The drawing is now closed. Thanks to the generous folks at Wowza, I'm giving away to one lucky reader of my blog a Wowza Media Server 2 perpetual license which retails for $995. Wowza's media server has support for multi-protocol and multi-client streaming including a complete interactive Flash media streaming feature set, live and on-demand HTTP streaming for the iPhone, live RTSP streaming with QuickTime, live and on-demand smooth streaming for Silverlight  and whole host of other features. Winner: Jason R. from Seattle, WA.

To enter the drawing, just leave one comment on this post with a valid
email address and I'll pick one lucky winner at random on March 1st. Big thanks to Wowza for the freebie.

Earlier today, YouTube launched a new "YouTube video speed dashboard" saying their goal is, "to give you insight into what your YouTube speed looks like compared to the YouTube speed of users in other regions and different ISPs." While that sounds like a nice idea, the results don't actually tell you anything in terms of your "YouTube video speed" or the quality of the video you are viewing. Since the results are not based on the data from an actual stream, YouTube's video speed dashboard is nothing more than a speed test that every other ISP has, which gives you no data on the actual performance of any video being delivered. It simply tells you the size of the pipe available.

YouTube's new speed dashboard says I am at 9.33Mbps, yet myself, and others, still get a lot of video buffering. There is no problem on my end with my ISP, the problem lies with how Google delivers video. As anyone knows, there are many factors that go into the buffering issue and while the last mile is one issue, it's not the only one. So who cares if YouTube sees that I have a 9.33Mbps connection if the 500Kbps video stream they are sending me isn't working. It's not just about the size of the pipe that matters.

Google says that "A higher YouTube video speed translates to a better and faster experience", but their new speed dashboard does not provide any real-time data or analysis of what the "experience" actually is. On YouTube's blog announcing the new dashboard they ask, "So, what can you do with all of this new data about your video speed?" The answer is easy, nothing. It's completely useless for telling a consumer anything about the video experience they are getting from YouTube.

– Why Can't YouTube's Player Auto-Detect When A User Should Get HD Quality?

– We Should Care About YouTube's Core Business, Not Their Market Share

– YouTube's Biz Blog Goes On Offensive, Says Industry Comments Are "Myths"

With a major snow storm about to hit the Northeast, many folks like myself are probably using the web to check out the latest forecast on Weather.com. The site is a treasure trove for anyone who really wants to check out the storm from all angles and there are already dozens of storm related videos available. As a result, I've checked out close to ten videos and each time, the site delivered me the same thirty second pre-roll add from pajamagram.com.

For content owners like Weather.com and others, examples like this highlight one of the many major problems with online video advertising. If a site like Weather.com that produces professional content, has a well known brand and has a large reach can't sell enough ad inventory, how can content owners ever expect to make any money online? Making matters worse, a site like Weather.com has a HUGE advantage over other sites in that they already know my zip code and could be delivering me ads that are tailored to my area. But that's not happening either.

While this is a problem that the online video space has been suffering from for years, why hasn't it gotten any better? Why isn't there more inventory and targeting taking place? What's the hold up? Every time I bring up this issue many who work in the online video ad platform space keep saying that they are already doing targeting or that their platforms support targeting, but clearly it's not taking place with content owners. I always ask for examples of sites that are doing this but don't get any. Makes you wonder if all these ad platforms can really deliver targeted, personalized ads.

While I do think ad platforms can determine what ads you have already seen and deliver you a different one, the fact this is not happening on Weather.com or CNN.com shows that even with the technology, the inventory is not there. For all the talk of how online video advertising is going to help content owners monetize their content, it's not happening on a major scale and won't until the user experience is much, much better.

Simply saying we need more inventory and better targeting to make online video advertising successful is not something people don't already know. I'm not making some profound statement that others have not though of. But in the past three years or so, I can't think of anything regarding on the online video advertising space that has gotten better. What's improved? Maybe the size of the ad window, but the quality of the ads is pretty poor, targeting is not there, the inventory is limited and the industry still has absolutely no video ad standards. I can't think of one aspect of the business that has improved the user experience in the past few years. Can you?

Yesterday I finished the advance program for the Streaming Media East show, which will take place May 11th-12th in NYC. We will have 110 speakers across more than 30 sessions over two days covering a wide range of business, technology and content subjects. I’m also excited that so many of today’s leading bloggers have agreed to moderate and lead sessions at the show including Peter Kafka from All Things Digital, Rafat Ali from PaidContent.org, Peter Cervieri from ScribeMedia.org, Dan Frommer from The Business Insider and Andy Plesser from beet.tv along with others.

Now the crazy part of placing speakers begins and I have to start sorting through more than 800 speaking submissions. Right now, I’m looking to place as many end-users and content owners first. So take a look at the subjects listed below, download the entire advance program and contact me if any of your customers would be a fit for a session.

• Inside The Cross Platform Olympics Experience
• Successful Content Syndication and Aggregation Strategies
• How Streaming Video is Changing The Television Landscape
• HTML5 And Web Video Standards
• Web Video Journalism: Future Or Fantasy?
• Media Framework: Video Publishing Platforms
• Advertising Spending: From Trickle to Torrent
• Understanding Adaptive Bitrate Technology And HTTP Video Delivery
• The Impact Of Broadband-Enabled TVs, Gaming Consoles And Devices
• P2P On The Flash Platform With RTMFP
• Cutting The Cord On TV: Will Online Video Lead To Cable’s Demise?
• Video Search: Finding Content In A Thousand-Channel Universe
• Going Mobile: Is Portable Media Finally Here?
• Using HD Video For Better Engagement
• Video Commerce: The Quiet Revolution In Online Video
• Tools And Best Practices For Enterprise Streaming Media
• Monetization And Video Advertising Formats
• CDN Pricing: The Going Rate For Video Delivery
• Making Effective Online Video for Training and eLearning
• Streaming Production: Improving Your Video Quality
• Cost Savings from Enterprise Streaming
• Using Microsoft Silverlight to Captivate, Engage and Monetize Viewers
• Automation And Workflow Solutions For Transcoding Your Video Content
• How Old Media Is Embracing Online Video and New Media

Next week we’ll open registration, update the website with the entire agenda and I’ll also announce our keynote speakers. If you have any ideas on how you may want to be involved in the show, I’m always open to ideas and you can reach me anytime at (917) 523-4562.

When Apple announced their new iPad last week, many said it was a big deal for content owners as it now gives them another platform to try and monetize their content on. But what I didn't see anyone talking about is how many iPads Apple needs to sell before the platform has a big enough install base to make a difference to content owners?

For developers that plan to use the same app for the iPhone and iPad, the number of iPads sold does not really matter. But what about all of the content owners who are going to write new apps specifically for the iPad and charge for them? How many iPads need to be in the market before they have a chance at actually making any money? This is an expensive device that consumers will have to be willing to drop between $500-$1000 on. This isn't the cost of a Kindle. And while there are plenty of Apple fanboys who will run out to get an iPad as soon as they can, anyone who thinks this device will have the reach the iPhone or iPod did is crazy.

So just how many need to be sold to be successful? This isn't a trick question, I'm just really interested to hear what other people think in terms of the number of units that need to be sold to make it an important device to content owners. So far, I've only seen one published prediction on the number of sales from Thomas Weisel who projects 4.1M iPads will be sold this year. Think that can happen? Is it enough? Would love to hear your comments on it.

All of the sessions and keynotes from the 2009 Streaming Media West and Online Video Platform shows have now been archived and are available online for free at www.streamingmedia.com/videos

If you have never been to that page before, you will be simply be asked to put in your name and email and will only have to do it one time. Anyone is welcome to re-purpose the videos on their own website or blog or syndicate in any manner they like. The only session that is not archived is the Xbox keynote which due to lightning conditions, may or may not be added.

Our thanks to Quality Tech who encoded all of the videos and to Brightcove for hosting them.

While many are already talking about CDN video pricing stabilizing in the New Year, so far, I don't see that stabilization taking place. Based on all of the data I saw last quarter, I expect pricing to continue to decline rapidly for the first half of this year. By the summer, pricing should become more stable and by the end of 2010, I expect that pricing on average will only decline about 25% for the year, compared to the 40% decline I saw on average in 2009. (note: you can always find my latest pricing post at www.cdnpricing.com – Previous Quarters: Q1 09, Q4 08, Q3 08, Q2 08, Q1 08.)

At the same time, while many content owners surveyed said they say traffic growth of about 35-40% in 2009, I expect that 2010 will mark the first time in two years that we will see the rate of traffic growth accelerate, but not by much. While we are only a month into the New Year, most of the major content owners I am speaking to think they can grow traffic by about 50% this year.  While that's only a 10% rate of growth over last year, it's still growth over the prior year, which is something we didn't see at all in 2009.

As you take a look at the Q4 pricing numbers I've published for video delivery, there are some key points that one needs to keep in mind. For starters, CDNs tend to be a lot more aggressive with pricing in Q4 as the year comes to a close and they are trying to get as much business in the door as possible. In addition, the average high numbers look a lot lower than usual partly due to the fact that Akamai is now aggressively cutting pricing across a wide swath of their CDN customers. I expect that by the third quarter of this year they will have re-price around 75% of their CDN contracts, which you can read more about here.

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