AP Online Video Network debuts improved player

Cory Bergman December 12th, 2006

If you check out a video clip on one of AP’s nearly 1,500 OVN affiliates, you’ll find a revamped player that looks suspiciously like MSN Video (see below). It should, as MSN is driving the technology and the advertising behind AP’s OVN. The new player features larger graphics and a “top video” tab, as well as an email sharing tool. “We now have twice as many videos in each section,” said Jessica Arnold, AP’s director of online video operations. “We’ve found that people tend to stay on the tab they entered on, so we want to surface as much content as possible on that first page.” And coming in January, AP will beta test a new feature that will allow affiliates to upload local video to their own OVN player. The new feature is scheduled to roll out nationwide in March.

8 Comments Add your own

  • 1. Irwin Fletcher  |  December 12th, 2006 at 2:43 pm

    How about they actually start having VIDEO instead of the newspaper version of video… which seems to be still images that float around and have boring voices provide narration..

    When I click on VIDEO, I EXPECT VIDEO…

    The AP product is awful… which I guess is good news for folks running TV websites…

  • 2. Dan  |  December 12th, 2006 at 10:54 pm

    I prefer the more real approach without the heavy
    handed editing local and national TV does.
    They give us 5 or 10 seconds of stuff that really
    could last longer. You can always fast forward
    through the AP stuff if you want.
    Irwin just wants to be spoon fed news, with the story
    angle decided on my editors. He can always get that
    on the evening news on nets or local.
    This AP video gives us a choice, which I like.

    And it works on my Intel Mac. Imagine that :)

    Dan

  • 3. Dan  |  December 12th, 2006 at 10:59 pm

    And another thing…
    from the sales perspective, people are going to be
    looking at that AP video web box longer, with the
    ads on the bottom. People will look down at that stuff
    and even click on it I bet. Contrast that to the sites that
    put a commercial before or after a clip that you HAVE
    to sit through. I like seeing ads around the video clips,
    not in them. Plus, people can clip on the ads that sit
    below a story and go buy something. You can’t do that
    with ads in the video box with the story.

    Dan

  • 4. Barney Lerten  |  December 13th, 2006 at 12:31 am

    We have the AP videos play on our site, and they include pre-roll ads - sometimes even 30 secs., while we keep our native pre-rolls to 15 secs max - that’s long enough! (We get their videos via hosted Customnews but didn’t go with their full-meal system, at least yet, for various reasons I now dimly recall, including requirements about how to promote their video segments out front, when we want to stress the LOCAL videos of course. When they go to this local video option, it’ll be worth looking at. Can’t ever afford to sit on one solution in today’s Web climate;-)

  • 5. Irwin Fletcher  |  December 13th, 2006 at 9:42 am

    No, I dont want to be spoon fed..

    I just want actual VIDEO.. not video still images labeled as video…

  • 6. Safran  |  December 13th, 2006 at 1:14 pm

    Upfront Disclosure: I consulted on this project. But I only consult on projects that fascinate me.

    Now, I will say that I like that the AP’s video project gives sites the impetus to Think Video. Can they improve the quality of those stories? Absolutely? Are they trying? Yes. Bottom line: There are now hundreds of sites that have video that didn’t, and I consider that a huge step.

    I’m very happy to see the Flash implementation, and especially happy to see the Nav bar switch to a non-traditional listing. Where it used to be a “Nation/World/Business/Blah/Blah” format, they now lead with Top Video. There are limited choices up top, and ShowBiz, SciTech and Caught on Tape are among them. That’s a BIG leap for a traditional org like the AP.

    It’s absolutely important that they move forward with local news uploads now.

  • 7. mustafe  |  April 5th, 2007 at 11:54 pm

    gfgfdghhh

  • 8. Sam  |  January 18th, 2008 at 7:46 am

    Wow, thanks for the excellent information!

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