Dailymotion first achieved success as a platform for citizens and independent journalists during the Paris riots of 2005, but it has gone past its roots in user-generated content to become one of the leading publishers of professionally produced independent video content in Europe. Creative director Digby Lewis, who will be keynoting at Streaming Media Europe on 17 October, spoke with Eileen Broch recently about the company’s development and future plans.

First, a little bit about your background. How did your work with Google and DoubleClick prepare you for what you’re doing at Dailymotion?

I joined Dailymotion after six years working in television and online media. Before that, I worked in the print publishing sector as a writer and editor for newspapers and magazines. I’ve always worked on the editorial side of things, and Dailymotion provided an excellent opportunity to put my experience to use in an exciting, developing medium. It’s also interesting, having been a content creator before, to be able to see things from the other side and act as a curator in this role.

How does a site like Dailymotion distinguish itself from YouTube? What’s its value proposition for users? What about for advertisers?

Firstly, the most noticeable aspect for the user is the video quality. Dailymotion has led the field in high-quality streaming video and we were the first major player to introduce HD video streaming this year. Professional content creators want users to have the best possible playback experience and Dailymotion delivers that.

Secondly, we have very strong links with the independent film sector, from students right the way through to Oscar-winning directors like Michel Gondry. Our Motionmaker programme is all about giving talented young professionals the tools and visibility they need to succeed in the industry. 

We then act as curators to programme the best of our contributors’ work-both Official Partner and Motionmakers-on our local homepages and channels. So when someone goes to the Dailymotion homepage, they should notice a significant difference in the quality of video content available on the platform.

All of this is attractive to advertisers-Motionmaker and Official Content provides a safe environment for brands. We have developed a number of products, display and instream, to maximize the opportunities for advertisers.

What advertising strategies do you predict will be most successful moving forward: typical text/banner ads, video ads, or perhaps branding and placement campaigns that blur the line between “advertising” and “content”?

We offer advertisers a suite of products and branding opportunities because we recognize that clients have different needs and business models. The key thing is to be as dynamic as possible. Display advertising provides a great starting point. In-stream is still finding its feet, but done well, can be far less intrusive a user experience than the standard pre-roll format which we have seen to date.

Original sponsored or branded content is clearly another very exciting arena for platforms like Dailymotion to work alongside advertisers. Once again, the key thing for us is to maintain our core values of quality content, so a project has to be just right for us to develop it beyond the concept stage.

Brands are also keen to engage with our Motionmaker community, and we have run successful campaigns in France which have harnessed our own “production team” if you like, and we hope to replicate this in the UK.

Do you have a geographic breakdown on viewers and users in terms of Europe vs. elsewhere?

Dailymotion is now the 50th largest website globally and the world’s second largest video entertainment website with 38.8 million monthly uniques. Our home territory, France, is still our most dominant user-base, making up about a quarter of that total audience. Our next biggest community is North America, with around 6 million uniques. Belgium, UK, Italy, Spain and Germany are our other principal European territories, ranging from 1.5 million to 600,000.

How much of your emphasis is on professionally produced content as opposed to user-generated?

Dailymotion started life as a platform for user-generated content and during the Paris riots of 2005 because synonymous with citizen journalism and editorial independence from mainstream broadcasters. While UGC continues to make up a large portion of the videos uploaded to Dailymotion, the landscape for streaming video has changed remarkably in the last 12 months and we believe that users are now hungry for professionally produced, quality video content. We are constantly signing Official Content partnerships-broadcasters, production companies, film and gaming studios, record labels, you name it. What’s exciting is that these partnerships are not about pushing TV content online, but creating web-specific content with professional quality production standards. As a former TV producer/director, that’s very pleasing to see on the site.

What sort of traction is your HD content getting, and how important do you think HD content will be to Dailymotion’s future success?

Dailymotion pioneered high-definition streaming video on a mass scale and it works well both for our users and content providers. These days, everyone from home-movie enthusiasts to super-indies can shoot in HD, so if you can provide a means to distribute this online it has to be a real bonus. As technology moves forwards and current data transfer limitations are overcome, high def streaming video will become the norm.

Will delivery to mobile devices figure into Dailymotion’s roadmap? And what about getting Dailymotion content onto TV screens? In the long run, can companies like Dailymotion compete against traditional broadcasters without a presence on the television screen?

While our website remains core to the business, we want people to be able to access Dailymotion videos wherever and whenever they choose. We’ve just announced a partnership with Orange World, which will launch in France over the coming weeks, soon followed by other European regions including the UK. We have also partnered with IPTV platform Channel Neuf in France to show Motionmaker videos. We don’t consider traditional broadcasters as direct competitors, in fact I think they are more concerned with reaching the digital audience than we are trying to reach the highly fragmented cable or satellite audience.

Finally, a big-picture kind of question. As you look forward, what kinds of online video initiatives do you see as being most successful in the next year or two? What are current video sites doing right, and what do they need to be doing differently?

Longtail UGC will become much less appealing to the online audience as we move towards an era of greater quality content-both in terms of production values and playback. But interactivity will also remain crucial to the user experience, so how do you develop those aspects further? Original sponsored series, as we have seen on a few of the major social networking sites, can be a fantastic fusion of sponsorship, entertainment and user interactivity (although the product placement can still be clunky and the scripting/acting a bit dire, so I would expect the standards to be raised here).

Dailymotion is also working to take its online communities offline-we have a monthly screening of Motionmaker films in Paris called ‘La Séance’ and looking at venues to do the same kind of thing in the UK. We are also partnering with major film festivals in Europe and the US to strengthen this bond between our Motionmakers and the independent film industry.

On Friday, 17 October, we’re lucky to have Alec Hendry, director of digital media operations and development for MTV Networks UK & Ireland, join us as a keynote speaker. We had a chance to sit down and talk with Alec a big about some of MTV’s successes—and challenges—in the realm of online and mobile content.

Q: Please explain your role and focus at MTV Networks.
A: As director of digital media operations and development for MTV Networks  U.K. and Ireland, I sit within the digital media group, and look across all of the different platforms that consumers interact with us on, including online/websites, mobile services, interactive TV and also broadcast TV where we’re working with SMS and interactive TV technologies.

Q: How does streaming media and online (and/or mobile) video fit into MTV Networks’ focus and emphasis?
A: Our aim is to provide as much content as possible across all of the platforms we’re currently working with.  Broadcast television is obviously one of our main outlets, but we’re also across the web and on mobile networks, and all of our research is showing that our core audience (16-24 year olds in U.K./IE) is on all of these different platforms, continuously moving between all of them, and using all of them at the same time.  So we try to ensure that we’re everywhere our consumers are-whether on our own property or others’, such as various social networks including Bebo or MySpace, and that our content is available on those sites to drive people back to TV, back to our own website (MTV.co.uk), and back to our mobile services.

Q: How would you characterise or describe the split across all of your platforms mentioned above- websites, mobile services, interactive TV and broadcast TV?

A: I don’t have direct figures as to the split between each of these, but sometimes we have the same audience across all four of these platforms, and on other occasions (or for other events and content), we have different audiences on different platforms. 

Certainly at the moment we’re seeing that the web is one of our strongest platforms right along with broadcast television, and that the web is one of the primary digital opportunities for us. 

And since we’ve been doing video on mobile handsets for quite a while (at least 3 years now), we’re seeing more and more mobile consumption as handsets improve over time.  We first launched mobile video content in the U.K. with 3UK when it launched its first 3G video content.  At that time we first started offering MTV video on demand downloads and streaming content, and now we’ve expanded to offering live mobile TV channels on most U.K. operators.  We’re seeing that we’re consistently in the top 10 mobile channels, normally coming only second to sports and news, so we’re obviously very pleased about this.

 
Q: What would you describe as the biggest challenge facing MTV Networks in terms of its online /mobile video initiatives?

A: I would answer that by saying I don’t think we have as challenges as we do opportunities. For example, how do we better engage with the audience wherever they are?  Media is a crowded marketplace, but our brand is very strong, our audience knows us well, they trust our content (both on the music and on the entertainment side), so we are able to serve a breadth of content as a trusted editor to bring the best and most relevant content to our audience.  We also pride ourselves on the high quality of content available online, including a wide range of content repurposed from our TV channels, but also made-for-mobile content, extra content produced strictly for online series and the like.

Q: What does MTVN see as the future of monetising (or building sustainable future for) online or mobile video?
A: For us, monetisation has always been a mixture of sources.  We have some ad-funded content, with pre-roll and post-roll advertising, and then we also have branded sponsorships.  We are also able to use online video as a driver to traditional TV broadcasts and advertisers there, so our in-house advertising agency is able to offer complete packages (broadcast television + online/web + mobile) to advertisers as part of their sponsorships, and so our efforts are definitely paying for themselves.

Q: Can you give us an overview of the MTV Overdrive initiative?
A: Our MTV Overdrive product launched in 2006, which was the first time we brought all of our video into an aggregated place that people could come to access.  To enable this, we built internal workflows to manage the digital archive and the custom-built content, e.g. our MTV News team has a daily news package which we were able to make available.  So again, we have end-to-end workflow processes to produce content cross-platform and then we don’t have to worry about the technicality behind the delivery process [to different platforms].  It’s a managed process end-to-end of a huge archive of online content now.

The MTV Overdrive platform was a great starting point for us to show some of our video content, and as that’s evolved we’re seeing the demand for video (especially in the U.K.) as extraordinarily high and we’re very pleased with the results there.  Now we’re in a process where we’re moving some of that video content so that it’s not just in the MTV Overdrive area, but rather phased out so that the video content is wherever it’s relevant, such as MTV News video clips on the MTV News site and so on.

Q: Can you tell us a bit about your experiences with streaming the 2007 MTV Europe Music Awards? 
A: Last year for the first time we were able to stream in high-quality Flash format, and to do this we used one of the very first commercially available hardware products that supported Flash video streaming, the ViewCast Niagara Pro Encoder, provided to us by Garland Partners Limited.  As it happens, we met and engaged with Garland Partners Limited as a result of their exhibitor space at Streaming Media Europe 2007.  They were previewing the ViewCast hardware, and that’s when we established contact and engaged with them for the MTV Europe Music Awards show to take place a few weeks later.

In any event, the ViewCast Niagara Pro Encoder allowed us to take the broadcast feed from our Camden (London) studios receiving the show feed from Munich and then live stream that in high quality Flash format.  At the time, that was really the only commercial product to deliver high quality video/audio over a sustained period of time (such as the 3+ hour long Music Awards show). 

Additionally, our team was able to produce inserts to use during the ad breaks, and we were able to send footage back from Munich (such as Wyclef Jean interviewing stars backstage) to drop into the ad breaks.  

We’re lucky to have Claude London, Digital Director, BBC Worldwide & Kangaroo JV, as our leadoff keynote speaker at Streaming Media Europe  on Thursday, 16 October. Eileen Broch was able to conduct this Q&A with Claude for the new European edition of Streaming Media magazine, and we reprint it here as a sneak preview of what Claude will be speaking on at the show.

Can you give our readers a brief description of the charter of BBC Worldwide and how it fits into the rest of the BBC? 

BBC Worldwide is the wholly owned commercial subsidiary of the BBC.  Its role is to maximise the value of the BBC’s assets after the public service window, for the benefit of the licence payer - essentially we commercialise BBC content with all of our profits being returned into the public service business.

BBC Worldwide has seven core businesses - Global Channels, Global TV Sales, Magazines, Content & Production, Home Entertainment, Global Brands and Digital Media. We generated sales of over £900 million in 2007-2008.

As Digital Media we oversee a stable of commercial websites such as BBC.com (the BBC website outside of the UK), TopGear.com and GardenersWorld.com; we syndicate digital content via outlets such as YouTube and MySpace as well as mobile operators; and we’re also a founder of Kangaroo, a VOD JV with UK broadcasters ITV and Channel 4.

What’s your role and focus at the BBC Worldwide?

I’m Director for Kangaroo, BBC Worldwide’s joint venture with ITV and Channel 4 to launch an on-demand service for the UK. I’m leading Kangaroo for BBC Worldwide, which means I have responsibility for the commercial strategy, product development, and brand building of the venture, as well as ongoing business development - from a BBC Worldwide point of view.

What do you think is the most important goal for BBC Worldwide over the next 1-2 years? What do you think are the greatest challenges facing BBC Worldwide in this same time period?

One of the key targets for BBC Worldwide is to expand its digital revenues from 1% of total to 10% of total over a five year period.  This is a big ask but its one we’re answering with a range of revenue-focused digital projects.

The most obvious of these has been a very pro-active syndication programme - getting our content onto the web via some major partners in revenue generating deals.  We were the first major broadcaster to sign up for a channel on YouTube, we were the first global broadcaster to sign a deal with MySpace and we were also the first UK broadcaster to sell full length content on iTunes.

Under the partnership, the best BBC video content will be made available online globally via MySpaceTV, the social networking site’s popular new video platform.

As well as syndication, branded sites are an important part of our digital strategy.  We take brands based around BBC content and create connected commercial web presences.  Sites like TopGear.com and GardenersWorld.com are building on established magazine operations. 

We’re also looking overseas for revenues and one of our major activities here is BBC.com, the international expression of the BBC online.  With BBC.com we’re essentially looking to monetise the millions of non-license-fee-paying overseas users of BBC.co.uk.  BBC.com is ad-funded and acts as a global window to BBC Worldwide content on the web and therefore is an important cross marketing tool as well as a straightforward destination media site.

Obviously Kangaroo is a major business objective for us.  By coming together with two of the other major broadcasters in the UK to create a VOD platform we’re helping build the wider market for online video content in the UK.  Kangaroo is potentially a huge opportunity for us to generate revenues from our content archives whilst giving users access to a huge library of content that hasn’t been available online before.

In terms of challenges, we face that same as any other media owner online.  It’s a hugely competitive and fast moving market and its not simply a matter of translating what we’ve done on traditional channels into new media formats.  We, like all media owners, have had a steep learning curve in terms of what does and doesn’t work online or on mobile and we’re continuing to pick up new data and examples every day that help us optimise our digital activities.

How do you feel streaming media and online (or mobile) video fit into these areas of focus and emphasis?

Given our broadcasting background the video world is at the very core of what we’re about and so online video is a massively important part of our future.  Where it’s really important for us already today is in reaching brand-new audiences - part of our mission is to target audiences who might not see our content on traditional outlets and delivering video online or on mobile is the only way to reach these populations.

Clearly new forms of video delivery have been at the heart of our syndication efforts, whether short form content on YouTube or full-length programming on iTunes.  Similarly, online content is central to our international ambitions.  We have channels in territories across the world, but online, streaming content is still an important way of getting our content out there.

How involved is BBC Worldwide with mobile efforts?

We’ve been actively involved with mobile for some time now and have content deals in place with a number of operators in the UK and overseas - people like O2 and 3 to name a couple.  It’s definitely an area we see growing in the future but I think we all need to recognise that, in revenue terms, mobile video is still at a very early stage. There is undeniable potential however, with mobile internet specifically.

How does BBC Worldwide factor in revenue generation (monetisation) either for its partners or itself in these syndication deals? 

Revenue generation is what we’re about.  Our role is to generate profits that go back to the BBC, so if there’s no compelling commercial logic for a deal then it just won’t go ahead. 

We’re flexible on how monetisation occurs - for example pay per view has been dominant on mobile for a while now, but in online environments ad-funded viewing tends to work better for short form content.  It’s all about what gives the best consumer experience and, in the end, the best returns.

What does BBC Worldwide see as the future of monetising (or building a sustainable future for) online or mobile video?

In the longer term media outlets seem to tend towards an ad-funded model, with profitable pockets of pay customers, as we’ve all seen from the satellite television world.  However, at the moment we’re in a hybrid content economy with a general mix oscillating between pay per view and free to air ad funded content.  For the foreseeable future I would expect that mix to stay in place.

How do the BBC iPlayer and Kangaroo fit together?

iPlayer is the BBC’s seven day, free, on-demand catch up service whilst Kangaroo is a joint venture between BBC Worldwide, ITV and Channel 4 to offer tens of thousands of hours of paid for or ad-funded programme content.  Whereas iPlayer is about displaying content within the public service ‘window’ - i.e. today seven days after broadcast - Kangaroo is about making huge swathes of great content available on demand, including BBC archive material.

The two platforms are different but are definitely complementary. Ashley Highfield, the new CEO of Kangaroo, summed it up well when he was at the BBC - if iPlayer is like BBC1 through BBC4, then Kangaroo is like the UKTV channels, part of BBC Worldwide’s joint venture with Virgin Media