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.

Yesterday, there were a bunch of interesting announcements that came out at the IAB Digital Video Leadership Forum in NYC, the most interesting being from NBC Universal.

NBC announced that it would no longer run or accept pre-roll ads longer than 15 seconds for short-form content. They did not define what length "short-form" is to them, but also said they would still run 30 seconds pre-roll ads in front of full-length episodes. This is a smart move on their part. I know a lot of sites already run 15 second ads, but in most cases, the advertiser really ends up deciding the length of the ad as opposed to the site.

NBC also announced that it had partnered with a handful of rich media companies including Unicast, Eyewonder, Pointroll and EyeBlaster to create new forms of online ads that let users direct the playback of advertisers’ messages and that enable branding in the video player itself, thereby giving more control to the viewer. Another smart move on their part as it is giving the viewer more say in how the ads are consumed. Instead of just forcing viewers into an experience that you know they don’t want, why not give the viewer the ability to customize the ad playback so that it’s a better user experience and gets the advertiser better branding. I think I am like many viewers on the web where when I see a 30 second pre-roll ad, I hit mute and go do something else for 30 seconds until the ad is over. If NBC can keep that ad down to 15 seconds and allow me to better customize my experience with the ad, I’d probably sit through it.

NBC set a July deadline for implementation to allow advertisers time to prepare for their new standard.

The Streaming Media East show is only one week away and we are working hard on all the last minute items. We’re going to have a lot of great coverage from the show, much if it in real-time. TVWorldwide.com will be webcasting the sessions, Beet.tv will be doing live interviews from the On2 booth, LostRemote.com will be blogging sessions and IPTVEvangelist.com will be doing on-demand video interviews.

We’ve also got a bunch of bloggers and writers moderating a lot of sessions who will have show coverage including Jose Castillo, Jeff Jarvis, John Havens, Robert Scoble, Steve Bryant and others.

We also have pre-registered press from Advertising Age, AlwaysOn, Broadcasting & Cable, Business 2.0, ClickZ News, CNET News, eWeek, GeniusDV, Wall Street Journal and  The New York Times amongst many others.

We will be adding links on the home page of StreamingMedia.com to all of the sites that plan on doing show coverage, so if you want to be listed, please contact me ASAP. If you are a blogger or media professional, it’s not too late to get a press pass.

Ryan Stewart over at ZDNet has one of the best blogs out there when it comes to the subject of rich Internet applications and the development community. With all the recent announcements from Microsoft and Adobe, many people are not fairly comparing platforms and don’t know what each one truly does. In his post entitled "The how and when of Adobe and Microsoft’s Rich Internet Application technologies", Ryan has created a guide for how and when you would want to use different rich Internet applications from Adobe and Microsoft including Silverlight, Flash, Flex 2, Apollo and other tools/platforms.

It’s a must read for anyone who wants to truly understand the differences between all of the platforms out there.

This week, Forbes published an article written by Chad Hurley on it’s website. I don’t know if the article also appears in print but I imagine it does since on the website it says it’s published date is three days from now.

I expect Forbes to publish a better article than this. Chad spends the entire time talking about how YouTube allows new talent to be discovered and gives people the ability to get in front of a lot of eyeballs and basically just tells us all how great YouTube is. Come on. We all know that YouTube allows new talent to be discovered and allows users to get eyeballs to their videos that normally no one would ever see. Is that the best thing that you can write about?

What about writing an article that explains how you plan to monetize YouTube? Or maybe some details on how the revenue sharing will work for video advertising you plan on rolling out this summer? Why not tell us what it’s been like integrating YouTube into the Google infrastructure? Or better yet, talk about when you plan on rolling out your content filtering technology and what that will entail.

There are so many things about YouTube and Google that people want to know about and probably need to know about that could have been discussed in detail in this article. But instead we just get another piece about how great YouTube is. Disappointing.

Todd O’Neill who is organizing a track on Evolving Delivery Systems for the upcoming Media Communications Association-International conference (ProTracks), is actively looking for some speakers in three areas:

• video production for streaming – SD/HD; production gear; post production
• delivery methods – hosted or not; digital signage; iTunes; Slingbox; Intranet; mulitcast; etc.
• strategies – the "why" of streaming; pitfalls to avoid; enterprise approaches; independent producer approaches; vlogs; etc.

MCA-I (formerly ITVA) is an association of professionals primarily in the corporate and business media space. The show takes place in September in Chicago. Contact Todd O’Neill directly if you are interested.

Microsoft will be making a bunch of announcements this week from their MIX event surrounding Silverlight and StreamingMedia.com’s Editor Eric is at the event and will be covering the announcements shortly.

From the week of NAB, Microsoft was distributing with its press kit the below chart comparing Silverlight’s features and benefits with that of Flash. I have not had a chance to really review them side by side but this is how Microsoft sees their platform stacking up to Flash.