Still working, but that’s good…

So we still have some final programming tweakings, some design & interface ironing, and content to write. But hey, that’s good. Things are moving very well. The system is completed (first release – we have a lot of smart ideas for the next round) and now we are focusing on the presentation layer

And a part of this presentation layer is the strategy. Why we do what we do? Why you don’t want to have your content on Youtube? Here is an answer (an exerpt from our business strategy docs). Here it goes

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Our main concurrents on the market (Google Video, YouTube, BrightCove, RooMedia, Blinkx) use the strategy of content aggregation and subsequent syndication to achieve traffic. The problem with this approach is that the big video content owners may feel frustrated because their brand no longer matters that much, being placed near thousands other smaller or bigger content owners. In the same time, they lose control over the distribution system, over the commercials packaged with their content.

We are a white label technology enabler. And that’s all. Nobody see our logo. Almost nobody, in fact. Just the content owners, in their control panel interface. In fact we can remove the logo from there as well, but it’s better not to in order to know whom to call when you need your questions to be answered.
Although expressions like “user-generated content” and “long tail” are in the pipeline, we believe that on the medium term the long tail will be characterized more by the re-use of older video contents (that are now gathering the dust, since they are no longer or only superficially monetized, on the archive’s shelves in the paradigm of classic media). Of course, the amateur-quality contents have their charm and it is also true that on the medium term there will be some niches where private persons could take over successfully (for instance cooking receipts presented by famous cooks, some talk-shows where the main interest is the content of the discussion alone, funny moments), but these only represent a few of the types of the video materials for the public.

The video production demands a high level of specific know-how, big production costs and also big marketing / promotion budgets. Thus making the barriers to some programme segments harder to pass. For example, it is very difficult to conceive a series that requires special effects. Let’s take the Star Trek example: even such a developed community as the franchise’s fans didn’t come to produce a series that stood up to the expected level of professionalism. They only got to make a few episodes from the Star Trek Stories, but these did not gain the expected success due to comprehensible reasons (the lack of marketing, of professional filming equipment, of special effects, of a coherent vision / plot).

On the other side, it is clear now that the same Star Trek fans could be interested in the video materials which had been done by the televisions, but which, however, no longer belong in the prime time (older episodes, materials that have been removed at the final cut etc.).

Using the Internet as a distribution medium under one’s own brand (website), a television station could use the contents in order to promote the current episodes of that show, to promote other shows appealing to the same audience, to make cross-selling (selling DVDs with episodes at a superior quality plus other bonuses), to generate a revenues from advertisements placed in the content or to use the episodes / contents for focus-groups (surveys).
Our proposal is the creation of a high-level technological distribution and aggregation system for video content, offered as a private label (us being just the technology partners, invisible for the main public and avoiding this way the concurrence with the content owner), and also the services and know-how needed for operating such a system in an enterprise medium.
The advantages of this solution are to be found at a business strategy level, but also at a technological level.

From the angle of the business strategy level, the use of a video ad server under one’s own brand allows the leverage of actual brand equity and its maintenance on the long term through avoiding the loss of the brand-equity towards the technological aggregation (e.g.: the Viacom – YouTube case).

From the technologically point of view, such a system has all the attributes offered by the big players, since the costs on the hardware parts are small, but also some advantages that cannot be offered by distribution through an aggregation:

• flexibility in ad distribution (pre/post/mid-roll, over layer, video ad, interactive spot etc.);
• possibility to customize the application, when it comes to design, but also for the interaction / analysis part, regarding the necessities and strategy of the client.

In two words, what we we wish to accomplish is to provide a technological platform for distribution and monetization of the video content through the inserted ads, at the enterprise grade when it comes to the technical solution and the services, and to be distributed as a white-label product in order to give the big content owner the possibility to collect all the benefits from the exploitation of their content.
PS Next week you’ll see the real thing