When I interviewed Kyte CMO Gannon Hall last month, he described Kyte as, "a universal media platform." Today Kyte has announced several updates to their media platform. The most notable update is the launch of advertising within the content stream. Two types of video ads are available on Kyte. The first is an overlay ad that covers 1/3 of the window and the other is an ad display during media uploads. The media upload ad would remain in place as long as it takes to upload the media - providing a strong point for messaging.

Kristen notes that these new ad products will work well with the upcoming launch of an internal ad server which will allow companies the ability to run their own ads.

Other updates include a clickable logo which allows for in-video branding, the ability to switch video channels within the player and server enhancements to make the Kyte player more responsive. 

Here’s an example of Kyte’s video ad product on the left and the ability to show an ad during uploads on the right:

More CN Coverage:
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Kyte’s particular brand of marketing has been to partner with celebrities and other influencers for using its self-publishing platform as a way to better connect with fans and viewers through live and scheduled programing. This process as a whole has been made easier with popular Nokia n95 cell phones and similar mobile devices that enable live video streaming to the Web. Kyte has been making some changes to better reflect the type of service it’s promoting, leveraging its increasing ease of use (with the right tools) and celeb endorsements to boot.

Kyte’s new types of advertising embrace the in-show overlay format, which will now display over the bottom 1/3 of the viewer canvas. There are also show production ads, which act as splash pages to be used in other video content as a form of cross-promotion or merely another advertising option within Kyte’s platform. True, overlay ads have been around for Web-based video programming for some time, but Kyte’s somewhat niche sector in the online video market has afforded it some wiggle room in regards to its ability to attract the type of brands that would want to promote themselves on Kyte’s user-generated programming.

The show production ads, however, go hand in hand with another upcoming feature from Kyte: an internal ad server for the support of brands that would like to insert their own ads from their inventory. What this will do is allow brands to directly cross promote their own Kyte content (or other content/events/promotions) within existing Kyte content, offering brands more control and making the effect of an owned Kyte channel more appropriate for individual brand’s marketing purposes. With that, Kyte will also need to improve its analytics offering. Currently, premium partners can take advantage of Kyte’s basic advertising options, but Kyte doesn’t have any robust ad analytics and behavioral reports just yet.

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Earlier this week I wrote about my thoughts on selecting the right online video partners for CN. In the post I noted that I left out "live" video players including Kyte, Qik and Flixwagon. The next day I received an email from one of the execs at Kyte who wanted to chat with me about what Kyte has to offer and their placement within my post. This afternoon I spoke for well over an hour with Gannon Hall, Kyte CMO to find out what’s new at Kyte.

Gannon explained that the best way to think of Kyte is as, "a universal media platform." While they provide live video streaming with some Nokia phones, it’s just one piece of their platform. Kyte can do video uploads, live streaming video, webcam video, etc. We looked at the client they speak about most, 50cent. At the time we viewed his community site, there were 952 people actively watching a video in his Kyte channel. This is not people viewing the player, Gannon says this is active engagement. As of the time of writing this post, it was down to 888 - simply amazing.

I asked Gannon who he would consider their biggest competitor. He said Brightcove and that they are winning deals away from Brightcove. He said they are like a "Brightcove 2.0" as they have many social media tools including a strong Facebook player and can do multimedia chat.

They are working with a variety of consumer and b2b brands and will announce more partnerships soon. The real strength of using Kyte is that your fans can pick up your Kyte channel and place it on their page, blog, or social network. When they embed the Kyte player, it retains your branding. This is certainly more powerful than a simple YouTube embed and the Kyte channel is always updated with your latest videos. From my perspective the embed and "channel" concepts are the real strength of what the Kyte platform offers.

I asked Gannon his thoughts about the notion of paying video talent for using Kyte or any other video platform. He said they have never done it and never will. They don’t need to he added.

As I add a video channel to the new CenterNetworks, Kyte could play a role in the strategy. I still don’t see us using it for the executive interviews or the funny videos, but for event coverage, it could be the perfect fit. The ability to feed into a channel is key for that type of video. It allows for easy posting and viewing without the need to create multiple content posts.

Check out my video interview with Kyte co-founder Daniel Graf at SXSW and 10 Great and Fun Mobile Video and Photo Apps.

More CN Coverage:
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Well-known […]

Mobile photo and video are game changers for individuals and news organizations. As more mobile devices (and carriers) are supported, this market is going to skyrocket. Here are 10 apps that are in the mobile photo and video space. Some are well known and some might be new to you, in any event, give them all a try! And as always add your own faves in the comments.

Flixwagon

The Flixwagon app allows you to stream video live online. Their player is the best currently and Flixwagon recently worked with MTV on their Choose or Lose campaign by having reporters all over the country streaming in live video using a mobile handset. Currently Flixwagon works mainly with Nokia handsets but also has some support via a Java client. Flixwagon is also partnering with a variety of conferences to get live streaming from conference attendees. They most recently had many mobile devices at SXSW. (our Flixwagon coverage)

Qik

Qik (pronounced Quick) is probably the most buzzed live video app currently on the market. Videoblogger Robert Scoble and SEO Jason Calacanis are heavy users of the app. If you have a Nokia mobile that is supported, you can stream live video onto the Web using the Qik app. Created videos are also stored for later viewing. Justin.tv is a Qik partner. (our Qik coverage)

Kyte

Why do I like Kyte? Simple, it works with my mobile. I can shoot a video, and then email it into Kyte and it appears in moments. When I upload the same video to YouTube it always gives me an error. While on my device it’s not live, it’s as close to live as possible. There is a live version of the app as well, again for Nokia devices. Kyte can also create shows based on photos as well. Nokia is actually an investor in Kyte. (our Kyte coverage)

JuiceCaster

JuiceCaster allows you to easily upload videos and pictures from your mobile to your JuiceCaster account along with a player for your blog and embed options into Facebook and MySpace. Most of the video I checked out was very, very grainy (a dog looked like a sheep) but the photos look better. JuiceCaster also allows you watch videos on your mobile.

Movino

Movino can help you setup live mobile video streaming onto your blog or Web site. It appears to support 3G and WiFi and a variety of handsets. If you use the Java client, there is no sound. What makes Movino different is that it’s all open source so you can grab the code and edit where needed. Movino was originally developed as a course project at Abo Akademi University. The developers note that the course has completed and future development may be limited.

mywaves

mywaves is a video content site. You can select from thousands of videos and send them directly to your mobile for later viewing. You can setup an auto channel which will send the videos to your mobile when they match your criteria. In their gallery it seems most people want videos sent to them of women in bikinis and lingerie.

GoTV

Want to watch TV on your mobile? GoTV offers about 10 channels of a variety of TV genres. The company is based in California and most of the content is originally produced.

ITookThisOnMyPhone

This service with the very long name lets you create online photo galleries based on the pictures you take on your mobile. Using the ITookThisOnMyPhone app, images are automatically uploaded to the site and after permissions are applied, the images are available for viewing. The service currently works on Blackberry and Windows Mobile.

Phoja

Phoja helps you find answers to your questions using photos. If you take a photo of something that you need help identifying (say a shirt someone is wearing, you want to know the designer), the Phoja community will help identify the product in the photo. They define the service as a "social photo discussion" and there’s a Digg ratings model which pushes popular photos to the frontpage.

Radar

You take a photo, upload it to Radar, it’s sent immediately to your friends and family and they can comment on it and the comments are sent back to you. It looks like photos are sent to your friends computers not their mobile devices. They have also partnered with Big Brother so you can watch video from inside the Big Brother house.

Check out the printer we used for our business cards:

Today is BarCampNYC in Brooklyn and I will be attempting to do some live interviews and coverage during the day. If you are at the event and would like to contribute your videos to the kyte channel below, send me an email for the instructions. Until I actually make it to the location, the player below will be blank. First videos should be live by 11:30AM Eastern. I can’t guarantee this works as it is our first time using Kyte for this purpose, but we will give it ye olde college try. I will update this post during the day with video updates.

Check out the printer we used for our business cards:

After my post about Kyte yesterday, the team asked me to swing by their booth. Let me just say that what they showed me was impressive. They showed me their 2-minute full Facebook application along with the one-minute embed option. The system works with mobile phones, webcams, and saved videos. We were able to take my mobile phone, create a video, email it to Kyte and it was online immediately in my channel. The live features work mainly with the Nokia N95 (Nokia is an investor in Kyte).

With all of the new live video services hitting the airwaves recently, I asked co-founder Daniel Graf about the differences between Kyte and Seesmic, Qik and Flixwagon. Here’s his video response:

Check out the printer we used for our business cards: