Providing services in the video space, we try to look years in the future. In fact, when Limelight was founded, that’s exactly what the visionary creators did: they believed that online video was going to be big and that companies would need a global, high-performing, scalable solution to ensure a great experience delivering video over the Internet.

But how big? Is watching video online ultimately a fad? Will it ever replace the tried-and-true behavior of sitting in front of the couch to watch TV?

In the recent State of the Media: Consumer Usage Report (2011) published by Nielsen Media, there is the glimmer of a revolutionary shift in video watching behavior. This shift goes against the traditional model of linear, broadcast television that is delivered to consumers according to schedule…not necessarily when they want it.

As the graph from the Nielsen study shows, there is an average per-weekly time spent watching TV of 32 hours and 47 minutes, an average time spent on the Internet (on a computer) of 3 hours and 58 minutes, and an average time spent watching timeshifted TV (i.e., on a DVR) of 2 hours and 21 minutes.

Now that might not seem very profound when talking about the future of how people watch video, but there are several key pieces of information in this graph that illustrate that “revolutionary” shift.

First, there is significantly lower percentage of viewers watching traditional linear TV in four key age groups:

• 2-11. This age group watched 22% less linear television per week;
• 12-17. This age group watched 33% less linear television per week;
• 18-24. This age group watched 25% less linear television per week;
• 25-34. This age group watched 13% less linear television per week.

So the question is, “are they watching less video or just watching less video through traditional methods?”

But when you look at the Internet graph, you see the opposite trend from the traditional linear TV graph. Two age groups (one of which was consuming less linear television) are consuming well above the average of 3 hours and 58 minutes:

• 18-24. This age group spent 12% more time on the Internet than the average;
• 25-34. This age group spent 68% more time on the Internet than the average;
• 35-49. This age group spent 53% more time on the Internet than the average.

That leads to a secondary question: “are consumers augmenting their time spent watching traditional linear TV with Internet access or displacing it?”

Although the answers to either of those questions aren’t directly clear from Nielsen’s findings, it is interesting to see the trends carry through to online video consumption. As illustrated in the graph, there are two age groups (18-24 and 25-34) that are watching significantly more online video than the 28 minute average per week (66% and 85% respectively). And these two age groups match to the increased Internet and decreased linear TV consumption.

The timeshifted TV behavior displays similar findings—age groups that are engaging in the behavior much more than the average.

At a high level, the Nielsen data suggests a shift in consumer behavior from consuming video that is pushed to them (i.e., broadcast TV schedules) to consuming content they can pull (i.e., on-demand). This is especially prevalent in a couple of key, younger demographics. It appears that these younger users want more control over how they access video. Now as I said before, this is a fundamental shift. It’s not overt. The whole “cutting the cord” is much more a media sensation than an actual state of consumer behavior. But combine some of Nielsen’s findings with some other insights into online video consumption and this trend of “pull vs. push,” of a desire to consume content on demand instead of having it pushed at us, becomes a bit more apparent:

• According to Informa Telecoms & Media, over 70% of broadband users are using OTT services (mainly Netflix and Hulu in the States) and by 2015, 2.1 billion people will be watching OTT video, which will be over 80% of all Internet users (1);
• Ovum principal analyst Michael Philpott believes that the increased adoption of more personal Internet-connected devices, and our growing reliance on and interest in Internet applications, has reached such a level that they are diverting our attention away from the TV (1);
• Parks and Associates research has shown that when given a choice of new TV features, 47% of broadband households in Western Europe’s largest countries chose viewing recorded programs on any Internet-connected device as one of their top three fea- tures. The other options they were given were live TV, 3DTV, online video access, and multi-screen services. Only 30% selected live TV as one of their top preferences (1).

So what does this mean if you are in the video industry? Well, if you are a linear broadcaster, it might be time to start looking at DVR and OTT. Your viewers want to spend less time a slave to the schedule and more time watching what they want, when they want. If you are a video publisher or aggregator, get ready. Consumption of video and other content through online means is going to increase, especially as these behaviors get established at the younger demographics.

But there is information missing that could help further define consumer video watching behavior. For example, it would be interesting to understand consumer perspectives on linear TV watching. Are they doing so at a specific time for a specific reason (i.e., to watch a show)? Or are they simply sitting in front of the TV for “downtime?” And, what is the balance between those two? And what about Internet-connected TVs? Perhaps it’s too early to examine data from those connected devices but how does that shift consumer Internet behavior (away from PC and even tablet)? According to Parks and Associates, Internet connectivity is becoming increasingly important in consumer decisions about electronics purchases—TVs, DVRs, DVD players, etc (1).

Regardless of the analysis that needs to happen (and will), there is an undeniable trend—“TV Time” is dying. Consumers increasingly want to pull content rather than have it pushed to them (and the broadcast/MSO world is responding with a slow, titanic shift to IP delivery). It may not happen overnight but as the Nielsen data illustrates, the behavior is taking root at the younger generations. 10 years? 15 years? Regardless, it would seem that in the near future we won’t be saying that the death of “TV Time” is greatly exaggerated.

Get ready. There are exciting (and very turbulent/disruptive) times ahead for the world of video!

Limelight Networks provides cloud-based services and software, coupled with a compute network that enables global delivery, to help you take advantage of this powerful shift in user behavior. Find out more at http://bit.ly/xluTq2.

- Jason Thibeault, Sr. Director of Solutions Marketing for Digital Media. You can connect with Jason on Twitter @jnthibeault.

(1) OTT Goes Global. Rider Research. December, 2011.

For the first time in a long time, the CDN space is getting exciting. Everyone is talking about licensed/managed CDNs and the CDN Federation. The talk itself isn’t really new. Many of the largest telcos and network operators have tried implementing their own CDNs over the years. But this is the first time that the CDN industry has really responded. A whole new business is cropping up around enabling other companies to deploy a CDN to distribute content on their networks. And Limelight is right in the thick of it.

Over the past few months, I’ve been spending a lot of my time productizing Limelight Deploy—the managed CDN solution we just “officially” launched. I say “officially” because we’ve actually been helping companies like Bell Canada, Microsoft and others implement their own CDNs for the past five years! And that’s why I get so excited about this development in the industry. When we announced Limelight Deploy during the CDN World Summit in Hong Kong, Bell Canada stepped forward to support us. We are very proud of the work we have done for Bell Canada and thankful that they are standing alongside us.

Like all big changes, though, this shift in focus for CDNs—from just providing services to enabling network owners and operators with CDN services—provides me an opportunity to reflect on the industry as a whole. I think I know what’s driving network operators towards CDN services. I think everyone knows. Control. Plain and simple. Control of their expenses, control of their performance, and possibly most importantly, control of their revenue streams. In my dealings with thousands of network planners all over the globe they almost unilaterally bring up one of the three “control factors” as a frustration they have with CDNs. I like to sometimes think of CDNs as dam operators. Imagine a dam holding back a flood of water. The dam operator controls how much water gets through. Too much and quaint little towns below flood. Too little and there’s no water for anyone. The network operators don’t like that we are operating the dam.

That’s why this industry is so interesting right now. The network operator frustration with CDNs hasn’t changed (it may have even gotten worse over the years). It’s just that solutions have finally matured enough and the economics have become compelling enough, for CDN operators to look longingly at the prospect of utilizing CDN technology for their own benefit.

Of course, “interesting” isn’t always good. The shift to providing network operators the capabilities to implement their own CDNs is also revealing potential disaster. Because of those years of frustration with CDNs, some operators are grabbing at anything they can find to help give them control of the dam…right now. Transparent caching. Dedicated CDN hardware. Software from startups. It’s like a kid who just learned to drive. He’ll take the car down to the mailbox just because he can! But “just because they can” isn’t reason enough to implement a solution that probably won’t scale to long-term needs. Network operators that choose the “quick fix” may not only be short-changing themselves on future opportunities, but also painting themselves into the proverbial corner. Many of those solutions aren’t battle-tested, especially at scale, and aren’t even provided by companies with any history in the CDN space. Why would you purchase CDN service from a company that has no real world experience in the field? Would you go to a garage to get cardiac bypass surgery? What about a pizza from a burger joint?

I understand that network operators need a solution that they can apply right now—something to give them back the control they want. But doing so at the expense of their future isn’t the way to do it. And we tried to apply that thinking as we productized Deploy. Limelight Deploy has proven CDN technologies to provide the kind of services network operators can use to solve their immediate pain. But Deploy also has layers of software (including cloud-based storage and other VAS offerings) that can enable long-term business success. Deploy is not just a bit pump. Sure, it includes tried-and-true caching technologies (the same tech we use at Limelight to serve some of the world’s most popular content) but where it really shines is in the integrated value-added services. Mobile delivery. Acceleration services. Web Content Management. Video Platform, Cloud Storage. Some CDN solutions are toolkits for a network operator to fix problems. Deploy is an arsenal of proven weapons to generate high-margin sales.

Technology selection is not the lone contributor to some potential long-term disaster for network operators implementing their own CDNs. There’s also time-to-market and operational complexities. When someone wants to sell you something, they’ll tell you it’s easy to operate, simple to use, and will last you forever. But that’s hardly the case with CDN technology. Installing a transparent cache isn’t just slotting a box into the rack. It requires expertise to integrate it into traffic flow within the network. More so, it requires long-term understanding to tune and tweak for optimal delivery. And that doesn’t even address upgrades…

Unlike some other solutions, we really focused Limelight Deploy on being a “managed” offering. We wanted to give operators three things. First were technologies, like caching, to solve the immediate issues. Done. Second were all the VAS and other software to enable high-margin revenue opportunities in the future. Done. Finally, we wanted to make available our 10-years of experience serving the needs of some of the most heavily trafficked internet content so customers could get the most out of their CDN investment—get up and running as quickly as possible with CDN (to both provide control and enable sales) without having to worry about operating it. Why did we do it this way? Simple. Like I said at the beginning of this blog post, we’ve seen the telco, ISP, and network operator space struggle with implementing CDNs in the past. We didn’t want Deploy buried alongside some of those past failures.

It goes without saying that I am genuinely excited about CDN. Everyone wants to talk about it and I’ve got a backlog of requests for meetings, presentations, and demonstrations of Deploy. Just keep in mind that if you are thinking about implementing your own CDN, consider the long-term opportunities and not just the short-term needs. This may help you avoid some of the potential disaster lurking underneath this shift in the CDN industry. And, who knows, you may just find a solution that enables a world of new business.

Learn more about leveraging the battle tested IP from Limelight’s ten years of experience as the second largest CDN in the world by attending our webinar. Details and registration at http://ow.ly/8VKfo.

- Guy Tal, Director of New Markets, Limelight Networks

We’re excited to announce that we’re teaming up with Conviva to offer our joint customers a custom version of Conviva’s Embedded Insight service. Why is this cool? Conviva monitors the individual player for every one of our customers’ video viewers and then shares real-time metrics on each viewer’s video quality and engagement with our *joint customers and Operations team. This means that both our customers and our Operations team can immediately be aware of congestion or server/POP performance issues and address these issues immediately to ensure consistent, high quality viewing experiences.

Roberts Communication Network is already testing this new integrated offering so that they can proactively prevent performance issues and ultimately improve view engagement with their videos. Armed with up-to-the second data on each viewer’s experience, Roberts can make more profitable business decisions and better target their audience – pretty cool stuff!

The custom version of Conviva’s Embedded Insights service gives content owners a look into their viewer engagement and video delivery performance that isn’t available anywhere else in the industry. The solution provides the kind of information people need to make the most profitable business decisions for their online video business.

We at Limelight Networks make it a priority to listen to our customers, identify their business challenges, and bring them best of breed solutions to solve these challenges. Our open approach to network management and available APIs allow us to work with companies like Conviva to continually provide new services that enable our customers to brilliantly orchestrate their digital presence. To learn more, check out our press release.

*Note edit to “join customers”

In our recent webinar, Marketers as Publishers, there were a number of questions we didn’t have time to answer in the Q&A session. The specifics of the questions differed, but three prevailing themes emerged. Attendees wanted more information on how to create targeted content for different audiences, how to deliver that content by using website personalization, and how to distribute it across multiple platforms easily. In response, here are a few concrete tips to consider. For more information, check out our white paper, How to Master the Art of Content Marketing, and learn online about the Limelight Dynamic Site Platform.

How to Create Targeted Content

Content targeting is both an art and a science, but the better you know your audience, the better chance you have of providing contextually relevant material. On the art side, spend time in external dialog with the types of people you want to reach. See what they’re reading and saying online, and engage in active conversation to understand what they want that you can offer. On the science side of the equation, divide your audience into different target groups based on the information you can collect about them. Use IP addresses to help pinpoint geographic location, SEO to learn what keywords resonate best, anonymous tracking to categorize common behavioral patterns, and site registrations to understand personal preferences. Then develop content based on that data.

How to Deliver Targeted Content Using Site Personalization

The Limelight Networks Dynamic Site Platform includes website marketing acceleration tools. Once you’ve created targeted content, our technology helps you deliver it to the right people, as they browse your website, using several different techniques. These include anonymous visitor identification, progressive profiling based on information captured over multiple visits, lead scoring with the use of behavioral data, automated pushing of content based on any data collected, ongoing reporting of content marketing results, and integration with major marketing automation software products including Salesforce, Eloqua and Marketo.

How to Distribute Content across Multiple Platforms Easily

Content distribution has gotten a lot trickier with the proliferation of smartphones and tablets, but luckily there are tools to simplify the process. The easiest way to manage delivery to multiple platforms is work from a single content repository and then feed that content to different templates based on the platforms you need to reach. Once again, the Limelight Dynamic Site Platform can enable this workflow for you. Our template-based web content management system is easy to use and comes with multi-lingual and multi-site management, advanced publisher tools, social media integration and more.

Just how important is the mobile shopping experience? Consider this: the mobile channel’s contribution to retail sales rose from 3.4% to 6.5% between October 2010 and April 2011, according to studies by Coremetrics cited by eMarketer. And, even though mobile purchases are still a fraction of overall sales, consumers increasingly use their mobile devices to research purchases before buying elsewhere. That means the importance of retail mobile websites is only growing.

With that in mind, here’s a look at some of our own numbers. Limelight Networks recently surveyed 520 consumers who self-identified as owning a smartphone or tablet and using that mobile device to research and/or purchase products online. In that group, a full 80% said they typically abandon a mobile site if the shopping experience isn’t up to par. Roughly three quarters of those who abandon ship said they are likely to return to the site later on a computer. However, about one quarter said they prefer to seek out a different site to continue shopping. In addition, roughly 20% of total respondents said they aren’t likely to abandon a mobile site in the middle of shopping, but that they are likely to avoid a poor-performing mobile site in the future.

In our survey, we also looked at some of the criteria that are important for defining a positive mobile shopping experience. Here’s what respondents had to say:

Content marketing has been on the rise for several years, yet many companies still struggle with implementing their own programs, and – even more commonly – with sustaining those programs in the face of ongoing content development and distribution challenges. Join us for a webinar today with AdAge to discuss the underlying platforms that make content marketing successful. Topics to be covered include:

• Keys to successful content marketing, including content development, reuse, and targeting models.
• How to develop an efficient and effective website engagement model.
• Technologies ensuring a high quality experience on the web with every content type – including video – even under high-traffic conditions.

The webinar runs today at 2:00 PM Eastern. Register here for “Marketers as Publishers – Content Marketing Strategies from Development through Distribution.”

Limelight today announced the new Limelight Dynamic Site Platform for Mobile, an extension of our web content management platform focused on mobile site publishing. Coming on the heels of our August software update, the mobile offering marks a significant step forward for the Dynamic Site Platform.  It lets users create mobile-specific sites, and provides tools for re-purposing content for multichannel delivery.

Features include:

• Device detection — Analyzes incoming browser requests and automatically displays desktop, mobile or tablet formatted content
• Shared content repository — Content is created once, and repurposed across multiple devices, regardless of format, design, look and feel
• Flexible templates — Template logic can be rendered in any text format, with full control over the presentation layer (HTML, CSS, Javascript)
• XML-based publishing — XML is the native content format of Dynamic Site Platform, allowing for fast and simple syndication of mobile content
• Device-specific image re-size — Device detection and template-based re-sizing ensure optimal image weights, regardless of device
• Single domain — Publish web and mobile sites at one URL that adapts to any device

Our partner Imavex is working closely this week with The Spirit International to stream live coverage of the biennial amateur golf tournament. What’s new this year? The live stream is available to viewers not just on computers and mobile devices, but also on the living room screen with a connected Roku box. Limelight powers the delivery, so we thought we’d ask Imavex a few questions about this week’s event.

Q&A
What is the Spirit golf event and what kind of audience does it attract?
The Spirit International Amateur Golf Championship is a world class golf event. It features the world’s best amateur men and amateur women golfers as they represent their respective country in team and individual competitions. The 80 participants enjoy an Olympic like experience from the Opening/Closing Ceremonies, international village and competing for gold medals.The Spirit International Golf Association and Texas Golf Association invite 20 countries from six continents to participate. Established in 2001, The Spirit is a biennial event that alternates tournament years with the World Amateur Team Championships.

The Spirit International attracts a golf audience as well as an International Audience. With over 20 countries represented in the event, it’s a worldwide event. It also attracts individuals that enjoy watching competitive golf, whether it’s professional, amateur, International or National.

When did Spirit start streaming the annual tournament live on the Internet, and how is this year different from previous ones?
The Spirit International began streaming the live event in 2009. The differences in 2011 and 2009 are multiple. The first difference is the marketing efforts around the Live Event. The Spirit International is doing an online SEM (pay-per-click marketing) campaign, display ads that are running on www.pga.com & www.pgatour.com, and a full social media campaign with a live blog, Facebook and Twitter updates. With regards to delivering the webcast, there are more platforms being used this year than in the past. The LIVE stream is being pushed to mobile devices, notebooks, and Roku.

Offering the event via a Roku channel is a pretty big deal. What added challenges does that bring?
Educating the end user that it’s available. Roku is a phenomenal product and covers a large audience, but educating our market is a big piece and why we think Limelight Networks and Social Media can assist us in growing the brand of The Spirit International.

Are you starting to see more interest from your customers in reaching audiences over connected TVs and streaming devices like the Roku?
Yes! It gives us the ability to deliver the webcast, interviews, highlights and so much more to our target market in their living rooms. We have not been able to offer that in the past, which in turn grows the audience of The Spirit International. Especially with an International audience, it gives us more opportunity to grow our market outside of the United States of America.

What about video in general? Do you see companies using online video more in their marketing efforts?
Video is more engaging to the end user than any other type of content product available to us. It’s the only way for our audience to truly engage with our event and continue to grow our event. The Spirit International goes to great links to increase our video traffic and continually find new ways to deliver our product. One way that we’ve been able to use video this year is through the players. Leading up to the event, we sent every player a flip video camera and asked them to make some videos about their golf accomplishments, information about them, and anything they feel entertaining. The response was great and has given us the ability to showcase these players as they are in real life. Essentially, it gives more personality to the players and gives us more content to push through the social media channels leading up to the event to assist in driving traffic to the tournament and LIVE webcast. The video program was a success and we are anticipating a significant increase in LIVE stream traffic from 2009.

The Limelight Mobility team has been hard at work with a new software update, and a new website dedicated to all things Limelight REACH. The latest software version is Release 4.11, and it focuses on access to REACH through a number of new APIs. New API functions include the ability to:

• create, read, update and delete content collections in a REACH account
• create, read, update and delete videos in a content collection
• check the status of all video jobs associated with a video being processed by REACH

Limelight announced a new partnership with Demandbase yesterday to help B2B marketers deliver targeted, personalized website experiences. The deal brings Demandbase’s Real-Time ID technology to the Limelight Dynamic Site Platform, and lets companies take advantage of real-time data to target customers and prospects.

According to a recent national study conducted by Demandbase, corporate websites are second only to personal connections and referrals in generating new sales leads. Given that reality, it’s critical for organizations to make the most of their websites in the sales process, and that means using available data to tailor the site experience for different audiences. A static website can present a company’s basic information, but a dynamic one delivers content in a context that makes it valuable.

Yesterday’s announcement coincided with the start of the Eloqua Experience event in San Francisco, where Limelight and Demandbase showed off data-driven targeting with a product demo. Here’s a look at how a website might appear to four different visitors. In the fictitious example above, the four personalities are as follows: Minnie has provided some generic information about herself, Anon’s presumed location is known because of his IP address, Bill is self-identified as a CEO and fits one of the company’s target audiences, and Pierre is an existing buyer, and a repeat site visitor.