The player: Anthony Bontrager, president of 1Cast, an online video news aggregation service.
The play: Tapping into the growing online news aggregation trend, 1Cast is working with news outlets to serve up their video reports in a targeted fashion on the Web. The 1Cast service lets users select news stories of personal interest to follow and then creates a video playlist that is updated throughout the day. “You don’t have to go clip by clip,” Mr. Bontrager explained. “You can just let it play or you can lean forward and see the first few or link to the others.” The site launched last year and will emerge from its beta test in the third quarter of 2009. 1Cast makes money by selling ads against the videos it delivers. The company splits ad revenue with its programming providers. Advertisers using 1Cast include Infiniti, Visa, Chili’s, Woolite and Lysol. Marketers can target by demographic, and the site is earning CPMs in the high double digits, Mr. Bontrager said.
The pitch: While RSS feeds, Google News Alerts and social media services are popular ways to find news, Mr. Bontrager is aiming to be the one-stop source for curating video reports online. He’s also betting on 1Cast’s three-screen approach–consumers can access the service online, on mobile phones like the iPhone and Google Android and on TV sets by year-end.
In the mix: 1Cast competes with popular online news sites like CNN.com, ABCNews.com and FoxNews.com, as well as news aggregation services like Google News. 1Cast news providers include CNBC, Reuters, BBC, Bloomberg, Associated Press, Dow Jones and others.
The money guys: Wireless pioneer Craig McCaw’s Eagle River Holdings has invested an undisclosed amount of money in 1Cast.
The pros: The service so far is posting high engagement numbers. Mr. Bontrager said 1Cast app users on mobile phones are accessing the service about five times a day and spending eight to 10 minutes per visit.
The cons: Building usage of the service is tough, especially in a crowded news environment.
Background: Mr. Bontrager earned a degree in business administration and finance from Seattle University. He previously worked at IPTV company Broadstream Communications, where he made deals with media companies including NBC Universal, Disney, Starz and Discovery. He also worked for a division of Fisher Communications.