Online Video Broker.

Associate Press (AP) and Microsoft had built a back-end platform that allows web publishers to distribute online video's to other sites across the web. The revenue from video advertisement linked to the content is then shared between the creator of the video, Microsoft , AP and the web site publisher. The service by AP known as Online Video Network (OVN) allows it's members to upload the video contents to their service and choose which sites or AP networked online, radio, or TV stations these video's are allowed to be displayed. This allows the creator of the content to have exclusive ownership of the video and can also make it a strategy to keep exclusive rights of their video content.

An example would be like if someone from another news agency in new york covers a launch in their area, they can choose to allow other networked media companies from other states or area to publish the news but they will be the rightful exclusive media to cover the event in new york. This can be a very strategic plan to keep audience ratings up and also share the resource with other people without damaging their earnings.

The content of the video's are safe from digital theft as it is embeded and played using a built in video player. Other sites can still take the video player but the video's with ads are still consistently linked to the network. As long as there is adverts playing, the revenue's will come in and distributed according to their prior arrangement when signing up for the service.

The profit sharing model tends to see microsoft geting a better deal compared to AP and the content creator. This can be seen in their profit sharing model where a content creator that shares its video to a publisher will get a 30 percent profit from the ad sales while the publisher would get a 20 percent cut with the remaining profits split between AP and Microsoft.But if it posted the AP's content, the publisher would get a 20 percent cut, with Microsoft and AP each receiving 40 percent. Somehow it might be some form of undisclosed agreement between AP and Microsoft.

Building the platform with the model of profit sharing from advertisement wher all parties are able to gain from it is in fact a great idea that is regarded as a win win situation for all parties. As the internet penetration increases, content sharing in this form should be encouraged as more parties are able to gain from the resources of others. This will reduce the cost of handling such services by the web publisher while being able to earn from just placing it in their web sites.