Embedded Video Comes to Email For Some
Florida-based company KOTW has announced a new product that allows for the delivery of video via email and which embeds the video within the body of the email rather than as an attachment. The new service will also provide metrics to advertisers such as number of views, length of views and who did the viewing. There's just one problem. It uses ActiveX which, if a personal firewall such as Norton is in place renders the thing useless and, counter productively, results in the need for a traditional video download or trip to a webpage where the video can be viewed.
NOTE: In Comments, Michael Murray of KOTW clarifies some misconceptions we had about the product and offers a more detailed explanation of what the technology can do.
Comments
Your review is very good, but I'd like to clear up the misconceptions and add a point.
There is never a traditional video download with KOTW streaming video email. Nothing is ever placed on the viewer's computer. KOTW is 100% streaming video email 100% of the time
There is NO advertising method that reaches 100% of the target audience, including Internet video. However, the KOTW streaming video email technology provides the highest possibility that the most number of people in the traget audience can see the advertising.
Television, radio, newspaper and magazine advertising can never tell you exactly how many people saw your ad. We not only tell you exactly how many people saw your ad, but exactly how long they watched it and who they are.
We also provide you the ability to download the data and include into a spreadsheet or database for further analysis.
Thank you for the great review of our product.
Call me crazy, but...
Eyewonder, Talkway, HelloNetwork, Oplayo...
All the dotcom boom java streaming video companies had inline-embedded (not attached) video email,
FIVE YEARS AGO.
Just about all of these companies had both streaming server versions as well as progressive download versions, so that point is moot. These ones were pretty much the only companies worth mentioning from a video quality perspective, as they all had much better compression algorithms and higher frame rates than anything else out there. Definitely delivered crisp video with good frame rates for motion video (not just talking heads shots where little changes, making for no-brainer easy compression).
And they had metrics tracking...not only views but also duration (and other basic stuff like open metrics, click throughs etc.)
I think that Eyewonder might be the only one that survived, but i see they have ditched their email product.
So how is this KOTW's product any different than any of these others that had great video but ultimately didn't survive the sustainable marketplace test?
This looks like an interesting service. Thanks for the tip.
Mike Bawden
Brand Central Station