The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

TriVision Studios and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC have had a continuous relationship since 2008 when TriVision first took part in covering the Children’s Songbook performance at the U.S. premiere of the exhibition Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul. Since then, TriVision has worked closely with the National Gallery of Art in several projects that included video production, translation, design and marketing services.

TriVision led the promotional campaign for the Afghanistan Exhibition that took place during the Summer of 2008 by target marketing to the Afghan communities at large, in order to inform them about the U.S. tour of these extraordinary artifacts that were uncovered in modern-day Afghanistan. TriVision also created ads for newspapers and promoted the exhibition online through video and flyers.

Later, TriVision provided video production for other important exhibitions that took place at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, which included the Pompeii and the Roman Villa in October 2008 and The Sacred Made Real: Spanish Painting and Sculpture in February 2010. The footage TriVision captured at each exhibition was later edited into a 4-5 minute high-impact video highlighting the exhibits.  In addition, the Spanish Exhibition, which featured art depicting icons of the Christian faith and relevant religious figures from Spain's history, was condensed into a 15 second spot and later aired on PBS.

To view the highlight video clip produced by TriVision, please click on the video thumbnail above.

His Excellency Ambassador Said Tayeb Jawad

On September 22, 2010, the tenure for His Excellency Said Tayeb Jawad ended as the Ambassador of Afghanistan in the United States. Ambassador Jawad, who performed seven years of service from December 2003 until September 2010, has done much to make the Embassy of Afghanistan in the U.S. the most successful Afghan mission abroad, as well as one of the most responsive embassies in Washington, D.C., in spite of limited resources. In addition to working with leaders and lawmakers, serving the Afghan community at large, and maintaining a high profile in the international media, the embassy has managed over 180 high-profile and prolific presidential, ministerial, and parliamentary visits.

TriVision Studios recently designed and developed the official website for the ambassador, ambassadorjawad.com. This website is an online resource for links and information about the work of the ambassador, including video clips, op-eds, speeches, interviews and more. The site also includes archives of articles and links to the latest news relating to Afghanistan, which will be regularly updated by TriVision.

The relationship between the Embassy of Afghanistan and TriVision has been ongoing since 2002, back when TriVision provided a nationwide Afghan-American community outreach campaign and documentation of President Hamid Karzai’s first visit to the United States. Since then, TriVision has actively provided services for the embassy, ranging from design, print and web to photography and video production.

TriVision congratulates the new Chargé d’ Affaires of the Embassy of Afghanistan, Mr. Ashraf Haidari and looks forward to continue providing services for the embassy and its staff, in addition to the now former Ambassador Jawad.

Why Netflix Has Already Won the Digital TV/Video War

How the Mail DVD Service Stole the Market from Cable and the Studios, Not to Mention Hulu, Apple, Google and Amazon

by Paul Verna, Adage.com

Now that premium entertainment is becoming easy to stream from web to TV, the race to monetize growing consumer demand is becoming fierce. The stakeholders include nearly the entire internet -- Google, Apple, Amazon, Hulu -- and nearly the entire entertainment industry -- NBC/Universal, News Corp, Disney, and soon, Sony, Viacom and Time Warner.

Unfortunately for them there's already a clear winner. Netflix. Here's why:

• The company built its business on DVD rentals by mail but realized early on it needed to diversify to accommodate shifting consumer behavior -- which it successfully achieved with its streaming offering: “Watch Instantly”.

• Over the past two years, Netflix has grown its subscriber base by 78% and its revenue by 54%, according to its recent earnings reports. These gains have come organically from steady quarter-to-quarter increments. The percentage of Netflix subscribers who stream video is growing even more dramatically. In Q2 2010, some 61% of subscribers used “Watch Instantly” for at least 15 minutes, compared with 55% in Q1 2010 and 37% in Q2 2009.

• Netflix understands that it needs to invest heavily in content acquisition to beef up its library of streaming titles. The company just cut a film licensing deal with Paramount, MGM and Lions Gate worth an estimated $200 million a year for five years. That sounds like a lot of money until you realize that Netflix spends about $600 million a year on postage. If it can shave off those costs by converting more of its customers to digital, it will increase its licensing war chest.

• Netflix has also been smart about partnering with makers of TVs, set-top boxes, video game consoles, Blu-ray players, tablets and smart phones -- not to mention Apple TV, which is essentially a competitor. The Netflix logo is ubiquitous on most of the major viewing platforms.

• Netflix is perceived as more of a movie brand than a TV brand, but this is starting to change thanks to CEO Reed Hastings' aggressive pursuit of licensing deals for back seasons of popular TV shows. Netflix is determined to pull the rug out from under Hulu in the TV space (at least when it comes to back catalog) and seems to have the right strategy to do so.

Compare this to how other companies are approaching the digital onrush.

Hulu. Hulu earns more revenue from online video advertising than any other site on the internet, according to eMarketer estimates. But its ad revenues still consistently fall short of analyst projections and the expectations of its owners.

Apple. Lowering the price of its Apple TV player to $99 and transitioning iTunes TV shows and movies from a download model to a rental/streaming model are good ideas. But it's hard to imagine massive numbers of people spending $99 on a separate gadget when they already own -- or plan to buy -- devices that enable them to watch online video (in other words, Netflix) on their flat screens for no additional cost, including game consoles, Blu-ray players and internet-connected TVs.

Google. The search giant has virtually owned user-generated video since 2006, when it purchased YouTube. The problem is user-generated video has proven very difficult to monetize. Will Google TV or a rumored YouTube premium HD subscription service help? It's too early to say.

Amazon. Amazon is reportedly considering adding a TV and movie subscription service along the lines of Netflix's “Watch Instantly”. Without knowing more about its offering, it's tough to say how Amazon stacks up against the others, but it's clear that Amazon is late to the party.

The Bottom Line: It will be years before TV and home movie viewing shift en masse from cable and broadcast to purely internet-based offerings. Until TV networks and movie studios start seeing dollar signs, they're not likely to make a critical mass of content available to digital video providers.

But with the advantage of having built and strengthened its user base for TV and Web platforms during the past few years, Netflix has placed newcomers at a critical disadvantage: The potential users of Hulu, Google/YouTube, Apple, and Amazon TV offering are -- for the most part -- already loyal Netflix users. And as long as Netflix continues to get the content licenses it needs to keep its users happy, their attention -- and dollars -- will continue to go to Netflix.

Story Courtesy of Adage.com

Google Instant Changes Game for Brands

More Impressions, but What about Clicks? 'A' Is for AOL, but Also for Amazon. Is 'K' for K-Mart or Kohl's?
By Irina Slutsky, Adage.com

Google rolled out the most significant change to its search page since the advent of search ads on Wednesday with what it calls "Google Instant." Rather than requiring searchers to hit "enter," results pop up -- along with corresponding search ads -- as you type a Google attempts to predict queries from the very first character.

The results evolve as you type and change in real-time, allowing users to adjust their string of queries as they type. "It's like power-steering in a car; once you get used to it, you won't be able to search without it," said Google Search VP Marissa Mayer, adding that it's a fundamental shift in search technology and "a step into the future of search."

The tagline for Google Instant is "Results as you type. Fewer Clicks" -- and the company predicts the product will save users more than 350 million hours a year, or two to five seconds per search, on average. So with all that time-saving, will users be spending less time in search, meaning less time with search ads, now a $23 billion business for Google?

"Overall, this will be a much better experience for our users, so they will actually be searching more," Ms. Mayer said. "Google Instant will grow the size and scope of search in general."

But there will be some concrete changes for Google's search advertisers. Since the real-time results can change on a millisecond basis, Google had to come up with a new way to define an ad impression. They decided that a cognitive pause was three seconds long -- meaning that if a user paused on a results page for three seconds or more, he or she was comprehending the contents of the page long enough for it to count as an impression. Google, of course, only gets paid when there is a click, but it will change the calculation for advertisers who carefully tailor their ads to reach a hoped-for click-through rate.

"It could be a 5% increase or a 5% decrease in average impressions, but it should not change the amount of money advertisers make," said AdWords head Jon Diorio after a splashy press event at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. "If anything, we believe users will be more engaged and drive more value for the advertiser. It shouldn't change the total number of clicks."

Analysts and marketers have just begun sorting through what it all means for brands that spend millions a month on search advertising. At first blush, the real-time results appear to give more prominence to the web's biggest brands. Just typing the letter "a" into the search box and doing nothing else auto-completes the first word as Amazon, or, AOL, depending on browser history and geography. As a result, almost the entire page is a list of Amazon links. The same goes for the letter "t" and Target and the letter "f" with Facebook.

While results appear to differ a bit based on a variety of factors, the advantage to those attached to a letter are a lot more search impressions. "You can't ignore the fact that the first letter is a high exposure spot," said Rob Garner, senior strategy director at iCrossing, a unit of Hearst. "I can’t help but think that's going to make a tremendous difference for the brands that come out at the top like Bank of America, Best Buy, Wal-Mart, etc."

But Google execs argued that the impact of those first-letter impressions will be small. They say the reason those big brands are the top results is because those are the results most often looked for when users type that letter into the search box, so Google continues to give the most relevant results.

Google execs were quick to note that natural search results, and techniques companies use to land higher in Google search results, won't change.

Story Courtesy of Adage.com