Online TV search engine developer, SetJam, announced Tuesday that it is working with major media companies (which it did not identify) to build a suite of specialized "TV Everywhere" widgets that it says will transform static entertainment sites into "on-demand interactive TV watching destinations." "TV and movie content owners are bringing their vast libraries online," SetJam CEO, Ryan Janssen (who was formerly COO of online financial tool builder, Angelsoft.net), said in a prepared statement. "Our 'TV Everywhere' widgets provide the glue between their offerings and the entertainment sites that people already use to help create the most powerful TV broadcaster in the world--the Internet."
According to SetJam, the widgets work by linking any mention of a TV show or movie to all the available online viewing options for that show. The company says that it has designed the widgets around a "time-to-view" metric that measures how quickly they get people to their shows: "We're basically leveraging our core search algorithm that takes into account all the content on the page, as well as popularity, release dates, and other metadata to automatically insert the right viewing options," SetJam's head of technology, Marcin Kaszynski, said in a prepared statement. Added CEO Janssen: "This is great for both the sites and our content partners. Our widgets double the pageviews per visit a typical entertainment site gets, and our content partners get wider distribution for their programming." SetJam says that it is also opening a full search API for sites that want custom integration.
According to Janssen, the widgets were designed to provide "all the SEO benefits to the sites that use them" and SetJam's "unique affiliate business model has enabled them to open their search API. Unlike our competitors who are trying to build ad-supported portals, we've got an affiliate business model," he continued. "We get paid to take users where the content is and it doesn't matter to us where they're coming from. We planned on pursuing entertainment sites like EW.com and E! Online, but apparently everyone needs this kind of search, from sites that have personalization strategies like Yahoo's to niche social networking sites that are looking to take traffic from the likes of MySpace and Facebook." Janssen also claims that "even the networks' own sites want exhaustive online TV and movie search. It's clear that even companies who have content on the scale of a Turner Interactive or Viacom are not only open to exposing competitor's content on their own properties, but really want to provide open and exhaustive search for online TV and movies to their users," he added. SetJam says that sites interested in learning more about its widgets or in joining its pilot program should contact the company through its contact page: http://www.setjam.com/contact.
