Our office is now located at the brand-new TradeCenter 128 building directly fronting Route 128 and Interstate 95 in Woburn, MA. The new mailing address is 400 TradeCenter, Suite 3890, Woburn, MA 01801.  Our phone and fax numbers remain the same.  Drop by if you are in the area!

Last week at the Streaming Media East 2009 show in NYC, we gave a 20 minute overview of the Gotuit Video Metadata Management System, and announced our latest customer - HISTORY^TM, with Ice Road Truckers Video Mash-Ups.

The good folks at Streaming Media just posted video from the event.  For those of you not able to make it, you can watch our presentation here.

It describes how broadband video publishers can tap the power of premium, scene-level metadata to drive more visits, longer session time, and greater content monetization, no matter what content delivery network (CDN), content management system (CMS), or advertising partners they use. Enjoy!

We were very happy today to learn that we were named a finalist for the 2009 MITX Technology Awards in the Rich Media category (for the third year in a row!).  You can see all the 2009 finalists listed here.

While our entry was for our complete Gotuit Video Metadata Management System (VMMS), we showcased our work with World Wrestling Entertainment and the WWE Smash-Ups site.  It is a terrific example for Rich Media, as WWE created a compelling new video product using our technology and a subset of their video archive.  Their viewers go to Smash-Ups to put together two minute remixes from the authorized WWE video library.  Delivering strong viewer engagement with powerful inherent viral sharing, look for other remix customer announcements from us soon.

The winners will be announced on June 16th at the 6th Annual MITX Technology Awards event.  Details can be found here.  Having won back in 2007, we are looking to reclaim our title!

Going to Digital Hollywood next week?  Gotuit will be attending and will participate on a panel.  Gotuit CEO Mark Pascarella will speak on Thursday at “Video Metadata Revolution: Unleashing the Value of Video Programming in an On Demand World”.

Thursday, May 7th - 2:15PM

Video Metadata Revolution: Unleashing the Value of Video Programming in an On Demand World: As “on demand” video programming becomes widely accessible via numerous platforms and players, rich video metadata is being used to enable consumers to personalize their viewing experience, tailored to their interests and viewing environment. As a result, while consumers were once limited to viewing programs from beginning to end, they can now engage in video “snacking”, “playlisting”, “remixing” and “sharing”. At the same time, rich video metadata is offering content producers and distributors new ways to present and organize the program assets, thereby creating new revenue streams with the opportunity for higher CPM, metadata driven, contextual advertising. As technology, content and advertising companies now work together to unleash the power generated by rich video metadata, the consumer will be in the driver’s seat, watching video when they want and how they want.

The panel is being moderated by Bill Niemeyer, New Video Strategist & Tactician, billniemeyer.tv, Moderator

The full list of panel attendees is:

-          Tim Napoleon, Chief Strategist, Media and Entertainment, Akamai Technologies

-          Mark Pascarella, President & CEO, Gotuit

-          Tom Boland, Director, Interactive Marketing, World Wrestling Entertainment

-          Josh Kline, President & CEO, Secure Path

-          Gianluca Ferremi, VP Sales and Marketing, 3RDI

-          Deepak Srinivasan, Vice President, Business Development, Nokeena Networks

-          Jonathan Steinsapir, Associate, Kinsella, Weitzman, Iser, Kump & Aldisert, LLP (KWIKA)

-          Bill Niemeyer, New Video Strategist & Tactician, billniemeyer.tv, Moderator

This should be a great show. Drop us a line if you would like to get together and we hope to see you there!

Last week, we released our latest whitepaper, entitled “Content is King, But Metadata Rules: Three Reasons Why Premium Metadata Delivers Premium Returns“.  A must-read for digital media executives, it examines how the broadband platform and the user’s viewing behaviors demand specific strategies to drive the largest return.  For those of you who want just the summary, here it is:

Summary

Because broadband viewing is very different from television viewing, publishers must not treat the “programming” of the two platforms the same.   Delivering the best performance on the broadband platform requires solving the three key challenges: 1) driving a larger audience to the content, 2) delivering greater viewer engagement and longer session times, and 3) implementing an ad strategy that delivers the required revenue without harming the user experience.

Premium, scene-level metadata is the key that unlocks the full value of video libraries and solves these three challenges.  By understanding the content down to the smallest usable element - the scene - the needs of the viewer, programmer, and advertiser are more effectively met.  The viewer is able to personalize their viewing experience and easily get to what they want to watch, the advertiser can target their message down to most appropriate content, and the programmer realizes a larger audience that watches more video and generates more revenue.  This is the roadmap to success for video on the broadband platform.

Figure 2: Gotuit-enabled advertising wheel

To give you one more incentive to read the full whitepaper, here is one of the diagrams showing how scene-level metadata transforms how publishers can serve in-stream video ads within their content.

Scene-Level Metadata Transforms Advertising For Broadband Video

We were happy to announce this week our fourth season of powering QuickKicks for Major League Soccer.  Completely redesigned, this year has all of our premium video navigation and discovery features as well as a remix capability.

A key question we ask all our customers is, “How can you best convert your visitors to viewers?”  For many sites, the common tactics are just a list of clips in order of most recent to oldest and a search box.  Major League Soccer is using Gotuit to better organize and present their content so that there are more interesting playlists and a more engaging viewing experience to covert those visitors.

For example, MLS chose to layout their video with the following top level choices:

• One Touch - this will show the star MLS players and all their best plays
• Amazing Plays - only the best of the best across all the games
• Games of the week - where each game gets its own playlist
• Archive - every game from past weeks

Within any game, the editorial choices are:

• Game Highlights
• Goals
• Saves
• Player Spotlight #1
• Player Spotlight #2

The result is that visitors are drawn to personalize their experience, by choosing the best plays, or just the goals, or just their favorite players.

For example, here is the first goal in franchise history for the Seattle Sounders FC:

Better content presentation results in increased traffic and longer session times.

MLS took it even further this year by enabling user-authored remixing.  This deepens the engagement with the audience, by allowing them to create their own highlight reels and then share them with the community.  The community can vote on their favorites here in the gallery.  Here is one I liked called The Yellow Card March:

When a user creates their own remix, they are motivated to share the link and/or embed the video, as you can see on the March 24^th post in the popular soccer blog (The Footy Blog) here.

All of this is accomplished using Gotuit metadata which acts as a lens into the original, unedited source game video.  No video editing or clipping is ever done.

With rich, structured metadata, publishers can unleash the full value of their video libraries.  For MLS, this means knowing the Team, Week, Player(s), Play Type(s) of each individual scene in their game video and leveraging that information into a better user experience.

Are you doing all you can to convert your visitors to viewers?

WWE just released another promotional video both on their site on YouTube, encouraging people to use WWE Smash-Ups.   This one features The Miz and John Morrison.

Enjoy!

If you are a long-form video publisher looking for better ways to engage your audience, check out what we have just done with World Wrestling Entertainment.  As part of their promotion leading up to Wrestlemania 25, WWE has put together a video application called WWE Smash-Ups.  Powered by Gotuit, this application lets fans access highlights from 25 years worth of thrilling WWE video, then create their own 2 minute highlight reel.  The best highlight reel will win $5000, and there are other prizes as well.

The Smash-Ups defined by the viewer take advantage of Gotuit’s advanced metadata capabilities that allow viewers to define their own favorite scenes from within long-form video and then put those scenes together in a custom order.  No new video files are actually created, making it easy and efficient to scale.  They also have the ability to associate an audio bed to the remix.

This builds on our other remix implementations with customers such as Lifetime, but there are several major technical improvements that we did to handle the large amount of WWE traffic and to deliver the best user experience. Try it out and take notice of the vastly simplified scene-authoring and remix-creation process. There are also new feeds for the Top 100 based on user voting and Most Watched Smash-Up, both on an all-time and weekly basis.

The site leverages our integration with both DoubleClick and Advertising.com to serve in-stream and in-page advertising.  Our flexible advertising policy capabilities allow WWE to set exactly the amount of advertising they want to serve based on either the amount of video watched or the time on site.

We think the site looks tremendous, thanks to our partnership with Brothers By Choice, the agency who created the outstanding graphics.

It is being heavily promoted by WWE, both on their site as well as Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube.  They even have the WWE Superstars getting into it.   Enjoy this promotion video starring the Bella Twins:

Go check out WWE Smash-Ups, and if you are a long-form video publisher looking for better monetization and user engagement, think about how you could make your archive available to your audience and let them define their own favorite moments and remixes.   It’s a great way to drive incremental viewing.

In Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronic Show?  Gotuit’s VP of Business Development, Dan Gill will speak on a must-see Digital Hollywood panel where he will discuss how broadband video publishers can maximize their advertising revenue using the power of interactive, rich metadata and flexible advertising logic.

The panel, entitled “Television and Video as an Interactive Content Experience - New Technologies, New Advertising - As Broadband, PVR and ITV Evolve”, will be Friday January 9^th at noon at the Las Vegas Convention Center, North Hall, Room N261.

Here is the full panel description from Digital Hollywood:

“Television and Video as an Interactive Content Experience - New Technologies, New Advertising - As Broadband, PVR and ITV Evolve”: There’s a new confluence of video, television and broadband that is constantly being redefined. Explore how these cultural drivers come together in interactive, advertising and content platforms, and see how constant experimentation with new and upgraded technologies will drive the future of the industry.

The panel is being moderated by Lauren Cole, President, Cole Media.

The full list of panel attendees is:

• Lauren Cole, President, Cole Media, Moderator
• Matt Emans, VP Product Management, Navic (a Microsoft company)
• Ed Forman, EVP Products and Services, ActiveVideo Networks
• Tracy Geist, SVP Market Development, OpenTV
• Dan Gill, VP Business Development, Gotuit
• Brian Murphy, EVP Branded Entertainment, TBA Global
• Lori H. Schwartz, SVP, Director of Emerging Media, Interpublic Emerging Media Lab
• Tara Walpert-Levy, President, Visible World

Looking forward to seeing you there!

We have been powering Major League Soccer’s QuickKicks video portal for the past three seasons.  Using our premium, scene-based metadata viewers can choose any game, and then watch playlists of just the Highlights, Goals, Saves, Set Pieces, Best Runs and player spotlights from each team.  Any scene can be directly linked to, or embedded using the metadata.More and more, soccer fans are using the site to get the best moments of the games to insert in their blogs - which is exactly the kind of viral sharing that helps to drive more traffic for MLS.

For example, check out this post by Jack Bell in the New York Times last week, in their soccer blog called Goal.  It talks about an unbelievable goal by the Danny Ceperos, the goalkeeper for the New York Red Bulls, to help power their 3-1 win against Columbus, and uses the Gotuit embedded video player to show readers that exact play.

The same highlight was grabbed by Ives Galarcep, another soccer blogger here.  Note that after watching the highlight, viewers can choose to watch more scenes from the game video, which brings them back to the QuickKicks portal in the context of that scene.

Driving more visit traffic is just one of the major benefits of having rich, scene-based metadata.  To learn more about how to unleash the full value of a video library using video metadata, read our latest whitepapers.