RESTON, VA, February 5, 2010 – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released December 2009 data from the comScore Video Metrix service, showing that nearly 178 million U.S. Internet users watched online video during the month. Online video viewing continued to reach record levels in December, with 33.2 billion videos viewed during the month.
Top 10 Video Content Properties by Videos Viewed
Google Sites continued to rank as the top U.S. video property in December, delivering 13.2 billion videos, with YouTube.com accounting for nearly 99 percent of all videos viewed at the property. Hulu ranked second with more than 1 billion videos viewed, an all-time high for the property, and representing 3.0 percent market share. Microsoft Sites ranked third with 561 million (1.7 percent), followed by Fox Interactive Media with 551 million (1.7 percent) and Yahoo! Sites with 539 million (1.6 percent).
Top 10 Video Content Properties by Viewers
Nearly 178 million viewers watched an average of 187 videos per viewer during the month of December. Google Sites attracted 135.8 million unique viewers during the month (97.5 videos per viewer), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 59.8 million viewers (9.0 videos per viewer) and Fox Interactive Media with 56.8 million viewers (9.7 videos per viewer). The average Hulu viewer watched 22.9 videos during the month, representing another all-time high for the property.
Top Video Ad Networks by Potential Reach
In December, Tremor Media ranked as the top video ad network with a potential reach of 103.7 million viewers, or 58.3 percent of the total viewing audience. Advertising.com Video Network ranked second with 83.6 million viewers (47.0 percent), followed by SpotXchange Video Ad Network with 81.3 million viewers (45.7 percent)
Other notable findings from December 2009 include:
* The top video ad networks in terms of their actual reach delivered were: Tremor Media Video Network with 30.5 percent penetration of online video viewers, BrightRoll Video Network with 21.7 percent, and BBE with 21.2 percent.
* Jambo Media, an online video solutions company, delivered videos to 39.4 million unique viewers, representing a reach comparable to that of video content providers in the top ten.
* 86.5 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
* 134.4 million viewers watched more than 13 billion videos on YouTube.com (97.1 videos per viewer).
* 44.9 million viewers watched 423.3 million videos on MySpace Sites (9.4 videos per viewer).
* The average Hulu viewer watched 22.9 videos, totaling 2.2 hours of videos per viewer.
* The duration of the average online video was 4.1 minutes.
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 28 - CBS Interactive today reported it jumped three spots to become the fourth largest property in terms of Unique Video Viewers according to comScore VideoMetrix (Sept. 2009). CBS Interactive posted significant year-over-year growth in unique viewers (217%), video streams (197%) and minutes (304%), as well as month-over-month gains in unique viewers (17%), video streams (27%) and minutes (21%).
The year-over-year growth was driven by increases from leading brands CBS.com, TV.com, CBSNews.com, CBSSports.com, CBS College Sports, CNET, GameSpot, and Last.fm as users turned to its leading properties for information and entertainment across popular categories including news, entertainment, sports, technology, games, and music.
The top 10 Properties According to Unique video viewers are:
According to comScore's September Video Metrix report reflecting actual unique viewers, Tremor Media is the top-ranked video ad network, with 33.6 million unique viewers, followed by BBE with 27.4 million and BrightRoll with 25.1 million.
comScore has not yet released it monthly top 10 results, but a sneak peek shows that Tremor places #8 on the list (I believe the first time an ad network has cracked the top 10), Jambo Media, a video syndicator (and also a VideoNuze sponsor) comes in at #9 with 32.3 million viewers and Facebook shows up at #10 with 31.1 million. All 3 companies are new to comScore's top 10 and compared to comScore's August top 10 list, they replace Turner (now #12), AOL (now #15) and Disney (now #20). All 7 other top 10 sites are back, though with a little shuffling (Google/YouTube, Fox, Yahoo, CBS, Viacom, Microsoft and Hulu).
With respect to the video ad networks specifically, as I've written previously, there's an ongoing debate about which numbers are most relevant to focus on. comScore has been working to fully populate its actuals list, which requires cooperation from the video ad networks themselves. Another way of measuring video ad networks' size is by "potential reach," which considers the total number of viewers of all the sites in a network (so for an ad network that would mean all sites it has the right to place ads on). Looking at both provides a broader picture of video ad networks' size.
By the potential reach measure, among video ad networks, Tremor is the top-ranked, with 72.9 million unique viewers, YuMe is #2 with 66.2 million, Ad.com is #3 with 57 million, SpotXchange is #4 with 55.7 million, ScanScout is #5 with 54.9 million and BrightRoll is #6 with 51.4 million. Oddly missing from the potential reach list is BBE, which in August was the fourth-largest video ad network with 62.7 million unique viewers. I'm trying to get an answer to that one. Tremor also announced yesterday that 60 sites have recently joined its publisher network, including A&E, Hachette Filippachi US, Thompson Reuters and SBTV.
It's also worth mentioning that Google/YouTube continues to dominate the video landscape. In September it is up to 10.4 billion videos viewed (vs. 10 billion in August), with a 40.2% market share (vs. 39.6%) in August. As the comScore data compilation slides I offered on August 31st support, Google/YouTube's share has hovered consistently around 40% since the middle of 2008.
Data like the above is obviously extremely important for understanding the evolving online video landscape. I'm cognizant of many people's concerns that the comScore data is incomplete or does not synch with internal logs or other measurement techniques. However, comScore is the only third-party data source that consistently releases results, providing trend data to analyze. Although I wouldn't suggest "taking the data to the bank," I do believe comScore provides great directional evidence of the market's growth and the standing of individual players.
FierceOnlineVideo got a chance to catch up with Rob Manoff, CEO of Jambo Media, to discuss the online video industry and his company's progress so far in 2009. Click here for more of our ongoing FierceOnlineVideo Leaders interviews.
FierceOV: Rob, as we approach the half-way point of the year, what have been some highlights for you and Jambo Media so far in 2009?
Manoff: The growth of our network has been really exciting, and we're now consistently ranked in the top 20 video sites by comScore. The successful launch of the Jambocast Video Network and our white-label Jambocast Player were also highlights of the year so far. We're excited to see how our concept of vertical video networks can grow and how we can provide our licensed video content to create new video networks for our customers.
FierceOV: Now that you've launched those two products, what additional new opportunities do you see to grow Jambo Media?
Manoff: It's still all about growth, and we want to continue to improve our player and the quality of the content in our network. We want to focus on content optimization, and by that, I mean making sure the videos we place on a site are the best in context with the other text and picture content on the page, as well as suited to the individual user, if we've seen them before. We're currently developing new ways to cookie the user and identify other content on the page so that this sort of personalized content becomes more of a reality, without becoming too intrusive. For instance, a cooking site would ideally have videos of preparation of the exact recipe the user is looking for, and a movie box office site might have trailers of the weekend's top grossing films. We think that will drive interaction and ultimately lead to more video views.
FierceOV: What are your thoughts on the content side of the business right now?
Manoff: I think the content area is very exciting right now, and we've been finding that content owners are coming to the realization that keeping their content on their own site is not enough. Hoping the user will find you in one location doesn't work, and then the content owner seeks out more areas to be seen, so they can get multiple uses out of each piece of content. I'm a believer in the syndication model, and we try to optimize syndication with our vertical video networks. We purposely price our model as a revenue share, with no minimum guarantees, instead of a subscription, to increase that incentive to try syndication as well.
FierceOV: Some companies in the online video space have taken a very vertical approach, where they focus on being a video portal or an ad network, whereas Jambo offers many different components. What do you think are the benefits and drawbacks of this approach?
Manoff: Well, we set out with a focus on video, so though you might say we're in a few parts of the video market, doing white-label player support, vertical video networks, we're not breaking into other content areas for instance. So we think we're still very focused on the market opportunity we see. We simplify things for our customers because they don't need three separate accounts and logins to choose ads and manage their video assets. We provide an all-in-one solution that also lets them customize the look and feel of their player on their sites.
FierceOV: What are some trends you're seeing in the space? What are some issues or pain points you feel need to be addressed?
Manoff: There has been major difficulty on the player side because each company needs to be integrated into the Flash player, but has different ways of doing it. I think you'll see a more universal approach here as well as in ad code integration. I also think syndication will continue to take off, and outside parties will start telling of their success with it, which will drive growth. We also think that every change and product design should be done with the content owner first in mind, because it's that content, not the technological capability of the player or the ad network being used, that excites people and drives the increase in online video viewing.
Jambo Media has moved video syndication another step forward with the official release of "Jambocast," an all-in-one video syndication platform. Jambocast, which is available for white-label licensing, essentially allows vertically-focused web sites to build out their own private video syndication networks. For web site that either don't have their own video, or want to augment what they do have, syndicating video into their sites is a great option. Jambo's CEO Rob Manoff recently explained to me how Jambocast works.
Jambocast follows on the company's success with its own video syndication network, Jambo Video Network (JVN). According to comScore, JVN ranked #18 in March '09, with 9M unique visitors and 37M video streams (U.S. only). As Rob noted, JVN has taught the company a ton about what's required to build and run a syndication network, lessons it has incorporated into the development of Jambocast.
First and foremost is the importance of offering a comprehensive solution. Rob explained that what he sees as unique about Jambocast is that it offers each piece part of what a syndicator would need - a "video syndication network-in-a-box." Customers get a customizable video player, ad management (which is also integrated with 3rd party ad networks), publisher/syndication management, content management and tracking/reporting. Jambocast's goal is to make it easy to get up and running and start making money. As Rob says, "we're a bunch of ad network guys building a video network with an ad network mentality."
Jambocast also responds to what content providers have been telling Jambo for a while: they want full control of where their content resides. Though embedding has become highly popular, Rob sees Jambocast as the "anti-embed alternative," for content providers who want hyper-distribution, but without risk of their brands ending up in undesirable places. Jambocast's syndication management features give web sites the tools to offer 3rd party content providers comfort.
Jambocast is getting quick traction - customers on board include Mondo Media (adult animation), KidsTube (video aggregator for kids), a large pet-related site (undisclosed for now) plus 6-8 others signed up, but also not yet disclosed.
Jambocast is a classic example of how syndication is continues to permeate the broadband video ecosystem. Though it's distinct, I'd put Magnify.net and KickApps in a somewhat similar orbit, with the former placing more emphasis on UGC and the latter more on social media features. Yet all are part of what I refer to as the Syndicated Video Economy, which continues to grow in influence. Having already made its own syndication network profitable, Jambo is now also going to help others do the same.
Despite gloomy macroeconomic reports and predictions of display ad dropoffs, a group of top online video ad executives told FierceOnlineVideo they are more than confident about the industry going into 2009.
In the roundtable discussion with Fierce, Jesse Chenard, chief strategic officer for Tremor Media, Rob Manoff, CEO of Jambo Media, and Michael Shehan, CEO of spotxchange, agreed that online video is poised for growth in the coming year.
"We've seen a decrease in ads from financial companies and travel companies because of the downturn in their industries," Shehan said, "but other people are seeing the benefit of moving to online video advertising and the amount of targeting you can do."
Manoff, whose company mainly targets small to medium sized businesses who have not yet integrated video, said the metrics provided by comScore were a major factor in the success of his company's video platform and accompanying ads.
"When you can dig deep and see not only how many times people watch an ad all the way through, but also can see demographic information, it shows them exactly who makes up their consumer base, which is good for the small to medium publisher ultimately," Manoff said. "We still think pre-roll ads are going to be the standard for a while, but we're excited about other formats as they develop."
Tremor Media was a major partner with the IAB as they work to develop ad standards, and Chenard said this was one thing holding ad buyers from migrating more quickly to online ad formats.
"You see so many variations of ads out there, pre-roll, overlay, accompanying banner, the list goes on," Chenard said. "This leads to ad buyers not really knowing what they're getting sometimes when they place online video ads, and I think standardization of names of ads and types will really drive their adoption of the format."
All of the participants in the roundtable agreed with Chenard that standardization would be helpful across platforms. They said increasingly efficient and accurate metrics are also helping them show the value of online video ads to customers. The panelists were confident that the growing amount of professional online video content to place ads around, increasingly standardized ad formats, and advanced metrics will help drive online video ad growth through the next year and beyond.
Ivanhoe Broadcast News to supply the Jambo Video Network with news about breakthroughs in science and technology as well as women’s lifestyle and family issues.
New York, NY (September 16, 2008) - Jambo Media, LLC, a leading developer of online video solutions – including JamboCast, JamboTV.com and the Jambo Video Network – today announced its partnership agreement with Ivanhoe Broadcast News, which will provide the Jambo Video Network with its Discoveries and Breakthroughs Inside Science and Smart Woman 90-second news reports.
The Jambo Video Network, powered by Jambo Media’s revolutionary JamboCast technology, currently delivers video content to almost 200 web publishers with more than 2 million daily video plays. JamboCast is a simple video solution for web publishers, content owners, and advertisers, providing flash video players for sites to display video content. Publishers using JamboCast video technology can customize their flash video player for their site and select from a wide variety of video content to display on their web pages.
“Ivanhoe’s video content is well produced and offers high quality reports to our publishers,” said Robert S. Manoff, CEO of Jambo Media. “Jambo is focused on providing our publishers with professionally produced video content that relates to the theme of their site. Ivanhoe fits perfectly within that strategy.”
Founded in 1982, Ivanhoe Broadcast News is the country's largest television newsgathering organization covering medical breakthroughs, family health and consumer news for women. Ivanhoe’s award-winning content is seen on more than 200 local television stations from New York to Los Angeles and is now available to all Jambo publishers in their JamboCast login. This content is broken down into a number of categories, such as health topics about cancer, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis and surgery, as well as lifestyle topics about nutrition, dieting, weight loss and wellness.
“We are pleased to partner with Jambo to offer our technology and lifestyle programming across their expanding platform,” said John Cherry, President of Sales for Ivanhoe Broadcast News (www.ivanhoe.com). “In additional to providing a new revenue stream, the relationship with Jambo helps us continue to fulfill our mission of providing life-changing news to the world.”
About Jambo Media LLC Headquartered in New York, Jambo Media, LLC, a leading developer of online video solutions – including JamboCast, JamboTV.com and the Jambo Video Network – provides simple video services to web publishers of all sizes.
Jambo Media, LLC, a leading developer of online video solutions, today announced that it has selected content delivery network (CDN) services from Limelight Networks Inc. to power all of Jambo's video properties, which includes the Jambo Video Network and JamboTV.com. Currently Jambo Media is delivering more than 2 million daily video plays and supports video on more than 120 web sites and growing on a weekly basis.
Limelight Networks'CDN fits well with Jambo's business model and will enable the Jambo Video Network to grow exponentially. Jambo Media will soon be releasing white label versions of their technology for advertisers, publishers and content owners called "Jambocast." The Limelight CDN will be a major part of the Jambocast technology.
"We have worked with a number of companies, as well as tried to run the video on our own, but Limelight Networks has proven to be the best choice for us," said Robert S. Manoff, CEO of Jambo Media. "Limelight's architecture and abilities have allowed us to deliver what we need to ensure quality customer service for our clients."
Manoff and his team of marketing and advertising veterans have created the Jambo Video Network by licensing video from sources such AP, iVillage, and Ivanhoe Broadcast News, and then packaging them into channels for distribution to affiliate sites via the Jambo video player. The videos are supported by a variety of advertising formats, so the websites get fresh content and earn ad revenues in the process. Affiliate sites can choose which channels to receive while customizing the look and feel of the video player.
The robust and scalable infrastructure of the Limelight Network CDN was engineered to meet the challenges of delivering rich media to today's Internet users, by meeting the challenge of the four dimensions of content delivery: increasing object size, entire content libraries, ever- growing audience size, and the immediate availability of every library object, regardless of popularity. Jambo selected Limelight Networks because of the video provider's long-tail library of content, and its need for high-availability and quick response while distributing high-bit rate, high-quality media files.
Jambo Media, LLC, a leading developer of online video solutions - including JamboCast, JamboTV.com and the Jambo Video Network - provides simple video services to web publishers of all sizes. For more information, visit www.jambomedia.com.
The trend toward widespread video syndication to small-to-medium sized web sites continues to gain momentum.
Two recent initiatives - plus others I expect are still to come - point to the increasing likelihood that broadband video's eventual distribution model will look far different from traditional, tightly-controlled approaches. I'm becoming more convinced that "syndicated video economy" concept I sketched out in March is where the market is heading.
The first initiative, covered in a recent NYTimes article, "Google and Creator of 'Family Guy' Strike a Deal" suggests that Google may finally be ready to point its powerful AdSense engine toward video distribution. AdSense, as many of you likely know, essentially created a "long tail of advertisers" by dispersing targeted pay-for-performance keyword-based ads to tens of thousands of small-to-medium sized web sites. Including Google Ads has become a no-brainer for many sites seeking to easily pick up a few extra bucks by allocating some on-site real estate to AdSense.
Now instead of distributing ads, Google is looking to take the AdSense model a step further by distributing video content (along with ads) to myriad web sites hungry for video, and cash. First up are comedic webisodes from Seth MacFarlane (creator of Fox's "Family Guy"). Google's proposition to small, and even larger sites, makes sense: we'll give you free high-quality video content, all supported by pay-for-performance ads. You get great content and can make money at it. What's not to like? Not much in my opinion. It seems like such a compelling model that one wonders why Google hasn't done this earlier. In fact, they did. Back in August 2006, Google announced a test with MTV to do exactly the same thing (the ensuing YouTube-Viacom litigation no doubt scotched the test). Hopefully this time around Google will have more luck.
Meanwhile, hyper video syndication is not just for the mighty like Google. Consider Jambo Media, a two year-old company with 12 employees which has built out a syndication network now generating over 2 million video views per day. Web sites like BestCelebGossip.com, Epigee.org and MensTech.com may not be household names, but, as Jambo's CEO and co-founder Rob Manoff explained to me, they are representative of virtually unlimited long tail web publishers eager for video, but unable or unwilling to create it themselves.
Rob and his team of ex-affiliate marketing and advertising veterans have created the Jambo Video Network by licensing video from sources such AP, iVillage, Ivanhoe Broadcast News, and then packaging them into "channels" for distribution in a Jambo video player. Of course ads come along with the video content (though Jambo has a separate ad-free "JamboCast" white label solution in the works too).
Affiliate sites can login to their Jambo account to select which channels to receive while customizing the look and feel of the video player. Over 100 sites have affiliated, which Rob believes will grow to several hundred by the end of '08, driving a projected 5 million views/day. Rob said that sites earn $2-4 effective CPM with revenue per day ranging from $10-30 on the low end all the way up to $1,000/day on the high end.
Jambo is pursuing a space that syndicators like Roo, Voxant, ClipSyndicate, Newsmarket and others have been in for a while. All of these players, along with now Google, are doing what Rob articulates well: creating video ad inventory where none previously existed. Such is the power of syndication in the frictionless Internet environment. And why smart content providers - from startups to established TV networks - are recognizing that increasingly, syndication is where the broadband market is heading.
Note: if you want to learn more about syndication and how one big content provider is succeeding with it, please join me for a webinar entitled, "Profiting from the Syndicated Video Economy." The webinar is sponsored by Akamai and will feature a presentation from Greg Clayman, Executive VP, Digital Distribution and Business Development, MTV Networks and me. Registration is free.
Jambo Media has announced that Internet media guru Jason Wolfe has snapped up an equity position in the online video solutions company. He will also join the company’s board.
Wolfe will help facilitate larger relationships for Jambo, the company said. He is the founder and former chief executive of Direct Response Technologies. In 1994, Wolfe founded Direct Response with one employee on board and an initial investment of $100.
“I have known the founders of Jambo Media since the days when they were clients of Direct Response Technologies,” Wolfe said. “I have always admired their skill and ability in online media. I have had plenty of opportunities to invest into various new media companies and concepts over the years, however very few have excited me. The opportunity to be an investor and advisor in Jambo Media is truly exciting.”
Jambo offers simple video services to Web publishers of all sizes.
