Diane's Blog

FreeWheel on CNBC

Diane — 2010-03-10T17:55:00Z

FreeWheel Launches Partner Program to Place Online Video Ads Everywhere

Diane — 2010-03-06T04:40:00Z

Written by Ryan Lawler
Posted on NewTeeVee Thursday, March 4, 2010 at 6:00 AM PT

FreeWheel has made a name for itself by helping publishers to run ads against their videos no matter where they are seen, whether they appear on a publisher’s own web site or — more likely — a distribution partner’s.But it’s tough to do that alone, which is why FreeWheel is announcing anew partner program to help disseminate and target online video ads across a wide range of distribution platforms.

The video ad company has spent the last two years partnering and integrating with a whole slew of different video distributors, ad networks, video management platforms, creative technologies, and content identification companies. In total, FreeWheel has more than 70partners helping it to reach, monitor, and measure ad effectiveness across various video distribution points. That includes about 25different advertising partners and eight different online video platforms.

One of FreeWheel’s biggest wins was partnering with YouTube to serve ads from content partners like CBS and Vevo. Due to partnerships with YouTube and others, FreeWheel also counts major video publishers like Discovery, Major League Baseball, Turner Broadcasting System and Warner Bros. as customers.

The expansion of its partnership program and the growth in the number of publishers and distribution partners it connects with has FreeWeel firing on all cylinders. According to VideoNuze, the firm is now serving almost 2 billion video ads per month, which is nearly double its volume from last November.

Members of FreeWheel’s partner program include:

Ad Networks: Advertising.com, AxelSpringer, BrightRoll, Broadband Enterprises, Collective Media, GoogleAdSense, Gorilla Nation, ScanScout, SmartClip (EU), SpotXchange, TremorMedia, UTarget, ValueClick, VideoEgg and VideoStrip
Advertising Tools & Technologies: adap.tv, DoubleClick DART, DoubleClick Rich Media, Eyeblaster, EyeWonder, Innovid, Microsoft Atlas, Panache and PointRoll
Content Distributors:ActiveVideo Networks, Alloy Media, AOL, Blinkx, Blip.tv, Boxee,DailyMotion, DivX, FreeStream Media, Grab Networks, iPhone, MSN,MySpace, NDN, Roku, Sling Media, Veoh, Viddler and Vudu
Player Platforms & Content Management:Adobe OSMF, Brightcove, Castfire, Cisco EOS, Digitalsmiths, Episodic,Extend Media, Kyte, Move Networks, Ooyala and thePlatform(s CMCSA)
Content ID Technologies: Audible Magic, BayTSP, Civolution, Vercury and Vobile

Dogs day at California office

Diane — 2010-03-04T22:00:00Z

I have to admit it is only possible for me to take pictures after they are locked in the "penalty box"

FreeWheel Unveils Partner Program Representing Integrations With 70+ Companies Including Roku, Brightcove, EyeWonder, and ScanScout

Diane — 2010-03-04T17:26:00Z

Just released today:

FreeWheel Unveils Partner Program Representing Integrations With 70+ Companies Including Roku, Brightcove, EyeWonder, and ScanScout

Formalized partnerships lead to fully integrated video solutions for major publishers

SAN MATEO, Calif., March 4 /PRNewswire/ -- Video monetization technology company FreeWheel today announced the formation of the PAVE Initiative (Partners Accelerating the Video Economy), a program formalizing 73 integrated partnerships with video distributors, ad networks, video player and content management platforms, creative technologies, and content ID companies.

FreeWheel has spent over two years building systems integrations that enable publishers to access an interconnected set of offerings and services when using the company's ad sales rights and ad serving technology.Moving forward, FreeWheel and the partners will work together to uphold and improve industry standards and create best practices for video revenue operations and technology.

"Integrating with this leading cross-section of companies is an important step for FreeWheel but also a step in the right direction for the entire video ecosystem," said Doug Knopper,co-founder and co-CEO of FreeWheel. "As major publishers and media companies transition towards full digital video strategies, they need to enable distribution, content management, monetization sources, and tracking across multiple screens. It's not realistic for those publishers to create and maintain dozens of flavors of integrations as their video initiatives scale – in fact, it's this lack of collaboration that has held online video back. The PAVE Initiative simply lets publishers focus on building more innovative and profitable video businesses."

FreeWheel has forged partnerships with many different facets of the ecosystem,but four of the most common based on client demand are with distribution channels, online video platforms, video ad networks, and creative technologies.

"As Roku expands the selection of video programming available in the Roku Channel Store, working with FreeWheel is a great fit," said Jim Funk,vice president of business development for Roku. "The ability for our content partners to retain real-time control over in-stream ad space on a living room television represents a major step forward. By integrating the Roku SDK with FreeWheel, Roku becomes an even more attractive distribution platform for top-tier content."

Online video platforms are another critical integration point, as Chris Johnston,director of technology partnerships at Brightcove points out. "The openness of our platform and our robust SDKs and APIs enable our customers and partners to easily build and integrate advanced plug-ins and features to expand the capabilities of the Brightcove platform. Our collaboration with FreeWheel has already enabled many of our customers to expand their video monetization strategies, and we're confident the PAVE Initiative will introduce even more ways for organizations to generate increased advertising revenue from their video content."

Systems integration for each PAVE partner goes beyond creating compatible technologies. These partnerships foster optimal communication and client support practices and are executed within industry standard specifications like the IAB's Advertising Impression Counting Guidelines. The goal is to make it that much easier for advertisers, publishers, and technology providers to scale.

"ScanScout takes pride in constantly innovating to deliver on the objectives ofour advertisers and provide maximum value for our publishing partners,"said ScanScout CEO Bill Day. "Whether we're creating early applications of a new standard, or something custom on behalf of a mutual client, our work with FreeWheel continues to build out the infrastructure supporting the video economy."

Advertisers also benefit from integrations like those formed through the PAVE Initiative. "Brand advertisers are looking for ways to reach consumers through online video with engaging and interactive experiences," said Michael Griffin, EVP of marketing and strategic development at EyeWonder. "With PAVE,partners from the entire ecosystem are joining forces to reduce friction and make it easy for marketers to buy and execute in-stream advertising at scale, in turn driving ad spend and increasing revenue for the entire industry."

About FreeWheel

FreeWheel offers the most formidable system for digital video ad management and monetization. Built from the ground up by a handful of former DoubleClick executives, FreeWheel's solution-set has already armed companies like Turner Broadcasting Systems, Warner Brothers, CBSTelevision Distribution, VEVO, Discovery Networks International, and others with the tools and services necessary to extract advertising revenue from video content. For more information, please visit: www.freewheel.tv

SOURCE FreeWheel

Bravo, Can not help but applaud!

Diane — 2010-03-02T06:43:00Z

From Hideo about professionalism -- 写得好！

职业化

文章分类:IT生活

我的第一个工作是大三开始在学校附近一个“小软件作坊”开发一些外包项目。由于公司很小，不太规范，加上项目来源不是很稳定，上班的节奏很轻松。每天睡到中午起来到公司楼下买盒盒饭带到公司边看电影边吃，吃完点根烟来两把魔兽，玩累了写两个小时代码，然后上网逛逛论坛，没事再来两把魔兽。到了晚饭饭点，和同事出去吃个饭散散步，回公司继续魔兽，玩到10点回宿舍睡觉。日子过得十分悠闲，但总觉得年轻的时光不能就这样浪费。

于是，我开始专研技术。我爱上了Java，每周末都跑到计算机书店买各种Java书籍，逛技术论坛，学习各种Java开源软件，后来公司的一个Spring项目还是我带领来做。我认为我成为了一个技术高手，开始洋洋自得起来。

而职业化 -- Professionalism，是我来北京进入外企工作后时常触痛我神经的一个词。公司有很多5年甚至10年软件开发经验的同事，有很多来自大公司的项目经理/架构师，还有很多来自微软/IBM/Yahoo的国外同事。相比之下，自己就是个涉世未深的大学毕业生。为什么这么说呢？因为细心的话，你会发现“他们”有很多共同点 -- 而这些共同点是大多数普通人根本不具备的。

“他们”上班很早。周一你去上班，发现“他们”比你早到公司。周二你去上班，发现“他们”比你早到公司。一个月甚至半年后你去上班，发现“他们”还是比你早到公司。

“他们”不会在办公室做与上班无关的事。早上大家在看新闻时，你会发现“他们”在投入的埋头工作。午餐后大家在看搞笑视频时，你会发现“他们”在投入的埋头工作。下午快下班时大家在聊QQ在和女朋友打电话时，你会发现“他们”还在投入的埋头工作。

“他们”很热情，很乐观。你需要“他们”帮助时“他们”会热心的帮你解决问题。当“他们”遇到难题时从不埋怨，而是认真分析，从容应对。

“他们”很谦虚，很冷静。“他们”和你讨论问题时很专注的倾听你的意见，从不大声争吵，说话富有逻辑，考虑问题十分严谨。

“他们”很努力。不经意见你会发现，“他们”在下班时间甚至周末还在提交代码，“他们”经常在美国白天时间和国外同事Email讨论问题。

“他们”视野广，思路开阔，责任感强。“他们”能预见系统在几个月后的运行情况，“他们”能想到一般人想不到的解决方案，“他们”经常对一些看起来像是小的bug深入探究。

“他们”注重产品的方方面面。代码质量/性能/可维护性/可扩展性/用户体验/产品运维。

“他们”乐于和同事分享知识，分享自己的经验。

“他们”学习新事物很快，并乐于向不同的team请教问题。

种种特点，最终在我的脑海中归结为一个词：职业化。如果我还像三年前刚刚大学毕业一样，每天仅仅自满于按时搞定领导安排的任务，那么我和“他们”的差距有多大？

我翻开公司的劳动合同，仔细重新阅读了一遍《职位描述》：
网络应用软件开发部工程师，北京
职责：
负责网络应用软件系统技术开发，设计及维护，包括广告发放及投放效果统计
负责网络应用软件系统产品质量，及时解决系统运行中的问题，避免客户损失
与产品管理部门及其他工程部门亲密合作，共同设计客户解决方案
负责招聘，培训及管理技术人员，提高团队开发力量，提高团队整体水平
负责协助招聘，培训及管理技术人员的工作
帮助团队提高团队开发力量，提高团队整体水平

映射到自己平常的工作当中，这几点我是否都做到了呢？我是一个称职的软件工程师吗？我离“专业”二字还有多远？

仔细想想为什么别人比你薪水多，为什么别人职位比你高，为什么别人能出国而你没有机会，为什么公司给别人配的高性能苹果笔记本而自己还是台式机，然后睡个好觉，从明天开始，上班别再迟到，工作时别再聊QQ，别再不到下班时间就开始收拾东西准备回家。

我不是个刚毕业的大学生；我是名称职的软件工程师。

Our Brand New California Office -- It Is Awesome!

Diane — 2010-03-01T19:09:00Z

Come and see our cool new California office!

Alex and Dom flew in, helped us setup the office networks etc.

The birthday boy waving in the back. Happy birthday, Doug! Laura drove up for a surprise office visit, she brought donuts and party balloons!

I like the red wall and exposed bricks, Abbie did a great job picking out the colors, thanks, Abbie!

The Great Wall conference room, Max is waving at everybody from Beijing office, he will be in Beijing this spring.

And the Central Park Conference room, Jon and Diya are meeting, always.

Now, how does this compare to our very first Oddstad office? Anybody remembers?

Random "Sketches" in HongKong

Diane — 2010-02-20T05:30:00Z

In HK for Chinese New Year (the year of Tiger), took some random trips.

Went to WongTaiSin temple on the first day of the new year, it clearly is a popular new year praying destination for HongKong-nese. There were news saying people would line up outside of the temple during each eve in order to be the first one to say their prayers to WongTaiSin...

People post their new year wishes on this wall, and wish WongTaiSin would bring good luck to them.

It was also Valentine's day, in HongKong for yet another valentine's day, three years straight, now that is amazing.

In ShenZhen on the 4th day of the new year, the shiny ShenZhen subway impressed me, took a few pictures. I wondered why almost nobody took subway though...It wasn't that late at night, around 9ish pm.

Discovered a cool soup dumpling place at Causeway bay yesterday: Chi Kee Wonton Noodle restaurant, they serve really good shrimp wonton...And very good sweet desert in Chinese style. For less than HK$100 per person, it is a sweet deal. Definitely going back again.

We decided for a walk after such a stuffed meal, took the cable car at central to the peak.

The view was OK, it was cloudy, humid, and cold...Winter in Hong Kong is cold...

We walked downhill from the peak...That was a long walk, especially after we realized the central-mid-level-escalator only going uphill at night.

I took the wrong picture, forgot to include the escalator on the side, I was too tired to pay attention. Oh, well, wikipedia has a much better picture.

FreeWheel Beijing 2010 Annual Party

Diane — 2010-02-06T06:38:00Z

Just when I thought the last annual party was an unmatchable one, I was blown away by how much fun we had this year...
We held the party at 后海5号 last night, the venue was great, it looked crowded, we packed close to 90 people with friends and families of FreeWheelers there.

Alex and Ray attended the party representing US offices, ask them for untold fun stories

Andrea asked all teams to creatively come up with programs on their own. I worried that it would be boring, made sure the venue had in house band in place to help warming the stage. It turned out the band was the most boring part of the night

We kicked off the party with a birthday cake to celebrate the Feb birthdays and the spring festival

There are many fun moments that any words would pale in comparison, you really have to be there to count them all...I am noting a few funnest moments that I so vividly remember and still can not help laughing when I think about them...

UI team opened up with the famously popular "Nobody" dance

I vote it "the most professional looking dance", youtube video of the dance was uploaded real time and immediately shared to all worldwide and drew a lot of "WOW"s. Great job for a few hours rehearsal at lunch time!

Core team's short play about our adservers selecting pre-roll, mid-roll, post-roll during commercial breaks filled the room with unstopped laughs and I even forgot taking my pictures. The audience were shouting for more commercials as the short play releasing one joke after another about FreeWheel Adservers working with 3rd parties, competitors, selecting the best performing ads, sponsorships, companions for video owner...

I vote it "the most creatively designed and executed short play", it was brilliant! This was a true surprise, I didn't even know how they prepared it completely without me noticing in the same room...

And the funnest game of the night...The creative stylist, with Jack, Free, Kevin, Di as the models and female members of their teams as their stylists. The "Hello Kitty" design was the unanimous winner...Guess who won the game

The song touched me the most is "I believe" from Snow, he rewrote the lyrics based on FreeWheel moments and created an MV himself using FreeWheelers' photos...I was so touched, forgot to record it, if anybody has it, please send to me...Many many thanks! (updated with YouKu link to the video)

Finally, "the cutest performance" goes to the "hello kitty" sang by Yuantao and his GF.

With so much laugh and love, no wonder we all found the professional band were boring!

I am still touched and felt the excitement when I review those pictures now, hence selecting a few to share my excitement...Thank you, from my heart, thank you all for a great night, for your participation, for supports from your families and friends, for your talent and creativity, for the love and care you shown, and, most importantly, for the laugh and fun you brought...I LOVE YOU ALL! THANK YOU!

Exclusive: FreeWheel Serving Almost 2 Billion Video Ads/Mo, MLB is Newest Customer

Diane — 2010-02-05T06:41:00Z

From VideoNuze:

Exclusive: FreeWheel Serving Almost 2 Billion Video Ads/Mo, MLB is Newest Customer

Thursday, February 4, 2010, 09:07 AM ET
posted by: Will Richmond

FreeWheel is on a roll, now serving almost 2 billion video ads/month, doubling its volumejust since November, 2009. In addition, the company has added MajorLeague Baseball Advanced Media to its customer roster and beganimplementing ads during the fall playoff season. The MLB win comes ontop of recently announcedcustomers Turner Broadcasting System and VEVO. FreeWheel'sco-CEO/co-founder Doug Knopper brought me up to speed on all the newslate last week.

Doug said that part of the increase in FreeWheel's volume isattributable to the additional customers that have come on board, buthe's also very excited about the year-over-year growth in ad volumeFreeWheel is seeingfor longer-term customers ("same store sales" if you will). FreeWheelis seeing big increases due to 3 factors: customers posting greaterquantities of video, plus deepening viewership of that video (all ofthis borne out by comScore's '09 video consumption data);customers' improving ability to actually sell ads against these videos(reflecting the shift of budgets to the online video medium); andreduced friction through the emergence of "accepted practices" in adoperations.

FreeWheel is also benefiting from its specialization in helpingcontent providers monetize their video on third-party sites (e.g.YouTube, AOL, MSN, Fancast, etc.). More and more content executives arerealizing that sizable viewership opportunities exist by syndicatingtheir video outside of their own properties. Doug said that everycontent company FreeWheel is now talking to is interested in some kindof syndication.

Doug described 3 types of syndication he's seeing: (1) across afamily of sister corporate sites, such as PGA.com providing CNN.comvideo, which are both owned by Turner; (2) between affiliated entitieslike local MLB teams providing video to the main MLB.com hub and (3)externally, to unaffiliated 3rd parties, such as WMG music providingvideos to YouTube. Given all this syndication activity, I wasinterested to learn from Doug what percentage of the ads FreeWheelserves fall into each of these 3 buckets vs. what percentage are servedon the customer's sites themselves. Doug said that FreeWheel is pullingthose numbers together in a way that ensures its customers privacy andwill get back to me when he has them.

In addition to the above syndication activity, FreeWheel is seeingexperimentation with delivering ads to mobile devices, convergence/CEplayers and Internet-enabled TVs. In all these cases, customized adpolicies determine who sells what ad inventory and how revenue isshared and reported. Powering all of this has been part of FreeWheel'score mission from inception, making it a key player in what I've calledthe 'syndicated video economy."

FreeWheel's growth echoes what I've been hearing lately from bothvideo ad network executives and video content providers. They too aretalking about rapidly rising volumes and improving monetization. As I wroterecently, I've been impressed lately by efforts to make video ads moreengaging and provide a better ROI, a trend I see continuing. Takentogether, while it's still relatively early days, online videoadvertising seems to be making great strides.

Turner's FreeWheel Deal Could Be 'Glue' for TV Everywhere

Diane — 2010-01-22T01:23:00Z

Link to the article: http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=141620

Turner's FreeWheel Deal Could Be 'Glue' for TV Everywhere

With Vevo, Other Distribution Agreements in Place, Ad Server Is at the Center of the New Video Economy

by Michael Learmonth
Published: January 20, 2010

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Turner Broadcasting System adopted a new adserver that may also play a key role in Time Warner's TV Everywhere initiative.

FreeWheel will serve video ads on several of Turner's online properties including CNN.com.

Turner inked a deal with FreeWheel to serve video ads for its online properties, such as CNN.com, PGA.com, Nascar.com and NBA.com. In addition, it gives parent Time Warner a solution for how to serve ads into long-form TV content, which it will soon begin to distribute online.

Time Warner's TV Everywhere initiative, now being tested in several markets, is an attempt to make broadcast and cable programming available online, on-demand and free, with a cable subscription. Cable customers need to "authenticate" their subscription in order to gain access to those shows they're already paying for as part of a cable package.

Turner will distribute its programming online with advertising -- much as it does on TV -- and the new system will allow it to insert those ads into shows, whether it's a series on TBS or a news clip from CNN, across the web.

Enabling 'TV Everywhere'

"When we look out on the horizon on TV Everywhere, it allows us to tie the pieces together -- it is the glue that allows us to insert ads in an authenticated model," said Walker Jacobs, senior-VP, Turner Sports and Entertainment.

Initially, Turner is syncing its web video on FreeWheel's platform, allowing Turner to control what ads are shown to whom on its own sites, as well as distribution partners such as Yahoo and YouTube. The system allows Turner to get credit for a view on a third-party site,such as Yahoo, while the distributor gets credit for any display ad impressions around the video.

FreeWheel also handles ad revenue splits with distributors,streamlining the complex economics of each deal. But for Turner, the deal means it can sell its own ads and insert them wherever its video is embedded or syndicated. "We can exclusively represent our brands wherever they exist," Mr. Jacobs said.

In addition to Turner, FreeWheel recently added Vevo, the joint venture between Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Abu Dhabi Media Co. Specifically, FreeWheel enables Vevo's business model by allowing the joint venture to serve its own ads into videos watched on YouTube.

FreeWheel, dreamed up by ex-DoubleClick execs and founded in 2007,has tied up video ad serving for an expanding group of media companies,including Warner Music Group, CBS and Discovery, as well as startups like Blip.tv. Among its competitors are Auditude, which has a deal with Viacom, and DoubleClick itself, which has its In-Stream video adserver.