Diane's Blog: Vobile and FreeWheel Partner to Increase Video Content Owners' Flexibility and Control of Online Distribution

Diane's Blog

Vobile and FreeWheel Partner to Increase Video Content Owners' Flexibility and Control of Online Distribution

FROM Business wire TODAY:

Vobile AND Freewheel partner to INCREASE VIDEO content owners’ flexibility and CONTROL OF ONLINE DISTRIBUTION
Partnership Designed to Enable Growth of Premium Ad Inventory

Santa Clara, CA — April 15 2009—Vobile, the leading provider of video content identification and management services, and FreeWheel, the first company to provide complete Monetization Rights Management™ (MRM) for both content owners and publishers, today announced a partnership that will provide content owners greater flexibility and control over the distribution of their content online.

Online video sharing sites have unprecedented audience reach and opportunity for low-cost content distribution. However, the lack of control over the content distributed by users has increased piracy risk to content owners and kept advertisers from fully embracing the distribution model. The joint solution from Vobile and FreeWheel helps content owners safely and effectively monetize their content online while increasing premium ad inventory for video publishers and portals.

“The dozens of video content owners and digital publishers we’ve met with in the past 18 months have communicated very clearly to us what the barriers to safe distribution are that they face online,” said Jon Heller, co-CEO of FreeWheel. “This partnership with Vobile is designed to remove numerous barriers and provide not just more control but more flexibility for content owners, further enabling the development of the digital video ecosystem.”

Vobile VideoDNA technology can accurately identify user-uploaded video, providing enhanced metadata and associated business rules specified by the content owner that apply to the specific video copy. The content owner can choose to allow ad-based monetization for a variety of criteria including the length of the clip, publisher location, time of discovery, segment or percentage of original content matched, and more.

FreeWheel’s MRM platform enables online video content owners and distributors to actively manage their inventory allocation, revenue accounting and ad serving aspects of video content syndication. It monitors and clarifies revenue share arrangements as well as who has the right to sell ad inventory, across the potentially huge numbers of videos, partnerships and agreements that content owners and distributors may have in place.

"Before rights holders fully embrace video sharing sites as their legitimate monetization platforms, they need assurance of complete control of content distribution,” said Yangbin Wang, CEO of Vobile. “Together with FreeWheel, Vobile offers a comprehensive video monetization solution that accommodates the needs of content owners, publishers and advertisers.”

About FreeWheel

To video content owners, rights holders, and publishers, FreeWheel(TM) provides the first Monetary Rights Management(TM) platform - a technology solution that dramatically reduces the unique financial risks and operational complexities of video ad serving across syndication relationships. Freewheel combines the innovation of a start-up with the most experienced and talented team of industry veterans. With decades of leadership experience at leading ad serving and monetization companies such as DoubleClick, Yahoo, Adobe, and Visible World, FreeWheel's team is united in the understanding that video is fundamentally different from graphical ad placements and search, and needs a unique solution to deliver maximized revenue with minimal complexity. For more information, please visit: www.freewheel.tv.

About Vobile

Vobile® is the leading provider of video content identification and management services. Its core VideoDNA™ technology enables fully automated identification, tracking and management of any video and audio content with high performance, accuracy and scalability. Vobile operates the VideoDNA Database (VDDB®), which is the most comprehensive database of authorized video fingerprints, metadata and business rules from major movie studios, television networks and record labels. Founded in 2005, the company is headquartered in Santa Clara, California, with additional offices in China and the United Kingdom. For more information, please visit the company website at http://www.vobileinc.com.