Beet.TV

Comedy site JibJab has raised $7.5 million in Series C funding from investors including Overbrook Entertainment and Sony Pictures, Jason Kincaid at TechCrunch reported. Andy interviewed JibJab CEO Greg Spiridellis at the TimeWarner Politics ’08 Summit in October about politics and comedy on the web, and I republished the interview today.

With the 2009 CES International conference kicking off tomorrow, everyone in the tech world is in–or watching–Las Vegas. The conference may be smaller than last year, but the media is just as eager to see what gadget goodies the tech companies have in store. In this video, CNET News.com Executive Editor Tom Merritt reviews the […]

Online TV delivery service Move Networks more than doubled the number of viewers watching its streamed content in 2008 to 55 million a year, up from 25 million in 2007, the company announced yesterday. Although those numbers are modest compared with big video sites, like Hulu, which streams to around 23 million viewers a month, […]

Famous angel investor Ron Conway called product placement "the next multibillion dollar industry" at TechCrunch50 earlier this summer. But there needs to be a standardization of the buying process before that happens, according to Paul Kontonis, CEO of the web video studio For Your Imagination.

Leading online media studio For Your Imagination introduced two new networks in 2009: personal finance network GEQ and fashion network Glampede, CEO Paul Kontonis told me at the Mogulus studio in SoHo last month. Video social entertainment platform Joost will begin distributing the new shows, as well as shows from existing FYI networks The Green […]

How-to video site 5min has made its VideoSeed distribution platform, launched last month, a free service for site publishers, Beet.TV has learned. We are the first to break this news. The move is win-win: site publishers can add related video content to their sites for free, and 5min expands the number of monthly uniques its […]

In an interview with earlier this month, Vizu CEO Dan Beltramo confirmed what we've been hearing for a while now: Pre-roll is the most effective method of brand advertising online. Period. And he has the numbers to back it up; in a food item campaign Vizu analyzed, pre-roll had six times the brand lift of […]

Peter Kafka, who debuted his daily blog MediaMemo on AllThingsD in October, writes today that the ad recession will last at least another year — making it the longest ad recession since The Depression. Which is, well, depressing. At our marathon filming day at the Mogoulus studio in Soho earlier this month, Peter described the […]

Starting today and for the next two weeks, Beet.TV's 800 videos will feature a 30 second post-roll ad campaign for "Changing the Present," a nonprofit organization that connects consumers with a choice of 1500 charitable gifts.  Earlier this month, I interviewed Executive Creative Director Kevin McKeon of StrawberryFrog, the highly regarded advertising agency responsible for […]

Verizon plans to expand its FiOS and broadband service, which began the first year of its local franchise agreement with New York City in July, to over three million residential units in the city over the next five or six years, Executive Director of Network Operations Chris Levendos says in this interview. Andy was among […]

Playable search engine SeeqPod will introduce a Windows mobile application tomorrow that will bring all the free music on the Internet to mobile phones. Users simply have to search for a song, and if it exists anywhere on the web–legally or illegally–SeeqPod will find it with its crawling and indexing technology.

Joost, which Portfolio previously described as going “from superhero from life support,” is attempting a comeback, CNET’s Caroline McCarthy writes today. Part of its revamping includes its new iPhone application, which I interviewed CEO Mike Volpi about from his London office via Skype earlier this month. I republished the interview here. —Kelsey Blodget, Associate Producer

Advertisers spend seven to eight percent of their budgets online, but only a tiny percentage of that goes toward brand advertising, according to Vizu CEO Dan Beltramo. Many prefer click-through ads because they’re easier to measure, but Vizu has developed a brand lift measurement system called Ad Catalyst to help change that.    "With accountability […]

Google web browser Chrome is leaving beta, Marissa Mayer told Michael Arrington today at the Le Web conference in Paris. I republished my interview with Marissa at TechCrunch50 this summer about Chrome. You can check out TechCrunch’s story here. —Kelsey Blodget, Associate Producer

The search solution Kosmix has raised $20 million in a funding round led by TimeWarner, the company announced today–an impressive feat in today’s economic climate. Andy interviewed Kosmix Co-founder Anand Rajaraman in New York earlier this year, and I republished the interview here.

EveryZing, a leader in video search optimization technology, has landed FoxSports.com on MSN as a client, the company announced today. EveryZing is a part of the new Brightcove Alliance, which you can read more about in our previous post.

Only large publishers with mainstream content–like CNN and Disney–should expect to make significant money from video ad revenue online, according to Benjamin Wayne, CEO of white-label plug-and-play video solution Fliqz. "It really doesn’t get interesting from a revenue perspective unless you can get to 20 or 30 million impressions a month. And when you consider […]

On-demand web video service Joost’s new (and free) iPhone application, launched Monday, streams its entire online library of 45,000-plus videos to users on WiFi networks, according to CEO Mike Volpi. A large portion of the library will be available on 3G within a month: “The technology is basically ready,” he says. Volpi spoke to me […]

Consumers planning to buy a Wii Fit or Blackberry Storm this holiday season should act fast: Those are some of the gadgets that will disappear first this holiday season, according to the great Sold Out Guide on shopping blog Shefinds.com. Last month, I interviewed SheFinds.com founder Michelle Madhok about the Web 3.0 concept behind the […]

Adobe has selected video at network YuMe to help serve advertising into its streaming and downloaded content, YuMe announced today. Andy interviewed Adobe’s Craig Barberich last summer, when the Adobe Media Player originally launched, about inserting adveritising into the Adobe Media Player’s downloadable video. I republished the interview above.