Robert Andrews

AMSTERDAM — At this year’s video industry conferences, we are hearing a lot from technology vendors claiming to have cracked the second-screen advertising opportunity. The latest is a pairing, Cisco and Innovid, who used IBC to show off two proofs of concept. In the first, the pair would use metadata describing a linear TV ad […]

COLOGNE — Everyone in media nowadays is eager for more data to inform their business. Now AOL is hoping to bring more data to every part of the video value chain, launching a new tool called Insights. “There’s such a big gap right now,” AOL Networks international SVP René Rechtman tells Beet.TV in this video […]

AMSTERDAM — Norwegian web browser maker Opera is having a busy International Broadcasting Convention show. It announced IPTV firms Amino and AirTies will adopt Opera’s software on their devices, giving Opera greater traction for its ambitions to break in to interactive TV. And the firm also announced it is basing the latest version of its […]

AMSTERDAM — Content owners who want to get their content on new smart TV platforms frequently need technology vendor help. One such TV app maker, 24i Media of the Netherlands, is expanding globally on this quest. “We probably will start an office this year in the United States in order to be closer to our clients,” […]

AMSTERDAM — Speaking with multiple online video players at the International Broadcasting Convention, you get the feeling the industry has converged on one main challenge this year – how to deliver video to a burgeoning number of different devices. “We see device fragmentation,” Boston-based Brightcove media and broadcast services CTO Albert Lai tells Beet.TV in […]

AMSTERDAM — One of the biggest beasts amongst online video technology vendors says the space has never seen such change. “We are at a time of fundamental change in the way people are delivering video, and it’s all driven by consumers,” Brightcove CEO David Mendels tells Beet.TV in this video interview at the IBC show. […]

SAN FRANCISCO – Just when many in the industry are excitedly committing to buying targeted ad slots using automated, real-time bidding systems, some publishers want to slow down the real-time clock – and one agency group is backing them. “Today, (real-time bidding) is known as being motivated by trying to drive prices down as low […]

Online video technology provider Kaltura sees a growing business line in the growing movement to revolutionize education. The firm, which began by offering open-source software, has been offering its services to colleges for some time. But CEO and co-founder Ron Yekutiel reckons there is further promise in the “flipped classroom” movement, in which students would […]

AMSTERDAM — Delivering adaptive-bitrate video streaming efficiently to smartphones could soon get much easier, with mobile chip maker Qualcomm pledging to use the MPEG-DASH video standard in a broader range of devices. “We believe it is the right direction for the video industry,” Qualcomm senior product manager Aytec Biber tells Beet.TV in this video interview […]

AMSTERDAM — At the International Broadcasting Convention, a video standard that enables high-quality live streaming from conventional HTTP servers took a step forward to satisfy content rightsholders. Microsoft announced the next version of its forthcoming PlayReady digital rights management standard would support the so-called MPEG-DASH standard in Windows 8.1 and Internet Explorer 11. “You can […]

AMSTERDAM — When US TV operator HBO launched a VOD service in to the Nordic countries 13 months ago, HBO Nordic, it was as a joint project with local digital video tech firm, Parsifal. Now the latter says it wants to pull off similar tricks elsewhere around the world. “We’re looking in a lot of […]

AMSTERDAM — In a world of competing technology standards, vying for lock-in, it can be tempting to back a favorite candidate. But one video tech firm is supporting multiple digital rights management standards, so as to not isolate any clients or potential customers. We take an agnostic perspective on rights,” says Irdeto Americas sales VP […]

Six months after H.265, branded “High Efficiency Video Encoding (HEVC)”, was ratified as the successor to the widely-used H.264 video compression standard, there is lingering suspicion that adoption will be as rapid as its forebear. But video tech firm Rovi has given the new standard one shot in the arm by unveiling the latest version […]

SAN FRANCISCO — Publishers’ behind-the-scenes ground-laying is bubbling up to make this winter a blow-out season in advertisers’ embrace of automated video ad buying, says one founder at the epicenter of the trend. “We’ve seen a lot of big publishers preparing for what they expect to be a very, very large Q4,” Mark Trefgarne, CEO […]

AMSTERDAM — The next-generation video compression codec to succeed the popular H.264 standard promises up to 50 percent smaller video sizes for cheaper online transmission – if the industry can ignite both consumer demand and producer inertia. To jump-start adoption of the so-called “High-Effiency Video Compression” (HEVC) – or H.265 – codec, video tech firm […]

SAN FRANCISCO — YouTube rival Dailymotion may commonly be thought of as a French video site – but that hasn’t stopped it hiring a Silicon Valley development team to build its recently-launched Vine competitor. “Mobile’s been a huge focus for us,” north America GM Roland Hamilton tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “We just expanded […]

SAN FRANCISCO — Live TV news rebroadcaster Livestation has spent the last few years building up its portfolio of 49 partner channels. Now it is trying to strike a balance between those conventional linear news sources and a new line-up of ad formats. “We have pre-roll advertising, we also have display advertising,” CEO Lippe Oosterhof […]

SAN FRANCISCO — It’s exactly two years since Nielsen attempted to bring TV-style audience measurement to online video for advertisers, through its Online Campaign Ratings (OCR) metric. Twenty-four months on, the metric is “Well under way to being the standard,” says Nielsen’s global media products EVP Amit Seth in this interview. “This last upfront season, […]

SAN FRANCISCO –  Hold on to your hats. The decades-old way advertising has been bought and sold could start to collapse in 24 months. “A lot of media companies have been good money with the old model,” IPG Mediabrands’ Magna Global north America president Kristi Argyilan tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “Our hypothesis is […]

Irreverent publisher BuzzFeed’s eclectic approach to web content may be paying off. In a staff memo published on LinkedIn (via TechCrunch), founder Jonah Peretti says the outfit “booked record profit in August”. And Peretti opens up on BuzzFeed’s video strategy, too, saying: “Ze Frank has recruited a talented team of video producers who have created 570 videos, with […]