JOOST is planning to offer live online TV. The company’s Executive Vice President of Content Strategy revealed that live programming will begin in Q1 of 2008. Live transmissions will include a “catch-up” option following the initial broadcast. Joost’s initial “live” focus seems to be on sports. The company is speaking with rights-holders for major professional sports, and working on features that will allow users to track scores and bookmark their favorite plays.
BLINKX will announce a new service today that allows users to monetize videos from YouTube and other sites. Users can embed the video within a Blinkx player, which will analyze the audio and overlay relevant contextual ads. Revenue is split between website publishers and Blinkx, while cutting one important party out of the revenue share: the actual video creator. It also creates the potential for Blinkx ads to be running on top of YouTube ads which, presumably, will be surrounded by AdWords ads and – hopefully – feature lots of obvious product placement.
MYSPACE will launch MySpace Platform in the near future, perhaps as early as next week. The platform will allow developers to create applications that run on the social-networking site, similar to Facebook’s recent well-received initiative. Developers will be allowed to serve advertising in the small widget-like applications, keeping 100% of the revenue generated.
NIELSEN and ARBITRON will extend Project Apollo into Q1 2008. The initiative, launched in 2006, pairs Arbitron’s people meters with Nielsen’s Homescan technology, allowing the companies to track multimedia and purchase information on a sample of 11,000 people and 5,000 homes. Some of the nation’s top advertisers are involved in the project, including Procter & Gamble, SC Johnson, Pfizer, and Wal-Mart. The extended period will allow for further testing and analysis of the service’s value to advertisers.
AT&T will pay $2.5 billion for additional wireless spectrum in the valuable 700 MHz range, allowing the company to expand wireless services and offer video broadcasts to its customers. All licenses held by Aloha Partners in the 700 MHz range will be purchased, making AT&T the largest owner of licenses in the 700 to 800 MHz range. The company has not announced its exact plans for the increased wireless capacity.