Do-It-Yourself Web-Video Syndication
Maven Networks Touts Distribution, Community Tools
By Todd Spangler -- Multichannel News, 3/4/2007 7:00:00 PM
What’s the best way to get online video flickering in front of the maximum number of retinas?
Content producers can go to a “retailer,” like the major portals — Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL — which are vying to be centers of gravity for online video. But Maven Networks, a startup that provides Internet video-production services, suggests there’s a better route: go direct.
The Cambridge, Mass.-based company has provided production-oriented services for Web video, such as workflow, publishing, media management and player design. To that mix, Maven has now added the ability to let customers create their own syndication networks.
LOCAL BLEND
Maven’s affiliate-syndication services will let customers create a network of affiliates and centrally control the distribution of content to multiple sites. It also lets affiliates upload content into the network. For example, using the Maven syndication system, a local TV station’s Web site could combine its own content with video from a national provider.
In addition, Maven has developed social-networking features to allow customers to ingest and present user-generated content from users who join their sites. Its new community features include viral-video sharing, member management, content upload and allowing video players to be embedded on third-party Web sites.
“This essentially lets our customers become Internet TV companies,” Maven CEO Hilmi Ozguc said. “We enable the direct-to-consumer experience without having to go through an intermediary.”
Except that Maven is also an intermediary that takes a cut for its services. Maven’s pricing starts at $5,000 per month for a one-year commitment, which includes 500,000 video plays per month. Fees scale up depending on usage.
Ozguc, however, said its pricing is lower than alternative distribution channels, and he emphasized that customers have complete control over ad sales and inventory. “We’re a pure-play technology company,” he said. “We’re not a media company. Our customers are the media companies. Our role is to provide the infrastructure.”
That positioning is also supposed to set Maven apart from a well-funded competitor — Brightcove, an Internet-TV syndication startup with digs just down the road in Cambridge.
In addition to providing back-end services based on usage fees, Brightcove operates a syndication network through which it sells ads against partners’ content. Moreover, the firm is embarking on an ambitious plan to evolve into a major destination for Internet TV content. “Brightcove is a media company itself,” Ozguc said.
But Brightcove dismisses the notion that it will be competing for eyeballs with its partners.
In a recent interview, Brightcove founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire said his company’s consumer-facing initiatives will create “more value for our media partners.” Allaire continued, “We found that most of the media owners we’re spending time with really think about their distribution strategy as a 'blended’ strategy.”
Still, Maven thinks its hands-completely-off model will be more appealing. The company claimed to have signed up more than 500 media customers to date. Ozguc wouldn’t disclose revenues but said the startup’s sales grew fourfold in the last year. He said Maven, founded in 2002, isn’t profitable, but is “not far from it.”
Maven’s customers include Hearst, CBS’s CSTV and A&E Television Networks. Ozguc said he’s talking to Cablevision Systems’ Rainbow Media, Cox Communications and other cable operators who are looking at different alternatives for distributing content they own or have an interest in over broadband.
One of Maven’s newest customers is Hearst Magazines, which is using Maven’s video-production tools to distribute broadband TV content to 14 sites geared around Hearst magazines.
Hearst will launch with 1,000 pieces of video content in the next 90 days, on sites including TeenMag.com, Esquire.com, Seventeen.com and CosmoGirl.com.
Now Playing on the Web
Comparison of two online video-syndication startups:
| Maven Networks | Brightcove | |
| Source: Multichannel News research | ||
| Web site | maven.net | brightcove.com |
| Headquarters | Cambridge, Mass. | Cambridge, Mass. |
| Funding to date | $30M | $82.5M |
| Employees | Fewer than 100 | 110 |
| Major customers | Hearst, Univision, The Weather Channel, CSTV, 20th Century-Fox, Sony Pictures Entertainment | Discovery Communications, Dow Jones, Viacom’s MTV Networks, The New York Times Co., Reuters |
HEARST TAKES CONTROL
Chuck Cordray, vice president and general manager of Hearst Magazines’ 100-person digital media unit, said the move to Maven was part of Hearst’s strategy to take back control of its Web presence. Most of the company’s magazine sites have been hosted by NBC Universal’s iVillage.
Maven provided the tools to customize the look and feel of the media player across different sites, Cordray said. “Our requirement was that the look and feel of the media player is integrated with the site itself,” he said. The magazine sites also will be adding more user-generated video, through the Maven network.
Cordray said Maven’s new syndication capability wasn’t what drove Hearst to select the vendor, but added that it’s an attractive feature his company may exploit in the future.
To Ozguc, in the first wave of Internet TV, media companies primarily were interested in quickly bringing their broadband channels online. Last year was “the year of panic,” he said. “People said, 'Internet video’s huge, look at YouTube.’ Now it’s about engagement, repeat affinity and getting mass audience.”
Will Internet TV Charge Ahead?
02/27/2009Scripps Picks Internet TV Platform
12/05/2007Maven Enables Nat Geo's PC Push
01/18/2004Harmonic Encodes For Mobile, Internet TV
09/12/2008Yahoo Buys Web-Video Management Startup
02/12/2008
