Mobile advertising is still in its infancy, but with smartphones and tablets on the upswing, the market is destined for rapid growth. Which is why Jumptap, a Limelight Networks partner, is bulking up on new ad services now. This week, the company announced the addition of video to the Jumptap Premium Ad Network. Limelight Networks will deliver that video for in-stream, pre-roll, mid-roll, and post-roll ads.

There are numerous stats illustrating the benefits of rich media advertising online, but publishers are only beginning to investigate how video can impact mobile advertising efforts. On the one hand, publishers want to monetize their content in every way possible. On the other hand, the technical and integration challenges are not insignificant. If big guys like MTV Networks have taken a careful and measured approach to mobile video, it suggests the industry as a whole is still trying to figure out a workable strategy for mobile delivery. The process isn’t getting any easier either. With a new handset launch or mobile OS update virtually every week, publishers have an exploding list of mobile platforms to contend with.

There is good news, however. Mobile video quality is improving by leaps and bounds, and the early pool of companies taking advantage of the new channel for advertising are getting access to consumers that their competitors are missing out on. As an example, if you’ve seen the app for The New York Times on the iPad, you know that one particular watch manufacturer has rich media ads plastered across every section of the online newspaper. No doubt the company’s competitors have not yet figured out how to integrate iPad advertising into their ad strategies. Score one for first-mover advantage.

For the partnership with Jumptap, Limelight Networks is pushing out mobile video that is automatically formatted for whatever device a consumer may be using. That doesn’t take away the challenge of managing complex advertising buys across multiple channels, but it does significantly reduce the technical headaches for companies ready to move forward with mobile video advertising. Since the mobile channel is only going to expand, that’s no small consideration. It may also be a good catalyst for more companies to jump in to the mobile fray.

Which is better at compressing video, H.264 or VP8? Some sites such as Quavlive offer comparisons. (Credit: Screenshot of Quavlive by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

If you’re deep in the media delivery business, chances are you’ve been following recent coverage of Google’s open-source WebM project. Announced in mid-May, the WebM project includes the VP8 video codec and Vorbis audio codec, both of which are available royalty-free. Debate is hot and heavy about the technical merits of VP8 compared to H.264, but plenty of people see potential in the open-source alternative. Given that potential, Limelight Networks is now supporting WebM/VP8 encoding for any customers interested in using it. Read on for more detail from Limelight Senior Director of System Engineering Wylie Swanson. There’s also great information available on the WebM project blog.

From Limelight’s Wylie Swanson:

Limelight Networks is pleased to announce support for WebM/VP8 encoding using our new Media Transcode platform. The WebM project was open-sourced just a few short weeks ago, and we are pleased to be able to incorporate support so quickly. WebM is an open, royalty-free, media file format, and is quickly becoming a hot topic on blogs and in the news. While the jury may still be out on how significant WebM is or will be, our customers can try it for themselves.

WebM includes:

• VP8, a promising new video codec that was released under a BSD-style, royalty-free license
• Vorbis, an already open source and broadly implemented codec
• A container format based on a subset of the Matroska media container

The team that created VP8 have been pioneers in video codec development for over a decade. VP8’s vision is to deliver high quality video while adapting to the varying processing and bandwidth conditions found on today’s broad range of web-connected devices. VP8’s bandwidth efficiency could mean lower serving costs for content publishers and higher quality video for end-users.

Last week we hosted a webinar with Streaming Media that included commentary from both Limelight Networks and MTV Networks on successful mobile strategies. While you’ll have to view the event yourself to catch up on everything that was shared (webinar archived for 90 days), we thought we’d post a few nuggets here for your reading pleasure. Note, as we’ve done in the past, we’ll also post follow-up answers here shortly to questions that didn’t get addressed during the webinar Q&A session.

MTV Networks on Strategies for Mobile Video

• What’s the best way to start planning your mobile strategy?
  Run the numbers. Economic modeling will give you a good sense of what content delivery prices are reasonable and sustainable for the mobile services you want to offer.
• Live video or on-demand?
  The overwhelming majority of mobile video is delivered through an on-demand model. That doesn’t mean live streaming isn’t an option, but the logistics are more difficult, and the process is more expensive.
• Mobile site or mobile app?
  The answer depends on your use case.  A mobile site is less expensive, but an app gives you better content protection, and better control over branding.
• How do you show success?
  User reviews are a good measure of how well your mobile video is faring. Positive reviews drive higher traffic, which also means more money in subscription fees and advertising dollars.

Congratulation to Limelight Networks customer Imavex on winning a 2010 MIRA award for New Media Excellence and Innovation. Imavex beat out several worthy competitors including the Indy racing site IndyCar.com, ExactTarget, and OnCars.com among others. We profiled Imavex here earlier in the year, covering the company’s STREAMOTOR service for mobile video marketing. In short, STREAMOTOR builds on a Limelight Networks API to allow car dealerships anyone to extend direct marketing efforts to the mobile arena. As an example, car dealerships are using it to send direct-to-customer videos that are formatted and delivered automatically to mobile devices. They’re like personalized video voicemails, and an excellent way to strengthen relationships with existing customers and prospective buyers.

Congratulations, Imavex team! And congratulations to the Limelight REACH team for enabling the STREAMOTOR mobile service.

It’s official. Limelight Networks has closed on our acquisition of EyeWonder. And if you’re wondering what that means, the result is that we now have expanded capabilities in online monetization through innovative, targeted advertising solutions. In short, we’ve got a really cool new interactive ad platform and ad formats to offer.

As background, the team from EyeWonder specializes in developing interactive digital advertising and has over a decade of experience in creating and optimizing the effectiveness of online ad campaigns. With recent shifts in where content consumption occurs, we saw an opportunity to combine their expertise with our world-class delivery services. Content is everywhere now, on every Internet-connected device, and by using our combined company strengths, we can help publishers, advertisers, and agencies capitalize on that trend by capturing and engaging audiences.

If you’re not familiar with EyeWonder already, take a few minutes to browse through the EyeWonder site. The section with work samples showcases some truly innovative campaigns. (EyeWonder has direct relationships with more than 800 creative, interactive, and media buying agencies worldwide.) Favorite samples here include the decorate-your-own-cookie interactive ad for Sprint, the Jackson Five Holiday album special with embedded sample tracks for Amazon, and the OneRepublic album teaser with embedded music video for Target.

Need more proof of how complex the mobile ecosystem has grown? Take the information released this week by AdMob. Although the data is skewed by where AdMob has highest customer traction, it does a fantastic job of emphasizing the number of variables involved in delivering mobile content. It’s a number that has grown significantly even since last fall. For example, AdMob points out that last September it received 96% of its Android traffic from only two handsets. Today, eleven different Android devices account for that same percentage.

The world isn’t only made up of Android devices either. Consider the number of mobile operating systems available, and then tack on other factors that vary from handset to handset: screen size, screen resolution, browser support, codec support. The list goes on. If you’re a content publisher, do you want to have to manage for all of those variables? Do you want to stay awake at night wondering if your content is loading on Johnny’s new Microsoft Kin? Remember, the smartphone boom is still young, and tablet computing has just gone through a rebirth. Mobile content delivery isn’t going to get any easier.

We often talk about the benefits of our CDN services with regard to delivery performance and cost savings. But there’s another important metric that is often understated: energy efficiency. The McKinsey Institute reported in 2008 that most companies only utilize 30% of their IT infrastructure capacity. That’s a lot of wasted power.

Limelight CDN services offer several advantages: the ability to virtualize storage containers for maximum efficiency, intelligent software for resource allocation, and the ability to minimize the number of servers required for high performance content delivery through the use of our lightning-fast fiber network. Why create waste by over-investing in small-scale corporate infrastructure? There really are efficiencies of scale to be gained by outsourcing. Resources that aren’t used to full capacity can be shared with a neighbor. That’s good not just for the company bottom line, but for the environment.

Other green Limelight Networks facts:

• We’ve reduced power consumption of our server components by over 60% since December 2006
• We’ve increased the throughput efficiency of our software by over 800% since December 2006
• We’ve deployed EnergyStar-approved enterprise servers and employee workstations, and we’ve established aggressive stand-by, power-off, and energy consumption policies on those machines, and attached components such as monitors, printers, and networked photocopiers

There are also broader benefits afforded by Limelight digital delivery, like the ability to do away with CDs, DVDs, and packaging materials. Bits and bytes take up a lot less space than physical goods. Not only do we operate under our own code of environmental responsibility, but we can help our customers go greener too.

Happy Earth Day.

There’s still no good definition for cloud computing, but an awful lot of people are spending (and making) an awful lot of money on it. A new quarterly report out by GigaOM Pro lists increases in data center spending, networking gear investments, and money spent on introducing new cloud services. So what’s the deal? How come we can’t define this thing yet?

If you think back to earlier in the decade, buzzwords like grid computing and thin clients were making the rounds. However, the focus for both was entirely IT-driven. In contrast, today’s cloud has a public-facing front. Consumers use cloud services all the time - from photo storage sites, to music streaming services, to online collaboration tools. Maybe it’s the consumer adoption of the “cloud” that has given the term and trend such significance. Not only are IT folks on board for the increased efficiencies that come with cloud computing, but consumers see the value in cloud services, which in turn means that businesses are latching on to the cloud to create new revenue opportunities.

This brings us to a new dilemma. Do we need to segment the cloud? Should there be a cloud, and also a cloud behind the cloud? A cloud of Flickr, Google Docs, and Web services, and a cloud of supporting infrastructure and network intelligence? If so, is it possible to draw a clear line where one begins and the other ends? Or do the definitions remain… cloudy?

There aren’t a lot of answers yet, but the market is starting to figure out what questions to ask. Meanwhile the cloud continues to grow.

We’re at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show this week, and yesterday we joined DirecTV in a joint demo to show off Adobe’s new HTTP Dynamic Streaming technology. It combines the benefits of streaming with the benefits of HTTP delivery, all wrapped up in one neat package.

Adobe hasn’t officially launched HTTP streaming yet (part of Flash Player 10.1), but a few of us have had a chance to work with the technology in advance of general availability. The addition of HTTP to Flash delivery means we can now take advantage of both adaptive bit rate streaming and new content caching opportunities. Here’s what that means for content producers:

• The highest quality video playback, even when users are viewing a video at different connection speeds
• More consistent video performance with dynamic delivery adjustments based on changing last-mile conditions
• Delivery to users even behind a firewall

It’s worth noting that Limelight Networks supports standards-based HTTP streaming (i.e. open technology), and currently has the largest available capacity for Flash streaming of any CDN service. As a content provider, DirecTV also has some cool things planned with the Adobe platform. NFL Sunday Ticket, anyone? It’s not just on your TV anymore…

We’ve all heard the headlines. We’ve nearly depleted our supply of IPv4 addresses, and Internet Armageddon is just around the corner. We may run out of V4 addresses as early as the end of this year or early 2011. Well now there’s a bit of good news. IPv6 traffic has increased to a measurable one percent of all Internet traffic. That may not sound like a lot, but it represents significant growth in a short period of time. Arbor Networks registered IPv6 traffic at just .002 percent in 2008.

There is also a way to accelerate further growth, and it’s a trend that’s already started to gain traction. The major ISPs and content delivery providers have to get on board with the IPv6 transition. Our content delivery services at Limelight Networks are fully IPv6-enabled, and as a result, major content customers like Netflix are relying on us for IPv6 migrations. Comcast has also been aggressive, and is starting an IPv6 trial with customers next month.

It’s worth noting that IPv6 is not just an issue for ISPs and major content providers. For corporate America, there are two main challenges with the depletion of V4 addresses. First is address management, which grows increasingly complicated as you deal with limited address resources. That issue goes away with the ocean of V6 addresses available. Second is the challenge of making sure site content and applications don’t get broken in network address translation (NAT). As more NAT devices are put in place throughout the Internet, there are more possible points of failure for applications that require end-to-end transparency. Think e-commerce in particular.

We’re just scratching the service with IPv6 here, but we’ll continue to cover it in more depth in the coming months. Any specific questions, concerns? Drop a note in the comments section.