Reality Digital Debuts Opus™, First Web-Services Platform for Monetizing User-Generated Content

October 2, 2006; 04:26 AM

Reality Digital, a leading digital media company, officially launched the first web-based services platform to monetize user-generated content (UGC) within an online business environment. Reality Digital Opus™ is a hosted, “white label” solution that enables businesses to quickly and affordably add a UGC and social network component to an existing website or to create a new UGC site. Customers including Atom Entertainment, Music Player Network and SPARQ Training have responded to the growth in online video and social networking, and contracted with Reality Digital to deploy Opus’ proven, transparent infrastructure model.

As a component-rich, enterprise platform, Opus includes: Opus AdCel™, the new patent-pending advertising overlay module; Opus Dashboard™, which provides administrative, screening and reporting tools for monitoring and monetizing content; mobile upload functionality; and other technologies for sharing, storing and managing digital content. Opus supports and scales to the most rigorous and dynamic of web communities or intensive video upload and sharing within a business context in real time. Business customers benefit from Opus’ completely transparent offering, which allows site customization that addresses individual needs, brands and vertical applications; end users enjoy the full UGC and social networking functionality they expect online. Reality Digital can launch the hosted platform in days, decreasing time-to-market without significant infrastructure investments; Opus’ low-tiered pricing model makes it easy to quickly realize new marketing tacks for building customer relationships.

Video advertising is revolutionized with the new Opus AdCel capability, a key component of the platform offering. Previously in beta, Opus AdCel is available to customers today and enables businesses to monetize content by associating specific elements of user-generated videos with the most relevant brands and advertisements. The feature identifies video via specific criteria, such as tags, words, phrases or clip length, and overlays a cell or branding bug that is relevant to the customer video. The result is a subtle, yet unavoidable, advertising experience for the viewer.

"Most critical to the advertising and marketing methodologies emerging in UGC today is the ability to support the monetization of videos without alienating the user base," said Michael Inouye, research analyst, In-Stat. "The integration of the social experience, video and 'subtle' advertising is a foundation for consumers to begin internalizing a brand or product, and that is very compelling to a UGC site. Approaches like Reality Digital's are most applicable to businesses that must balance top-line growth and the health of their online community."

AddictingClips™ (www.addictingclips.com) from Atom Entertainment, Inc. is an online destination for uploading and sharing video and animated content. Atom selected Reality Digital for its advanced technology and business-to-business focus.

“Atom Entertainment explored many infrastructure solutions for AddictingClips,” said Scott Roesch, vice president and general manager of Atom’s video services. “We decided on the Opus platform for its feature set, affordability and rapid time-to-market, which helped us get AddictingClips up and scaling quickly in a matter of months. Reality Digital’s technology was instrumental to our success.”

Customer Music Player Network announced the installation of Opus in conjunction with its vertical outlets, GuitarPlayerTV.com, BassPlayer.tv and KeyboardMag.tv. Music Player valued Reality Digital’s offering for its ability to take an existing community of like-minded individuals, i.e., musicians, and create an environment that fosters sharing in relation to a common interest. By using Reality Digital Opus™ Music Player will be up and running with the UGC site (www.GuitarPlayerTV.com/MyGPTV) in less than two weeks.

“Opus will become our real-time bulletin board. Our subscribers and readers are about to have a much easier way to connect with one another and will be able to share musical ideas and techniques. We feel, ultimately, this will be the best way to encourage collaboration on projects and leverage our brand as the epicenter of that community,” said Vicki Hartung, group publisher, Music Player Network.

The online training community, SPARQ, focuses on innovations in performance training. SPARQ Training (www.sparqtraining.com) connects high-school athletes, trainers and coaches with content, forums and features that are designed to help athletes improve their game and get noticed. In the “Locker Room,” users (athletes) upload their game performances and highlight reels to showcase their abilities. An upcoming “Training Room,” will feature video training programs, drills and content from SPARQ’s 500+ certified trainer network. The integration of a community-rich content and ratings section enables sparqtraining.com to create a more dynamic space for athletes to connect with each other and with the trainers who can help them maximize their performance.

“Reality Digital’s Opus technology has given athletes across the country the ability to showcase their skills and performances. It revolutionizes the way our network of trainers are able to provide valuable training programs and drills, in video form, to passionate athletes around the world,” said Ken Black, SPARQ vice president of Brand Marketing. “Video is the most compelling way to showcase performances and demonstrate training techniques, and Opus has created a simple and effective way for us to help athletes and trainers tell their own personal stories.”

“With over 15 years of digital asset management experience for Fortune 500 companies, the team at Reality Digital is in the best possible position to parlay our knowledge to address the challenges of monetizing consumer produced video,” said Cynthia Francis, chief executive officer, Reality Digital. “We have devised a simple and profitable business model for companies to leverage the explosive growth of user-generated video. This introduces new opportunities to help foster deeper, more intimate relationships between the business and their customers.”

About Opus:

Reality Digital Opus™ Platform

The Reality Digital Opus platform is a Digital Media Management Framework (DMMF) based on industry standards such as Microsoft COM and ASP, AJAX, SOAP, XML, JavaScript, HTTP and SMTP. It is an N-tier solution built upon Microsoft’s .NET Framework, Microsoft SQL Server and IIS 6. The architecture is separated into multiple physical tiers that include the application interface, business logic, asset repository and file type support.

About Reality Digital, Inc.

Reality Digital (www.realitydigital.com) is a software development company that enables businesses to enhance their online presence through the use of user-generated content (UGC) and social networking. Comprised of an executive team with over 15 years experience creating innovative video technologies for Fortune 500 companies, Reality Digital continues to leverage its knowledge and expertise in the UGC space by allowing businesses to build and maintain a constant dialogue with their customers.

Reality Digital Opus platform is a “white label” service that allows verticals, such as retail, real estate and entertainment to support UGC content through a hosted service. Web sites can create their own UGC site quickly, easily and cost effectively. Reality Digital’s customers include Atom Entertainment’s AddictingClips.com, SPARQTraining.com and others. For more information, visit www.realitydigital.com.