Sunday, November 23, 2003

Cable & Wireless to Stream Online Video Ads for MSN

Cable & Wireless America will deliver the online streaming video advertising for MSN Video, MSN's new high-quality broadband video player that will be broadly available this winter across the MSN network. Cable & Wireless is providing an end-to-end streaming media solution encompassing content encoding, content and campaign management and streaming media delivery services. Encoding services will be provided for advertisers, enabling advertisers to put advertisements in Windows Media 9 Format. All video advertisements will be streamed over the global content delivery network of Cable & Wireless America, which consists of numerous streaming servers at the edge of the Internet.
http://www.cwusa.com

  • In October, Microsoft announced that its MSN Network will offer a wide variety of high-resolution, on-demand broadband video content for free. Special programming from NBC News and MSNBC.com is available now in a Beta version of MSN Video. Additional content from multiple providers and custom programming choices will be added to the service for the full consumer launch this winter in the United States only. The free service will be supported by advertising. MSN Video will include 15-second video ads for every five to six minutes of content as well as contextual stationary ads displayed within the video player between motion ads. Microsoft said that “consumers are increasingly turning off their televisions to go online,�? making its MSN Video offering an ideal way for advertisers to reach the Internet demographic.


  • MSN Video is based on Windows Media 9 Series technology, and offers up to 300 Kbps playback speeds. MSN developed the new service with the brand communications firm Starcom MediaVest Group (SMG), which helped create the media-buying components of MSN Video.