Speaking of our new website, we've put in quite a bit of work to make it as user friendly as possible so that you can easily find the information you are looking for on VoloMedia.  We have added a few new pages, including a Customer page where you can find examples of the leading companies we work with and an Ad Gallery where you can see the latest and greatest campaigns we have going for our customers.  Please feel free to browse around.  Enjoy!

Jeff

Podcasting News offers a good summary.

Jeff

Jeff

The downloading and mobile audiences are growing quickly. Arbitron-Edison Media research released this week shows rising Podcast consumption, now reaching 18% of the US population. Consumer habits are changing quickly, and the larger media landscape is being transformed rapidly.  This rate of change is only bound to accelerate, as consumers avail themselves of freedoms afforded by the newer technologies. For example, if you own an iPhone (or one of the newer iPods), you are able to load videos onto the iPhone via iTunes, or directly download videos from the Internet and save it on the iPhone for later viewing, or stream videos to the iPhone screen while connected online. These consumption behaviors complement watching video in iTunes, on a larger screen notebook computer. Consumers will use all of these modalities to get the content they want. These consumers are a highly engaged audience, not casual web surfers who happen to trip upon a random link. They are committed to the media they receive, having vested considerable energy, time, bandwidth and storage. For media publishers these are unprecedented times, a great opportunity to carve out a unique niche in the emerging media landscape.

As the downloadable medium grows, so does the challenge for publishers and advertisers. How do you reach these audiences? What ad formats best suit this medium?  How do you measure usage and engagement?  As traditional TV and radio models become increasingly defunct, it becomes imperative there is a rapid maturing of standards reflecting the emerging mediums. The ADM can help.

Murgesh Navar

Recently, Brian, our CEO, was interviewed by Mark Ramsey of Hear2.0.   During the course of the interview, Brian and Mark discuss how the radio industry can benefit from monetizing their content in the form of podcasts and how VoloMedia can help content publishers with this.  Brian also talks about  VoloMedia’s ad insertion and metrics reporting solutions as well as the company’s revenue model.  Here is the link to the interview: http://www.hear2.com/2008/04/make-money-from.html

Next, Jeff, our VP of Marketing and Products, presented at a webinar on Online Video Advertising: The Time is Right along with folks from Limelight and Tier 1 Research.  The presentation focused on trends in the streaming industry that affect online video advertising and the technology and infrastructure that are enabling all of this to happen.  In it, Jeff talks about the narrowing of the traditional distribution window for content, the proliferation of iPod/device ownership that is driving consumer demand for digital media that is portable and VoloMedia’s solutions.  Here’s the link to the webinar:  http://www.streamingmedia.com/webevents/details.asp?EventID=284

Please register and take a look at either or both. And if you have any questions about building the business of downloadable media, do not hesitate to contact us at info@volomedia.com.

Jenny

Jeff

Although Mr. White’s article describes companies’ concerns over bandwidth utilization and cost from the consumption of online video in the workplace, this angle is not as compelling as the issue of employees wasting valuable company time.  Based upon this hypothesis, companies should be happy if people are time-shifting/place-shifting their non-work entertainment content away from the office…even if company-paid bandwidth is consumed to accomplish this objective.

The math isn’t hard to do:  A 3Mbps DSL line costs $60/month, i.e., only $3 per workday.  My oft-watched ABC News “Nightline Story of the Day” video podcasts average about six minutes and 36MB each, requiring less than 100 seconds to download.  (3 megabits per second = 0.375 megabytes per second; so 36MB/0.375MB per second = 96 seconds)

As the average U.S. employee costs an employer something like $240/day – based upon $50,000/year plus benefits (and probably double this in Silicon Valley) – and 70% of these workers are watching online videos for an hour a day at work, that’s $21/day of lost productivity for an average worker.  Actually, assuming that companies strive for at least a 2-3x return on employee cost, the real “opportunity cost” of this online consumption is closer to $50/day per employee.

One hour of video podcasting can be downloaded in about 20 minutes…in the background.  Therefore, one DSL line can handle the daily downloading needs of 34 employees (8 hours / 20 minutes = 24 one-hour downloads / 70% watching videos = 34 total employees).  As a DSL line costs only $3 for an entire day – less than a single, low-fat, no-foam latte at Starbucks – it costs a company less than $0.10 per day per employee to handle the actual downloading.  So, as I said, it’s not a bandwidth cost issue…but it’s definitely an opportunity cost issue.

To combat this very real drain on corporate resources, companies should encourage their employees to download non-work content and take it with them to consume outside the office.  Heck, to help ensure the success of this program it would probably even be a “no brainer” for most companies to hand out free iPod Nanos (starting at $149/each).  In CFO-speak, the “payback” on this investment would occur in less than two weeks (or less than one week if looking at the opportunity cost).  That’s the best investment a company will ever make.

Brian Steel

CEO

NOTE:  My bandwidth usage example in this blog post was intentionally kept simple – to help focus on the point that its about employee cost...not about bandwidth cost.  However, many readers will realize that much of the bandwidth consumption will occur at the same time, so that a single DSL line could easily get bogged down, implying much slower downloads than what I calculated and the need for more bandwidth at those times to handle “legitimate” work uses.  However, given the overwhelming magnitude of the basic ratio – of $50 of opportunity cost per employee/day to $0.10 of bandwidth cost per employee/day – even if the company had to increase its bandwidth by ten times, there’s still a 50:1 ratio, i.e., a persuasive argument in favor of focusing on reducing wasted employee time and not on bandwidth costs.  I should also note that since we're "in the business," VoloMedia's employees consume a lot of video - online and offline - and are encouraged to do so.

This recommendation offered by one of his peers sums up why we are so excited to have Buzz join our team:

“Buzz is an oustanding manager capable in a role as a leader, doer and influencer. His technical and analytic skills are top notch; his intuition a major asset. He's a tireless worker who acheives what he sets out to do. You can count on Buzz no matter what, and all that he's involved with is better for it. There's no one I'd rather have next to me in a foxhole or enjoying a sail on the Bay.”

Jeff