The Digital Edge Blog

Blip.tv has added a new channel to their roster: Rocketboom…

Rocketboom has signed on to become part of the blip.tv network of shows. Blip.tv, a fast rising video destination site, has reached an agreement with Rocketboom to host all of their videos and to provide advertising for the show - with an innovative and important twist.

I got a chance to speak the other day with Dina Kaplan, one of the founders of blip.tv and a media industry veteran, to get some perspective on the Rocketboom deal and to better understand where blip.tv fits in the developing web video landscape.

It was clear from our discussion that signing Rocketboom was more than just a business deal to Dina and the other founders of blip.tv. She credits Rocketboom with being one their key motivations for starting the company. The success of the show was a catalyst for her “epiphany’ on how the web could change the rules for producing and distributing video content. Rocketboom was the first daily video show to gain an audience on the web. Its quirky production and short format programs helped to define the genre and establish the web as a viable channel for the medium.

Though the deal with Rocketboom is an important step by itself for blip.tv, it is also the launch point for something that may prove far more significant for web video in the long run. Concurrent with this deal, blip.tv is introducing a new format for delivering advertisements.

Mid-clip overlay ads…

Most ad support in web videos takes the form of pre-roll ads - short video clips that run before the actual content clip plays. You can’t skip them, and they make you wait to watch what you clicked to see. By contrast, mid-clip overlay ads simply pop-up over the lower third of the screen without forcing you to wait or interrupting the video that’s playing.

As you can see from the picture, these mid-clip overlays are not really intrusive. We are even seeing these types of ads on traditional TV now. The overlays delivered by blip.tv usually stay on the screen for about 10-15 seconds and then disappear on their own. The technology for these overlay ads is based on features found in Apple’s Quicktime. According to Dina, blip.tv needed to work with Apple prior to launching with Rocketboom to include the capability to interact with these overlays. This extension currently allows users to just click on the small ‘x’ in the corner of the overlay if they want to close the ad. I expect that this interactive capability will be put to additional uses in the future.

While there are multiple sites claiming to be “first’ in delivering overlay based advertisements - YouTube and Brightcove among them - blip.tv appears to be the first to offer this capability in a non-Flash based environment. And this has one incredibly powerful implication.

Blip.tv can help untether overlay ads from the web…

Adobe’s Flash format is really bound to the web, but Apple’s Quicktime isn’t. In fact, it’s the technology behind Apple’s iTunes service. And when it comes to media players, it’s clear we live in an iPod dominated world. Combine that with the fact that every iPod Apple sells today - save the screenless Shuffle - is capable of playing video, and it’s likely that the demand for ‘off-line’ video will continue to grow quickly. These offline video consumers will become an increasingly important component of the web video demographic, and an attractive market for advertisers as well.

Blip.tv, unlike their Flash based peers, will be able to help content producers monetize this segment of the market without having to fall back on more intrusive pre-roll ads. Programs syndicated by blip.tv over Apple’s iTunes will have this ad overlay capability available right in the downloaded video. And this will bring a non-intrusive form of advertising off the web and into the pockets of millions of people.

It’s something that can really extend the value of an ad for a sponsor…

From the consumer’s side, it may also give studios a way to offer their premium content on iTunes without charging for it directly. Increasing the amount of programming people can freely download, sync, and watch is an important step in bringing this model of consuming video to the mainstream market. But progress here has been slowed by concerns over how to monetize this content in a way that’s viable for producers while still being palatable to consumers.

This may be a solution…

I asked Dina about any plans blip.tv’s may have to serve up overlay ads through iTunes dynamically. This would let them insert a different user specific ad at the point a user downloads a show instead of just inserting a single general ad at the time the show is encoded. While Quicktime is capable of handling this dynamic insertion on a technical level, blip.tv does not appear to have any active initiative to leverage it. They are currently focused on working with partners to build up an inventory of ads that can be leveraged by this new format, extending its use beyond the current show sponsorship model they announced as part of the Rocketboom deal.

I hope dynamic ad insertion is an area that blip.tv will consider implementing. Beyond offering the ability to match ads to individual users, it creates a naturally growing inventory of ad slots for Blip.tv to monetize both through ad rotation and by mining historical show inventory.

Blip.tv is focused on becoming something more than just a web video hosting service. They are looking to become a media portal - combining a growing stable of web targeted, professionally produced programming with an ad serving infrastructure that can make it a viable alternative - both for producers and viewers - to traditional television. They are content to leave the ‘viral video’ market to sites like YouTube - that’s not a space they’re interested in developing. Instead, blip.tv wants to become the flag-bearer for the next generation of television quality programming developed specifically for the web.

From the looks of it, they’re well on their way to that goal…