In the case of the Wall Street Journal and Conde Nast, the companies are borrowing the language of the TV industry and inviting advertisers to sponsor “documentaries,” “shows” and “original programming slates.” The actual content, however, is typically a collection of 2-4 minute web clips and the marketing pitch often invites a single brand to slap their name on the entire package.

Will it work? Both the Journal and Conde Nast are relying on their historic brand power to attract video sponsors and, like everyone in media, are serving up their wares on all screens. But the two companies are also taking different approaches to scale and strategy. Here’s a look at their offerings, and how the companies are framing their new video identities.

A video start-up inside 100-year-old magazines

Conde Nast wields considerable cultural and political power through titles like Vogue and Vanity Fair and GQ — but that doesn’t mean the company and its famous editors Anna Wintour and Graydon Carter, who were on an hand at Conde’s ad event, know much about making video. Many readers, meanwhile, may not even know the videos exist.

Appearing to recognize that print prowess doesn’t automatically transfer to video, Conde Nast went on a hiring spree, bringing in “video natives” from companies like the Huffington Post and CW Networks, and giving them rein to create content in a hands-off environment. The “start-up” (that’s Conde Nast’s word for the venture) is known as CN Entertainment and is also working with TV veterans who produced fare like Mad Men and Project Runway.

CN Entertainment’s output has been trickling out for a while, and includes video series like GQ‘s “10 Essentials” and Glamour’s “Elevator Runway.” On Wednesday, the company announced over 30 new “original programming slates” that include Wired’s “Angry Nerd” and programs tied to titles like Teen Vogue, Epicurious and Vanity Fair.

The new offerings represent a big expansion for Conde Nast’s video efforts. But they but also come at a time that other companies are rushing to offer original programming too — AOL, Yahoo and the Weather Company were just some of sites who made similar announcements this week.

To avoid being over looked in this flood of content, Conde Nast is relying on syndication deals with sites like Twitter and YouTube. The company is also promising to spend heavily on marketing in order to assure advertisers that someone will actually watch the videos.

“It’s on us to make people know the brands are in the business to create video. A lot of people fall down with the philosophy of ‘build it and they will come’” Fred Santarpia, Chief Digital of CN Entertainment, told me at the event. He said the company might, for instance target GQ magazine readers with Facebook ads to make sure they’re aware of the brand’s videos.

Santarpia said he could not disclose revenue figures, only saying they were “healthy.”

Not your father’s Wall Street Journal

For the last year, the Wall Street Journal has been pursuing its “WSJ Everywhere” strategy that involves producing a lot of content and putting it in as many places as possible — from the iPhone to the X-box and more.

Unlike Conde Nast, the Journal has been relying heavily on its existing print teams to crank out the content. This typically means pulling reporters before a makeshift studio in the Journal offices or even recording them via Skype from their homes and hotel rooms. The result has been plenty of video but a mixed bag in terms of quality.

Now, the Journal appears to be increasing its efforts to pluck out the best stuff and package it as discrete channels. At a splashy event on Monday morning, executives touted the Journal’s proximity to power brokers and invited advertisers to become exclusive sponsors of fare like “Seib & Wessel,” a senior journalist chat fest.

“This isn’t your father’s Wall Street Journal,” war reporter Michael Phillips told the crowd. Perhaps to drive home the point, the event also featured appearances by rapper MC Hammer and a Bloody Mary stand to help ad and media executives start the week off right.

The Journal also announced a new documentary series “WSJ Startup of the Year,” sponsored by the NYSE, that will feature famous entrepreneurs like Richard Branson kicking the tires of upcoming companies. The paper is also betting on lifestyle video content like “WSJ Cafe” and clips from popular sports writer Jason Gay.

According to Chief Revenue Officer, Michael Rooney, people are watching the videos because they are attached not just to the paper but to the Journal name.

“They want to follow this brand anywhere and anyhow they can get the content,” Rooney told me at the event, adding that advertisers understand the viewers are high income people and will pay top dollar to reach them. WSJ is now streaming 20-25 million videos a month with premium cost-per-thousand view rates coming in at $40-$60 a month.

Early innings for old brands and new video tricks

This week’s ad outreach by Conde Nast and the Journal comes at a time when digital display dollars are proving insufficient to offset the inexorable decline of their legacy print products. The turn to video promises higher ad income as online viewing takes off, and big brands contemplate moving more of their TV budgets to the web.

The video strategy seems obvious but that doesn’t mean it will be easy. To actually pull this off, the print companies will have to persuade advertisers that their videos can reach a wide enough audience to be worth their time (this is likely the reason the New York Times pulled down its paywall for online video last week).

At the same time, they will have to compete with a host of other media outlets suddenly jostling for video dollars too, as well as newer outfits like PopSugar and Break Media who have already figured out how to produce compelling videos on the cheap.

This flood of content from all corners could also depress the high rates that are attracting brands like Conde and the Journal to video in the first place. And while a tilt of ad dollars from cable to online video seems inevitable, no one knows when this will actually occur.

“The market is growing. Everything points to more money moving into space,” said CN Entertainment’s Santarpia. ”It’s early —  only time will tell.”

Asked to frame it in baseball terms, Santarpia said it’s only the second inning for the online video industry — and the first for companies like Conde Nast.

(Image by Yuri Arcurs via Shutterstock)

A new study by Forrester Research claims that so-called “programmatic” buying or “real time bidding” will account for nearly 25 percent of online video ad purchases by next year. This mirrors what is going on in the world of display advertising where more big advertisers are using ad tech tools to serve ads to diverse audiences in real time.

The report, which was commissioned by SpotXchange (an online video exchange that has skin in the ad game), also says that premium publishers have been slower to adopt programmatic bidding, in part because they fear it will undercut the value of their inventory. The report predicts, however, that many of these hold-out publishers will change their position as brands get accustomed to programmatic buying and begin to demand it.

The impact of programmatic on video ad prices is debatable. People in the ad tech industry point out that automated ad buying is simply a tool — not a reflection of ad quality. By this reasoning, publishers can hold their pricing line if they wish while also ensuring that their space is available in real time when there is a surge in demand. Conversely, as the report points out, publishers remain wary that brands will use the tools (as they did for display advertising) to drive down prices.

Overall, the future of video prices in the short term may be determined less by ad tech tools than by more basic principles of supply and demand. On this front, the good news for publishers can be seen in this chart which shows online ad spending rising quickly:

Another recent report is even more optimistic — pegging the 2013 number at $4.1 billion.

The bad news, though, is that the word is out about video’s promise and more and more people are showing up to grab a slice of the pie. Ad industry sources told the Wall Street Journal last month that there is ”not enough to feed everybody.” The Journal reported that, despite brands beginning to reallocate their TV budgets, prices are already under pressure; $15 to $20 per thousand views (CPM’s) last year versus a CPM of $17 to $25 in 2011.

The Forrester report also predicts that video ad inventory will be become increasingly divided between private and public exchanges.

The move into paid video distribution is a “natural next step” for Vimeo, CEO Kerry Trainor told me, following the launch of a “tip jar” feature last September. The new feature is called “Vimeo on Demand” and is available to creators with Vimeo Pro memberships (which are aimed at professionals, cost $199 a year and offer options like more video storage and HD playback).

Creators control price for their videos but have to charge at least $0.99. There’s a 90-10 revenue split after Paypal or credit card transaction fees, with creators taking 90 percent.

Creators also control geographic distribution and whether their content is streaming-only or downloadable. They can put it up for sale on Vimeo.com, on their own website, or both. If they choose to enable downloading, the format is DRM-free MP4.

YouTube is reportedly planning to start offering subscriptions as an additional monetization vehicle for creators. For now, Trainor said, Vimeo isn’t looking at any type of subscription offering: “The feature is targeted toward the creator, and there are no plans for a viewer package.”

While Break is not the only one feeding the demand for bro fare, the L.A. company has done more than most to move these videos into the professional realm. In doing so, Break is also tapping into a deep pool of research to reshape perceptions about how brands should market to men — portraying them as “good guys” rather than doofuses or metrosexuals.

The result, on the surface, is thousands of clips about beer, boobs and bravery. More deeply, the bro video phenomenon is part of an emerging low-cost studio system that is changing men’s entertainment and advertising.

From college capers to consumer content

Break’s office, located in LA’s Miracle Mile, contains a small studio and employs 30 full-time content creators as well as numerous freelancers to feed its video content machine. The place has a few dude touches — a mustache wall and action figures scattered about — but otherwise is a serious business that, according to CEO Keith Richman, brought in $45 million in revenue last year.

The company is also attracting top level talent such as actor Christopher Walken, who recently riffed on trailer park toddler Honey Boo Boo. Last year, Break created a five-part series involving San Francisco Giants pitcher Brian Wilson and a Sasquatch; the show was a content marketing play by Beef Jerky, but the videos went viral all the same.

This star presence on Break is a considerable leap up the value chain for the company that, in its early days, relied almost entirely on homemade videos. ”We started with user-provided, lower quality content. As our audience and sales expanded, we started producing our own,” said Richman.

Now, Break is at the point where it’s producing its own weekly shows like “Man at Arms” in which a blacksmith shows how he makes famous weapons like Jamie Lannister’s sword on Game of Thrones or the lethal hat worn by James Bond villain Odd Job.

The shows, which are usually between five and 10 minutes, are cheap to make – Richman says the average price is $700/minute or $3,000-$5,000 per episode – and Break is able to make lots of them because of demands for the company’s male-based ad offerings.

Binders of Men

Marketing to women is a huge and sophisticated industry but, when it comes to men, brands frequently treat them as caricatures – one-dimensional clowns or louts. Break is trying to pitch a more subtle approach based on reams of survey data it collects on the site.

According to its research, men are more receptive to positive messages that show them as good guys, friends and fathers. Break has even published a “definitive guide to men” that cites an evolution from Bruce Willis type “guy’s guys” to self-aware types like Tim Allen to, last decade, metro-sexuals. And now?

“Today’s man is striving to be a “mensch” – a Yiddish word for “good guy,” or someone to admire and emulate,” says the report, which was produced by Break’s SVP Marketing, Andy Tu. He explained that many of the findings come from panels of men that Break consults on a regular basis.

Do all men really want to be mensches? Who knows. But Tu says marketers love using the surveys and data Break provides in designing their campaigns. Sony, FootLocker, Pepsi and Burger King are among their bigger brand partners.

For its campaigns, Break often produces original content for its clients and, on some occasions, as well. It also places display ads alongside videos across its networks (many of the videos are still user-generated or plucked from other sites).

A new studio economy

Research is one explanation for Break Media’s ability to make higher-quality bro videos. Another is the low cost of failure. Compared to traditional TV or movie studios, sunk production costs are tiny for Break and its competitors like College Humor. ”Video is a shots-on-goal business,” says Richman. “If you’re good, you’re going to score. We’re going to have big loser bombs at some point but it won’t kill us.”

In this sense, Break and its bro videos are part of an emerging online ecosystem in which smaller video companies are ramping up their production cycles and, like traditional movies and TV, even adding on-location shoots. The ecosystem is also rapidly expanding as distribution options proliferate (Break shows its videos on its own sites and on YouTube channels) and as consumers become connected to more devices with better broadband.

According to Richman, a tipping point occurred that means brands are now treating online video as a serious alternative to traditional TV. Richman credits the shift with Google’s decision in 2011 to invest $100 million in original YouTube content.

If you want to see an example, here’s a “Man at Arms” piece replete with blacksmith and power chords:

(Image by Anton Todorov via Shutterstock)

Fanhattan is something like a TV Guide for online video: Users enter the movie or TV show they want to view, and the app hooks them up with a list of online providers (Netflix, Amazon, HBO Go, and so on) where they can watch it. The company’s expansion to the web allows it to offer more content recommendations from more providers — 29 providers on the web, compared to 16 on iOS — as well as more free shows, for a total database of a million shows and videos. Web viewers, for instance, can watch shows on broadcasters’ websites, and they can access Hulu as well as Hulu Plus. “Depending on what device you’re using the service on, it will clearly show you your options for watching,” Fanhattan CEO Gilles BianRosa told me.

BianRosa says that Fanhattan launched on iPad first because the difficulty of finding content to watch was more pronounced there — “all those apps that don’t talk to each other.” The web is a little different: “Many people actually discover movies and shows on the web, so we wanted to make sure that the discovery aspect was really front and center, especially the social aspects.”

The company is launching a new blog, Fanhattan Voice, that provides video recommendations and other entertainment news and features. And the company’s WatchLists feature, which has been available on iOS since last summer, is being expanded on both iOS and web: Users can now curate their own lists around different themes and can share them with others, rather than just marking which TV shows and movies they want to watch.

BianRosa told GigaOM’s Janko Roettgers last summer that the company will expand to connected devices in the future, but he isn’t ready to announce anything yet. “We’re going it one screen at a time,” he told me. “But we think that launching on the web in the way we have will help consumers in the living room discover what’s available.”

GigaOM readers who want to try Fanhattan on the web in beta can sign up with code “GigaOm.”

The figure was supplied by Videology, a provider of ad tools to agencies and marketers, and comes with a nifty graphic (via VideoNuze) that shows a snapshot of the industry. Highlights include a growing range of sectors that are buying video ads and increased use of behavioral data to target ads.

The other significant part of the report is that the vast majority of video ads ares still served on the desktop:

Videology said in an email that the mobile’s share of overall video ads  grew one percent in the previous quarter and that the overall growth in video means mobile is expanding rapidly. Unlike Google, Videology continues to consider tablets like the iPad as a mobile, not desktop, device for ad purposes.

The third category — “Connected TV” — refers to pre-roll video ads served on devices like Roku, Apple TV and Xbox. The 3 percent figure is up from 1 percent the quarter before.

These numbers shouldn’t be treated as gospel, of coure, as Videology has a stake in the video ad industry. But the company’s broad connections to marketers, publishers and agencies do give it a good big-picture view.

Going forward, it will be interesting to watch how quickly the above desktop-to-video ratio changes to reflect a world in which half of all internet viewing is expected to take place on mobile devices. At the same time, publishers will be watching closely to see if video ads can hold their high value as more inventory comes on the market.

(Image by cybrain via Shutterstock)

Then something happened. The company’s revenues grew, its share price soared and CEO Tim Armstrong revealed a strategy to make AOL a media and advertising powerhouse. The company’s winning streak continued Friday morning as Wall Street greeted AOL’s latest earnings report with glee; the stock shot up another 12 percent when markets opened.

“We’ve walked through the the value of the turnaround and got to growth,” Armstrong said on a morning call with investors.

It’s too soon to say the company’s back on top but, for now, the results look like the real deal. Here’s why: as analysts fussed over AOL’s debacle with hyper-local site Patch and its dwindling dial-up business, the company quietly invested in state-of-the-art ad technology and rejigged AOL to inject new revenue streams. The most important of these are inside the AOL Networks group — a business unit that offers ad tech tools to publishers and advertising agencies that are still learning to navigate the world of automated ad buying. The Networks group grew 37 percent year-over-year and posted revenue of $183.5 million in Q4. (Total revenue for AOL in the quarter was up 4% from a year ago to $599 million; adjusted OIBDA income was down 7% to $123 million).

During this time, AOL has also become number two in online video thanks to products like HuffPo Live; this is significant because video is one of the most lucrative forms of online advertising. AOL now plans to draw on its fancy ad tools to create automated buying for its own video inventory while, at the same time, offering those tools to other companies who are still catching up on the video front.

Meanwhile, AOL’s media properties don’t look as dysfunctional as they did a year ago. Armstrong appears to have figured out how to manage the mercurial Arianna Huffington and, as for his pet project Patch, the hyper-local site is still losing money but he promises it will be profitable by the end of  the year.

The bottom line is that AOL has three major revenue streams, all of which look viable. There are still danger signs, of course: AOL’s display ad business looks shaky and, as Henry Blodget points out, the company’s revenues may come from three streams but nearly all of the profit is still coming from the legacy subscriber businesses.

But, for now, investors are right to like what they see. People looking for 2013′s turnaround story should stop fussing over Yahoo — it’s AOL that is poised to be this year’s comeback kid.

Correction: an earlier version misstated the sale of AOL’s patents; this has been corrected to say the patents were sold to Microsoft (which in turn sold them to Facebook).

Disclosure: GigaOM distributes some video content through AOL.

(Image by Rob Hainer via Shutterstock)

Let me say that again: a door-to-door salesman.

I think that’s a first, for me at least. While lots of internet services market heavily — television ads, radio spots, billboards, leaflets and print — I have never come across this sort of feet-on-the-street approach before. Trying to prevent customer churn is one thing, but this just has the ring of desperation about it… and comes as another piece of anecdotal evidence that suggests Lovefilm’s feeling incredible pressure from Netflix.

When Netflix launched in the UK and Ireland a year ago, it was a clear who would be in its sights. Reed Hastings and his team may say they are targeting the bigger pay-TV services, such as Rupert Murdoch’s Sky, but their first hurdle was undoubtedly trying to surpass the Amazon-owned rival.

Lovefilm has been competing where it can, particularly in trying to head Netflix off at the pass by signing exclusive content deals with Universal, Fox, and others. But it’s also trying extremely hard to defend itself by stopping customers from fleeing: when I tried to unsubscribe a while back I realized it was one of those irritating services that forces you to phone up to cancel (a surefire sign that I will never go back).

And you can’t blame them: it would take a brave gambler to bet against the American company right now.

Netflix is storming on almost all fronts, from its acclaimed original programming, to its balance sheet: Wall Street loves it again, as it finally recovers from the farcical series of events it inflicted upon itself in 2011.

And that is having an impact on its rivals.

Former Lovefilm boss Adam Valkin told me last year how the company had feared Netflix since 2004. And though Netflix still has some way to go — it’s still unclear whether Netflix is making inroads against its real targets, the broadcasters, and claims almost dubiously high membership numbers across the British Isles — it definitely has some crucial competitors, at least, running scared.

My Damn Channel has appointed Eric Mortensen, who was previously Blip’s senior director of content and network programming, as its director of programming and acquisitions, a new role. ”We’re investing in the team and the infrastructure to make the My Damn Channel Comedy Network the first choice for fans and the right choice for talent,” said founder and CEO Rob Barnett in a statement.

In 2012, My Damn Channel launched a live daily comedy show on YouTube. The company says it saw a 91 percent increase in total video views across all its sites in 2012 compared to the previous year.

My Damn Channel’s search for more original content comes at a time when other companies are looking for the same thing. Amazon Studios recently announced its first six comedy pilots, including offerings from The Onion and “Doonesbury” author Garry Trudeau. And Yahoo launched its first original comedies last March. Barnett told me he’s “encouraged” to see other companies “beginning to fund great original content and we are working with some of them.” My Damn Channel Comedy Network stands out, he says, because it is aimed at creators “looking for a network partner who specializes in comedy series.”

Sky Go Extra is £5 (USD $7.93) per month for existing Sky customers and builds on Sky Go, the company’s on-demand service for mobile and connected devices (which is free to subscribers). Customers who sign up for Sky Go Extra can also watch on-demand streaming video on four devices, up from the two allowed under Sky Go.

The offerings available to Sky Go Extra users depend on their underlying Sky TV package. Customers who already pay for the Sky Movies pack can “download blockbuster releases around six months after they have ended their run in cinemas,” according to the release. That includes movies like Avengers Assemble and Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows, as well as all the James Bond films. Customers who don’t pay for the Sky Movies add-on can download TV shows from Sky channels and from partner channels like Nickelodeon, Disney and HBO — including HBO hits Girls and Game of Thrones, AMC’s Mad Men and Fox’s The Following.

Once users download Sky content, it’s not to keep: “Sky Movies content can be watched for up to 30 days and once viewing commences is available for 48 hours. Most other Sky content can be watched for up to 7 days and once viewing commences is available for 48 hours.”

Other U.K. companies are also experimenting with downloadable video. The BBC’s iPlayer lets users download BBC programs to computers, iPhones and iPads for offline viewing. (Content can be watched for up to 30 days, with playback available for seven days after viewing begins.) The Amazon-owned Lovefilm doesn’t allow offline viewing, but plans to do so.