Online Video Industry Executives On The Move

A quick round-up of some of the latest hirings in the online video industry:

• BitTorrent announced this week that Douglas Walker, former CEO of Alias Systems, will now serve as their CEO. Bram Cohen, former CEO of BitTorrent will assume the role of chief scientist. In addition, Eric Klinker, former CTO for Internap, is now the new CTO of BitTorrent.

• Abacast announced today that Rob Green, former Group Manager of Business Development on the Microsoft Windows Media team, and former SVP of business development and strategy at Nine Systems has joined the company's board of directors.

• Limelight Networks announced this week that Roxanne Ivory, the former senior director of consumer marketing for Motorola's Connected Home business is now the VP of marketing at Limelight.

• Internap announced this week that Jim Leach, former VP of corporate marketing at SAVVIS is now the VP of sales and marketing operations at Internap.

• Robert Gribnau, formerly the GM of Content Delivery Services at Internap is now VP of sales for North America and Europe at CDNetworks.

• Ray Hood has been named the new CEO of Media Publisher. Rod Bacon, the co-founder and former CEO is now the Executive Vice President, service providers.

• Last month The FeedRoom announced that Mark Portu, a former SVP at Open Text Corporation, is now the CEO. Former CEO Bart Feder has been named as Chairman of the Board of Directors.

If you are looking for a new position, have taken a new job or have a job opening at your company, let me know. In many cases I will highlight it here on the blog - free of charge.

Three Speaking Spots Open For Streaming Media West

We're now at over 100 speakers for the Streaming Media West show next month in San Jose and I have only 3 spots left to fill in the program. I am accepting all inquiries from anyone interested in any of these last 3 spots which will all be selected in the next 24 hours. Please e-mail me if interested.

Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Entertainment Devices: How TiVo, Xbox, and iPod's Are Changing The Content Landscape
Today, with the influx of new entertainment devices, consumers no longer rely on just the PC for their online video consumption. Between iPhones and iPods, their Xboxs and TiVos, consumers now have many ways to get their video fix. So what are the new business models that will be created from these new devices? What current hurdles need to be solved so that content can be monetized for multiple platforms? Explore with this panel the role of current consumer entertainment devices in this new convergent world and how these devices will play together to offer a superior video experience.

Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Using Video to Drive Revenue Growth in the Enterprise
Today, companies' uses of enterprise video deployments are typically justified with the ROI metric of cost savings. While there is no doubt that this is part of the value proposition, some data suggests that revenue generation-rather than cost savings-is the true “killer app” for the enterprise. This panel of corporate users will discuss the implications of using video in the enterprise with an eye towards revenue generation, and they'll explain how streaming video can accelerate a product launch or bring new sales people up to speed, resulting in revenue growth.

Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Evaluating and Choosing The Right Methods Of Video Delivery
With all the various means of distribution and protocols available for video today-CDN, P2P, streaming, progressive download-there is still no single solution that will meet all customers' needs perfectly across all platforms and devices. Learn the various methodologies for content distribution, as well as the pros and cons of each type. Speakers will also discuss which methodologies apply best to which platforms and geographic locations based on type of content, length and format of video, and target audiences. Panelists will also provide you with guidelines and formulas for determining the best single and/or hybrid solution for your online video distribution needs.

Forbes.com: NBC, CBS, ABC and FOX's Internet TV Strategy

Forbes.com has a good article from last week about TV on the Internet and what NBC Universal, CBS, ABC and Fox are doing with online video. It contains Q&A interviews with Fox Digital Media President Dan Fawcett, ABC Digital Chief Albert Cheng, CBS Interactive's Quincy Smith and NBC Chief Digital Officer George Kliavkoff.

Google-YouTube: Twelve Months Later, Advertising Just Getting Started

It's been a year since Google acquired YouTube and in that time, the promise of YouTube developing and rolling out a successful video advertising product is only just starting to get off the ground. It's going to be a long time until there is enough data in the market to suggest if the model will be successful, and YouTube has a long way to go before we find out of it can really generate any serious ad revenue from their content.

Paul LaMonica over at CNNMoney.com has a good in-depth article about the hurdles that YouTube faces one year later with more niche competitors, the Viacom lawsuit, the big media companies entering the space (Hulu) and the problem with getting advertisers to spend money around UGC content.

New Radiohead Album Being Delivered By Level 3's CDN

About two weeks ago, the band Radiohead told customers they could "name their own price" for their soon to be released new album. Starting yesterday, the album was available for download from the Radiohead website and when you download the 50MB file, it redirects you to the Level 3 network for the content.

While not an indication that Level 3 is going to put any of the other CDNs out of business, it is proof that Level 3 is continuing to sign up large customers even though they have yet to announce them. First it was Metacafe's videos that an analyst noticed were coming from Level 3, then I noticed the live streams for DirecTV's NFL Sunday Ticket package were coming from Level 3 and now this new Radiohead album. Clearly Level 3 is already starting to get some traction in the market for large scale delivery of video and static content via streaming and downloading. And with many in the industry assuming or speculating that Level 3 is going to offer a cheaper price for their streaming CDN offering next month, and the announcement last week by Level 3 that they are pricing their transit product and static CDN service at the same price, the company is clearly lining up to make a full on assault on the market in this quarter.

The CDN industry, which was once a very quiet segment of this industry even two years back, is now the hottest and fastest growing segment of this market in terms of the number of solutions and providers in the space and entering the fray. The next 24 months are going to be a fun ride.

Updated CDN Pricing Coming Next Month At CDNPricing.com

Since my post in August entitled "CDN Pricing Data: What The CDNs Are Actually Charging For Delivery", I've gotten enhanced insight into CDN pricing thanks to many new CDN customers who have come across my pricing post and have reached out to share a lot of new data with me. I've probably seen close to 50 contracts just in the month of September alone and many new readers to my blog are sending in data on what they are paying.

Next month, I will be doing an updated post comparing the CDN pricing averages from 3-4 months ago. To make it easy to find on my blog, you can now go to www.CDNpricing.com which will send you directly to the latest post with the pricing data.

I'll be doing an update sometime in November and had been waiting for BitGravity and BitTorrent to have officially launched so they can be included in the pricing round up as well. I will also have pricing averages from Level 3 as they are expected to launch their CDN for streaming in the beginning of November and I'm already seeing pricing from them on CDN for downloads.

In the mean time, if you are a customer of a CDN and want to share your data, I'm happy to chat with you to share what I am seeing in the market. You can contact me at anytime.

DoubleClick's Ari Paparo Kicks Off Streaming Media Europe Showing The Growth In Online Video Advertising

Thanks to everyone who made last weeks Streaming Media Europe show a success. Attendee traffic grew from last year and we also had more speakers, exhibitors and sponsors participating. Due to the shows growth over the past two years, we'll be moving the show to a larger location for next year. I had some great conversations with European providers and content customers and brought back a lot of new insight into the European market.

Bloggers are just starting to get up coverage of the show and you can already read some highlights of the show here, including an overview of Ari's keynote. In Ari's presentation, he noted that several key challenges remain to be overcome before in-stream video ads become the $1.5 billion market that some forecasters are predicting. Most notably, he pointed to the lack of infrastructure within content publishers and ad agencies to support the degree of integration between video and banner ads to avoid delivering contradicting messages—say, delivering a Coke banner alongside a Pepsi video—as well as the inability to change ad messages on the fly the way they can with banners.

In the next week or so I will be posting MP3 recordings of all the conference sessions along with video archives from many sessions as well. Speakers presentations are just starting to be placed online and we'll have all the archives wrapped up shortly and will announce attendee numbers.

Akamai, CacheLogic, Internap, Level 3 and VeriSign To Speak On CDN & P2P

My buddy Yaron Samid who organizes the NY Video 2.0 Meetup in NYC every month has organized a session at Streaming Media West next month entitled "CDNs & P2P - Is Hybrid Content Delivery the Future or Just Hype?". He has invited and assembled speakers from some of the major CDN providers and those who have hybrid CDN/P2P offerings. Confirmed speakers are:

• Philip Kaplan, CSO, Internap
• Travis Kalanick, Senior Director, Engineering, Akamai
• John Dillon, CMO, CacheLogic
• Stephen Trainor, VP Strategy, Content Markets Group, Level 3
• Todd Johnson, SVP, Worldwide Marketing, VeriSign

Should be a good discussion amongst many of today's leading providers on where they see P2P playing a role in the CDN business and what some of them are working on as they move to more hybrid offerings.

Register for the show before October 12th and pay only $795 for a full 3-day conference pass.

Analysts Wanted To Join Panel With IDC and Wainhouse At SM West Show

At the Streaming Media West show next month, I am moderating a session on Wednesday Nov. 7th entitled "Industry Drivers: Leading Analysts Discuss Future Trends and Business Models". We have speakers from IDC and Wainhouse confirmed so far and I am looking to add two more speakers from large research houses.

You can see more details about the show and the session on our website. If you are an analyst covering the online video industry and would like to join the panel, please contact me ASAP.

Tons Of Job Openings With The Online Video Infrastructure Companies

While I welcomed any vendor to send me open jobs they had for me to list on the blog, I'm getting more than I can possibly feature. Between all of the vendors who offer content delivery services, content management, enterprise webcasting solutions or software and hardware for video platforms, there is a huge void in the market of qualified people.

The biggest open positions are product managers and sales support engineers as well as experienced account managers who know the space and come with a Rolodex. Due to how many spots are open, and how many companies are trying to fill them, there is a lot of money being offered. I have not seen salaries and offers at this level in our space since the 2000 era. Vendors are still raising huge amounts of money and rapidly growing their head counts.

If you are looking for a new position, send me your resume so I can pass it along to all these companies. I'll pass it on to as many companies as I know who have open positions. While many websites list open jobs in the market, most of them are only focused on content jobs and traditional broadcast TV spots. I see very few focusing on the online video market for vendors. I may set something up in the next few days.