Hearst is Transforming Online Video and Itself with Smart Investing in MobiTV, Slingbox, Brightcove and the NewsMarket

View a transcript of this interview

Can old media becomes new media through smart investments?  Tough to say, but Hearst is involved with investments in several promising companies in the online and mobile video space.

I visited Micheal Dunn, Vice President of Hearst Interactive Media.  Michael is involved with evaluating investments and acquisitions in the digital space for Hearst.  He looks a many companies and does due dilligence on prospective deals. 

The company has made investments in some good ones including MobiTV, Slingbox, Brightcove and the NewsMarket.

He told me that Hearst makes investments in companies which will provide a return on investment.  And, equally important are portfolio companies which provide technology ideas that can be valuable to Hearst and its broad range of media properties including newspapapers, magazines, cable television networks, television stations and a multitude of online properties.

Michael has been CTO at Dell and Time Warner.  He’s also longtime videoblogger — check out his skiing videos done with a digital camera and hosted on Blip.TV — looks pretty snazzy to me.

HearstbuildingMichael also helped with technical advice on the new Hearst headquarters which has been getting notices in the technology media, among other places.

Speaking of established media companies and executives making transformations happen, you should read this interview with former Disney CEO Michael Eisner with NewTeeVee’s Liz Gannes.  Interesting to see what he’s up to with the Vuguru.

YouTube Grows as MySpace Video Views are "Treading Water"

Read this report on NewTeeVee about the latest traffic on the major online video sharing site.

Andy Plesser

, , , ,

Posted on 03/29/2007 at 1:45 PM by Andy Plesser

RECENT VIDEOS
AAA
Video Search at a Crossroads with Increased Adoption of ‘Schema’

BOSTON – Effective video search has been limited, largely since  search engines don’t index  images. But things are changing with the implementation of Schema, a technology which allows video producers to “wrap” a transcript as an “object” into a video.    The Schema ...

Posted on 05/19/2013 at 9:42 PM by Andy Plesser

AAA
mDialog Has Dynamic Ad Insertion for Live, Linear Programming

BOSTON – mDialog, the Toront0-based video advertising technology company, has a new product to dynamically insert video advertising  into live programming.  The product launched in collaboration with Brightcove, was announced last month at NAB. Last week at the Brightcove global customer event, we ...

Posted on 05/19/2013 at 9:01 PM by Andy Plesser

AAA
Forbes Ups its Native Advertising with “BrandVoice”

LONDON — With the same publishing platform used by its staff and it network of 1000 contributors, Forbes.com is increasing branded content in the form of articles published on brands micro-sites.   The company is publishing about 8 such articles a day and is expanding into branded video projects, ...

Posted on 05/19/2013 at 3:25 PM by Andy Plesser

517559930_11.jpg
Tumblr Cozies up to Madison Avenue with Agency Program, David Karp Explains

MONACO (originally published 11/20/2012)- Tumblr, which has been a non-commerical blog platform, has announced an agency program for brands who want to share their messages in the form of “story telling,” explains founder and CEO David Karp in this interview with Beet.TV We interviewed  him in ...

Posted on 05/19/2013 at 8:25 AM by Andy Plesser

AAA
Adaptive And Addressable: How Connected TV Could Totally Target Ads

LONDON – GroupM’s Mindshare already targets many conventional TV ads using online data – but the full internet delivery of TV advertising could unleash even greater targetability. Speaking at Beet.TV’s recent London Video Ad Strategy Summit, the group’s chief digital officer Norm ...

Posted on 05/17/2013 at 11:22 AM by Robert Andrews

AAA
Video Recommendation Engine Taboola Goes Mobile with Hearst, Time.com

BOSTON – Taboola, the video recommendation platform, widely deployed on many publisher news sites, is now on mobile devices, on the apps of Time.com and several Hearst U.K. publications, says Adam Singolda, CEO, in this interview with Beet.TV We spoke with him about the growth of Taboola and the ...

Posted on 05/16/2013 at 3:20 PM by Andy Plesser

AAA
‘Joyus,’ Video-Centric Women’s Shopping Site Finds High Views-to-Sales Conversions

BOSTON – Joyus, the San Francisco-based video shopping site for women, which raised $11.5 million in a new venture round earlier this month from Time Warner and others, is finding extremely high conversion rates from video views to product sales, says co-founder Diana Williams in this interview with ...

Posted on 05/16/2013 at 12:05 PM by Andy Plesser

AAA
The Smithsonian Channel Finds an Audience on the Roku

BOSTON – Launched on Roku in October, the Smithsonian Channel is ranked among the most popular apps, attracting 2 million video views a month, says Carlos Zambrano, senior producer at Smithsonian Networks, in this this interview with Beet.TV Also in this this interview, he talks about the channel’s ...

Posted on 05/16/2013 at 10:18 AM by Andy Plesser

AAA
Brightcove CEO Sees Expanding Opportunities with Xbox

BOSTON – While the Xbox grows as a pervasive digital video platform, the number of video apps is quite limited, controlled by Microsoft, but that will likely expand says Brightcove CEO David Mendels.  He says that Brightcove is readying several implementations for the game console. We spoke with him ...

Posted on 05/16/2013 at 9:10 AM by Andy Plesser

AAA
Akamai Has Diagnostic Tool for Individual Viewer Performance

BOSTON – Akamai has expanded its analytics offering to include new functionality to track the individual viewer experience and consumption history, explains Noreen Hafez, senior product marketing manager, in this interview with Beet.TV.  We spoke with her at the Brightcove PLAY customer conference earlier ...

Posted on 05/16/2013 at 5:54 AM by Andy Plesser

Screen shot 2013-05-16 at 12.13.17 PM
Wendy’s Use ‘Photobucket Stories’ for Campaign

Photobucket Stories, a new feature on the recently relaunched Photobucket site, gives users a “digital canvas” on which they tell stories via photos, videos and text. The photo storage and sharing site has also had a couple brands use Photobucket Stories successfully, says David Toner, VP of ...

Posted on 05/15/2013 at 4:52 PM by Katy Charles

Screen shot 2013-05-16 at 11.56.04 AM
Brightcove’s Allaire: The Big Impact of New W3C DRM Standards for Premium Publishers

BOSTON – Thanks to the newly issued standards on DRM for HTM5 video, issued by the W3C on Friday, the digital video industry is finally headed to an industry standard that will lower costs for producers of premium video producers who have been reliant on proprietary solutions from Adobe, Microsoft, Google ...

Posted on 05/15/2013 at 1:05 PM by Andy Plesser