On Monday May 14th, the night before the start of the Streaming Media East show, I will be hosting an informal gathering at the Bridges Bar at 7pm, located in the lobby of the Hilton Hotel in NYC. (1335 6th Avenue at 54th Street)

Thanks to CacheLogic and Microsoft, they will be providing some free drink tickets. This is a great chance to meet some of the speakers and others before the show. No passes are required and all speakers and friends are invited. We’ve also extended the invite to those from the industry who may be local to the area.

We always get a great cross section of attendees from the media and entertainment, broadcast, enterprise and advertising industries. No need to RSVP – just come on by and feel free to pass this along to others.

Thanks again to CacheLogic and Microsoft for providing free drinks will they last.         

That’s the focus of one of the sessions at the Streaming Media East show next week. We have a couple of sessions dedicated to the online video advertising subject and this panel discusses how as video advertising evolves in the coming months and years, technologies and business models will naturally extend beyond those in practice today.

Moderated by Jeff Marcus, former CTO of 24/7 Real Media, this session
discusses the challenges and opportunities that face the online advertising industry in 2007 as it establishes a foundation for video advertising that will help shape the future of the broader consumer advertising industry.

The panelists include:

• Jeremy Lockhorn, Director of Emerging Media and Video Innovation, Avenue A / Razorfish
• Aleck Schleider, Senior Director, Product Sales, Advertising.com
• Richard Glosser, Executive Director of Emerging Media and Partner Integration, CondeNet
• Christian Anthony, Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder, Special Ops Media

Register for the show
and come hear about what’s next for online video advertising. Are there any topics or points would you like to see discussed at this
session? If so, please include them in the comments section.

We’re not even halfway  through the month and already there have been a bunch of funding deals.

• Today, Joost announced that five selected parties have collectively invested approximately $45 million in the company including Sequoia Capital, Viacom and CBS amongst others. They don’t say exactly what they plan to do with the money but I think it’s a safe bet to say that a good chunk of it will go to expanding their delivery capacity

• This morning, ROO announced that it had completed a private equity financing with gross proceeds of $25 million in a stock transaction involving mostly existing investors. ROO will use the money for ongoing operations, expansion of their video platform and "to pursue previously announced acquisitions."

• Last week, Itiva Networks announced it has secured $7 million in private funding. The company said it plans to use the money for working capital and to expand it’s sales and marketing efforts.

In addition, I know of a few more deals that should also be announced this month. Will be a successful month for companies in this space raising money.

Yesterday, NPR’s show "All Things Considered" focused on the topic of Internet television and what is taking place on the web today with video. The piece is a pretty good overview of how both content creators and distributors are approaching the online video market. Myself, Brightcove and the founders of Joost all got some air time.

I would of liked to have seen them talk a little bit more to the business models taking place today, but you can only cover so many details in such a short piece. I would not want to be the editor who has to take a topic like Internet TV and condense the entire business down to a ten minute story.

Newsweek just posted an article by Steven Levy where he got to do a sit down Q&A session with the founders of Joost. Nothing revolutionary in the article, but I do enjoy one of Niklas Zennström quotes as it is dead on, "New technologies very seldom completely replace things—they’re usually complementary."

We have some great sessions at the Streaming Media East show next week talking about what consumers want when it comes to rich media. One of the sessions on May 16th is entitled "The Streaming Disconnect Between Consumers and the Major Media"

Moderated by Tejpaul Bhatia, formerly of ESPN, this session discusses current consumer demands for video and new content platforms, as well as the new media efforts being taken by the major media companies.

The panelists include:

• Ron Berryman, Senior V.P., GM Television Stations, Fox Interactive Media
• Jeff Kaufman, VP, Content and Programming, >nbbc
• John Jurgensen, Digital Entertainment Reporter, WALL STREET JOURNAL
• Jim Sexton, SVP, Interactive Brands, Scripps Networks
• Mariana Danilovic, VP, Business Development, MediaZone

Register for the show and come hear the steps that content creators and major media companies need to take to adapt to consumer behavior and the benefits they can get from diversifying their content offering across multiple platforms. Are there any topics or points would you like to see discussed at this session? If so, please include them in the comments section.

When it comes to many facets of this industry, there are many data points missing, the biggest of which is reliable metrics and analysis that is backed up by real data. I am constantly getting copies of research reports from analysts and research houses that give size of market numbers for a particular product or service which is based on no data or completely wrong data. Yes, I know much of it is a guessing game when it comes to predicting numbers based on growth and trends, but there is enough hard data out there today when it comes to content delivery that would allow you to see the size of the market today and estimate the size of the market for 2008.

One of the questions I am always asked is what is the size of the content delivery market for outsourced hosting and delivery as it pertains to audio and video, both downloading and streaming. The answer is simple – no one knows exactly as the majority of the delivery networks do not give revenue numbers or break out their revenue based on their product line. Yet, research houses continue to put out reports that they want you to spend thousands of dollars on that are complete junk.

While reading a story on TVover.net about "Content Delivery Networks Gear Up for the Online Content Surge" there is a reference to a report from Frost & Sullivan that says, "New analysis from Frost & Sullivan, World Content Delivery Networks Market reveals that revenues in this market totaled $0.50 billion in 2007 and is likely to reach $2.50 billion in 2013." Am I the only one that finds something wrong with the idea that the report says how much revenue was done in 2007 when the year is not even half way over yet? Mind you, this from a report that costs $6,000 for a single user license and does not say what the $0.50 billion number is comprised of or like others, does not spell RealNetworks correctly.

Then I go and read a story on Forbes that says "Limelight and competitors like Akamai Technologies, Level 3 Communications and Internap Network Services collectively generated about $600 million in revenue last year from their content delivery services, according to Accustream Research."

Say what? Level 3 did not provide any content delivery services at all in 2006. Level 3 didn’t complete the acquisition of the SAVVIS CDN assets until January 23rd of this year. So how is Level 3 even included in the list? And Internap didn’t complete the acquisition of VitalStream until February 20th of this year. So that should say VitalStream, not Internap. Internap did not have any revenue associated with content delivery for 2006.

Later in the week The Week of the 21st, I am going to detail in a blog post what the real size of the content delivery market was last year and share with you the data I use to achieve the numbers. I’ll also show how the industry can realistically estimate what the market will be for this year and 2008 for content delivery, and it won’t cost you $6,000 to read.