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.

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.