Next week Dagens Media is hosting a half-day seminar about online video for media buyers. The event is held at Berns in Stockholm, March 24th. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find the agenda posted online, but it seems really promising with interesting people from all the different parts of the business of in-stream advertising.

Personally, I’m really looking forward to the panel discussion with Aftonbladet, Expressen, TV4 and Kanal 5. I am expecting some badgering on the pro’s and con’s with long-form content versus short-form which can really be interesting. The latter two, being broadcasters, obviously advocates long-form content and it’s tv-like experience while the first two don’t lack arguments for why short-form content is better.

Myself, I’m gonna have 20 minutes on stage to explain what online video advertising is today, how the media is best used and what cool stuff is coming up in the near future. I’m hoping to have enough time to also show some inspiring examples of cool campaigns and talk about the upcoming Swedish IAB guide to in-stream advertising that we’re launching at the event.

Unfortunately the event is already over-booked, but I really encourage you all to try to get in anyway. I think it will be worth the effort!

It’s a shame that I couldn’t find time to visit Barcelona and the MWC last week (I love Barcelona), but luckily our friend Ángel Fernández over at La Vanguardia sent us some very interesting pictures which kinda makes up for it.

La Vanguardia was showcasing some of the latest things together with us, Brightcove and Adobe, and it really is cool. The quality of the images might not live up to the things demoed, but what you see is actually interactive in-stream ads (by Videoplaza), served into a Flash based videoplayer (by Brightcove), running on a normal smartphone (by Google) in the latest version of Flash Player (10.1, by Adobe) that soon is supposed to support most of the smartphones out there.

Now, Adobe’s move with Flash Player on smartphones have generated a lot of buzz and obviously is interesting to follow as the charismatic leader of a leading provider (Apple) recently outed his feelings about Flash at least semi-public.

Whether to do mobile in-stream ads with native apps, Flash or HTML5 is going to be an interesting question for the year to come. We’re already doing two (apps and Flash), have good plans for HTML5 and reality probably is that most of us in this world have to do all three in order to support all devices out there.

But it sure was cool to try this with Flash 10.1 as it required no modifications at all of our regular Flash component to get it up and running. Further, it’s hard to ignore the fact that the entire advertising eco system is kind of leaning towards Flash (big understatement) which makes it hard to push other platforms when you’re selling ads, whether you like it or not.

Ps: Ángel is apologizing for the image quality, claiming that he’s the second worst photographer in the world, but we know that he’s inaccurate as at least two of our team members (#1, #2) have an even worse track record. :)

I’m one of those people who always think things are moving too slow and feel frustrated we’re not growing faster. But sometimes, when I take the time to look back, I realise I’m wrong. This is one of those moments.

Looking back at 2009

Last month Videoplaza turned 2 years old and considering most things happened this year, 2009 just must have been a great year. Looking at some key metrics – that I can share – this is the progress:

• From a simple and basic product to a stable, scalable and value creating product loved by our clients
• From a team of 6 in Stockholm to 15 employees in Stockholm, London and Paris
• From 5 clients in 1 market to 20 in 6 markets
• From losing money to breaking even in November!

Not only has it been a good year for us, it’s been a great year for online video in general. We see that across all the European markets. Many of the experimental projects are turning into real volume businesses, ad networks are getting up to speed, online video is getting its own media budgets etc.

Like most people blogging, I haven’t been as active as I’d wanted to be. Part of it is that I’m more busy now, part of it is the complexity of sharing information as the company grows. Transparency is one Videoplaza’s key values so I really hope we can get better at this next year. We believe it’s important to stay open and human. We believe that is the only way to create true trust and credibility.

What to expect from 2010

Having almost reached profitability last month, we are making huge investments on all areas in 2010 taking the company to the next phase. Below are some bullets on what to expect from us:

• Dramatic increase of the team from 15 to 30-35
• Moving into a new 425m2 office in March that we signed yesterday, (we have some spare space, interested?)
• Increase of our client list with major tier 1 publishers across Europe
• The launch of a partner programme to structure all of our valuable relationships in the video eco system
• Major improvements on all levels with the product – we’re doubling the dev team!
• Exciting stuff on the world of syndication and third party ad serving
• More and better integrations with video ad networks
• Experimental projects with new platforms such as the iPhone, IPTV, media centers etc.
• More research to better understand and prove the value of instream advertising – first part of that will be published in Q1
• Happier and more profitable clients

With this blog post I’m now ready to close the lid of my Macbook and start my holiday.

Best wishes from me and the Videoplaza team from a white Stockholm!

The photo is from my kitchen window if you wonder :)

When at Streaming Media Europe a month ago or so, our CEO Sorosh Tavakoli was interviewed by Intruders.tv. The interview, that I think is actually one of the better with him, is now available online. It covers among many things the story on how Videoplaza came about and how we help publishers monetise online video.

Enjoy!

It’s crazy over here at Videoplaza. In a good way. Things are simply taking off.

With a product that is maturing, with explosive growth of online video consumption (and ad revenues) and a really positive outlook for the year to come: We feel that we need to shift gears and take Videoplaza to the next level.

We have a leading position on in-stream video ad serving in Europe. In just two years, we’ve grown to be 15 people in three countries. We have about 20 clients in five markets and the overall inventory is growing exponentially.

But with the pace things are happening now, we simply have to ramp up. 2010 is the year when Videoplaza will conquer Europe and to keep up with bold words like that, we need to expand – big time.

Let me just cut the bs and tell you this:

• We are recruiting 10 new Videoplaza rock-stars before the end of Q1 2010.
• 6 of these positions are developer roles described here. The others are for sales and admin, please drop us a line if you’re interested.
• Already now, our office is completely cramped. So we’re moving our headquarters to a new Stockholm location (TBA) – more than three times the size of our current.

With this push we’re confident that we will keep (and extend) our lead on in-stream video ad serving. We are the domain experts and intend to remain the best at what we do.

To achieve that, we can work with nothing less than the best people available. Finding 10 of those in one push is obviously going to be a challenge, so please help us out and spread the word.

Thanks!

Hi everyone, it’s time for me to introduce myself. My name is Johanna Tamker and I’m the new Marketing Manager here at Videoplaza. Coincidentally — this is a tech start-up you know — I’m also the first girl at the office.

As I’m writing this, I have just started my second week and I must say I’m thrilled to be part of the Videoplaza crew. It sure is exhausting to keep up with the pace now in the beginning, but I dare say impossible to find nicer people or a more intriguing field of business.

To sum my first week up I would have to say challenging, engaging and loads of fun. Next week it’s off to London to meet Gavin, our UK rep, and attend the Admonster dinner with him and Sorosh on the 3rd.

You’re going to hear more from me on the blog around up-coming events, trade shows, seminars etc so make sure to keep a lookout.

The webinar with Brightcove went smooth and without hiccups. We are quite happy with the outcome and realise that we should do this more often.

If you missed to tune in or want to share with friends and colleagues, here’s the presentation.

Our partners Brightcove will be hosting a webinar together with us on Thursday (November 26th) to discuss instream video monetisation. The webinar will focus on best practices together with a case study on how we helped Kanal 5, one of Sweden’s largest broadcasters, to more than double their online video ad revenues. Sorosh will will be presenting the case from our side.

The webinar is an open invite so if your are interested in attending sign up at: http://www.brighttalk.com/channels/7143/view

One bad thing about this time of the year is the Stockholm weather. A better thing about November is all the conferences and awards. Tonight, we’re crossing our fingers that our nomination for this year’s SIME Awards will be fruitful.

But even if that doesn’t turn out to be the case, we can get our hopes up for the next award as we’ve just been nominated to IDG’s IT Business Awards.

Hope to see you at SIME tonight or at Clarion the 26th!

We have crossed the Baltic sea and have our very first Finnish customer CityVice Network. These guys are genuine entrepreneurs with a long background in the online video industry creating quality content for different partners in their network.

It’s great to see that CityVice Network use Monetizer as a way of charging for their content. It really shows a shift in the media landscape where content providers, not just publishers, are able profit from advertising.

CityVice Network did a great job getting the top fashion bloggers of Finland to create and distribute their personal online fashion videos. The campaign was sponsored by H&M ads served by Videoplaza, the perfect advertiser for the perfect crowd.

Press release & some coverage in TechCrunch