Next week at Ad:Tech in San Francisco the Association for Downloadable Media will be releasing new ad formats that have been approved for downloadable content.

For podcasters and web video companies this is an important step in unifying the advertising industry. Standardization will increase interest from advertisers and reduce the cost of monetizing rich media.

Here are the session overviews from the events on Wednesday, April 16th. I sure hope they make this available for download!



10:00-10:45
Downloadable Media Advertising Standards - New Units Debut for Public Comment
Thinking about buying advertising in portable media? Are you a content producer who wants a “piece of the action?” Come to this session to see the unveiling of the first set of ad formats to be ratified in the industry across all networks and individual properties that choose to participate in the industry standards and accept these new common formats. Attendees will see first hand the ad formats selected, hear the reasoning behind them and have the opportunity to comment in this open forum.
Moderator: Bryan Moffett, NPR

Presenters:
Brian McMahon, National Podcasting Systems and Chair of Ad Standards Committee (presenting Ad Standards)
David Herscott, MEA Digital (POV on Ad Standards)
Sean Cheyney, CMO, AccuQuote (POV on podcast campaigns)

Break 10:45-11:00

11:00-11:45 Session #3
Downloadable Media Audience Measurement Guidelines - New Best Practices Debut for Public Comment
This session unveils the Association’s recommendations for measuring podcast listener/viewer numbers that can be applied and replicated by any creator or aggregator of downloadable media. The ADM encourages open measurement standards that encourage consistent data collection and distribution within all participating member organizations. Creation of these standards allows confidence in reporting to advertising agencies and brand sponsors so increase the volume of media bought in this burgeoning category of highly engaged consumers. Learn how publishers are using portable content and marketers are activating the long tail.
Moderator: Chris MacDonald, Libsyn PRO, Chairman, ADM
Presenters:
Angelo Mandato, RawVoice and Chair of Measurement Committee (presents guidelines)
Stephen Smyk, Performance Bridge (Agency POV on Audience Measurement)
Daniel Rioux, SVP, Media Director, Campbell-Ewald for The Navy

Yahoo Sports will now feature video from major league baseball and the company will sell advertising for its free and subscription video content.

MLB.com provides feeds of every baseball game played, and before the deal had not been selling advertising against its content. Now the $119 annual subscription service will include a handful of interactive ads using Yahoo's Clickable technology.

This is a big win for Yahoo because not only will it bring more people to their site and increase revenue, it also is another strike against Microsoft. MLB.com has been using Microsoft's Silverlight media technology to distribute video, and now it will be used to deliver ads from Yahoo. That's gotta hurt.

MLB.com may expand the free content as the relationship with Yahoo produces revenue and reinforces the ad-supported model for baseball content.

Via MediaPost.

Vertical networks that aggregate content around a subject could be the next evolution of media company if done right.

Peyman Nilforoush, who runs the NetShelter Technology Media network, has insightful analysis of the highs and lows of traditional media companies running vertical networks. While Forbes and many others have entered the fray recently, ESPN and the Washington Post are backing away from running vertical ad networks.

Traditional media companies with large audiences have a potential conflict of interest in promoting other websites from which they make a smaller return than their own content. This isn't an impossible hurdle -- it takes a commitment from the management and understanding of the long term benefits of selling ads across a variety of sites. The ad sales folks need to understand and get past this challenge so that all sites in the network get fair representation.

Vertical networks need to think differently about advertising than traditional media company (the network comes first), and that's not something that everyone can do.

(Disclosure: my rich media company works with Washington Post partner network Adify.)

Yahoo is getting into bed with anyone who's not Microsoft. The company is acting like a woman pursued by a guy she doesn't want, so she hooks up with other partners just to keep from being available.

Yahoo bought an analytics firm, and now is testing running Google's search ads. The latter move could be seen as an act of desperation to increase revenues, or could be a test just to prove to board members how little the company would gain if it abandons its own platform.

Yahoo recently acquired video site Maven and continues to expand its video presence by enabling Flickr users to upload video.

Rumors continue that Yahoo may team up with AOL. The combined entity could eliminate jobs and only makes sense if Yahoo ends up with more money in the deal.

Microsoft continues to act like the infatuated male who just gets angrier and angrier as he is continually rebuffed. And anyone who's ever watched a Lifetime movie knows those scenarios don't end well.

With the exception of the home loan lead generation business, online advertising revenue will grow even faster than expected. Adotas quotes data from ZenithOptimedia that upgrades projected online ad revenue to $67 billion.

Thank the writers' strike, newspapers with an assist. Interactive advertising and video advertising will be the big winners as companies will go online to shore up sagging sales.

Advertisers will push for more registered users to get the demographic data needed to justify purchases into what can be unchartered territory for many.

It will be interesting to see the mood at next week's Ad:tech in San Francisco. Is the excitement just as high even in the weakened economy?

The web media player scene is more crowded than Penn Station is at 5:15 p.m. This lack of standardization has hurt the online video and advertising markets as creative has to be customized and developers have to learn different platforms for customers.

Enter Adobe's Media Player (how original!). In digital media the company is better than anyone at creating solid standards (see Flash, Photoshop, PDFs), so hopefully this new player is worthy of the title.

You would think that they'd be the best at integrating interactivity via Flash, which would solve lots of technical problems and quicken countless meetings.

I'm not knocking the existing players that are out there, but since none has been able to dominate, for everyone's sake, someone needs to rise above.

Yahoo announced its all-in-one advertising platform AMP, and while it does commoditize the ad selling process, it will be good for the industry.

Yahoo is working with newspaper publishers to streamline the buying process across websites, and this will help to lower the cost of advertising. This is good because the return from display advertising is still too low when compared to other media.

AMP will work with other ad networks and dilutes the value of the sales person. This makes differentiation tougher, but every advancement includes some compromising.

Yahoo is making good moves with first Panama, and now AMP. Selling out to Microsoft is a bit premature with technologies to significantly enhance revenue around the corner.

Also, putting more pressure on Google is a good thing as competition breeds innovation.

Congress last week held some ill-informed and meaningless hearings, and not about steroids in baseball. Congress wasted nearly as many hours of productivity as the NCAA tournament in investigating if terrorists could infiltrate the virtual world Second Life.

As Wired's Danger Room points out, the money exchanged in SL are in very small amounts, and if some jihadist were to take up residence, the community would know and report on those activities quickly.

The only issue that should be investigated in Second Life is about taxing the profits of virtual money. People are supposed to pay sales tax and declare their revenue, but so far SL is immune.

Now IBM is "enhancing" the Second Life experience for corporate customers so that avatars can attend meetings and interact instead of people. I can't wait for the lawsuits if avatars are deemed to be sexist or discriminatory.

I see the value in virtual meetings, but technology from Cisco that allows real-time video and voice communication and document collaboration is more productive. Spending thousands of dollars to create an island for team members to feel relaxed when they meet virtually is a big waste of money.

Virtual worlds have been in development for decades, and while they can provide some entertainment, they are not for business. I would expect that the media and business corporations will vote themselves off their island and focus on more serious tasks as the economy worsens.

YouTube is finally awakening to the marketing opportunities of leveraging its audience. While AOL and MSN have been pumping resources into original video content to differentiate themselves, YouTube's much larger audience has come from search of uploaded videos with little thought on how to market the content.

Enter the best marketed (not to mention best band) of all-time), The Rolling Stones, which kicks off YouTube's living legend series. The Boys don't need more money, but using YouTube to publicize their new move Shine a Light and what must be their 11,435th live album is smart marketing. YouTube is enabling users to upload questions, some of which will be answered by Mick and Keith.

For YouTube to make its acquisition by Google really pay off, the company will have to do more marketing promotions and go beyond being a video search engine. Adding better ways to browse content and promote original content will help attract more advertisers.

YouTube, like the social networking sites, have a poor audience to revenue balance, and that's gotta change.

The Internet Yellow Pages market is anything but settled or fully exploited. Research house ComScore released data showing that the top spot in IYP has been taken from Superpages.com by YellowPages.com, while Yellow Book more than doubled its share of search.



Yahoo lost more than 5 percent of the IYP search market, bad news for a company in turmoil.

It is refreshing that the big search engines haven't yet overtaken this market and that the search results generated by Google and Yahoo come from an assortment of properties -- not just the search engines' own sites.

Print yellow pages still dominate their online yellow pages in revenue, and that must change. The lucrative yellow pages market is a big waste of paper as most of the books aren't recycled. Fortunately those of us concerned with living sustainably can opt out of received the printed doorstops by calling the yellow pages companies.

I don't think I'm that unusual in doing nearly all of my searches online, yet the print books still take in most of the money.

Someday the online yellow pages business will become as hotly contested as the general search market, but for now a clear leader has not been determined.