WebProNews

Tag: Video

  • YouTube Launches its Univision Channel

    YouTube Launches its Univision Channel

    In November, YouTube announced that it had struck a partnership with one of the top Spanish-language broadcast networks in America, Univision. The partnership would see YouTube providing both short clips and full shows from the network. YouTube has now announced the official launch of the Univision channel.

    The channel contains content from Univision’s three major networks: Univision, TeleFutura and Galavisión.

    YouTube - Univision

    "Some of the most popular shows on the channel include Univision’s morning show Despierta América (Wake-Up America); TeleFutura’s entertainment show Escándalo TV (ShowBiz TV), and Galavisión’s home decorating series Decorando Contigo (Decorating with You), among many others. The Univision channel on YouTube will also premiere weekly show recaps made just for YouTube viewers," says Shanna Preve, Strategic Partnerships at YouTube. "These videos will feature top Univision talent summarizing the best moments from Univision shows in the last week."

    "The partnership provides more premium, current, monetizeable content for our advertisers interested in reaching the growing online Hispanic demographic; Kraft Foods is the channel’s exclusive launch sponsor," adds Preve.

    The Univision YouTube channel represents the first time Univision programming has been made available on the Internet outside of the network’s own properties (at least legally).
     

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  • YouTube Getting Serious About This Video Rental Thing

    YouTube recently started experimenting with renting video content as a potential new way for content producers to make money, which led to the question: will YouTube be the place to rent movies in the future?

    YouTube kicked this initiative off by offering a few independent films from Sundance, an experiment which some saw as a failure, but YouTube appears to have found a success, saying that they increased exposure for the films by about 60%. YouTube is now looking to expand the content that it offers for rental, and is calling upon partners to bring more to the table.

    YouTube - Sin: The Movie Rental

    YouTube has invited a small number of additional beta partners in different categories to begin offering videos for rent, and now thousands of videos are available. YouTube offers the following examples: 

    "Through this new offering, content owners now have control over the entire lifecycle of their work," YouTube says. "They can migrate videos from rental to ad supported; they can set the price and rental duration. In short, they can test and customize their distribution to fit their audience’s habits and their business’ needs."

    The company thinks topics and genres with small, but passionate audiences will better monetize with the rental model, as opposed to the ad supported one. They also note that paying users generally expect a longer duration from videos, as well as higher production value.

    YouTube’s goal is to make rental an option for all content creators, and the company will invite more and more as improvements are made. There is currently an application process that content providers can go through if they want to monetize their videos this way.

    Related Articles:

    > Barclays Analyst Predicts YouTube Profitability

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  • Looking at Polaroid’s Photo Sharing Service

    A couple months ago Polaroid launched a new online photo and video sharing service called Polaroid Studio. It didn’t initially receive a whole lot of buzz, but WebProNews stopped by their exhibit at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Vegas earlier this month, and got a look at just what Polaroid Studio’s all about.

    You can use the service to upload photos or videos, but it offers a unique feature in that you can customize what your photo albums look like. You can choose backgrounds, pick how many photos you want to display across, up and down, etc.

    Social media hounds may particularly like the Facebook app, which lets you easily import the photos into Facebook from Polaroid Studio. The site also has a store right in it where you can purchase various items with your photos on them. If you want a coffee mug, a Calendar, playing cards, or whatever, look no further than the site where you are already keeping your photos. That’s kind of convenient.

    The service is still young, but so far it claims already over 62 million photos. They are also about to launch a pro version for professional photographers that they will be able to take and brand as their own.

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  • Video Advertising Takes to the Highway

    If you’re interested in new trends in advertising, you may be interested in the possibility that you will be seeing trucks driving around playing full HD videos. Hopefully you won’t be so interested that you stop paying attention to the road.

    Flick Studio is making these trucks with the hopes that companies will be interested in purchasing them for their own advertising purposes. The idea comes from trucks that are already out there, which feature rolling ads. This takes the concept to a whole new (and likely expensive) level.

    Information about FlickTruck is scarce. The FlickTruck site only shows a couple videos (which offer no real details) and a GPS tracker tracking the journey of one of the trucks, "Flick-2". However, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Vegas recently, WebProNews spoke with David McDonald of Flick Studio (FlickStudio.com or FlickTruck.com).

    As you can see, it’s a truck with 3 big TVs built in. The displays are higher than 1080p. The are WUXGA and can be viewed easily in broad daylight.

    Flick Studio began producing the trucks six months ago, and currently there are only two of them. Those are just to drive around executives who are interested in the technology. Who knows where they will go from there?

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  • Cisco Showcases Big Video Plans

    Cisco Showcases Big Video Plans

    Cisco has quite a large presence at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this year. The company is showcasing some interesting new video experiences at the event.

    Today Cisco announced new customers, features, and professional service options for the Cisco Eos social entertainment platform. The company also announced that it is providing a medianet (a media-aware IP video network infrastructure) to NBC during the network’s coverage of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics Winter Games, February 12-28.

    Ned Hooper"Video is rapidly expanding from a lean-back experience confined to the living room, to a new breed of exciting video experiences available on any device or screen — anytime, anywhere," said Ned Hooper, chief strategy officer and senior vice president, Consumer Business at Cisco. "The network is the platform to make this happen, and as a result, we are enabling new experiences that allow consumers to easily capture and share their lives and connect with the people and content that matter most to them."

    Cisco also announced today its data for Flip Video obtained during the 2009 holiday season, which highlights huge growth in video usage over the past year. The company says, "There were more than one million Flip Videos uploaded through FlipShare software in December 2009. These uploads represent three million minutes of Flip videos viewed, which is equivalent to more than six years of continuous video streaming, representing an increase of 395% from December the year before. In addition, there were 42,000 gigabytes of video streamed in December, up from 525% the year prior, indicating an increase in HD video usage."

    Cisco says it will be sharing its vision and progress towards developing an "entirely new category" of video communication called “home telepresence”, while at CES. This uses consumers’ existing HDTV and broadband connection to deliver a unique natural video communication experience from the living room, according to the company.

    "With Cisco’s best-in-class telepresence technology and networks such as Verizon’s advanced, all-fiber-optic network, we believe we will deliver a video communication experience to consumers unlike anything they’ve seen before," said Marthin DeBeer, senior vice president and general manager for Cisco’s Emerging Technologies group. "Home telepresence will make a difference in consumers’ lives by allowing them to enjoy natural video communications with family and friends wherever they are located. To ensure that early home telepresence users will have plenty of friends and family to communicate with, in addition to calling other home telepresence users, they will be able to place calls to PCs using a webcam and video chat service."

    More details about Cisco’s announcements can be found here and here.

    Watch for more WebProNews coverage of CES, with exclusive video interviews coming soon.

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  • Online Music Most Popular Digital Content Among Kids

    The majority (79%) of kids age 2-14 have purchased some form of physical or digital content in the past year, with 31 percent acquiring both physical and digital content, according to a new report from The NPD Group.

    Video rental services and online music services were the most popular among kids ages 2-14 in the past year, with 19 percent using an in-store video rental service, 12 percent using an online video rental service, and 14 percent using an online music service. Paid subscriptions to online video game rental services and paid subscriptions to online gaming websites ranked among the lowest.

    Forty-one percent of kids who own some form of digital content said music was the first type of content they downloaded, with 38 percent saying it was game downloads.  The average age when kids make their first digital purchase is 7 years old. Girls are more likely to download single songs and also slightly more likely than boys to first buy ringtones.

    Anita Frazier
    Anita Frazier

    "Forty-three percent of digital downloaders were six years old or younger when they acquired their first digital content," said Anita Frazier, industry analyst, The NPD Group.

    "Since parents are the first touch point for children this age, it is important for companies to develop marketing strategies that reach parents as well as kids."

    The report found digital content to be an additional source kids turn to when they want to supplement their physical collections, which is supported by the fact that less than 1 percent of kids only purchased digital content.  In terms of money spent on this content by kids, $0.85 of every content dollar spent went to physical items, while $0.15 went to digital.
     

    Related Articles:

    YouTube and Universal Making a Music Video Site?

    YouTube is Going Through Changes

    MTV Offering…Music Videos?