Buzvia Blog

After uploading close to 50 3D animations for one of my other properties (WoodMarvels.com) using Revver, I heard about Tremor Media… to put a long story short, I asked Mr. Kronengold, the director of Corporate Communications at Tremor Media, how different Tremor Media is compared to YouTube and Rever. At first, I though they where yet another video site but he set me straight

Background information

Tremor is an independent, Venture Capital (Canaan Partners and Masthead Venture Partners) backed online advertising video network that specializes in pre-roll, video-in-banner and other format of monetizing online videos submitted to them. These beginnings are similar to both YouTube and Revver except for one glaring difference, they aren’t a “social video” warehouse like the other two, they concentrate squarely on the monetizing aspect of video content. In this way, they could actually work hand-in-hand with Revver and YouTube, though these companies already have internal plans on doing so (YouTube after being acquired by Google).

Video Quality

As I wrote a few articles back, Revver has great video quality while YouTube absolutely sucks. Tremor tells me its got the best video encoding technology out there. They have their own platform called Ad-inStream which enables publishers to serve their own video content, manage playlists, build business rules around content for serving ads and creating media RSS feeds but they don’t offer individuals a tool for uploading their own personal videos to host or share. Their focus is on corporate, not anybody with a video but just looking at the samples on their site… the quality is amazing.

Interactivity and Sharing

Both YouTube and Revver allow commenting of their videos and embeddable technology that allows you to share your video even outside of their respective sites. Although Tremor isn’t focused on the social video aspect of the industry, it does work with marketers in leveraging the social media space through branded widgets and content integration. Advertising in the social media landscape is just one of the many services that they offer our clients.

Revenue Sharing

Revver is build on a revenue sharing platform, YouTube is slowly getting there and Tremor has no interest in going there at all. Again, Tremor’s roots are not in social video like the other two but instead, on creating a platform that allows advertisers to purchase ads on the Tremor network in either pre-roll or in-banner media. Revver shares money with both content producers and “sharers” while Tremor shares revenue only with the publisher where the ads end up appearing.

Advertiser Targeting

From what I can see and experienced, each ad network has a very complex system that targets ads to a specific demographic that the advertisers is searching to hit. Although Google is secretive and Revver is no different, Tremor did tell me they have a combination of behavioral targeting, contextual targeting, standard channels, geography, day-part, browser type, operating system and connection speed targeting. The difference is that unlike Revver or YouTube, Tremor will actually build a custom channel that reaches the exact audience that the advertiser, unlike the other two that simply rely on what the customer submits to automate this process.

Vetting and Click-Fraud Prevention

If you have a pulse, YouTube will accept your videos, that’s why it’s so full of video garbage while Revver actually reviews each video to make sure it meets a certain standard of quality. Tremor takes this one step further by vetting all publishers on their network to make sure they have high quality (unique) content, enjoyable user experience and ad-friendliness. For instance, I can stick a YouTube or Revver embeddable video on the most horrible site on the internet without raising an eyebrow while Tremor finds this completely unacceptable. All three sites so share a number of automatic and common sense measures to reduce the occurrence of Click-Fraud.

Conclusion

While YouTube and Revver are social video sites, Tremor is a video ad network… I guess you learn something new everyday!

The Bottom Line

Advertisers, Publishers, Producers all have the same mission, to get the word out.

Buzvia: Tremor Media, Youtube.com, Revver.com, WoodMarvels.com

On a daily basis, I deal with people from five different countries across multiple timezones, that isn’t even counting the traffic that my sites generate from just about every country in the world. As such, how can anybody label their online enterprise as being (name your country)?

The reality of the internet start-up

The internet, by it’s very definition, has no boundaries. Unlike land, it’s only limited by the number of hard drives, processors and electricity used to run it. You require no passport to visit a server in another country to view a site anymore then you are required to explain your intentions of visiting said site to any governments. I think the sooner we ditch this “country-centric” idea of our world, the better as it’s making less sense the more we progress towards a virtual economy. When a company is virtual, by its very essence, no longer geographically based. Servers might be in one country, investors another, employees or contractors in another and marketing/sales being handled by a third party in yet another country. Web start-ups are the equivalent to an instant multi-national conglomerate with a global outreach and audience.

Nationalism and the internet

Now, this brings up another topic of interest to me, the whole idea of nationhood. Any person who reads through a few pages of history will soon realize that countries come and go with the passing of time incredibly frequently. I find this interest in geographically isolating the internet puzzling because as explained earlier, the internet isn’t attached to any physical areas, it’s virtual, simply made up of light pulses moving from A to B. It doesn’t have any mass, it doesn’t have surface nor any boundaries… so what is up with this notion of trying to attach one to it? Nationalism has as much to do with the future of the internet as teaching toads to sing a national anthem.

Problems with attaching a nation to the internet

The internet is global and virtual, so whose laws governs them? The internet is still being controlled by national interests, ICANN, who assigns .coms, is based out of the United States but has influence in just about every country out there. It’s a badly kept secret that ICANN wishes to escape the grips of the US Government which invented the internet. Currently, the lifeblood of a online company, the domain, is governed by the laws of the country of the registrar, not where the company is based. Bodog.com learned this the hard way last year when it’s very profitable online gambling business was almost put under because it failed to follow-up with lawyers in the USA, even though none of it’s “physical” business was based in the States. Bodog.com lost it’s domain because the registrar who held the domain was based in the United States, it had assumed US laws didn’t apply to them as they where not based in the United States.

Promotions based on geographic location

I believe promoting an online presence specific to any particular country is a mistake many start-ups do. I don’t care a website is based in Palestine or Tuvalu for that case, if the site has something of interest to me, I will visit it. As such, limiting your audience, unless it’s a critical aspect of the business, makes no sense at all. I welcome site from any and every country on my sites, the origin is of no significance… this is globalization at it’s purest essence! As such, categorizing start-ups by country when they are essentially an online virtual company serving a global audience doesn’t make much of any sense.

The Bottom Line

The internet is the world’s first step towards a global government.

Buzvia: ICANN – Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers