March 30, 2008

Widget Upgrades in Preparation for Advertising

We have been working hard to prepare the CozmoTV widget for advertising that should begin running across some channels as early as May 1^st. You have probably noticed the alteration in the controls across the bottom of the player area. We have made this change to accommodate overlay advertisements that will appear at the top of these controls either at timed intervals or when you roll your mouse over the player area.  We also plan on running similar overlays across the bottom of the player during the 8 second interval between videos in a channel.

We are currently testing different ad units from Adap.TV, ScanScout, VideoEgg, Tremor and others for compatibility with our platform. There are a variety of issues with each and we are working to resolve these issues such that we can carry advertising from multiple platforms in a way that ensures a smooth experience for users. We are specifically trying to avoid the use of pre-roll and post-roll ad units as we think that they do not respect the attention of our audience.  We respect this attention and are basing our model on delivering relevant ads that encourage user interaction as opposed to ads that interrupt.

We are testing a variety of formats for these interactive ads, but generally this interaction will be initiated by users clicking on a banner to launch a video clip, an external website, or even an application within the skin of the widget. We are refining the forms of interaction that will occur within our player to give advertisers maximum flexibility in terms of how they can interact with this audience. As we start running these ads, we’re going to rely upon our audience to tell us and our advertising partners how to improve this experience so as to provide each with maximum benefit.

As we begin testing some of these ad units we will demonstrate some samples through this and other partner sites. We look forward to your feedback.