Streaming Media - June/July 2008 - (Page 48) streaming the olympics may claim an average of 1.5 million daily downloads of Silverlight’s 4 MB plugin, but it’s at the Olympics that Microsoft expects Silverlight to make its biggest splash. Monetizing the Games With so many broadcast advertising dollars at stake, NBCU is not offering live coverage online simply because it thinks streaming video is “cool.” Rather, it appears as if online video is attracting an increasing share of ad spending, and NBCU’s view of the advertising future— perhaps influenced by the DVR’s impact on broadcast advertising—no doubt includes a growing online video component. The Beijing Olympics will offer NBCU the opportunity to gauge the willingness of advertisers, agencies, and end users to accept and pay for online video ads. (NBCOlympics.com had already sold 70% of its ad inventory 4 months before the start of the games.) But while ad sales are clearly critical to its success, delivering if the end user clicks away. This allows publishers to save on bandwidth costs by serving only the 500KB watched by the user rather than the entire 5MB video file. Both web playlists—formerly called “server-side playlists”—and bit rate throttling were previously available only on the Windows media server. Their availability on the Windows web server is indicative of Microsoft’s long-term strategy to transfer functionality from the media server to the web server. “We’re essentially bringing more intelligence to progressive downloads,” says Sklepowich. “Ultimately, we’re going to bring streaming-like capabilities to web servers.” Moving Overseas The U.S. isn’t the only country competing in the Olympics, and NBCU isn’t the only entity broadcasting or streaming the games. Mexico City-based Televisa, the largest media company in the Spanish-speaking world, There was plenty of video on the NBCOlympics.com website long before the games began, though none of it took advantage of Microsoft’s Silverlight technology. This summer, NBCOlympics.com will offer 4,400 hours of on-demand streaming in addition to its 2,200 hours of live programming, using an interface much like this April 2008 prototype. NBCOlympics.com wants to be careful not to trash the user experience. “There is something magical about amateur athletics,” says Miller. “Our online strategy is the same as on the broadcast … which is to ensure that [advertising] doesn’t intrude on the user experience to the extent that it diminishes what we’re trying to celebrate. … We’re obligated on behalf of our users to make sure they have a great experience, and our advertisers expect that.” With the flow of online video ad dollars set to grow from a trickle to a flood, companies in the online video ad space are competing to facilitate and reap the benefits of the long-promised monetization of online video. Microsoft will use the Olympics as an opportunity to showcase Silverlight’s support for third-party ad servers such as Atlas and DoubleClick, and it will also demonstrate two features on its 2008 web server that promise to raise the bottom line. “Web playlists” enable publishers to securely sequence content and advertising, preventing end users from skipping online video ads, and with “bit-rate throttling,” the server meters how fast content is sent to the client and stops 48 STREAMING MEDIA June/July 2008 is working with Move Networks to stream the Olympics to Spanish-speaking audiences. Move’s streaming technology breaks video down into small, 1 to 2-second files called “streamlets.” Using “adaptive streaming” on the client side, the player analyzes available bandwidth and processing power on the client machine, then reassembles the streamlets to maximize the quality of the downloaded stream. Move promises faster start times, smoother playback without buffering, and highquality video resolution. (Its technology powers much of the streaming at ABC.com.) At MIX08, Microsoft announced that the Move plug-in would be bundled with Silverlight 2.0, so instead of downloading the 200KB Move plug-in, sports fans south of the border can download Silverlight if they want to stream the Olympics. (NBCU’s Telemundo network will stream the Olympics to Spanish-speaking audiences within the U.S.) Game Time Decisions As of press time, NBCOlympics.com had yet to make a number of important technical decisions. A slew of http://NBCOlympics.com http://NBCOlympics.com http://NBCOlympics.com http://NBCOlympics.com http://ABC.com http://NBCOlympics.com
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