Sorry, gotta love Elvis Costello, but today’s blog title is actually apropos.

Here at 1cast, we’re very committed to bringing the best of television news from around the world to your desktop, mobile or any other device. And yesterday we delivered a breakthrough that goes far beyond technology.

Many of you have already started to see clips from Al Jazeera in your search results and micro-casts. We are pleased to be the first company in the U.S. to bring this content to viewers from coast-to-coast. In times like these, we believe our viewers will appreciate the perspective our newest partner - Al Jazeera - brings to issues in the Middle East. More importantly, we all benefit from the access and insight that only the world’s largest Arab news channel can bring to events that have impact far beyond the borders of countries at the center of conflict, challenge and hopefully change for peace.

The addition of Al Jazeera brings to 1cast one of the most impressive line-ups ever assembled of world news leaders. If you’re interested in global affairs there’s probably no better place online or off than 1cast for keeping track of the day’s world headlines in near real time. 1cast viewers can simply enter terms they are most interested in and immediately see the best of the day’s television news coverage from BBC Worldwide, Agence France Presse, Reuters, CBC and now Al Jazeera.

Viewers simply won’t find this kind of world news coverage in a single place anywhere on the web or mobile devices. So let’s all become a little more enlightened about the world we live in. We’re just getting started in bringing our viewers worldwide news sources that expand our horizons as well as our understanding.

Anthony Bontrager

One of the greatest gifts the Web has bestowed on content owners and the advertisers that support them is the mountain of data that is available at every turn. But this is also turning into a problem for advertisers and publishers alike. Are brands taking behavioral targeting too far?It won’t come as any surprise that the Web has transformed advertising, maybe more than any business in the world. Google, the poster child of the Web’s dominance, has built an empire around an advertising model that not only didn’t exist 15 years ago, but really wasn’t even possible. Dynamically matching advertising to content, although now seemingly commonplace, is revolutionary in every sense of the word.

The first decade of this century has seen the rise of data-driven marketing. ROI is king, everything is measured, and that means everything is targeted. The age of “18-35 year old males” being a sufficiently specific demographic was dead before the ship even sank. Now, thanks to Facebook, Gmail, Del.ici.ous and a bevy of other social services, we have access to enough data to learn significantly more about people without any personal interaction. Furthermore, we can track those people across multiple properties and indefinitely improve our accuracy in targeting them with relevant, desirable content and advertisements.

For advertisers, this mountain of data means they can refine their targeting orders of magnitude more than ever before. We’ve come a long way from the entire world being broken up into a dozen or so buckets. Entire marketing campaigns are being built around demographics so specific, you may have to test the limits of the six degrees of separation theory before finding a hit. It might take you years to find someone to fit the bill of “Asian females from the Southwestern United States age 22-27 who like skateboarding and have been to at least 2 professional sports games in the last year,” but that might be a slam-dunk market for a major brand advertiser. This is, without doubt, the greatest gift to advertisers of the last half century.

Getting back to our original question though, have advertisers grown a little too smart for themselves? These micro-targeted groups benefit from brand advertising, but it’s nigh on impossible to find enough people fitting the demographic to justify large scale brand recognition ad buys that programmers and publishers need in order to afford to make this type of hyper-targeting possible in the first place. On the mobile side, this audience just got the kick in the pants from the iPhone it needed to convert consumers to video on the phone — Nielsen just announced that viewership is up 50% over last year — but this audience is still in the early days and trying to impose these highly targeted, yet micro ad buys on what is essentially an early adopter audience isn’t moving our industry in the right direction. One could argue that such micro-targeting could in fact become the mad-cow disease of our industry, killing off many viable businesses in the name of raising the engagement needle a few points.

Occam’s Razor theory states that the simplest explanation is often the correct one. Perhaps in our quest for more detailed metrics in the hunt for greater ROI, we’ve actually moved further away from what we were originally seeking. I would suggest we stop holding online and mobile video advertising to a different standard or litmus test of value. These platforms (desktop & mobile), by their nature already offer tremendous insight into our respective user/viewer bases and if managed and mined correctly, give us sufficient data to derive a much more quantifiable ROI than television, in its one-size-fits-all, bulk format, could ever hope to offer.

So perhaps what we truly need is less focus on advanced mathematics and a more concrete focus on the basics of user engagement, personalization and seamless mobility of the user experience.

Anthony Bontrager

It’s been a while since my last post as the team at 1Cast has been extremely busy the first part of 2009 adding new content partners to our line-up and fine tuning our mobile applications. 

A few weeks ago at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the 1Cast team hit a big milestone: we launched 1Cast for Android, bringing our unique content distribution platform to the growing Android community.  In the few weeks since its launch, we’ve had tens of thousands of users download our application and sign up for the service, garnering fantastic feedback in the process.

We’ve been closely following the feedback that we’ve been getting about 1Cast for Android and have responded to nearly all of the feedback and comments.  To get a sense of our growing user satisfaction, check out these quotes:

“I absolutely love this app!! I no longer have to go online and search for news articles.  This is fabulous.”

Renee 3/11/2009  

“Wow!! You guys did an excellent job! Thank you so much and keep up with the good work!!”

Wendy 2/27/2009

“Awesome. Video quality is tops.”

Zach 2/13/2009

The issues and suggestions that are being provided by our growing user base regarding our mobile applications and web-based service are tremendously useful to us.  Please keep enjoying the beta service and keep your suggestions coming!  We’re keeping a close eye on all of the feedback, both through the beta website and other forums. 1Cast represents years of hard work and dedication for us, and we’re really excited about what we’ve delivered so far and about making it even better going forward.

Enjoy.

Anthony Bontrager

In my last blog post, I recognized the many contributions our users, the blogging community and our content and strategic partners have made through their feedback on the 1Cast platform.  We’re extremely fortunate to have so many people passionate about what we do and genuinely interested in seeing 1Cast succeed.

I’m pleased to announce that the team at 1Cast has released the first set of updates to the 1Cast service in response to this feedback.  I’ve detailed these updates below, and all are available on our desktop and iPhone/iPod touch experiences:

Content First:     A number of new users to our service commented that they would rather be presented with headlines first as opposed to an empty or under-populated Favorites section.  We couldn’t agree more.  Therefore, we’ve moved our Headlines, Sports, Suggested and Networks tabs to the front of the order, and placed the Favorites section next to the Make Your Own Cast search tab.

Meta-Data:     We’ve added detailed meta-data around each video clip comprising a micro-cast.  This meta-data includes a working title and descriptive sentence of the individual clip.  Our goal here is to address the needs of those users who want a more lean forward experience and be able to see what a video clip entails before they watch it.

Clip Embedding:     We’ve modified our single clip embed process, removing the necessity of deleting unwanted clips in order to embed just one video from your micro-cast.  This single checkbox function is more intuitive and does not require the disruption of your micro-cast, allowing users to quickly and easily embed clips into their favorite social networking site or blog.

Video Ads:     As we fine-tune our advertising strategy, we are researching various ad placements.  At this time, we are testing both 0:15 pre-rolls and 0:15 mid-rolls within the micro-cast to determine which format our users prefer. 

Login Viewing:     In order to put content in the hands of consumers quickly and with minimal friction, we have modified our login procedure.  As of today, you will be able to watch micro-casts from our Headlines, Sports, Suggested and Networks tab without having to formally login.  For those curious about 1Cast or want a fast news fix, this is a quick and easy way to experience the power of micro-casting without having to formally register for our service.  However, you will need to login if you want to create your own micro-cast or watch anything within your Favorites folder.  This change is our most significant as it underscores our belief that nothing should stand between a viewer and content.

We continue to work on additional enhancements to the platform, including adding more content from leading news, sports and entertainment providers.  As we get closer to these releases, I’ll be sure to let everyone know.  In the meantime, please continue to provide us with your feedback.

Anthony Bontrager

Two weeks ago, 1Cast announced the launch of its private beta, bringing to consumers the world’s first personalized broadcast delivery news service.  The launch was met with much acclaim and the usage numbers for our service, including downloads of our iPhone application are already well on target with our expectations even at this early stage.

An inevitable part of any beta test is being confused with or compared to other companies in or around your target space.  1Cast has experienced much of this over the past two weeks and I thought it would be a good idea to clarify a few points about what 1Cast aspires to be.

Simply put, 1Cast is a service offering that allows everyday news consumers to build personalized news playlists (micro-casts) and have them delivered in near real-time to their desktop or smartphone device.  We believe that consumers do not want to hunt and peck for individual video clips of relevant content, but prefer that it be delivered in an easily consumable, lean-back format. 

1Cast also allows for a more of a lean-forward experience, allowing users to navigate within a micro-cast and watch individual clips, share their micro-casts or clips with friends, or even embed them in their blog or favorite social networking site through the use of our widget.  Ease of use, and timeliness of information delivered wherever and whenever you are is the focus of 1Cast.

We believe that targeting the broader market with a true service offering, rather than offering a toolset to specific niche markets, is the best possible strategy for web video consumption.  It allows us greater flexibility in the distribution channels we select, offers users an intuitive manner in which to view video news content from multiple sources, and provides our content and advertising partners a compelling distribution channel.  So far, our user feedback has affirmed this belief.

I would like to give a big THANK YOU to the 1Cast team for all their hard work and dedication these past few years.  Small teams with big dreams have led the web video explosion and we’re thankful to be a part of this evolving industry.

I would also like to thank all of our users, the blogging community, as well as our content and other strategic partners for their feedback and support during the launch of our beta.  We’re truly grateful and look forward to providing continued enhancements to our product to meet the needs of our growing user base.

In the meantime…. Enjoy!

Anthony Bontrager

1Cast is pleased to announce today that we have launched a private beta version of the world’s first on-demand personalized broadcast delivery news service!  Today’s launch marks the culmination of nearly two years of behind the scenes work with the goal of building an online platform that brings multiple news broadcasters together into one complete user experience. Anyone can now access professional broadcast news whenever and wherever they want, only minutes after original broadcast.  

1Cast and our personalized news service, which we call Micro-Casting, allows users to discover a wealth of atomized video news content by keyword or phrase, then sit back and watch or engage with the news that matters to them.

Users of 1Cast can also share this content across the Web, finally giving social networking and blogging sites a legitimate source of embeddable, professionally produced video content from national and international news sources.

 
We’ll be extending only a limited number of invitations to the private beta, and access is provided on a first come, first serve basis.  Anyone can sign-up now for beta access at www.1cast.com.

Anthony Bontrager

Today we announced that 1Cast has extended an open invitation to the coming private beta of 1Cast to all former users of Redlasso.com.  As the first online news service to obtain legal distribution rights with several major national and international networks and cable news operations, those of you inside and outside of the blogosphere will no longer have to worry about embedding or linking to illegitimate video content.

In the coming weeks, 1Cast will officially launch, in beta, the world’s first on-demand personalized broadcast delivery news service, a project that has been under development for more than two years.  

Since we emerged from stealth mode in August, we have been working quietly behind the scenes to test the 1Cast platform with a select group of consumers and bloggers.  The knowledge and feedback we gathered from these individuals will be reflected in the beta version of our product, and we’re very excited to share our unique service offering and wealth of up-to-the-minute video content with you soon.

In the meantime, we welcome former users of Redlasso to sign-up for our private beta at http://1cast.com/welcomerlusers.html.

Anthony Bontrager

Some of you may remember this 1988 film staring Edward James Olmos and Lou Diamond Phillips. The film is about an inner-city math teacher who decides to change an educational system that is blind to the needs of its students.  This true story is a great example of overcoming challenges to deliver on a promise.  In this case, the promise of a valid education to kids, regardless of geography or socio-economic status.

The team at 1Cast believes in the premise of “Stand and Deliver.”  For the past two years, we have been quietly developing a service that delivers on the promise of seamless mobility of professionally produced content.  This has been more than just a technological undertaking, but an educational one as well.  For us, our real challenge was to educate broadcasters and cable programmers that by giving viewers more control over how they consume content, two things happen: first, the user is able to build greater affinity with a brand if it’s flexible to use and easy to consume whenever and wherever people want.  Second, specifically in the case of perishable news content, this affinity leads to more time spent with the content and additional monetization for a product with such an inherently short shelf life.

We are extremely pleased with the response we’ve seen from national and international broadcasters and programmers to our proposition.  Yet, in the end, only the consumer has the ability to say whether we’ve delivered on our promise. 

I think the following post by political blogger Ben Domenech of RedState answers that question:

“The fine folks over at 1Cast, a new media delivery tool for smartphones, were kind enough to let me try out a beta version of their software on an iPhone during the DNC and RNC. It’s an excellent solution to a problem for smartphone users who want to find video content across multiple channels, but end up getting RickRolled by Youtube half the time, and have to deal with proprietary constraints on others.

Imagine an automatically updated RSS feed for video, personalized to your specific political, corporate, or news tags, delivered smoothly to your device, and that’s this new service. The ability, within hours of her speech, to pull up footage of Sarah Palin’s remarks and then effortlessly move to related news clips of responding coverage on a variety of networks was just wonderful when you’re on the go at a convention. To me, the untapped potential of this service for Sports is the most tempting - the day I can get an inexpensive service on my existing smartphone (as opposed to having to purchase some specific device) that delivers so quickly and smoothly that I can get fully streamed TV highlights from a first half of NFL play while sitting at the game at halftime will be a very happy day.

If you’re a gadget addict or a politics and news junkie, check them out at 1Cast.”

Anthony Bontrager

While I’m a fan of Ayn Rand’s works, borrowing the title of one of her books as the theme for this blog is in many ways an anathema to modern day political correctness. 

And yet, when it comes to media consumption, specifically online video, we’re all guilty of a bit of selfishness.  We want media delivered on our terms, to our devices and at times that are convenient for us.  We rely on terms like uniqueness, relevancy, targeted and in-context to avoid the ugliness of the word “selfishness.”

But let’s call it like it is shall we?  Selfishness is the natural reflex to decades of having to deal with the one size fits all mentality of traditional media.  Today’s environment though has changed dramatically, with more content available than ever before and on more mediums than we can possibly watch in the span of a day. 

So doesn’t it stand to reason that being a bit selfish and picking the content or information that is important to us and watching it how, when and where we want is now the expected norm?  And as a corollary, by allowing me to revel in my media-centric selfishness am I not giving programmers, advertisers and others in the value-chain a better glimpse into who I am, how I think and what I’m interested in?  Doesn’t that lead to increased value?

I would argue yes to all three.  My selfishness means that if programmers want to reach me, they need to make their content more widely available and in different consumable formats so I can choose what I want.  By doing so they get the benefit of learning more about their viewers, which can lead to greater programming diversity – both in terms of content choice and distribution.  Advertisers benefit as well as they can segment viewers more effectively thereby increasing the relevancy, and arguably the ROI of the ad placement.  Finally, consumers’ benefit by having a wealth of content at their disposal that can be packaged to suit their needs.

So is selfishness really a bad thing after all? 

Anthony Bontrager