AMSTERDAM -- One of the first second-screen films ever made has sold rights to English-language territories, says the film's director Bobby Boermans, during an interview with Beet.TV at IBC last month. Boermans recently directed "App," a Dutch thriller about smartphone-addicted teens. Boermans said rights have now been sold in 20 territories including Australia, New Zealand and North. The film is one [...]

AMSTERDAM -- The upcoming HEVC video compression codec promises to cut streaming files by up to 50% without losing quality. But what if you could go 30% to 50% smaller again? That's what brand-new video tech startup Beamr Video is promising. Launched at the recent IBC show after four years in development, Beamr's technology, which runs on Linux servers, borrows from still-image compression's [...]

SundaySky, company that allows brands to customize videos to target consumers in real-time, has raised a $20 million venture round from Comcast Ventures, the company announced today.  We have republished an interview with Jim Dicso, President and Chief Revenue officer, who explains the company's offering.  

COLOGNE – Data alone isn't the answer to better ads. Creativity, insight and relevance still reign, says Amir Kassaei, IBC Chief Creative Officer, DDB Worldwide, in an interview with Ashley J. Swartz, CEO of Furious Minds, at DMEXCO last month. The problem with data is that it's not always used to foster value, he says. Data is a tool, and needs to [...]

Over the last couple of years, we have seen countless research reports highlight the growth in consumers' use of alternative-screen devices whilst they watch TV. But amongst the clearest and most useful snapshot of the true meaning of what has become a mature trend is IPG Media Lab's contrarian new report, The Second Screen Fallacy, just published here together with its sister [...]

Waywire, the video curation site known for its association with Newark Mayor Cory Booker, has been sold to Magnify, a New York-based digital video company, according to a report by Peter Kafka in AllThingsD Earlier this year at SXSW, we spoke Magnify CEO and founder Steve Rosenbaum about the evolution of the company and its work with publishers.    

Next week, dozens of tech innovators and established leaders will take the stage in Santa Clara  for the annual DEMO conference, which will have 1000 attendees.  Contrary to recent developments which have reinforced the reputation of Silicon Valley as a "young boys club," about a third of the DEMO speakers will be women and about 15 percent of the presenting [...]

AMSTERDAM -- Level 3 is trying to help broadcasters and sports teams communicate with video in what exec James Taylor says they see as a problematic digital world. In this video interview with Beet.TV at the recent IBC show, Level 3's EMEA cloud services director talks about the company's Video Cloud service. Level 3 recently sponsored the Tampa Bay Buccaneers American football [...]

AMSTERDAM -- More languages means more opportunity to make money from video. That's the pitch according to Dotsub, the New York-based online video subtitling and translating outfit. "With captions and subtitles, there's a great correlation between more views, more completions," enterpris sales head Peter Crosby tells Beet.TV in this video interview at the recent IBC show. The company last month redesigned its [...]

AMSTERDAM -- One of the coolest video networking technologies out there has to be the likes of LiveU, which combines multiple mobile networks in a single area in to a single channel of capacity for distributing online video. At the 2012 Olympic Games in London, many broadcasters used the technology to funnel video between locations and on to viewers. "We had over [...]

Mobile devices should be at the centerpiece of creative and messaging, says Francisco Cordero, VP and General Manager at InMobi, a mobile ad network, during an interview with Beet.TV about the need for data-driven creative for mobile. Because it's the device closest to the consumers, agencies and marketers should develop creative campaigns with mobile in mind from the get-go, he says. "The user [...]

One name with which some in the online video business may not be overly familiar is Vidyo. The New Jersey-based provider of videoconferencing technology often sits in the background whilst its clients roll out products partly based on its code. "Google Hangouts (video chat) is built on the Vidyo technology," Vidyo VP Ray Glynn tells Beet.TV in this video interview. "Google has [...]

Time was, Akamai was a plain old content delivery network. Then it began offering video distributors Sola analytics tools to track audience behavior and quality of video service. Sola's latest addition this year, Viewer Diagnostics, aims to tell advertisers and video service operators just how well end users are experiencing their video. "We can see through color-coding whether the consumer is having [...]

"Data is the new oil", the saying goes. For marketers, that's nearly the case, says Adobe's product marketing director Tim Waddell. "Rich, first-party data is the DNA of any advertising campaign," Waddell tells Beet.TV in this video interview, "the number-one data source that a marketer should be using." But Waddell says Adobe's own data shows digital marketers have a crises of capability. [...]

What a September! We just finished up an incredibly busy, fun,  productive September starting with our networking party in San Francisco,  coverage of the IBC show in Amsterdam, our programmatic video leadership summit in NY at Hearst, followed by DMEXCO in Cologne -- then Advertising Week in New York and finally finishing up with the Kaltura video summit.   What a month! HUGE [...]

Advertising networks must provide more specific data to target ethnic online video use that is outpacing that of the populace at large, according to one ad group exec. "If you're African-American or Hispanic, you're twice as likely to be sharing, downloading, watching video, texting," SMG Multicultural EVP and digital innovation director Marla Skiko tells Beet.TV in this video interview. "Anything you [...]

As part of the movement to programmatic buying, some brands are bypassing their agency trading desks and going directly to the open market auctions.  We reported recently on The Kellogg Company as one of the first such earlier movers. But going to the open marketplace has limitations, says Paul Dolan, SVP at Xaxis, the programmatic media agency unit of WPP.  He [...]

Video is playing catch-up to display in the advertising stakes - so who could be the big fish in a pond that's about to grow bigger? Speaking at Beet.TV's programmatic leadership summit, former Forrester principal analyst Joanna O'Connell rated AOL's acquisition of programmatic video outfit Adap.tv "very cool" and "a big stake in the ground". But buying in to programmatic video doesn't [...]

New York University, which has expanded  globally with a number of campuses, is delivering an increasing amount of video from inside and outside the classroom.  It is successfully serving  content to many students in low-bandwidth regions by using adaptive bit rate technology provided by Kaltura and Akamai, says Richard Malenitza, Manager of Academic Technology Services for NYU, in this interview [...]

The introduction of the iPad and other touch-screen devices has had an enormous impact on the consumption of programming created by the New York-based Sesame Workshop.  Apps and new channels of distribution including Netflix and YouTibe, has put digital consumption of programming no par with television, says Scott Chambers, SVP of Global Media Distribution, in this interview with Beet.TV We spoke [...]