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Now See Here: Online Video Enters the
Mainstream of Business Content Services |
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1 August 2005 |
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Corporate video services supplying broadcast TV footage
used to be rather sleepy affairs, forwarding tapes and
transcripts well after broadcasts had aired. Today's
Web-oriented video environment is changing this snoozy
status quo rather rapidly, though. In addition to
consumer-oriented moves by Yahoo!, Google and others,
business-oriented Web services that can trigger awareness
of online broadcasts seconds after they hit the airwaves
are beginning to catch on in the marketplace. These
services offer invaluable strategic and tactical input to
corporate and governmental professionals, as well as a
nifty supplemental revenue stream for broadcast outlets now
able to reach behind-the-firewall online audiences. It's a
young marketplace that's developing far more rapidly than
many may imagine - a sure sign that more imagination may be
required to harness profits from it sooner rather than
later. |
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It's
remarkable to see how rapidly video has burst on to the scene
of Web content. A year ago online video was still a fairly
segregated phenomenon, with major TV news outlets trying to
charge for access to basic footage, pockets of entertainment
video and lots of scattered amateur video. Today video is
seemingly everywhere on the Web - on mobiles, in weblogs, in search
engines and increasingly using the Web and Web-fed platforms as a primary delivery
medium. Major TV news outlets now make their ad-supported video
clips available online for free, CBS jumped over cable and
launched 24x7 breaking video news online, CNN.com has an hourly
video headline service, The New York Times spins its own news
videos online and Yahoo! is cutting deals with CNN and
ABC News for video services. In the entertainment world it's
now clear that on-demand video via the Web is going to compete
with cable service for primary delivery of content far more
quickly than many had imagined. If seeing is believing then
more people are believing in Web-delivered video than ever
before and lining up to cash in on the phenomenon.
Lately those cashing in includes
companies focusing on business information services. Today's
announcement of a marketing alliance between LexisNexis and
Critical Mention to make video content from Critical
Mention available later this summer via the LexisNexis
AlaCarte! service is an interesting example of the widening
impact of video on Web-based business information services. Sean
Morgan, Founder and CEO of Critical Mention, has lead his team
in applying many lessons about how businesses make the best use
of general media outlets learned during his days with Screaming
Media and Pinnnacor.
Critical Mention monitors video footage from U.S. broadcast
news outlets and builds transcripts and indexing for these sources
from the supplied close-caption text as they are being broadcast live. Clients can monitor
broadcasts via a Critical Mention browsing tool or via keyword alerts that can trigger
awareness of broadcasts hitting important topics within seconds
of a broadcast hitting the ether. Users can forward clips in
email, order CDs of selected clips and use powerful filtering
tools to hone in on exactly where and when and in what context
specific footage was aired. Many leading corporations
already take this service in directly, so the LexisNexis AlaCarte! deal serves to make it easier to reach small and
medium sized businesses and situational users that are willing to pay for access to
these clips and text transcripts on an as-you-go basis.
Through services such as Critical Mention the ability to
monitor business-oriented video in real-time without having to
be a zombie in front of the "boob tube" is creating a powerful
source for business intelligence services that is becoming a
standard tool faster than one may think. Companies trying to
understand brand imaging in consumer marketplaces need to know
what broadcast TV outlets are saying - where even today most
people form their opinions from news and advertising. As video
moves on to the Web, this need will only increase as the pool
of available channels becomes ever broader and harder to
monitor with conventional tools.
Yet in spite of these exciting developments many business
content providers are only beginning to dabble with video, even
though their largest corporate clients are already well-versed
in it. Here are a few thoughts as to how business content
providers can cash in on video effectively in the months ahead:
- Don't think of broadcast video automatically as a
low-end service. The Googles and Yahoo!s of the
world are positioning video search engines for the masses,
but they're hardly of the caliber of a Critical Mention's
sophistication to date. With highly effective indexing,
searching and services delivery combined with auditable usage
that translates into per-view revenues for partners, this is
a premium money-maker on both ends of the proposition not
reliant on ad dollars. This kind of streaming media alert
will be to general corporate markets what real-time quotes
were to financial markets thirty years ago: a mother's milk
of market information that will be invaluable to brand
managers, IR departments and corporate relations
professionals. There are certainly the ever-present
dangers of commoditization lurking in the wings that face any
aggregator, but this is a young market cycle that's just
beginning to be exploited.
- Think of high-end services that can benefit from video
awareness. Content from Critical Mention is used for
powerful business intelligence tools such as
Biz360, but
it's content that is just beginning to find its niche in
other kinds of business information applications. Sales force
automation can certainly benefit from such up-to-the-minute
alerting capabilities, as can general corporate portals and
library services. Business information database services will
seem somewhat naked without such a capability sooner than you
may think.
- Take advantage of openness. While the lion's share
of business-oriented video is found today via broadcast
television outlets, the burgeoning flow of video from other
online sources is going to give today's broadcast outlets a
run for their money. Chief amongst these will be video
generated by corporations, today fed mostly to broadcasters
seeking footage.
The
NewsMarket has already made a nice niche for itself in
this space, but there's a burgeoning online video marketplace
well beyond standard sources that needs to be examined and
tamed quickly for immediate business use. Services such as
Google and Yahoo! are hot on the trail of corralling content
for general use, but the more demanding standards of business
use are likely to be fair game for those willing to make the
move.
With so many options available to today's business content
consumer from Web sources being a first mover is no guarantee
of long-term success. But by applying the lessons learned from
earlier online business cycles and doing careful marketing
homework Critical Mention has done an impressive job of finding
a need and filling it in a highly profitable manner with an
easy-to-deploy service. Expect more appearances from video in
major business information services in the months ahead - and
more sophistication in thinking about how
professionally-oriented content services can be packaged
profitably with video in mind.
-
John Blossom
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