As America's self appointed number one Yahoo booster, I was delighted to read this post on Tech Crunch, which indicated that in Aug/Sep 2008, Yahoo rose to the number two position in video plays, ahead of Fox, Hulu, MSN, and Nick.
Yes yes, they still pale in comparison to YouTube plays, but if you think about video in the context of a money flow -- that a monetizable vid sends money to the shower, and that a nonmonetizable one is actually an expense to the provider, then the numbers look a lot different. TC's piece says that only about 4% of YT vids are monetizable, whereas Yahoo and Fox and Hulu and MSN have a much higher proportion of professional, prescreened vids that advertisers are delighted to run before or on top of. So Yahoo and YT may be a lot closer in revenue than it looks.
And of course it helps to have an election and a Wall Street meltdown for a property with a politics, news, and finance page view leadership.
Have you seen Live Rail's State of the [Online Video] Industry report? A piece in ReadWriteWeb alerted me to it, and the findings are pretty fascinating. You can download the whole report here.
But here are some of the highlights (text from the report):
Online Video Advertising Spend To Grow >55% Next Year - US Online video advertising spending expected to hit $962m in 2009 - Confusing array of technology and ad-unit standards constraining current growth rates - Video ad spending still represents just 2.36% of all online advertising - Average In-Stream CPMs reach $15.8 - In-Stream (pre/mid/post roll) still representing 88% of all video ads - 20.95% of internet video streams being monetized - Video Publishers generating an effective monetization rate of $4.05 per thousand streams
And check out dis little tidbit:
THE RISE AND RISE OF HULU
Despite still being substantially smaller than YouTube, with 88 million videos served compared to YouTube’s 4.2 billion, analysts are now beginning to suggest that Hulu will be the more successful business, thanks to its ability to sell advertising across 100% of its inventory, compared to just 3% for YouTube.
This is thanks to its policy of only serving high-quality original content, and securing licensing deals from content owners, rather than allowing users to upload the content themselves. This has removed the risk of copyright infringing content, or content of questionable quality; risk factors that most advertisers are anxious to avoid being associated with.
According to one estimate, Hulu could enjoy $90 million in revenue in its first year. YouTube’s estimated worldwide revenue total for 2008 is $200 million this year, but is estimated to be approximately half that domestically. Given that Hulu caters almost exclusively to a US audience, both YouTube and Hulu could see roughly the same revenues in the U.S. this year.
Quality matters.
Lots more juicy bots of real orange in this report. Go get it people!
This NYTimes blog post by Miguel Helft reports o n the implications of the decision by Federal Court that Veoh is NOT GUILTY of copyright infringement for videos that were posted by users. The case had been filed by IO Entertainment, an adult company that owns gay adult film maker Titan Media.
The decision does not say that online video sites can sit back and pretend they don't notice when consumers post copyrighted material but rather that Veoh had made good faith efforts to prevent copyright infringement.
“Far from encouraging copyright infringement, Veoh has a strong DMCA policy, takes active steps to limit incidents of infringement on its website and works diligently to keep unauthorized works off its site,” Magistrate Judge Howard Lloyd, of the U.S. District Court in San Jose, wrote in the decision.
The case has implications on another case between Viacom and YouTube over the same issue. Or so says YouTube. Viacom has other views:
But in a statement, Viacom said the ruling did not weaken its case against Google: “Even if the Veoh decision were to be considered by other courts, that case does nothing to change the fact that YouTube is a business built on infringement that has failed to take reasonable measures to respect the rights of creators and content owners. Google and YouTube have engaged in massive copyright infringement – conduct that is not protected by any law, including the DMCA.”Oh, them's fightin' words.
Here's what Tech Crunch had to say about the Veoh argument:
A key issue of the case turned on whether or not Veoh should lose DMCA safe harbor protection because they transcoded user uploaded videos to the Flash format, something every online Flash video site does as a matter of course.
IO Group argued that the transcoding made Veoh a direct infringer and that the materials were under their direct control. Lloyd disagreed, saying “Here, Veoh has simply established a system whereby software automatically processes user-submitted content and recasts it in a format that is readily accessible to its users. Veoh preselects the software parameters for the process from a range of default values set by the thirdparty software…ButVeoh does not itself actively participate or supervise the uploading of files. Nor does it preview or select the files before the upload is completed. Instead, video files are uploaded through an automated process which is initiated entirely at the volition of Veoh’s users.”
I started a subscription to Politics, the magazine arm of campaignsandelections.com. Or perhaps it is the other way around. I am a political junkie, and one of the reasons I started the sub was to get a look inside how political campaigns are using and viewing the web.
The first first conclusion I reached, and I could do this without cracking open the pub, is TV TV TV. Take a look:
The mag and site are for campaign professionals and consultants, and by saying TV TV TV I am not making a criticism that is also not valid for many brands in that most consultants, like most old school marketers, would prefer to conduct campaigns by TV rather than in participatory environments online because:
1. As we all know, it's a lot easier to make money off TV buying.
2. TV ads are 100% controllable. By contrast, remember the macaca story that brought down George Allen with taped evidence of the not-even-veiled racist message. One of the positive and constructive messages Allen promised in this clip. When he welcomes a citizen of the US to America.
3. TV is better understood in DC, by consultants and of course candidates, who tend not to have an intuitive understanding of the YouTubes.
4. Did I mention you can make more money on TV ads?
So much of the content is about TV -- ads, how to be a pundit, that sort of stuff. But there are a couple of articles on the Internets, and I am struck by how similar are the challenges facing campaigns to those that face brands.
There is a big article about how The Twitter and the Tubes and the FaceBooks and the MySpaces are going to transform both the speed and the range of opinions out there about the goings on at the conventions. This poses challenges for both parties:
For Dems, it'll make it tough to put that unity veneer on a party that LOOOOVES to squabble and argue over issues both large and minuscule. And fringier bloggers and attendees disrupting the effort to appear more centrist that it did in the Primaries.
For Repubs, I think the big risk is in unfriendly bloggers exposing the rather monochrome and male and elderly composition of attendees. And friendly bloggers deviating from the party's message of centrism when sitting among a group of singularly pro-life, pro Iraq war party footsoldiers. On the plus side, I am expecting lots of good viral photos of those elephant hats GOP women make.
For candidates, the challenge is that one cannot do the ole "I never said that" when someone with a Chocolate or an iPhone is there taping their messages to the hard core bases. Or the danger of embellishing one's record when it's all out there on tape. Remember this?
And if I may get on my soapbox for a moment, what is all this "I am saddened" crap. Sad: I am sad. Not saddened. I now see people-on-the-street in interviews on the news saying it. YOU are responsible for this, Washington! But anyway.
Well, I'm glad Twitterers and Bloggers and Camera Phoners are asking for some truth from both orgs and from both sets of candidates.
There are also bright spots in that article -- the opp for attendees to the conventions to give their citizen journalism coverage a focus on issues that matter to people in states, counties, and towns back home.
The mag also talks about a new multicandidate donor destination app. Choose all the campaigns you want to support and with one click the money goes out. Orgs like Emily's List, which supports campaigns of female and female-issue-friendly candidates, is just one of the orgs using it. So there it is, Open ID of a sort in the world of yard signs and :30s.
Another piece focuses on a hand held printer, which reveals both the arrival of advanced technologies geared to campaigns and the continued focus on printing despite the increasingly digital world.
The other major story is about brand - err, candidate -- reputation online. They do a piece in consultation with a company called International Reputation Management that focuses in part on keeping unwanted negativity off the first page or two of Google search results for a candidates or issue.
Phase one of their strategy consists of creating multiple web sites in a candidate's name. "Having one official campaign site is no longer enough, according to the experts. Candidates need to own their own name. That means registering for as many blogging and social networking sites as possible and filling them with useful content - before someone takes them first."
Truer words were never spoken.
The next step, according to the piece, is driving traffic to all these web presences so they are the ones that appear on top in search. They point out that the results for Obama include the official campaign site, his Twitter page, his Linked In profile, and his MySpace page. That's four slots on page one checked off the list. Actually, when I checked the page, the other slots were news of his Afghanistan trip, a YouTube channel controlled by the campaign, a WaPo campaign profile, and an MSNBC profile. Nothing unfriendly or ranty there. If you are the Obama campaign that means that there is nothing nasty on page one.
Blogger outreach is the third strategy. And they wisely point out that this is a long term effort, not a one time full court press. They also point out that bloggers don't want the same nonstories that the mainstream outlets want. Seen the below:
They want tailored info, and more specifics. They also state that threatening legal action against negative blog entries will only begat more.
Creating and maintaining your own Wikipedia entries is also on the checklist. Another wise move brands would be smart to follow.
So now onto the ads I found in the pub. Most are for Republican consultants, with several promising to "bag donkeys." One from The Traz Group even features donkey heads as animal trophies -- I suppose there are relatively few Repub candidates that are also PETA activists, so Traz is probably safe there. ;-)
Direct mail houses abound, with some also offering email lists of people with high giving propensities.
In sum, it appears as if there are a few orgs that "get" and embrace digital, and a lot being dragged kicking and screaming into it by...consumer eyeballs and dollars. Just like the brand world!!!
D'ja make a viral video? Did ya post it on the Toob? Wanna know who watched? Youtube now offers an insights suite that provides a wealth of info on geography, demos, lifecycle, and a variety of other measures for videos on their site. Whether you have 10 views or 10 billion, data is always fun to play with.
