Smartclip Standardizes on Akamai’s Open Media Player for Largest German Ad Network

CAMBRIDGE, MA.- Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM), the leader in powering rich media, dynamic transactions and enterprise applications online, today announced that smartclip AG, the largest video ad network in Germany, has standardized on Akamai’s Media Player Framework for its online advertising customers.

With Akamai and smartclip, premium content owners and publishers can take advantage of turnkey solutions to deliver and monetize digital video content. The ability to offer these open standards to smartclip’s massive advertising network is expected to improved ad quality, increased publisher inventory and enhanced consumer experiences.

Smartclip offers advertisers and agencies television-like inventory and reach, exclusive premium video content, standardized technical ad formats with room for maximum creativity and detailed cross-publisher video ad reporting. Smartclip powers more than 100 million professional video views per month from partners across a variety of industries including major media companies offering content in areas like news, sports, entertainment, automotive and more.

“In today’s fragmented video market, there is a large amount of user-generated content with hundreds of different technical setups causing issues with inconsistent quality, brand control and copyright infringement,” said Jean-Pierre Fumagalli, CEO of smartclip. “We recognize the need for premium video inventory and standards as we are expanding rapidly into other European markets. Using open standards will help partners within our network considerably in growing their business.”

“The open standards provided through Akamai’s Media Framework allow for a massive inflow of media buying against rich media,” said Tim Napoleon, Chief Strategist for Digital Media at Akamai. “By utilizing an open source licensing model based on industry standard video formats, branded video players are easy to incorporate into commercial applications"

As online video syndication and distribution has matured, there are fundamental technology barriers to growth. Specifically, the lack of a standards-based approach to the video player application slows time to market and increases complexities around content syndication and revenue sharing between sites. To help address this challenge, Akamai, along with leading video technology platforms, advertising servers and online video solution providers, have launched OpenVideoPlayer.com. This online community initiative encourages a common approach to video player development, facilitates development of best practices for video player development, and encourages adoption of open standards within the online video advertising ecosystem.