube and MySpace. "With the dominance of YouTube and MySpace Video, smaller sites are going to need to have something different," he said. "Emerging alternatives include online editing, revenue sharing with content producers and hybrid services which offer both premium and user generated content."

Thanks to Marty Lafferty from the DCIA for tip!

The Venice Project - not so new or revolutionary perhaps?

Finally someone sees through the myth (From Staci D. Kramer's article on the Venice Project in PaidContent):

"Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, the creators of the three services and the technology behind them, have Google or Jobs-like status when it comes to new projects: they could start work on a stealth grocery list and people would clamor to see it, be part of it, do their shopping for them, invest in the grocery store. That’s not to say the Venice Project wouldn’t be worthy of attention otherwise but it’s certainly the reason TVP is already on its way to being one of the most-hyped broadband video/TV efforts in a category where start-ups are multiplying as fast as tribbles.

So what is The Venice Project? A code name for a service that would allow viewers to watch high-quality streaming professional video (movies, TV, etc.) using p2p instead of a central server and meshing TV with web capabilities like tagging and search. The plan calls for working with content providers to distribute legit content—no, this isn’t the first p2p effort to do that—and, as the FAQ says, to make it “as TV-like as we can, with programmes, channels and adverts.” They also want to mesh TV and web in terms of revenue—advertising with rev sharing. Limited beta started last month and the list is already closed to new would-be testers; so far, no live TV."

Read the rest of the article by clicking link below:
The Venice Project: Better Title Might Be YAITVP (Yet Another Internet TV Project)

P2P company joins A2IM

The P2P advocate organisation DCIA today announced that DCIA Member INTENT MediaWorks, a provider of technology for online distribution of licensed digital media, is partnering with fellow Member Nettwerk Music Group to distribute Nettwerk’s large and ever expanding catalog of artists, such as Barenaked Ladies, Sarah McLachlan, and Avril Lavigne.

Nettwerk has been responsible for the release of over 400 albums that have amassed worldwide sales in excess of 100 million copies, including multiple number one albums and singles.

“INTENT’s approach to digital distribution takes advantage of the sheer volume of the peer-to-peer (P2P) audience in a meaningful manner. It combines the promotional, marketing, and revenue tools necessary for artists to take control of their art and career.”

INTENT puts licensed music and video into general circulation via P2P networks, websites, and social networking destinations. Its technology tracks each file as it makes its way through the Internet for rights holders.

More revolutionary perhaps, is that INTENT also announced this week that they have joined the American Association of Independent Music (A2IM), representing a broad coalition of independent music labels. The organization is committed to promoting sector opportunity and enhancing market share for its membership.

“With nearly 30% of the market, indies are gaining prominence at a rapid pace. INTENT offers a way for these artists to significantly accelerate their market presence and adoption,” said Les Ottolenghi, CEO of INTENT MediaWorks.

“People have shared music for decades and online channels are a natural evolution of the practice. File sharers represent behavioral marketing at its best and should be embraced. INTENT brings much needed structure to the P2P market with a platform for profitable and consumer-friendly distribution of digital entertainment,” he added.

INTENT MediaWorks CEO Les Ottolenghi will deliver the opening keynote address at the upcoming P2P MEDIA SUMMIT NY, where RawFlow's CEO Mikkel Dissing will also be a keynote speaker.