Videoplaza, the video ad server startup, has moved swiftly to make its Monetizer AdPlayer product ready for the iPad’s European invasion.
That’s because it now supports HTML5, enabling videos to be monetized on Apple’s tablet. Remember the iPad doesn’t support Adobe’s Flash Video, the current industry-wide standard for delivering online video, so it’s the HTML5 way or the highway as far as Apple is concerned.
And specifically, Monetizer AdPlayer now offers a plug-in for Brightcove, which has already rolled out a HTML5-friendly version targeting the iPad – see the video demo below.
In a blog post, Alfred Ruth, Co-founder & VP Products at Videoplaza, notes that HTML5’s video support and adoption is still in its early days, with the industry yet to settle on one specific video codec or support DRM, which is required by sectors of the video publishing industry.
It’s going to be really interesting to follow the pace of HTML5 adoption. The standard is not finalized yet, and the technology is obviously in it’s infancy. There’s an underlying conflict going on about which video codec that should be used (H.264, Ogg Theora or WebM).
Further, HTML5 is also suffering from the same problem that a couple of years ago was partly responsible for holding Flash back: lack of support for DRM.
In other words, it’s not a real standard yet despite the potential advantages it has in the long run. What’s required is an evangelist to push the burgeoning standard, and Ruth notes that Steve Jobs isn’t a bad candidate.
While Flash ultimately overcame this and became the de-facto standard it is today, it could probably have turned out completely different if services like Youtube, Sky [UK] and M6 [FR] would have picked another technology. In the same way, HTML5 is probably going to need some high profile evangelists and migrations of major services in order to become mainstream and get content owners across the globe to recognize the standard and allow their content to be streamed in this way.
But then again, speaking of evangelists, Steve Jobs and Apple has already made a good start driving HTML5 adoption. And he’s not alone.
Videoplaza, headquartered in Stockholm, targets broadcasters, newspaper publishers and other premium media owners and has to-date partnered with several leading European media companies including Sweden’s TV4 Group, Denmark’s Ekstrabladet, La Vanguardia in Spain, and myvideorights.com and Incisive Media in the UK (see TCE coverage).