D-on-Net

Logos in Google maps is old news...sort of

Reuters, the Associated Press and the WSJ have all reported Google is beginning to show display advertising within Google Maps.  However, this is primarily old news.  Snapshots of display advertising within Google Maps first hit the blogosophere months ago, but it appears Google has fine tuned their efforts.  When snapshots first hit the blogosophere, typing in the right search query would show traditional red balloons, with no logos etc. and blue balloons, which would display a company logo within the index card containing the company's information.  It appears Google has ditched the blue balloon and gone for more specific markers.  For example, typing "Bookstore New York" will result in a couple of coffee cup markers appearing next to hoards of the traditional red balloons.  Clicking on the coffee cup marker results in a Barnes & Noble sponsored link (identified in the upper left corner of the index card) and displays a large B&N logo. 

According to reports Google is letting the market set the price for the added advertising capabilities within Google Maps.  Google's local advertising product manager, Dominic Preuss was quoted in Reuters saying "If people find these ads are more valuable they will bid higher," he said. "It will simply be market driven."  Bidding for the enhanced feature is now publicly available.

I like the fact Google is getting creative and beginning to incorporate new ways for marketers to advertise within Google's portfolio of offerings.  However, a tremendous amount of opportunity still exists.  For example, it makes perfect sense to begin incorporating click-to-call functionality within the sponsored advertisments and index cards that appear on Google Maps.  Sure, it isn't likely Barnes & Noble would care to pay for this, but hotels and restaurants will likely be chomping at the bit for these kinds of features.  The recently announced partnership with Verizon Superpages should provide the necessary catalyst to also begin enabling Google to deliver more sponsored local ads within Google Local/Maps.  Superpages massive local sales force gives Google the extension into the small and local business it so desperately needs in order to educate and sell business owners on the value of advertising online.  Building these local relationships is also critical for Google in terms of fulfilling its vision of serving location based advertisements if and when Google is able to partner with ISPs (like Earthlink in San Francsico) in order to build out a nation wide Wi-Fi network.   

Brightcove is the next one-stop-shop for online video syndication

  Brightcove has been on my radar for a while, but has been a company leaving me with a lot of unanswered questions...and promised, but undelivered briefings.  However, today I decided to revisit the company and it appears they have revamped their site and started to reveal a lot more information regarding what exactly the company has up its sleeves - especially in terms of its value proposition.  For example, their homepage is now advertising a couple of their affiliate partnerships with the latin website Barrio305 and National Lampoon's TogaTV.  Clicking on either of these enables you to see what the Brightcove platform actually looks like, and it is not too shabby!  They are using Macromedia Flash 8, which creates a very crisp viewing experience.  Clicking through their revamped site it became quickly apparent these guys are going to live up to the hype and deliver on becoming the next one-stop-shop for video syndication.  Their recent acquisition of Meta Stories helps build out their publishing capabilities and as their site illustrates, they also have the tools to distribute, monetize and deliver content to consumers. 

Most intriguing to the new site is the visibility into Brightcove's advertising solutions.  It appears Brightcove is giving content owners the choice of either handling their own ad sales or applying to take part in Brightcove's own Advertising Network, all of which is sold by Brightcove.  The company is offering marketers Site Specific Placement, which gives the marketers complete control over the placement and integration of the advertisement.  The company is supporting 7, 15, and 30 second video pre-roll as well as synched banners.  Viewing TogaTV gives you an example of both as an AT&T add is shown through the video player with a banner add off to the right.  The company also says it has ad targeting capabilities, tracking capabilities and for large media companies that may already have an ad server for their site, Brightcove can integrate its capabilities directly with the ad server.  So what does all this mean?  Well, it appears that Brightcove is the process of covering all of the necessary bases.  I am especially interested in finding out more about their targeted ad and tracking capabilities, so if anyone has some insight please drop me a line.  I also still believe it is possible Brightcove could be providing the technology behind the delivery and placements of advertising into AOL's In2TV (AOL is an investor in Brightcove) and coincidentally the revamped website wasn't launched far behind the launch of In2TV.

Brightcove is also dipping its toes into providing Pay Media services by enabling content owners a suite of offerings to create a digital video stores allowing content to be downloaded to own or rented for a period of time specified by the content owner.  Brightcove also says it plans to support subscription models and again, the content owner is able to set the pricing.  Simplifying the process, Brigthcove is offering a "turnkey" solution for credit card processing, account management and customer service and is using Microsoft's DRM technology to protect against content piracy.  This offering is especially intriguing because Brightcove is essentially becoming the go-to outsourcer for the players who have hoards of content but not the cash or the technical expertise to develop their own i-tunes or Google video platform.  This solution also aids in bridging the time-to-market gap. 

Clipshack and Oodle collaborate to form shakeyouroodle.com

Today Clipshack and Oodle announced they have joined forces to launch shakeyouroodle.com.  This is a site dedicated to moments I am sure many people wish were not caught on video, but at least it is all for a solid cause! 

VideoEgg is evolving into more than an online video publishing service

Yesterday I was fortunate to get a briefing with VideoEgg co-founder Kevin Sladek and to say I was impressed would be a serious understatement.  VideoEgg's mission in a nutshell is to make the process of publishing video online as simple and painless as possible regardless of the end-user's device or video format.  While their product is arguably second to none, what is more intriguing are their plans to begin monetizing the service.

VideoEgg Publisher is a free (more on this later) web-based service, equipped with a pleothera of editing features, enabling users to upload video content via their pc, web cam, or various mobile devices and post the video to their blog, web page, or even eBay allowing users to create video auctions.  The process is painless and only requires a few clicks of the mouse before your content is encoded into Flash-format creating what truly is a high-quality end-user experience.  For the tech gurus out there, VideoEgg partners, on an exlusive basis in many respects, with On2 Technologies [ONT] using their VP 6.2 web compression codec.  Also unique to VideoEgg is the fact the encoding takes place on the client-side server, which means their servers do not grow with their user base, which is the opposite from Google Video, where encoding takes place on the server-side.  Also worth noting is the fact they partner with everyone's favorite CDN, Akamai Technologies. 

On the partner front, VideoEgg's largest publicly announced partnership is with Six Apart, the creators of Moveable Type and Typepad (which I use).  Typepad users can upload videos to their blogs (vlogs) for free, but the video must be less than two minutes in length.  VideoEgg has also partnered with Blogger and eBay.  While I did not embark on the topic of eBay with Kevin during our discussion, it is worth noting he and his co-founders actually tested video auctions on eBay and found they generated a larger selling price than the same items shown in eBay's traditional auction format.  We mention this because this kind of success falls in-line with eBay's decision to acquire Skype in that they are betting PC-to-PC communications will enhance its sales volume.  Too bad they could have done this much cheaper through a highly publicized partnership with MSN Messenger, Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger or AIM. 

Back to the topic at hand.  VideoEgg recently announced they now have a VideoEgg Integration Kit enabling other websites to embed the VideoEgg Publisher for FREE to their sites and learned over 200 sites have already registered for the plug-in, which is a staggering number considering this was announced less than a week ago.  This is the precursor to VideoEgg's grand plan.  While the service is currently free, the service will soon be supported by, you guessed it, advertising.  If users or affiliate partners choose not to have ads displayed then they will be required to pay for the service on a pay-per use basis.  I asked Kevin several questions regarding the ad-supported service, but he was clear that he wasn't ready to let the public know their plans.  I asked if the advertisments were going to be embedded in the video and all he would tell me was they will be displaying advertisements within the player environment.  This could mean ads on a side-bar or within the video, so it looks like we will have to wait and see for sure. 

A topic of particular interest to me is the anlaytics side of advertising, which was my next topic of discussion with Kevin and he definitely left me standing on a cliff.  I asked Kevin if they have or are in the process of developing any analytic tools that will enable them to provide a solid reporting package to the advertisers, in other words, so advertisers can track ROI.  While Kevin was not willing to divluge what they are up to, it sounds like they have this area covered, which in my opinion is what makes VideoEgg even more exciting.  If this is a service that will eventually be embedded on thousands of high-traffic sites across the web and they have developed a tool-set enabling them to send advertisements to various videos and sites based on the content of the video, content of the site, or demographics of the site...that is a compelling value proposition to any advertiser.  Yeah, it is early and maybe I am getting a head of myself, but it is possible VideEgg could become, and we are hoping they do, much more than a web-based video publishing service.

VideoEgg is based in San Francisco, CA. and has only raised two rounds of financing, just closing on a Series B round in January 2006.  Amount raised to date has not been disclosed.

Google mugs shareholders via shelf offering

The announcement of Google's shelf offering makes me feel like Clark W. Griswold after he is expecting his x-mas bonus and instead receives a membership to the jelly of the month club.  News of dilution is never well received by the market, but this is a serious slap to the face of Google shareholders.  Shares have enjoyed a nice ride, approaching $400, since the announcement of its addition to the S&P 500.  However, leave it up to team Google to find a way to give back some of its gains.  A colleague of mine said it best when he said "Google is mugging shareholders from the bump in the stock that would come from the buying demand by taking the money to their own pockets."  This is definitely one way of looking at it.  However, the flip-side of the argument is that Google, based on the current price, stands to pocket an additional $2bn with the offering, which will bring its total cash balance to $10bn thus supplying them with even more amo to invest in order to generate greater return for its shareholders.  Interesting to note is the fact Google spent approximately $1bn last year on capex ($840mn) and M&A ($130mn).  With an anticipated $10bn on its balance sheet it is safe expect them to put A LOT more of their cash to use in 2006.  In fact, I have a good idea which areas and what companies some of that money is likely to be spent, but unfortunately you will have to pay to find that out.

A fond farewell to Arrested Development

Tim Goodman, from the San Francisco Chronicle reported yesterday that Fox's hit t.v. show, Arrested Development, is officially finished.  I decided to write about this, not only because I can honestly say Arrested Development was one of the best t.v. shows I have ever witnessed, but because I thought it was possible this show could have become the first t.v. show (with any kind of fan following) to be aired solely over the web.  I knew this wasn't going to happen after hearing rumors Showtime wanted to snatch it up.  However, it appears that deal is officially dead.  With the show's creator officially throwing in the towel it doesn't appear their will be an opportunity for the show to be the next pioneer of the web.  The cancellation of Arrested Development isn't as much sad as it is tragic.  No more Carl Weathers cameo appearances and no more Tobias "the never nude."  No more G.O.B. doing magic (with more passion in his pinky than David Blaine's entire body) to the song "Final Countdown."  I hope t.v. execs everywhere realize this should be THE case study for how to ruin a hit t.v. series by confusing the hell out of its audience, and I am not talking about the storylines.  I swear after season one they never informed the audience when season two was starting and then they kept changing the time and day the show would be aired.  It got to the point to where I gave up and just waited for the season two DVDs to come out and will do the same with season three.  This was a golden opportunity for Yahoo! (we know they haven't made the best bet with original content) or AOL (talk about a way to launch In2TV) to take a chance to put it on the web, and support it with ads while making it easily accessible.  Honestly, Fox had the golden-ticket, but instead decided to pull an M.C. Hammer and BLOW ALL OF IT.  How do you have an Emmy award winning show canceled after only three simultaneously shortened seasons?  Unbelieveable!

eBay trial is a mini-RIMM/NTP

The media is making far too big a deal of eBay's patent suit with MercExchange. At the end of the day, eBay has plenty of funds to pay either the original settlement of $25mn, the suggested $100mn settlement by MercExchange, etc. eBay is likely not interested in paying these, but to get this out of the media foray, they might just say let's punt. Either way, this is a non-event and we find MercExchange a bit out of the hemisphere to think they can seek 0.75% of the "total" value of all eBay purchases made with the "Buy it Now" tool. If they were to instead seek remuneration on just eBay's fee from all purchases made with this tool, we would find them at least sane. However, the bigger picture again is that this is a non-event for eBay and both entities should settle this and move on with their business.