Online Video Weekly News Round Up - Storm the Bastille Edition

It's Bastille Days here in Milwaukee, celebrating the beginning of the French Revolution, an event which my family was on the wrong side of back then (yeah, I'm a blue blood, doesn't it show?). But the rest of the country is simply carrying on with normal operations and excessive watering to fight off massive drought conditions (even in like 30% of Wisconsin actually). Here's another edition of the weekly online video news round up for your weekend morning coffee.

It's been a slow week for online video news, I think everyone split for San Diego Comic-Con, an event which is generating massive amounts of streaming video itself in fact.

Broadcasters Fail to Get Injunction Against Aereo

Aereo is another company that picks up TV broadcast signals and reproduces through an IP network to get the signals to mobile devices. It costs $12 a month and did not have an injunction placed against it, which all four major broadcasters were seeking in a court case. The judge stated that while it might do damage to the broadcasters, it's probably not likely and the service itself is "likely legal" which could be a precedent that sees rapid expansion of the service...if they win the rest of the court case(s) against them.

The broadcasters are concerned that Aereo could deprive them of carriage fees they receive from cable/satellite/telco TV operators. They also argue that Aereo will lead to lower ratings, giving them less inventory to monetize.

Judge Alison J. Nathan, who denied the preliminary injunction, agreed with both arguments and ruled that the broadcasters could suffer “irreparable harm” from Aereo, but that is not likely to happen as the case moves through the courts.

Source: Media Daily News

Poptent Rises past $5M in Payouts to 50,000 Creators

Poptent recently pulled in $5.5M in funding but he more interesting news (because everyone pulls in funding now and again) lies in the network itself.

• Poptent's global network has grown to include more than 50,000 members in 140 countries.

• Poptent has paid out $5 million in cash to Poptent members for completed brand and agency video assignments. Poptent crossed the $1 million payout threshold in late 2010 and the $2 million mark in mid-2011, providing an additional measure of its accelerating growth;

Source: Press Release

Microsoft Lays Off Staff in Mobile & Branded Video Ad Area

Huh, I wonder if this means they're washing their hands of it all or just restructuring some teams.

On Wednesday (July 11), the company initiated an expected round of layoffs with the Microsoft Advertising division... between 15 to 30 percent of the group’s sales force was expected to be eliminated.

Microsoft has completely eliminated its mobile advertising team, the Global Creative Solutions team, which housed Microsoft’s much praised branded entertainment business BEET (Branded Entertainment Experiences Team).

Ouch. That means there could be some talent floating about with some serious experience. So we can either expect (if it's like video games) some new branded video ad companies or some hirings at existing ones.

Source: AdWeek

StreamingMedia interview with Tim Street of mDialog

Talking about the future of mobile video advertising was Tim Street from mDialog while at the latest Streaming Media event and they've shared the interview.

 Right now, if you've watched a video on an iPad, for example, you'll see a spinning wheel and that's the player switching model that doesn't really work. So, that's a big challenge for folks when they're trying to take advantage of their current ad ops workflow and take what they've been doing on the PC and make it work on these new devices. So, the challenge to get past that is manipulating the m3u8 playlist. -Tim Street

Source: StreamingMedia.com

HuffPost Ready to Launch into Online Video Full Bore

I got this, ironically, from the Wall Street Journal:

HuffPost Live, whose main studio will be in New York, will run 12 hours every weekday, with highlights after hours and on weekends. Huffington Post's editor in chief Arianna Huffington has hired a 100-person newsroom for the network, including veterans from ABC, CNN and al-Jazeera English.

That's going to be a large amount of inventory with a high price tag I bet.

Source: WSJ