The HBO model already works for cable TV. HBO is profitable. On the internet, music services that charge a subscription fee, such as Rhapsody, are not as successful as those such as iTunes that charge per download. “Pay per use could be the future.”

Schaeffer makes an excellent connection between profitable ventures in current video and how the internet has not yet utilized the same business model. Subscription models provides a barrier to entry that has cut off several potential customers. If video providers are looking to turn their content into cash, they’re going to have to look to successful ventures for inspiration. The pay-per-view model seems to be the most effect means of monetizing content. The step content producers have to take is to form a relationship with a streaming video company that is able to create en e-commerce model suited to their specific needs.

ISPCON: Taking Advantage of Video [ISP Planet]

Chicago, IL: It is no secret that the housing market isn’t as strong as in years past. Realtors and contractors are trying to find ways to inject new life into their businesses, and many are turning to the Internet. Wescon Builders, a rehabilitation and construction firm in Chicago have found a new way to compete in the market, streaming video. By hiring the services of online streaming video provider ClickStreamTV, Wescon Builders is now able to take users on a virtual tour of homes and job sites.

Wescon Builders specializes in custom solutions to home design and construction, meaning theirs is a business where visual presentation counts. The company found success by creating an online portfolio of photos on their website, but were looking to go one step farther. Rather than have potential customers look at photos of their work, Wescon sought to provide users with video content. With the aid of ClickStreamTV, customers could now take virtual tours of homes completed by Weson and get a three hundred and sixty degree look at designs.

Streaming video, the technology being used by Wescon Builders is not new, but has only recently made its way into the mainstream business market. More and more companies are seeking ways to increase their web presence, a tactic which has been found to increase revenue. Most companies have web sites, but few are including multimedia due to lack of knowledge of the format, or a lack of direction regarding how to effectively use tools such as video to sell their products to a digital world.

ClickStreamTV was created as a solution for any business looking to put video on the web. The company prides itself on being flexible to the needs of their customers, and able to provide a complete video on the web experience that doesn’t require users to have an IT department to get the full experience.

Wescon Builders has been around for over two decades and specializes in construction and rehabilitation services. Priding themselves in high quality work and a strong commitment to the community, Wescon relies on the success of their repeat and referral client base. 

Another study, this one by the research firm IDC, suggested their lack of enthusiasm might be well-placed. More and more users are spending more and more time on social networking sites, but the study found they aren’t very responsive to ads there: Clickthrough rates were reported to be far lower than at other sites. On the web in general, nearly 80 percent of users clicked on at least one ad in the past year; on social networking sites, fewer than 60 percent did so.

It is no secret that one of the biggest draws sites like Facebook have is that their features are all provided free of charge. This is great for users, but the people behind the site are left with trying to find a way to monetize their service. Charge users a fee and risk losing countless members. Settling on advertising, Facebook still isn’t winning, with users up in arms about privacy invasion and now advertisers upset that their investments are not panning out. 

What does this mean for the online video market? Well, free sites like YouTube are not immune: 

Meanwhile, the folks at Google are still scratching their heads over YouTube, for which they paid $1.65 billion in 2006. The web video supersite serves 5 billion videos a month in the United States and nearly 4 billion in France, Germany and Great Britain, comScore reports. Yet its revenues are negligible—about $200 million this year, according to analysts’ estimates. That’s barely 1 percent of Google’s total income.

The volume is there, but the translation from visitors to income is missing. Companies, however, would be mistaken in thinking that online video iteself is not viable. The key of course is how video is being used. Streaming video sites that allow unrestricted uploading serve a very specific purpose, creating a community. Companies should adapt the community building aspects of social sites, but give it a business edge.

Most people think that when they want to share a video, they are restricted to sending a link through email. This link will then take users to a page where the video is embedded, or perhaps to a page that leads to another page. The point is that this process is cumbersome and generally not very professional. Also the control I’ve been talking about is nonexistant.

This is where video email comes in. Imagine being able to create a list of videos you want your recipient to watch. You place thumbnail pictures of these videos into an email, then you customize the email with additonal text, links, and downloadable documents. When your recipient opens up the email and clicks on the thumbnail, the video launches and begins to play. No digging through multiple pages or sending users to a cluttered site. Simply click and watch. Senders of video email can now control what content their receipients are viewing by directing their video watching experience.

In additional to the control afforded over the content itself, video email providers can also give senders the ability to track their emails. Not only can you track when an email is opened, but also when a video is watched, which files were downloaded, and which additional links were clicked. Video email tracking has become just as sophisticated as web statistics.

I end this segment of video email by saying that businesses can embrace video, and the sending of video without giving up control. The key is to find the tools that allow for you to retain control without sacrificing the technology that comes with streaming video.

For more information on video email, please visit ClickStreamTV

Think of video email as the next step in sharing videos. I’m can gurantee you’ve shared a Youtube video with friends, perhaps it was a clip from a television show, or someone falling off a boat. You have a few options when you share these videos. You can copy a link and send it to a friend via email or instant messenger. You can even embedd the video onto your own site, facebook profile, etc. The point is that the videos do not stay in one place. Like all data on the Internet, they travel.

So what if you’re a small business? Of course you could put your videos on YouTube and hope others share them or send links to those videos to customers. While YouTube is inarguably the most popular video sharing site, businesses who use it for video content are sharing their viewership with clips of kids blowing off fireworks. 

What businesses need to do is step away from social media sites, they need to embrace their own video content and exercise complete control. This is where video email comes in.

This is a great service for smaller customers who have very specific needs but it won’t challenge any of the major CDNs for years to come. Amazon would have to add so much additional functionality to the service that it would take years just to build and deploy it. Too many people are under the wrong assumption that all you have to do is deploy a bunch of boxes and turn them up and then all of a sudden you can then compete with the major CDNs. It takes a lot more than just a ton of boxes and bandwidth to compete with Akamai or Limelight in terms of size, scale and functionality, not to mention revenue. Which is proven by the fact that after Limelight, the next closest company in terms of CDN revenue is doing less than half of Limelight’s total revenue for this year.

So while Amazon is taking a step in the right direction, they are still a long way off from actually becoming a major player in the CDN game. CDN delivery still remains expensive and out of reach for many businesses, and it is companies such as ClickStreamTV that is working within the system to provide the delivery method to small businesses. Amazon’s affordable CDN can serve as a foundation for companies, but without the proper development technicians it doesn’t matter how well content can be streamed. If Amazon wants to up the ante, they would do well in turning their video service into a public product, selling not only content, but a means to display it.

Why Amazon’s CDN Offering Is No Threat To Akamai, Limelight or CDN Pricing [Business of Video]

For example, for a long-form piece of video, it’s possible that the connection degrades during the play time, especially for consumers using WiFi connections which ebb and flow in terms of quality, or for those using cable modems, where increasing neighborhood online traffic may disturb connection quality. “So our system has to be a lot smarter about what bit rate to use in any given time. We need an infrastructure on the back end to create many different versions of a piece of video, splice it up and have the intelligence that says, based on the quality of the connection, what to send down the pipe for a smooth video experience.” 

Now where have I heard this before? Perhaps it is ClickStreamTV, which has a back-end built around detecting system settings and delivering not only the correct file format, but a bit rate that is tailored to fit the speed of the user.

Video producers and video streamers have to realize that every users is essentially on a unique system. Optimizing video content for one setup while ignoring users on older machines or even different operating systems is an easily avoidable mistake. As internet video is pushed into the future, know that not all your viewers are also leaping into the future. HD video and Windows Media delivery may seem professional, but it won’t matter if less than half your audience can actually view the content. 

Sometimes it isn’t a bad idea to look back while you’re moving forward.

The Next Generation of Video [Semantic Web]

I think it is also crucial for all facets of the online video industry to keep things in perspective and set expectations properly. For instance, at the beginning of this year it was all about how online video advertising was talking all this money from broadcast and print advertising. The death of every medium except the Internet was being predicted and as a result, people expected more than what was possible. The most aggressive prediction I saw was for online video advertising to be a billion and a half dollars in 2008. Now, at the end of this year, it looks like it will be more along the lines of $500 million. While there is nothing wrong with that number, even if it was a billion and a half dollars this year, that’s less than 3% of the entire TV advertising market, that the industry is predicting such immediate death for. Lets be positive and excited about the growth we have coming, but also be realistic.

Now is a time of growth, not decline. While the online video marketplace may still be in its infancy, this can be viewed as a positive position. We can hope that in the coming years, the shift between television and online becomes even greater, turning online video into the dominant force in the marketplace.

Hard Times Are Good For The Online Video Industry: Don’t Give Into The Scare [Business of Video]

The new feature, called SmartAd, uses an algorithm that automatically identifies and inserts ads into portions of the video stream that aren’t exactly essential to the clip’s digestion. Think: put an ad on every square inch of a race car or baseball infield fence.

Every sqaure inch? That’s seriously bordering on spam. When will companies learn that if content is not popular enough, it will never reach enough viewers to have ads become effective. If a producer is streaming popular content, they are better off offering pay-per-view features. Let users pay a few dollars for content they can’t get anywhere else.

KeyStream Inserts Ads Into Video Blank Spaces [Wired]

From the very first YouTube debate, the Internet, and more specifically video on the Internet has played a vital role in campaigns. Going beyond traditional campaign ads, both presidential candidates have used the web to house a collection of videos aimed at giving voters a clear understanding of their stances.

Barack Obama has dubbed his video portal BarackTV  and has included in it introductary videos on himself, his wife, as well as running mate Joe Biden. Also in the collection are ads, video from his campaign tour, as well as speeches he has given. The advantage Obama has in this market is that he commands the support of many young, tech savy individuals. Rather than hoping supporters and undecided voters catch his appearances on television, or expecting articles in newspapers to drum support, Obama has created a one-stop destination for information about himeself.

McCain on the other hand has taken a different approach to his video content. Located on his official site, the Republican cadidate has chosed to use video to deliver two messages. The first are the standard attack ads that are seen on television. The other, more important message, focuses on McCain’s stances on various issues. Many times, voters can’t find the information they need on a candidate’s policy on a specific issue, and McCain has attempted to remedy this problem with video.

Looking ahead to tomrrow night, how might campaigns use streaming video while voters are at the polls?

One suggestion is to stream live video from rallies and campaign headquarters, giving supporters an inside look at this important night.

Another suggestion is to provide streams of events going on throughout the country such as concerts. Perhaps even charging supporters a small fee that could be used to fund the events or even benefit charity. 

As this election marks the first intensive use of the Internet, tomorrow night could be the first national coming together of video and viewer, with the entire country focused on one single event