Webtrends just announced that they have enhanced their video tracking metrics to enable advertisers to better measure the results of (and return on) their video advertising. This is good news as video advertising increases in importance. And, it is critical to those of us who will depend upon video advertising to support our product.

Our hope is to enable you to watch your favorite YouTube and Hulu videos on your TV. And - we want to make this VERY affordable (as free as possible). In order to do that, we plan to support the service with unobtrusive ads that run while you are searching for your video. In order for any advertisers to be interested, we will need to supply these critical metrics as to how much of the ad you saw, and if you expressed interest in learning more about the product. Webtrends and other services such as Visible Measures make reporting on video ads as data rich as static web ads - a critical piece to this developing medium.

So - as we continue on our quest to get your favorite videos off your computer and onto your TV, it is good to know that the supporting industries are evolving as well. Spread the news to potential advertisers - we still have some ad space available on ActiveTV!

So according to Adweek, some Tivo owners can finally watch YouTube on their TV! Bummer that it is only thousands that have a powerful enough box to do so. Tivo despirately needs to embrace Broadband Video as its increasing relevance may negate the need for Tivo altogether (with sites like Hulu and ABC.com). This is a step in the right direction -- as I mentioned in my post on Broadband's Abundance.

We want to take it much farther than the thousands who will be able to watch YouTube on their TV via their Tivo -- we want to open up not just YouTube, but also Hulu and ESPN.com and CBS.com and CNN.com to the millions (over 5 million) of folks who have PS3s or Xbox360s -- so they can watch these Internet-based videos on their TVs. I mentioned this on my last blog post where I invited PS3 owners and Xbox360 owners to try out our Beta. The offer is still open - email me at tracy@themediamall.com.

As always - would love to hear your thoughts!

We have had great feedback from our DSM-520 users, and we want to offer ActiveTV to many more users!  We are completing development on a UPnP version of ActiveTV...it will first be available for the PS3, XBox 360, and HP MediaSmart TV.  It will offer a limited but powerful set of video content sources, including Hulu, YouTube, CBS.com, CNN.com, ESPN.com, and Netflix.  WOW.  And -- to kick it all off, we are offering a FREE Beta version for folks who have one of these game consoles/TVs.  If you are interested in participating in our Beta, you can subscribe to this blog (we will be offering all subscribers the Beta version) or drop me an email at tracy@themediamall.com and I'll make sure you get on the Beta list!  It is still about 2 months out, but it is something to look forward to this fall!