Economy Pushes Advertisers and Publishers to Tap Into User-Generated Video Content
By Jack Myers
10/30/08


A core question being asked about the media and advertising business for 2009 is whether advertisers, as they scale back budgets, will shift increased dollars into tried-and-true network television. "Marketers need to determine how they can put less money to work yet generate greater marketing impact." points out Magnify Media (www.magnify.net) founder and president Steve Rosenbaum, "As they scale back will they put their dollars into network or will they look for their consumers in different ways," Rosenbaum asks. "People are challenged now to do more with less and they are standing back, taking a hard look at their core assets and opportunities. Online video is a growth category and publishers will be turning to video asset aggregation and curated content to generate more page views, more users, and more money while cutting back on their costs."

"Despite the doom and gloom, pre-roll online video advertising remains robust and offers advertisers an important alternative as they seek high impact options that are more consistent with evolving consumer behavior," Rosenbaum comments. In...

I have been coming across some great channels and thought it was about time to share a couple good finds with the Magnify community. The below channels impressed me with their creativity, content, customization and overall enojoyability.  Check 'em out.

http://backstagegallery.magnify.net

Ever see an amazing picture of a musician or a concert and wonder what the story behind the picture is? Back Stage Gallery has videos of famous concert photographers talking about their experiences behind the cameras. There are some great stories that are worth checking out. The channel also has an impressive collection of old concert videos to entertain you in the middle of the day while your boss thinks you are working.

http://yousurftubes.magnify.net

Every time I come across this site, I am instantly annoyed that I do not know how to surf...

We’re looking for a couple of people to host our traveling Magnify Mascot Magnus (left) on his world tour. He is a friendly orange fellow that fits nicely in small places and loves to have his picture taken. Magnus has already visited some exciting places, but would love get out there and see more of the World. Take a picture or a video of him and we’ll put it up in our world tour gallery (http://worldtourblog.magnify.net). You’ll also get a brand new Magnify t-shirt for hosting Magnus. And it’s all free to you.

If you are interested in having Magnus shipped to you, please send us an email at Mascottour (at) Magnify.net for details.

New York  10.10.08  Magnify.net, the leading Video Search and Integration Platform for Mid-Market Publishers, announced it is expanding into "how to" video aggregation for the fast growing sector of instructional video content.

Magnify.net is adding high speed, on the fly, video search of 5min, ViewDo, and Expert Village to enable community managers for the 35,000 and growing content channels to have access to the discovery and inclusion of relevant teaching, training, and coaching videos.

Said Ran Harnevo, co-founder and CEO of 5min.com said, "We're big fans of the growing syndication economy that is emerging around video. Clearly Magnify.net has done a great job of providing customers with the tools to find video and build video communities around that content. We think adding 5min to their search and integration solution is good for us and for video consumers alike."

"We have been continually impressed by the quality and knowledge value that these sites have been able to foster," said Magnify.net CEO Steven Rosenbaum. "In working with Ran and his team at 5min, we're now able to provide contextual, useful, and informative video to site builders...

"AOL looking forward to a long and mutually beneficial relationship with Magnify.net"

As some of you know, there was a recent article in Silicon Alley Insider that suggested that AOL was somehow shutting down 50 or more of its projects.  Well, that is certainly not a good thing -- especially when you read that you are one of them. Yikes!  How can AOL be 'shutting down Magnify.net' when they don't own us? Heck, we don't even have a deal with them.

Well, the good folks at SAI were quick to clarify things -- and posted a correction.

And folks at AOL jumped on the phone and helped us clear up what really happened.  So,  here's what our friend Fred McIntyre (SVP AOL Video) had to say about AOL, Magnify, and our relationship going forward.

“Magnify.net currently leverages services and APIs that AOL provides through UserPlane and Truveo.  AOL is pleased to provide these serv...

We wanted to update you on a number of features, and answer your feature questions from previous emails you've sent us.

First,  Mobile Upload is built and currently in closed beta for testing.  We expect we'll release it to a handful of customers next week to test various devices.  Let us know if you'd like to beta the product once it's ready for testing.

Second, we have launched support for geotagging video submissions and display of their locations on a map. Our geo-location functionality is based on natural-language address entry and dynamic lookup via the Google Maps API. You can see a map of the videos which have been geotagged to date here:

http://YOURSITENAME.magnify.net/admin/manage/geocoding

And based on some feedback from larger customers,  we've added features to make Geotags editable by Site Admin's:

We're also working on a 'bulk' geotagging feature, that will let  you search on a key word (like "Katrina") and tag all videos in a collection with a geolocation.  This should increase the ability to encourage geotagging...

Like most people, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about Halloween. Which costume I’ll be wearing (Alan Greenspan or the Little Mermaid), who will take me trick or treating (Mom or Magnify’s Director of Corporate Development, Alan Medvin)…these are tough decisions! I decided to search Magnify for some ideas and was happy to find multiple Halloween themed channels. It never ceases to amaze me how many channels the Magnify community creates on nearly any topic I can think of. So in honor of the season, I picked out a couple channels I thought were interesting and one that just plain scared me.  If you have an idea for another Halloween themed site, we would love to see it, so go ahead and build it.

http://halloween.magnify.net

http://scarystories.magnify.net

http://halloweenday.magnify.net

After last week's report of Steve Jobs' heart attack (which turnd out to be a hoax), we found ourselves wondering what it means when a person or a company finds themselves having to correct false rumors.  Well, it seems we're getting a chance to learn that leason the hard way.

This morning Silicon Alley Insider is reporting that AOL is giving the axe to 50 projects.   On that list is Magnify.net.   Wow, that's a shame, since AOL isn't an owner, or even an investor or partner with Magnify.net.  Ouch, they're killing us and they don't even own us.  That's harsh.

We've reached out to our contacts at AOL to see if we can find out what this means, and if they're going to correct  the rumor.   But for now, sufice it to say -- we're alive and well, rocking in fact, and just having brought in another round of funding and having our pro and enterprise sales exceeding expecctations,  we're no danger of going away.  Very much the opposite in fact.