News Bytes: September 10

YouTube: 5 Billion Served
via Portfolio.com: Tech Observer

Sam Gustin writes: Google's YouTube is absolutely crushing the competition in Web video, according to new data from market research firm comScore.In July, Web users watched a staggering 5 billion videos on Google sites, (YouTube accounts for 98 percent of Google's video traffic), earning it 44 percent market share.The next closest competitor was Fox Interactive Media, which came in at a paltry 3.9 percent market share. Microsoft and Yahoo's video offerings earned 2.5 and 2.4 percent market share, respectively. Hulu, the ad-supported Web video partnership between Fox and NBC earned an anemic 1 percent market share.In terms of unique viewers, YouTube was dominant as well, drawing over 90 million unique visitors for the month. The next closest was Fox Interactive Media, with 54 million visitors, most of whom were watching videos on MySpace, the social network.Perhaps the most telling stat involves YouTube's stickiness, which is driven by the social nature of the site that no competitor has been able to replicate.YouTube users watched an average of 55 videos in July -- no other Web video service had users who watched more than 12 videos on average.

@ CTIA: Sony Pictures Integrates Dynamic Ad Service On Minisode Network
via mocoNews.net

Sony (NYSE: SNE) Pictures Television is revamping its mobile advertising capabilities with a new service that will enable the entertainment giant to automatically insert ads, a first of its kind for WAP sites in the United States, according to the company. The company's Minisode Network, which is on the carrier decks at Sprint (NYSE: S) and Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ), also operates off deck through the support of ads. "None of these video-on-demand services have the ability to dynamically serve ads," said Eric Berger, SVP of mobile entertainment. "If you want to have video-on-demand with advertising you have to do what we call stitch the advertising onto the video."

After a sponsorship campaign ends, Sony and its competitors have had to pull down the content, edit new ads into video clips, re-encode the video and post it all over again. The new system, which is powered by Mobixell Networks, will stick the video advertisement into existing clips as a pre-roll, post-roll or interstitial ad with no downtime. Berger: "It enables us to move in and out of campaigns more quickly and put more advertising partners through this service so they can deliver more impressions." Sony's Minisode Network uses pre-roll ads before each clip and uses just one sponsorship at a time. The company hopes its ad-supported network will flourish outside the carriers' walled gardens, but Berger admits there are shortcomings: "The challenge for us is the business doesn't really scale today." Mobile ads aren't simply given away, but get bundled into packages at the company's ad unit.

@ CTIA: Verizon Wireless Roundup: V CAST Video Service Expands With 13 New Content Providers
via mocoNews.net

Verizon (NYSE: VZ) added a whole mess of new video content to its V CAST Video service today from at least 13 content providers. The carrier added the following channels to its programming line-up: Tuned In from 60Frames; Comedy Time Latino from Comedy Time; TLC, Animal Planet, Planet Green and Discovery Kids from Discovery Communications; ES Musica and Rock On: Altitude from GoTV Networks; the G4 Channel from Comcast (NSDQ: CMCSA)

Entertainment Group's G4; The WB Channel from Warner Bros. Television Group; SayHeyHey from SayHeyHey.com; the Relix Channel from Zenbu Media; HGTV and Food Network from Scripps (NYSE: SSP) Networks; and DC Comics and Scooby-Doo & Friends from Warner Bros. Digital Distribution. (Release).

Samsung Considering Acquisition of SanDisk
via MediaBytes with Shelly Palmer » MediaBytes

SAMSUNG announced that it is considering an acquisition of SANDISK (NASD: SNDK), which could adversely affect TOSHIBA, whose chip plants are co-financied by SanDisk. WIth competition looking to take over, the ties between SanDisk and Toshiba would inevitably erode and leave Toshiba without one of its biggest clients in its core business, memory chips. Things could be bleak for Toshiba if the alliance goes through, however, anti-trust violations could keep the deal from going through.

Family Guy Creator Launches Cavalcade of Comedy
via NewTeeVee

Seth MacFarlane kicked off his long-anticipated, multimillion-dollar, Google AdSense-distributed Cavalcade of Comedy animated series today. Two new shorts are live on both MacFarlane’s sethcomedy.com and on the show sponsor Burger King’s YouTube channel.

Fans of Family Guy will be pleased to know that MacFarlane’s new apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, featuring much of the same kind of pop-culture-filled humor that made MacFarlane a frat house name.

As we’ve written before, Cavalcade is unique in the web video world in that it will be distributed via Google AdSense to sites that are demographically aligned. There will be 50 episodes with “new Cavalcade shorts every week.”

Vid-Biz: DTV, Motherhood, Verizon
via NewTeeVee
DTV Switch Tested in Wilmington, N.C.; town shuts off analog system in a test for the larger, national switch in February. (The Wall Street Journal)

ABC Orders 13 Episodes of In the Motherhood; the former web series has been in development at ABC since the spring; casting is still not in place for the series. (TVWeek)

Verizon Offering More TV Shows; wireless network to get full-length episodes of programs from NBC, MTV, HGTV and more. (Multichannel News)

Global Media Exchange Acquires inDplay; division of Ascent Marketing buys online content licensing marketplace inDplay, which was backed by Google CEO Eric Schmidt. (release)

Disney Serves Up 186.7 Million Streams in July; record month tied to web originals featuring High School Musical, Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Bros. (Variety)

U.S. Open Online Attracts 300,000 Users
via NewTeeVee

Roughly 300,000 users watched the U.S. Open’s final men’s tennis match online this past Monday, according to numbers from CBS Sports. The rain-delayed match was live-streamed on both CBSSports.com and the USOpen.org, where each of those 300,000 users watched approximately 49 minutes of video for a total of 243,000 hours of video.

While those aren’t Tiger Woods numbers, they aren’t too shabby given that they didn’t have a similar brand-name star (easy, Federer fans, it’s just the truth). And since the game was on a Monday at 5 p.m. ET, it’s probably 300,000 more than they would have gotten had the network only showed it on TV. And it looks like CBS is just getting warmed up when it comes to sports online.

CBS Sports announced yesterday that it will live stream all of the 17 scheduled home college football games of the Southeastern Conference on CBSSports.com. This is the first time college football fans can watch games online for free. Coverage “kicks off” on Sept. 13 as Georgia takes on USC.

Sports is only beginning to spread its wings online, and it will be big business as more online options open up. The NFL started streaming games last week, ESPN will start live streaming Major League Baseball games, and the NBA is in negotiations to stream local games.