Henry Blodget at the Sillicon Alley Insider writes a quite interesting post titled Sorry, there’s no way to save the TV business today. I think he manages to summarize the big shift that the industry is going through quite well. I think this quote is right on the spot:

This is where the future is going.  That’s obvious.  The only question is how long it takes us to get there–and who gets killed along the way.

July first will be an intersting day as I’ll be speaking and participating in a panel at the Future of Broadcasting in London. The event has quite an exciting line up of speakers (of course I say that :) ) that will discuss the future of broadcasting.

I’ll be presenting our take on how to monetise online video as well as you must and talk about how our Swedish broadcast clients are enabled to make as much money from online as from broadcast.

Here’s the agenda:

SESSION SIX: BREAKING INTO THE MAINSTREAM? OPPORTUNITIES IN VIDEO ON-DEMAND

• 11:15 -
  A remarkable year: the progress of iPlayer and the wider on-demand market
  Anthony Rose
  Head, Online Media Group, BBC
  
• 11:35 -
  A wider perspective: assessing ad-funded on-demand
  Michelangelo Volpi
  Chief Executive Officer, Joost
  
• 11:55 -
  Swapping analogue dollars for digital dollars: business models for successful online video monetisation
  Sorosh Tavakoli
  Chief Executive Officer, Videoplaza
  
• 12:15 -
  Bringing on-demand to your living room. Analysing the television on-demand marketplace
  Asanga Gunatillaka
  Head of Commercial & Strategy, TV, Virgin Media
  
• 12:35 -
  A US perspective: an insiders look at Hulu
  Johannes Larcher
  Senior Vice-President, International, Hulu
  
• 12:55 -
  PANEL DISCUSSION: examining the future for on-demand services

  A number of prominent figures in the world of on-demand discuss the future of on-demand services, the impact of technological advances and how to engage audiences who have an increasing number of services to choose from.

  Johannes Larcher
  Senior Vice-President, International, Hulu
  Anthony Rose
  Head, Online Media Group, BBC
  Michael Comish
  Chief Executive Officer, Blinkbox
  Asanga Gunatillaka
  Head of Commercial & Strategy, TV, Virgin Media
  Michelangelo Volpi
  Chief Executive Officer, Joost
  Sorosh Tavakoli
  Chief Executive Officer, Videoplaza

Today is a big day as we are launching our first two clients in the UK! We have signed Incisive Media and Factory media, both launching sometime during the day on mpora.com and vnunet.com.

Below is the official press release going out today. If you are attending the IAB event later today, make sure we meet up!

PRESS RELEASE

Videoplaza signs first UK Clients

Incisive Media, Factory Media first UK sites to use video dedicated ad server to monetise time

London, June 4th, 2009 – VIDEOPLAZA, announces its first UK clients for its ‘built for video’ ad server platform – Monetizer. Factory Media and Incisive Media will both launch online video advertising services, through Videoplaza, to capitalise on the growing popularity of online video.

Videoplaza, a privately owned company, based in Stockholm and London, enables clients to manage, present and track online video advertising. It has developed an ad server platform that can increase revenues and demonstrate media value, from advertising placed in and around their online video content. Working with leading broadcasters, news media, business and consumer publishers in five countries, Videoplaza’s ad server technology, creative ad formats and real-time reporting enables clients to monetise the time users spend watching online video, rather than started streams.

Factory Media’s extreme sports video channel Mpora will offer advertisers and sponsors access to its valuable audiences using Interactive Pre, Mid and Post Roll advertising. The channel will also use In-stream overlays, served within the video content, a format proving popular with advertisers and users alike and also Companion Ads synchronised with a client’s video ads.

Incisive Media a leading business information provider, is implementing Videoplaza’s ad server to offer exciting new opportunities for brands and B2B advertisers to target its high value audiences, starting with the IT professional community VNUnet

By adopting Videoplaza’s ad server platform both companies will be able to more effectively manage their online video advertising inventory, optimize client campaigns and demonstrate improved advertiser ROI, in terms of advertising exposure and engagement. The deals will also introduce the next generation interactive preroll format to the market called the iRoll.

John Barnes, Managing Director - Digital Strategy and Development UK & Asia for Incisive Media stated “We see a great opportunity in video and want to be equipped with the best monetisation tool in the market. We have chosen to work with Videoplaza not just because of their technology, this company understands this space and has made it work in other markets.”

According to Darryl Newton, Managing Director, Factory Media, “Mpora.com is now a significant part of our business, with over 2 million video streams served each month. Demand for advertising on our platform is growing incrementally and clients are particularly excited by creative video solutions. Working with Videoplaza we feel we can meet the needs of these customers better by offering more dynamic and engaging formats combined with video specific reporting such as engagement rates and time spent with the ads.

Sorosh Tavakoli, Founder and CEO for Videoplaza added “We are delighted to announce agreements with these two great innovative publishers. We are doing everything we can to repeat the success from the Swedish market where more and more publishers have profitable online video products.”

Videoplaza has been in the UK since January 2009 and is building a local team to advise and support both local media owners and international networks based in London.

For further information contact:
Sorosh Tavakoli, Founder and CEO Videoplaza
+44 7530 885 492
sorosh@videoplaza.com

John Barnes, Managing Director - Digital Strategy and Development UK & Asia, Incisive Media
+44 (0)20 7316 9007
john.barnes@incisivemedia.com

Darryl Newton, Managing Director, Factory Media
+44 (0)20 7332 9700
darryl.newton@factorymedia.com

Download the press release as pdf

Today the four largest print publishers in Denmark, Berlingske Media, Ekstra Bladet, Jyllands Posten and Børsen and 4 big advertisers have come together to kickstart the online video advertising market in Denmark!

Having had video for a long time and many of them having huge traffic, they are finally monetising this valuable asset in a proper way. From today, their videos are monetised through prerolls, overlays and companion banners all using Videoplaza.

However interesting this is, what I would like to tell you about is the story behind all of this. It isn’t too often you get the 4 largest players in a market to cooperate in this way. So here it comes: The story behind the Danish online video monetisation kickstart project – 4 publishers, 4 advertisers, 3 months, 3 iterations.

The story behind

When looking at expansion to Denmark, we quickly realised the huge challenge waiting for us. Nobody (almost) ran prerolls, hence the knowledge in the market was low both at sellers and buyers. We couldn’t even get meetings booked.

This is when we got in contact with Tim Frank Andersen and his Brandzation, now our exclusive partner in Denmark. They came up with the kickstart idea saying:

”if there is no market for this, let’s create it!”.

The publishers were quite clear that they couldn’t cover the big costs of producing, managing and distributing video with the extra display revenues they created. There needed to be something else. The problem was that nobody wanted to take the lead and invest in launching new formats into the market. This is understandable since there’s no know-how and making a try is quite resource intensive. But what if we, Videoplaza, could bring the know-how and we could do it all together?

After a number of meetings and brainstorming sessions, we finally had the sales managers of the four largest print publishers in Denmark around the table. And today they are all going live with 4 of the largest advertisers in Denmark, De Gule Sider, Nordisk Film, Nykredit and SAS, finally moving to a profitable video product!

Our role

We have contributed to the project in two ways - technology and know-how. Our product Monetizer is being used by all the publishers to manage, serve and track the ads in and around the video. The publishers are all running us parallell to their traditional display ad server, most of them using Adtech. And having run more than 100 campaigns for publishers in different countries, we have also a good feeling for how to package, price and sell this new inventory.

The kickstart project

The kickstart project will run for 3 months and consists of 3 iterations. We will use prerolls, overlay banners and companion banners. Every month we will try different setups and do research around it. We are also looking at the effects of the advertising together with Gallup. The purpose is to go beyond the click and look at what happens in the head from a brand lift perspective. We hope to publish some of the results here.

We hope this project will get this market started. It’s not just about chosing the same technology, it’s also about setting a standard for trading and to really dig deep to understand more about the final value created for the end client, the advertisers.

What this means for us

For us as a company it’s of course nice to grab an entire market in one go. Working with Ekstra bladet means also now that we have our first tabloid client. And not to be forgotten, today is the day we go live outside Sweden!

If you need help kickstarting your online video advertising market, you now know who to call.

Read more here: TechCrunch, ArcticStartup, Resumé (SE) & Dagens Media (SE).

About a month ago IAB UK released the Video Guide where Alfred Ruth was one of the contributors. June 4th, the guide will be printed and there’s a small launch event for that organizied by the IAB at their offices at 14 Macklin Street. It’s titled: Online video advertising: pause, play and fast forward.

I’ll be one on the speakers together with Nancy Cruickshank from the Telegraph, Sharon Braude from Media Contacts and Kieron Matthews from the IAB.

Read more and signup here.

One of the main events of 2009 for Videoplaza will be the Admonsters event in Prague June 7-9th. I’ve come across Admonsters a couple of times and I’ve only been hearing good things about it and after meeting Matt O’Niell, who heads things up there, a couple of times my impression is that they are doing a lot of things right.

Admonsters is basically one of very few forums for ad ops people to meet and share knowledge about what is happening in this more and more complex world of ad serving. We are a result of that complexity, adding a new nische product to the current eco system of products out there solving different problems.

We are proud GOLD sponsors at the big Prague event which means we can spend a lot of time with the Admonster members. It will be a very good opportunity for us to show what we can offer but also to learn more about our users.

From Videoplaza, we will have me, Alfred Ruth our VP Products and Magnus Hultman our VP Sales attending. If you are also attending, we are all looking forward to meet you there!

(…and if you are working with ad ops, make sure you get your self a ticket straight away!)

Mike Butcher and his gang will hit Stockholm on Wednesday this week to gather the Swedish, or maybe even the Nordic, startup scene. I think they will be quite successful as there are a lots of good people signed up for the event already.

I’ll be on the Investment Panel about trends in startups and funding at 4:50pm.

You can register for the event here and if you will be there, make sure we connect!

Also, I can tell you that we will be making an announcement that day that I think will be quite fun!

Cheers

When over in Paris a couple of weeks ago to kick things off and for the Ad:tech conference, Franck Perrier did a  video interview with me about Videoplaza. Below is the video and here is the link to his blog post (translated in English here).

And regarding the French market, Sophie is coming up to speed and building a good base now. We are also working on a French part for this blog that she will manage. Stay tuned within the coming couple of weeks for more info on that.

If you are based in Paris or just passing by, make sure to meet up with Sophie over a coffee! She can be reached at +33 6 70 01 90 48 or sophie@videoplaza.com.

Au revoir.

Since last summer we’ve been part of the IAB UK Video Council contributing to the brand new Video Guide that was released today. The guide contains comprehensive information addressing most of the questions still surrounding the business of online video advertising, and hopefully it will play it’s role in growing the business for us all by making it easier for media buyers to grasp the subject.

An important part of the handbook is the new guidelines on ad formats. The idea is that publishers and technology providers should adapt to these guidelines and thus enable creative assets to be reused across different sites without adaptation. We’re of course doing our part of the job to enable that.

Here in Sweden, we’re trying hard to catch up. I’m chairing IAB Sweden’s Video Task Force and I assure you that a Swedish guideline is on it’s way. Let’s get these prerolls, midrolls, postrolls and overlays standardized world wide!

To our clients this is old news, but we have switched CDN partner to world famous Akamai. As you can read in Akamai’s press release, we’re more than happy with the performance that we have experienced for a couple of months now.

The reason for switching is simple: To be able to bring our clients the most reliable service with the best possible end user experience, our choice of CDN partner is crucial and Akamai is simply the best CDN available. It doesn’t matter if your discussing bandwitdh, reliability, response times or global coverage — Akamai seem to win on every point.

Here’s some impressive facts about the Akamai network (and thus our performance and reliability):

• The network handles more than 300 billion requests every day
• 10-20% of the total internet traffic is handled by Akamai
• The network consists of about 42 000 servers in 70 countries and 950 networks
• Akamai servers are one hop (as close as you can get) from 85% of the world’s internet users

More stats here, and if you’re as nerdy as I am, you can be impressed by the live visualization of Akamai’s traffic. 4-5 million http requests every second…

Anyway, bottom line is that the Videoplaza experience is now powered by the best CDN available. Regardless of where in the world your audience happen to reside, we can now provide the best possible end user experience available.