Case Study: Ask a Ninja & Federated Media

Ask A Ninja is one of the largest independent video podcasts on the net today, with over 300,000 viewers for each new episode released. Technorati ranks it solidly among its Top 100 Blogs - more than 3,100 sites link to the Ninja. One of Forbes Magazine's top "Fictional Stars," the Ninja has been featured on CNN and ABC News, and praised in Ad Age, the New York Times Magazine, Wired Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, the Washington Post and on National Public Radio. It is also the recipient of two "Podcast Peer" awards, including one for favorite video podcast. Additionally, the show was recognized as "best series" in the inaugural YouTube video awards.

Delivering its quirky wit at the speed of lightning, Ask A Ninja is redefining American humor. Ask a Ninja publishes over 80 episodes using the Castfire platform, utilizing the publisher tools, real time ad insertion and analytics. Each episode, when delivered to the audience through either the Castfire flash player or through their RSS feed is comprised of 6-9 content segments controlled via a drag and drop template interface. Castfire enables the publisher to update content regardless of when it was distributed, with new advertising, branding or cross promotional messages. In addition, the automation and simple filename structure enables all video related assets (videos, players, thumbnails and posters) to be easily integrated into their website and their Ning based social network.

Ask A Ninja's advertising partner, Federated Media (FM), relies on Castfire's advanced reporting tools for reporting to advertisers like Ask.com, CBS, and Doritos. Castfire set up separate logins for FM and all of their publishers like Ask A Ninja. The publishers are only responsible for uploading their content. FM manages all advertisers by rotating campaigns in real time across all episodes and formats. As these campaigns rotate in, they will be automatically inserted within the content wherever the template designates placement. As ads are never hard-coaded into content, their episodes remain evergreen, and ads are always fresh whether online or on a disconnected device. With almost 60% of the millions of impressions each month being delivered through RSS in the mp4 format, monetization of this format is critical.

The reports generated from Castfire's data warehouse enables FM to report back to the advertisers on a variety of metrics, including ad insertion and syndication. In addition, reports on "bonus" or "award" videos are correlated to specific campaigns, providing insight into calls-to-action for each ad buy. These analytics have proved invaluable to FM and its ability to secure seven figure ad deals.