Castfire

TV Week has a great article on the success of video properties, including a Castfire client, Ask a Ninja. We have been very fortunate to work with Ask a Ninja since March, 2007 - we are tremendous fans of the show.

Online Fame Easy; Ads Harder to Get - TVWeek - News

Near the top of the pile sit Kent Nichols and Douglas Sarine, who have parlayed their "Ask a Ninja" Web program into about $100,000 a month in ad revenue and income from merchandising and licensing.

Andy Plesser from Beet.tv follows up with:

Seems that Federated Media is doing a good job in selling ads for the show.  And the tiny San Francisco start-up CastFire is doing an impressive job in publishing the video.

Thanks, Andy!  You are correct - FM is killing it! They have taken advantage of Castfire’s functionality to rotate ads through archives and downloadable media to maximize profits for their publishers. We continue to see growth in all properties which is being accelerated with our Bebo, Facebook and video search engine integration.

Congrats to Kent and Doug on their continued success with Ask a Ninja.

In November, Castfire began powering a video ad campaign with Federated Media and The IT Room that runs on some of the largest technology blogs and sites, including Digg, GigaOM, TechCrunch, Boing Boing, Mashable and more.  While video ad units are nothing new on websites, the campaign was integrated into the RSS feeds of almost all of the sites as well.  In addition, the campaign was comprised of 8 separate videos, of which all of them have been updated or changed throughout time.  The technical hurdles were quite large, but Castfire’s automation, player templating and analytics data warehouses have enable all of the demands.

If you are not familiar with some of the challenges of working with RSS feeds, there are two key areas that needed to be addressed immediately.  First off, the feeds are generally cached by online feedreaders, stripping javascript and other code from the xml.  This removes the ability for an ad server to directly interact with each impression.  Additionally, the many of the large feed readers do not allow for flash components to be used directly in the reader.

Custom players and tracking codes were generated for each of the sites - both the RSS unit and the 300×250 unit, with each of the 8 videos loaded for each.  Publishers were provided a single block of html to place into their RSS feed, for which Castfire is able to manage.  Castfire’s automation and player templates provides the ability for random videos to be played, or for Federated Media to update/change the creative at any time.

Castfire has also worked with many of the online feed readers to ensure that our video players are whitelisted and allowed to be displayed within the reader.  This is a key to this campaign’s success; without being able to view the player, it would be impossible to watch the video!

Scale is a big issue when looking at a campaign like this - RSS can be brutal and some of the sites have the largest RSS audiences out there!  At the time of this blog post, Feedburner reports TechCrunch’s subscribers at 624k.  For each post on all of the sites, a player is displayed, analytics collected, and a video may be played.  Tens of millions of impressions for this single campaign - not including any of the standard episodic content that is published.

The final piece of the puzzle is analytics to which our data warehousing efforts come shining through.  Castfire creates a separate data warehouse for each network.  With multiple fact tables, tons of dimensions, and incredible detail, reports breakdown sites, player impressions, video plays, click throughs, geo information and more.

While 98% of our customers are publishing branded, episodic content, the value of our audio/video platform becomes more apparent as the system is responsible for more and more uses. It is exciting to see our platform continue to grow and expand. </proud parents>

The NFL’s Atlanta Falcons worked with Digitaria and Castfire to relaunch their web presence and we think the both the design and the content are fantastic.  As seen above, the video content is incorporated into the site itself, providing an integrated experience between images, text and video.  As Castfire delivers a single flash video file (flv) and not an xml playlist, custom players throughout the site were easy to build and integrate to provide a seamless experience for the Falcons’ fans.

I have been watching the video work by Matt Moore from the Falcons and have been extremely impressed by the amount and quality of content that he is publishing each day.  The web team for the Falcons, like many of the NFL teams, is small and has very little time. For instance, when the team is playing away: the team is not going to wait for the web team to edit and upload before the bus leaves the stadium! They have to get the content together, edited and posted — sometimes while riding to the airport and uploading via an EVDO connection.

The Castfire platform automates much of the process of publishing content, including transcoding, meta data, multiple formats, jpg and thumbnail images, to offload as much as possible. We have worked with the teams at Digitaria and the Falcons to improve the process, speed and functionality and will continue to make improvements over the coming weeks.

The highlight for me is the incredible series they are producing. My favorite? I know you are thinking it is the Cheerleader Bios, but no: David Irons’ Rooke Diary. It is a fresh and real look into the life of rookies in the NFL.  David Irons’ is extremely funny and hams it up for the camera. You can subscribe here.

Tonight, we welcome WebbAlert to the world! The fabulous Morgan Webb is hosting a daily tech news show, lasting 4-5 minutes and covering the biggest technology news. The information is fresh, interesting and a part of conversations that happen on technology blogs.

Castfire has worked with Federated Media and WebbAlert to launch this new property. In doing so, we worked together to roll out new functionality: media groups and a syndicated player. As building an audience is always key for new properties, they have partnered with a handful of sites and traded promotional spots for placement. To automate this, the two features, while separate, work hand in hand.

A basic building block of Castfire is the concept of a template. While they are standard in website CMS’s, they are quite a new concept for multimedia. We have added a new segment type, Media Group, to our templates that groups multiple segments to one slot. Each time a video is requested, a different media segment is played, allowing for automatic rotation of interstitials. Each of the partner sites will get an equal amount of promotion across all of the video impressions — including rss distribution of quicktime files! This feature works great for not only external promotions, but also cross promoting content within a network. Look for this to be rolled out to many of our clients to promote content across their networks.

Slide out Player for WebbAlert

Originally uploaded by castfire

The second piece of functionality adds a javascript widget that can be placed on partner sites. The widgets displays a jpg image, either a static image or one from the latest episode. Upon clicking on the image, the latest episode will slide out of the image and begin playing. The magic is that this can be set once and Castfire will ensure that the latest episode is always played! No need to know the actual url of the latest episode, having to update html, or having some sort of rss reader figure it out — it is all built into Castfire. This is a variation on the feature that is used by the Killington Ski Resort in their successful podcast.

Congratulations to WebbAlert on your launch! This is definitely a video we will watch each morning…

Additional Coverage: TechCrunch, Fred Wilson, NewTeeVee, Gizmodo, John Battelle

Late Thursday night, May 17th, the first episode of Ask a Ninja launched on the Castfire platform. It was soon followed by 17 additional episodes from the archives and we will have the entire catalog published by the end of this week. Now…the episodes have been posted on various platforms since Ask a Ninja started publishing. Why is this different?

• The episodes themselves are dynamically created using a template. There are actually 6 segments to the show that are assembled into either a single flv or mp4 file. Prior to publishing, we changed the template, updated both the ad segments, and updated the DVD segment — none of which required editing on the desktop!
• This is not pre or post roll advertising! The advertisement exists in the musical credits and as the third segment (interstitial). The placement can be changed at any time and on the fly.
• Each segment can maintain it’s own click through links on the flash player. This provides the Ask a Ninja team to have click through directly to their site as well as the advertisement have trackable click through from the player.
• The Ask a Ninja brand is most important! Download links all point to the askaninja.com domain for them to remain in control of their content.
• Castfire is a white label solution that provides the management, distribution, monetization and analysis tools for both FM and Ask a Ninja.

More coverage here:

• NewTeeVee
• ChasNote
• Searchblog
• Ad Rants
• Additional: James Gross
• Andre Torrez

About 2 months ago, Saxotech contacted us to explore the Castfire solution. They were in the 11th hour with a competitor and termed one of my favorite new sayings (though it is not really new, just context), “consider this speed dating so we can make a decision.” Today, we are announcing a partnership between Saxotech and Castfire in which we will be integrated into their CMS to allow newspapers to seamlessly publish, distribute and monetize their audio and video.

Saxotech is a very impressive organization that you have probably never heard of! They provide the infrastructure, online and in print, for 400 newspapers worldwide. There website gives small, but impressive, metrics that reflects the power of their platform (as of 4/20/2007):

• 456 Customers
• 10,712 Users
• 13,755,545,896 page views

Castfire will provide the multimedia CMS to allow their customers to reach audiences across multiple platforms and devices: web, iPod, Zune, Apple TV, syndication, etc. In addition, the platform will allow their sales forces to monetize all of the content and provide additional revenue streams to their organizations. We will be working Saxotech to innovate and provide additional outlets for the content. Audiences expect content to be delivered in a variety of formats: print (*real* paper and the web), audio, enhanced audio, and video. This partnership will provide those features, and more, out of the box.

I can say, personally, that our interactions with Saxotech have been outstanding and the possibilities this provides are phenomenal. Their knowledge of the news publishing and our knowledge of multimedia publishing are a fantastic match! We will highlight customers as they become live, which will be shortly.

SAXOTECH and Castfire Partner to Provide an Integrated Video Solution for the Media Publishing Industry

Agreement Allows Media Companies to Reach New Audiences, Drive and Manage Viewership and Realize New Ad Revenue Opportunities

TAMPA, Fla., April 20, 2007 – SAXOTECH today announced it has partnered with Castfire to enable its media company Web sites to launch ad-supported Internet video channels, syndication initiatives and user-generated media campaigns.

SAXOTECH will integrate the Castfire solution with SAXOTECH Online™, an enterprise-class Web publishing platform developed exclusively to enable the rapid flow of content from news sources to dynamic, multimedia Web sites. With the technology integration, the two applications will work together to seamlessly publish video content.

SAXOTECH will offer a one-stop video solution empowering its customers to distribute content in a controlled video player on their Web sites, while at the same time providing additional revenue streams through pre- and post-roll ad spots. The toolset also allows for upload and management of user-generated content.

The Castfire solution is not limited to online video, but allows for the management and distribution of audio and enhanced audio. Castfire was designed as a platform to distribute multimedia content in all formats keeping media publishing companies ahead of the technology curve.

“SAXOTECH recognizes that video is a powerful medium; crucial to online news and information consumption,” said Peter Ibsen, executive vice president of strategy and products of SAXOTECH. “After a thorough evaluation, we are excited to partner with Castfire and believe the integrated video solution will provide our customers with a customizable architecture, robust features, and a templated system that will ensure a cohesive branded experience even with user-generated content.”

“This partnership blends two top media technologies integrated to provide a single environment for distributing news and information,” said Brian Walsh, CEO of Castfire. “Flexibility is key in reaching audiences and Castfire provides the ability to view not only on the Web but through RSS and with devices such as iPods, Apple TV or Tivo. We couldn’t be more excited to be working with SAXOTECH to bring next-generation technologies to media companies and their audiences.”

This technology relationship is a key element of SAXOTECH’s continued strategy for successful media businesses, outlining how next-generation media companies will benefit from a single, focused technology infrastructure and removing the need to manage multiple vendor integration.

The integrated video solution will be generally available in May, 2007.

About SAXOTECH
SAXOTECH is the leading provider of integrated Web and editorial content management software, and online advertising solutions designed exclusively for the media publishing industry. Our scalable, easy-to-implement solutions are used to plan, create, edit, design and publish for multiple channels and are backed by world-class customer support. Today, SAXOTECH’s solutions are in use by more than 450 publishers around the world. For more information on SAXOTECH, please visit our Web site at www.saxotech.com.

About Castfire
Founded in 2005, Castfire provides content management, distribution and monetization tools for audio and video online. Designed for high volume sites with large libraries of content, the system features easy to use interfaces and advanced APIs to allow publishers the ability to reach audiences across multiple platforms and in multiple formats. For more information on Castfire, please visit our Web site at www.castfire.com.

Congratulations to the San Diego Chargers on launching their Bold New Tradition. We are excited to be a part of the launch — the new look is great. You can download the video here.

Latest.mp3 is a feature that we developed to ease integration of podcasts through the use of a simple url. Instead of using a specific url for an episode, each account has a unique url that ends in latest.mp3. This url will automatically play the newest episode, allowing for the newest episode to always be played without having to build any rss reader functionality. Killington Ski Resort and the Vail Ski Resorts are using them to re-purpose podcast content to different players and for advertising campaigns.

Killington

The Killington Ski Resort is utilizing this feature in two implementations. First, as seen in the image above, they have integrated a flash player into their homepage that is hardcoded to always play http://serve.castfire.com/audio/snowcast/latest.mp3. This removed the need for their external design team to spend additional hours building in RSS functionality into the site to ensure that the newest weather report is played. It also ensures that the newest episode is played a soon as it has been published.

Killington has also launched an ad campaign, buying rich media space for their flash banner ads. To get the most mileage out of their podcasts, a play button has been added that will play the latest episode featuring weather, ski conditions and mountain specials. The banner ads not only funnel users back to their website, but skiers and boarders can listen to the newest weather conditions and subscribe directly from the banner ad.

Vail

The Vail Ski Resorts have a desktop application, developed by otoLabs, that provides customers with constant picture, video, and text updates from the mountain. Utilizing latest.mp3, the application allows users to listen to the latest weather, trail and lift reports from the same application. And all of this was done without the development team having to build any additional RSS functionality.

In both cases, we automatically change the filename to a default filename that is set on the system. This ensures that the user experience will be great even when they are searching for the file on their computer! The user experience continues off of the first contact with their sites to every interaction.

I will try and get a screen shot of the banner ad that was produced that re-purposes the podcasts. Even better, I will try to get the actual banner for you to experience!