FREE AD SUPPORTED FEATURE LENGTH MOVIE PLATFORM DELIVERS AND MONETIZES CONTENT ACROSS MOBILE AND OTT DEVICES WITH UNICORN ONCE™

Tempe, Arizona – April 25, 2012 – Unicorn Media, a mobile monetization technology provider, today announced that Screen Media Ventures, independent supplier of feature length motion pictures, has selected its patented Unicorn Once™ technology to distribute and monetize their owned and operated digital platform, Popcornflix to PC, mobile and OTT devices.

Popcornflix.com™ is a free ad supported feature length movie streaming platform that lets movie lovers enjoy great movies anytime. Popcornflix features hundreds and hundreds of popular titles and exclusive content, available to viewers via PCs, mobile and OTT devices. Unicorn Once™ allows Popcornflix to greatly reduce the complexity of managing and delivering their free ad supported video content by allowing them to upload one time, and then dynamically insert and target pre-roll and interstitial ads in real-time across every platform.

Unlike traditional ad insertion methods, Unicorn Once™ does not stitch ads, it allows for ad content to be adjusted on-the-fly, server-side, in real time rather than in hours, without the need for re-transcoding. This patented technology allows Popcornflix to deliver their high-quality feature-length motion pictures everywhere their viewers want to watch it, while monetizing it across all platforms.

Additionally, Popcornflix can analyze the performance of their content through Unicorn Vision™, Unicorn Media’s real-time data warehouse.  This sophisticated analytics engine not only provides detailed reporting on a given asset or catalog of assets, it also provides information that identifies the device type and platform on which the ad and video content was played. This level of insight provides the ability to adjust ad or video content in real-time across any device or platform to both maximize profitability and increase viewer satisfaction.

“Unicorn Once™ gave us the ability to dynamically insert interstitial ads on any platform, allowing us to take full advantage of the revenue potential across all platforms including PC, Mobile, and OTT devices. Better yet, we can do this in real-time, keeping content fresh and giving the viewer an optimal experience,” says Gary Delfiner, Senior Vice President, Digital Distribution, Screen Media Ventures.

“We are thrilled to have Screen Media and Popcornflix on board. Our Unicorn Once™ technology allowed them to simplify workflows and easily reach and monetize their content on multiple devices,” said Mike Flatin, President, Unicorn Media. “We were able to seamlessly integrate Unicorn Once™ with their current provider and enable them to easily reach their goals, allowing them to maximize their ROI across every platform.”

If you missed last week’s live broadcast of the Akamai/Unicorn Media joint webinar titled “Monetizing Mobile and OTT Video through Dynamic Advertising”, you can now watch it in its entirety at http://www.unicornmedia.com/company_webcast.html.

The webinar provides valuable analyst insight into the growing opportunities for advertising in the mobile and OTT video space. Unicorn Media discusses the real-world challenges with reaching and monetizing video on all devices and how Unicorn Once changes the game. And finally you’ll hear first hand from Msnbc Digital Network how Unicorn Once has streamlined mobile video delivery and allowed them to unlock revenue streams that were previously unavailable.

Please feel free to contact a member of our team if you have any questions or would like to see a demo of Unicorn Once!

MOBILE CLOUD PLATFORM PROVIDER UTILIZES PATENTED UNICORN ONCE™ TECHNOLOGY TO DELIVER AND MONETIZE CUSTOMER CONTENT

Tempe, Arizona – April 5, 2012 – Unicorn Media, a mobile monetization technology provider, today announced that Blue Wave Media, a mobile cloud platform service provider, has chosen Unicorn Once™ to monetize and deliver customer content to mobile and connected TVs for customers such as Porchlight Entertainment, Echobridge Entertainment, Moonbeam Entertainment, and many others.

Unicorn Once™ is a patented technology solution that enables the monetization of media content by allowing publishers to upload one file, one time and then deliver that video content via a single URL to any IP-enabled device such as iPad, iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Roku, connected TVs, game consoles and more. Blue Wave Media utilizes Unicorn Once™ to deliver and monetize short and long-form content to Internet-connected devices; enabling dynamic ad integration and real-time analytics across all platforms. Unicorn Once™ utilizes the native player or application player on each device, maintaining the flexible nature of the Blue Wave Media mobile cloud platform. Unicorn Once™ also provides real-time intelligence into content and ad performance across all devices through its real-time data warehouse, Unicorn Vision™.

The Blue Wave Media mobile cloud platform is an open access, premier content delivery and mobile application platform which provides content publishers, studios, IPTV networks, television networks, second screen offerings and corporate enterprises the ability to drive dynamic content and mobile app structure updates at any frequency. Blue Wave Media chose Unicorn Once™ for its flexible infrastructure and its ability to allow its customers to dynamically insert interstitial ads and monitor content or ad performance in real-time on any device.

“Unicorn Media provides a critical component of Blue Wave Media’s mobile and connected TV platform services. We at Blue Wave Media consider Unicorn Media to be a valued partner. The willingness of their team to work directly with BWM is a key factor in our ability to deliver quality service to our clients and essential to our rapidly growing business,” says Jodi Roth, CEO, Blue Wave Media, Inc.

“Blue Wave Media needed a solution that offered their customers the flexibility that they need, not only in reaching every device, but in having the ability to monetize content and unlock revenue streams that were not previously available. Unicorn Once™ provides them with the technology to do exactly that and we are happy to take part in their growing success,” says Bill Rinehart, CEO and Founder, Unicorn Media.

The mobile advertising opportunity over the next four years is expected to grow to more than ten billion dollars with exponential year over year increases, according to eMarketer. The firm also estimates that, of that overall market, mobile video advertising comprises about 151 million dollars today, with an expected tenfold growth rate by 2016 to over one billion dollars. Are you ready to capitalize on this opportunity?

Delivering dynamic advertising to mobile and OTT devices is a complex endeavor. In this quickly evolving market, factors such as device fragmentation, new workflows, video formats, playback technologies, and lack of transparency all conspire to make mobile advertising a daunting challenge.

To learn how to unlock the revenue potential of the mobile video market and about best practices in monetizing mobile videos, reducing internal costs, and measuring the results in real-time, you should attend our upcoming webinar.

If you already have a mobile video advertising solution in place, ask yourself:

• Can you dynamically insert ads in flight without having to statically stitch ads during preprocessing?
• Can you easily reach every device?
• Can you flight ads in real time?
• Can you employ one transcode to deliver multiple ad formats?
• Can you measure your ad performance in real time?
• Do you have a robust operational support capability including detailed notifications?

If you answered no to any of these questions, you are a prime candidate for the solution being presented. If you do not have a solution in place, this webinar will arm you with the knowledge to help you understand this market.

By attending this webinar, you will:

• Hear from industry experts on the mobile advertising market today and its potential
• Get an overview of the key success factors in deploying an advertising solution
• Be armed with a set of best practices you can employ to improve your current implementation or adopt a new one
• Hear from a leading broadcaster about its experience in working in this environment

We look forward to your participation. Click here to register for this event.

PS. – All registrants will receive a copy of our newest mobile whitepaper Mobile Advertising – A Quagmire of Complexity or Field of New Opportunity

Our Systems Engineer, Joe Dominguez has been in Guatemala with DOCARE for the past few weeks (see previous post). Joe has been in touch a few times and has sent us a few photos from his trip.

This is the line waiting to be seen the day they saw 400 patients.

It’s really hard to imagine a world without healthcare and the great lengths these poor people will go through to see a doctor. These pictures show the long lines of people waiting to be seen. Joe said that in just one day they saw over 400 patients in San Miguel Escobar and over 1300 in a two day period in the town of Pastores, Guatemala. Amazing.

Joe with a few of the children.

This line went around the block.

Yes, Unicorn Media is in Barcelona, Spain at Mobile World Congress this week! Mobile World Congress is Redefining Mobile and is being held 27 February to 1 March at Fira Montjuïc. Mobile is now a force transforming our world in an unprecedented way. Mobile connects, entertains, informs and inspires us, ultimately changing how we live and who we are. Mobile World Congress is the global epicenter of this redefinition as its participants enable, lead and accelerate it.

If you are attending and would like to meet with our CEO, Bill Rinehart or our CTO, AJ McGowan about our ground-breaking mobile monetization solutions, please feel free to contact us at salesinfo@unicornmedia.com or (888) 986-4267. We’d love to speak with you there or set up a time to talk when we return! www.unicornmedia.com

Unicorn Media’s Systems Engineer, Joe Dominguez, is currently on a mission in Guatemala with DOCARE International, a medical outreach organization dedicated to providing much-needed healthcare to indigent and isolated people in remote areas around the world.

This is Joe’s second trip to Guatemala. Each year they take a group of physicians, pharmacists, dentists, therapists, and nurses with many students from Midwestern University campuses in Glendale and Chicago. The team provides primary care medicine to the Mayan Indian population and see about 500 patients per day with about 6-8 attending physicians overseeing medical students.

We’re proud of Joe and the work he’s doing!

Francine Hardaway, Stealthmode Blog |

Arizona is full of cool startups, and I love to write about them all, in no particular order, and without judgment. These are not necessarily the “hot” ones, or the funded ones. They are the ones that start and grow in Arizona because of the excellence of  their concepts, their business models, or their founders.

For instance, I bet you have never heard about Unicorn Media. It has been operating in “stealth mode”  for a couple of years, seeded by its founder, Bill Rinehart, who used to be CEO of Limelight, another Arizona company that operated under the radar for years until it raised some money from Goldman Sachs and finally went public.Its offices are in Tempe, where having outgrown one space, it now splits its company offices into corporate and development.

Unicorn had been a content delivery network for independent artists, and then began delivering content to larger players. Today Unicorn unveiled a new and improved website  with a streamlined message that puts the focus on a new offering,  Unicorn Once, that will probably elevate the company to rock start status very quickly, because the ability to deliver content easily to mobile devices, whether Android, iPhone, or tablet, has become unbelievable important to advertisers in the past year. Mobile advertising is on a tear, and without getting too technical, I can tell you that one of the big problems with mobile is the formatting. Every Android phone is slightly different, they’re all different from iPhones and iPads, and who knows what mobile innovation is coming down the road. For an advertiser, the ability to upload video once to all those formats is a major time saver and revenue generator..

It took Bill a couple of pivots to get here, but now the company has the only patented product to deliver big gains to big media companies, and you will see elsewhere the news that Msnbc Digital Network selected  Unicorn Once™ technology to deliver, monetize and analyze mobile and OTT video content for all its  brands. Unicorn Once™ lets Msnbc Digital Network to easily reach devices such as iPad, iPhone, Blackberry, Android, Roku and countless others for  msnbc.com, TODAY.com and NBCNightlyNews.com.

What else can Unicorn do? It can give detailed reporting in real time about user behavior on any channel, and can tell whether content is being viewed on the web or on a mobile device. That means video content can be adjusted in real time across any device or platform so you, the user, can view it optimally.

So from my vantage point, the Valley startup community looks textured. complex, and vibrant. As they say on the soon-to-be-public Facebook, it’s complicated. I’d be lying if I said we were Silicon Valley, but in the ten years we have been running entrepreneurship training, and the six years we have produced the Arizona Entrepreneurship Conference, I’ve unearthed plenty of talented teams building businesses every bit as interesting as those anywhere else in the country. It’s my intention to  shed some light on the world of Arizona startups.

Read more: http://blog.stealthmode.com/2012/02/startup-scene-in-arizona-heats-up/#ixzz1loESPKXg

http://www.businessinsider.com/startup-scene-in-arizona-heats-up-2012-2

Bookmark/Share

Email Print Stumble LinkedIn Digg

At last year’s Streaming Media West conference, I had a chance to catch up with David Morel, who has worked for a number of content delivery networks (CDNs) and streaming platform providers in his career. Morel is a strategist and a fixer of complex problems so when he’s excited about something, I listen carefully and am often not disappointed. This meeting was no an exception, as he took the chance to talk about Unicorn Once, Unicorn Media’s new media manipulation technology and the problems it solves.

“Did you know that HLS works best in five-second segments on some devices,” he asked, “but in others it makes more sense to use the ten-second segment approach? We’ve figured out which devices do better in particular playout scenarios,” Morel said.

Having spent a few weeks in mid-2011 doing playout testing on a number of Android devices, as part of a set of reports commissioned by Adobe, Morel’s comment about different approaches for different devices piqued my interest, especially since his timing was spot on: a pressing concern had just arisen about Android playout, as during Streaming Media West 2011, Adobe announced development of Flash Player for Mobile was being discontinued.

At the same time, Google was announcing support for Apple HTTP Live Streaming in its newest Android operating system, Android 4.0 or Ice Cream Sandwich. In addition, MPEG DASH was winding its way through ratification for fragmented MP4 (fMP4) HTTP delivery, leaving the overall mobile video delivery market in a state of flux as to whether to stick with Flash Player or move to other solutions.

When I asked Morel how many devices they were working on, his answer floored me: it turns out that Unicorn had figured out the best playout profiles for a variety of iOS, Android, and other mobile devices, plus a number of set-top boxes and smart TVs.

Morel claimed that Unicorn can provide up to 4400 customized strings that covered over 500 different devices (and here I was happy I’d been able to test 14 and present my findings at Streaming Media Europe) but he also was quick to point out that no more than 100 mobile devices account for about 99 percent of all video content consumed in the marketplace today, and that globally no more than 500 devices are used except for very fringe cases. This matches up with my testing, where we determined about 400 different device permutations were needed to adequately cover the existing Android devices in mid-2011.

With the customized strings in hand, Morel said, Unicorn was able to create Unicorn Once to customize the experience for almost any user of any video-equipped mobile device.

“We are able to generate the appropriate format from a single high-quality file at the time of request, which is where the Once name comes in,” Morel said. “Give us a file once and we’ll make sure it’s delivered to the user’s device in the best possible format. And we’ll do it via a single URL.”

Just doing real-time conversion would be interesting enough, but Unicorn Media had its sights set on a higher prize: the ability to add multiple interstitials (read, commercials) into long-form content, with each user receiving a customized mix of interstitials based on the currently available advertising inventory.

“We generate the unique content for a unique end user at the time of request, instantaneously, with a full feature-length film with 20 commercials taking about one second to push through our Dynamic Permutation Layer or DPL,” said Morel. “We don’t do it through transcoding, but through direct file manipulation, effectively stitching together a seamless single piece of content with all the interstitials integrated directly in to the single piece of content.”

It all sounded a bit too good to be true, so like all good skeptics, I put the Once technology conversation aside for a few months. Last week I followed up again, asking Morel to elaborate with a customer example. Morel mentioned AccuWeather and another customer, Screen Media.

“For our customer, Screen Media, that has a library of premium long-form content, we do up to 28 interstitials for delivery to a Roku set-top box,” Morel said. “We’ve been told by Roku that no one else is doing that many interstitials, and certainly no one is doing it with delivery of different commercials to each unique user.”

Morel noted that Unicorn isn’t really stitching content together, although there are some devices that expect a playlist of content. Because Unicorn can “directly manipulate several pieces of video content into one seamless file” via their DPL, the ability to instantly change up advertising inventory is feasible.

“The moment a new commercial is available in inventory, we can begin serving it as part of our rotation,” he said, adding that a live version of the technology is also in beta release.

Today, while clicking on a video on MSNBC regarding the South Carolina Republican primary, I noticed the URL that briefly appeared was prefixed by once.unicornmedia.com.

The two images here show the page just before clicking the video link and just after clicking it.

Is MSNBC about to announce that it has become the newest Unicorn Media customer? If so, what will be the impact of a news organization being able to monetize live streams online in the same way that it monetizes breaking news (by adding in commercial breaks)?

Unicorn won’t confirm whether or not the MSNBC.com iPhone delivery is a beta test or a full-blown move away from bigger name CDN partners to the Unicorn Once technology (served through a Unicorn partner CDN, since Unicorn itself is not technically a CDN provider). It appears, however, at least a portion of MSNBC’s current videos are being served via Unicorn Once.

This article illustrates why the SOPA and PIPA legislation is bad for start-ups.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/01/18/businessinsiderthis-horror-story-sh.DTL

Joshua Metzger knows first hand how destructive the Stop Online Piracy Act (and its sister, the Protect IP Act) will be to startups if Congress doesn’t heed the protests and pull the cork on it.

He was the lawyer for Veoh, a once high-flying competitor to YouTube that was sued out of existence by a major record label, — even though Veoh won its case and its appeal.

Just last month, the court confirmed Veoh’s victory in its years-long battle with Universal Music Group. The 9th Circuit court upheld an earlier ruling from the district court.

Unfortunately, the costs of the suit, and the tactics used by Universal Music Group, had already forced Veoh to shut its doors.

“Universal Music Group had taken the unprecedented action of not just suing the company but suing individual investors on the board,” Metzger recounts. Ultimately the costs of the suit were so high for everyone involved that Veoh had no choice but “to sell the company even though we won.”

Metzger was Veoh’s staff lawyer at the time. (His title was senior vice president of corporate development and general counsel for Veoh). Universal Music Group filed a suit under The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) .

“The DMCA is now pretty much well-established law, and because its been litigated for over 10 years, everyone knows the rules of the game. The courts have defined the DMCA and now the media companies want to introduce new legislation that is more beneficial to them than how the courts have defined DMCA,”  Metzger told Business Insider.

“The risk of SOPA/PIPA is that it’s a new set of rules,” he adds. “The world doesn’t need new legislation that will just lead to new litigation.”

Since copyright has already been well established under DMCA, Metzger sees only two real results if SOPA/PIPA passes: “It will force early stage companies to spend millions of dollars in litigation or it will stifle innovation and investment because investors will be loath to invest in a technology that has a risk of litigation.”

Veoh was founded in 2005 by Dmitry Shapiro, who has founded several Internet startups and was perhaps best known as the CTO of MySpace. Veoh had raised $70 million in backing from Goldman Sachs and other investors. These included Disney chief Michael Eisner, Time Warner Ventures, Adobe and Intel, he says. It was sold to Israeli startup Qlipso in  2010.

Veoh may have had problems other than just this lawsuit. It ran through a few business models. But the suit caused it to spend millions in defense instead of millions in development.

Metzger’s ultimate point is: if a startup of that pedigree, with that kind of cash, could be sued out of business even though it wasn’t breaking the law, what chance would the next crop of startups have under SOPA?

Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook.