I am pleased to announce that Vivian Schiller, Chief Digital Officer of NBC News, will be among the keynote speakers at a two-day conference on the state of online video at the W Retreat and Spa in Vieques, a small island off the eastern shore of Puerto Rico. The conference, on March 16/17, will be limited to 75 participants.All attendees will have [...]

The 2012 presidential, congressional and local elections will involve enormous media budgets with an increased portion going to online video, says Mark Marvel, head of video monetization for MSNBC.com. He explains how the giant news site plans to serve video ads on the "district" level. We spoke Marvel recently at the Beet.TV Online Video Summit on Engagement. You can find the session [...]

MONACO --  Both attracted and scared by the opportunities to get their brands widely disseminated on the Web via online video, many advertisers can't make up their mind about a distribution strategy for their ads.   Jason Krebs, Chief Media Officer of Tremor Video, the industry's biggest independent online video ad network, says in this segment that "advertisers are schizophrenic" in dealing [...]

MONACO - Moviepilot, a Berlin-based social networking site which recommends and drives moviegoers to opening weekend screenings, has recently launched in the U.S. and has some four million fans on Facebook, says Tobi Bauckhage, CEO and founder, in this interview with Beet.TV. We spoke earlier this month at the Monaco Media Forum.  Bauckhage speaks about the vitality of the start-up scene in [...]

MONACO -- A Copehagen-based start-up called 23 is finding traction in offering a publishing platform for companies to create "video centric websites," part of a content management system (CMS), says CEO Thomas Madsen-Mygdal in this interview with Beet.TV. He says that traditional offerings of OVP's of video players and related services has become a "commodity." We spoke with him earlier this month [...]

This holiday season, one of the most dramatic shifts in technology consumption is the wide-scale move to streaming rather than downloading media, says Dan Ackerman, senior editor of CNET in this overview on holiday technology trends. This is made possible by popular streaming services like Netflix and inexpensive tablets and low-powered PCs, he says. We caught up with him earlier this month [...]

MONACO -- TV Links, a video directory which indexes and curates over 2000 video programming sources, is growing by 20 percent month-to-month and now has 50 million monthly users, says Adrian Constantin, CEO of Interakt Media, the parent company of TV Links. Headquartered in Bucharest and Madrid, the company's market focus is primarily the United States and other English-language markets, Constantin [...]

MONACO - Recommendation engine The Filter is aiming to capture a slice of the burgeoning entertainment discovery service market via deals with telcos, mobile providers, cable operators and programmers to improve engagement with content, said Rhett Ryder, Chief Operating Officer of The Filter, in a recent interview with Beet.TV. The Filter works with sites like Vudu and DailyMotion to recommend content [...]

Audience-targeting video syndicator AlphaBird will be expanding its brand and its offerings this quarter, driven by two recent acquisitions, the company's CEO Chase Norlin said in an interview with Beet.TV. The company is broadening beyond its audience targeting work to add more refined tools. That's coming in part from the purchases of brand integration platform PlaceVine earlier this year and social [...]

MSNBC.com has maintained high completion rates for its video ads with the new ASq format compared to before, said Mark Marvel with Beet.TV. MSNBC.com already had high completion rates approaching 85% to 90%, so landing close to that with the ad-selector style of ASq, developed by an industry consortium led by VivaKi, is promising, said Marvel, the Senior Director of Video [...]

MONACO  -- The emerging opportunities around video recommendation, syndication, advertising and new platforms for distribution were among the topics discussed at the Monaco Media Forum on November 10th by this outstanding group of industry leaders. I had the privilege of moderating this session with Ran Harnevo, SVP for video at AOL; Jason Krebs, Chief Media Officer of Tremor Video; Chase Norlin, [...]

MONACO -- AnyClip, a company that creates rich metadata around premium content, has signed a licensing agreement with Warner Brothers, the company announced earlier this month.  At the Monaco Media Forum, we spoke with CEO Oren Nauman about the deal with Warner and how AnyClip drives movie sales and rentals with its proprietary technology. Andy Plesser  

With 12 new shows and eight more in development, Reuters is making a significant commitment to television programming for the Web and is finding traction with advertisers, says Riley McDonough, SVP and General Manager of Thomson Reuters, in this interview with Beet.TV. McDonough was a panelist in our session last Tuesday on online video advertising. The Webcast, originating from the New York [...]

MONACO -- EPIX, the premium entertainment service available on television, on- demand, online and on consumer electronic devices, will be available next month on the Microsoft Xbox and the Apple iPad, says Emil Rensing, Chief Digital Officer, in this interview with Beet.TV. EPIX is a joint venture of of Paramount, Lionsgate and MGM. The premium [...]

MONACO -- In the wake of the Arab Spring and the loosening of the grip of state-controlled media, new content creators are emerging in the Middle East. In Cairo, Yasmine El-Mehairy has launched a portal for new mothers, providing information during pregnancy and through early child rearing years. The site is called SuperMama and is targeting the entire Arab-speaking world, says [...]

In a big crossover of a Web original to cable television programming, the "Annoying Orange" will be appearing on the Cartoon Network, according to a report in The New York Times.  The growth of the Annoying Orange brand was built by The Collective, a management company for Web creators.  In September in Hollywood, we spoke with Dan Weinsten, Manager of The Collective, [...]

Engagement is often seen as the holy grail of online video measurement, but brands shouldn't neglect reach and GRP either, says James Kiernan, senior VP and managing director at ZenithOptimedia, in this interview with Beet.TV. Reach and GRP are valuable because they can be looked at as common metrics to compare success of online video against TV, he said. That's particularly helpful [...]

Bolstered by its work developing formats for online video, VivaKi's The Pool is now working to develop best practices and formats for tablets, said Beth Doyle, Innovations Director at VivaKi during this interview with Beet.TV. Issues to consider for tablet ads are whether tablet ad formats should be interstitials, banners, pre-rolls or something else, Doyle said. Other factors are whether tablet [...]

In its work with Microsoft's Bing, media agency MediaVest is partnering with TV networks such as AMC, CW and MTV to create new brand extensions focused on search, video and social, said Jill Griffin, senior VP strategy and innovation director at MediaVest in an interview with Beet.TV. For AMC's breakout hit "The Walking Dead," MediaVest has helped spearhead an effort with [...]

Engagement around online video consumption, meaning the action of a viewer who interacts with a video ad, is a "high-value task" which drives buying outcome, says Dave Marsey, SVP/Group Media Director at Digitas, in this interview with Beet.TV. Moreover, the value of this engagment can be properly priced and measured, he explains.  We spoke with him at the Beet.TV Engagement Summit. The [...]