Power Video

Break CEO Breaks it Down

Mashable has posted a podcast interview with Break Media CEO Keith Richman, who discusses the state of the online advertising business. Last week, Break Media formed the Online Video Advertising ROI Council, which will “analyze and determine online video advertising effectiveness and better understand the challenges in measuring ROI for the online video medium.” We certainly need someone to do that.

Richman explains the council’s goals in further detail in the interview. It’s a fascinating listen for content providers and distributors as well as marketers.

Recruiters to Score with Video

While people have debated the pros and cons of video resumes, recruiters are finding out that online video can be a big boost to their efforts. Click Z reports on a study from Borrell Associates that finds online video ad spending will reach $10 billion in 2012, up from $522 million last year—much of that driven by major local ad categories, including recruitment.

Like any other ad, video from recruiters could be used to pinpoint the right candidate, which also involves eliminating the wrong candidate. Think about watching a video tour of the department for which you’re applying for—you’d know right away whether it seemed like the place for you. This is particularly true for younger job seekers, who value culture and environment as much as they do salary and benefits. And video testimonials from current employees can be a great asset, as well.

As is often the case, the simplest applications are the most effective.

Riding the Rails

The open-source framework Ruby on Rails has become a popular tool among Web site programmers. That’s why we’re now offering Fliqz4R, an open-source Rails wrapper for the Fliqz video platform developed in collaboration with educational technology company LearnHub. You can learn more about the new tool, including instructions, resources, and code examples, at LearnHub’s Fliqz community site.

My, How We’ve Grown

We try not to toot our own horn too much around here, but some things are worth celebrating. The fact that we’ve enjoyed robust growth—six quarters in a row—is one such thing. As is the signing of Inman News as our 7,500th customer.

Inman is the leading independent real estate and media news service. Real estate is one of our key vertical markets, so we’re particularly proud to provide white-label video services for InmanTV, where you can see a few examples of Inman’s branded Fliqz players.

Now it’s on to the business of serving the next 7,500 customers.