http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/19914.asp
Imediaconnection.com
| 8 video myths debunked | |
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By Marissa Gluck U.S. online video advertising is expected to grow to $4.3 billion by 2011, yet there is still confusion on how to maximize this medium. Take a look at some of the most common myths about online video advertising and examine the realities. |
Will a new low-price, high-def video camera make traditional still cameras obsolete?
A culture war is brewing in the world of digital photography, with a handful of enthusiasts arguing that high-definition video tools are making traditional still cameras all but obsolete.
In a field where traditionalists are still debating the merits of film versus digital imagery, this contention naturally produces sparks. But growing numbers of photographers are already experimenting with HD camcorders to produce professional photos, with results now even being published on the front pages of newspapers.
With legislators once again raising consumers' fears about their online privacy, the industry needs to prepare for possible fall out.
For several years, websites, ad servers and marketing companies have been tracking the online activity of millions of internet users. These companies compile and analyze this information, and then use it to help advertisers deliver ads to those most likely to be interested in their product or service. Most consumers may not have been aware that their online activities were being monitored and analyzed -- until now.
Consumer and privacy groups are challenging online targeted advertising, usually claiming that websites and advertisers should not be able to track online activity without providing notice to consumers and getting consumers' consent. Privacy advocates are also worried about the possibility that companies will combine anonymous online data with personally identifiable data, which seems increasingly likely as more marketing and database companies merge.
5. Grow Up: Get a job, figure out where you're
going in life, determine who you are today before you make up your mind about
who you want to be. Cats playing piano are cute, but addictive viewing is going
to require real strategic planning. I would recommend speaking with a life
coach, or maybe a college guidance counselor.
4. Get Off The
Internet: I feel like every time I want to speak to you, you're
in a browser. Stop tethering me to the desk, to the computer, to a connection.
Let me view my video everywhere and anywhere I want to. It's cheaper to let me
download your clip and only resync for fresh advertising than to restream the
same content over, and over, and over again.
3. Be More Than Video:
"Connected Viewing" should deliver something "Disconnected Viewing" never could,
useful interactivity. Think about how much flash powers online
(widgets, games etc.) and tell me it doesn't have a place as a semi-transparent
overlay. Let me multitask within my viewing experience, let me click for more
info, let me do so much more than "watch"... let me experience.
2. Stop Annoying
Me: Nobody likes the Amway guy, he's just there
to yell in your ear. So please stop serving unwanted pop-ups in video. What
makes someone think that a bottom-third of the screen animated overlay is any
better than a traditional pop-up? If this is the best format we can come up
with, we're in trouble. Oh yeah, and where are all the variable format ads?
Why do I see the same ads if I'm viewing a 30 second clip, a 5 minute clip and a
35 minute clip? How about adapting? Isn't that what mainstream media is
"having trouble" doing? Could it be that even "digital" media has a thing or
two to learn about adaptation?
1. Know Me: You know who I am. You know what I'm watching. You know what I've watched before. You know what you're going to suggest to me next. It's time we get to know each other. I'm Jon. Now please pull up the content I will find most interesting, because frankly, I feel like I'm doing all the work over here.
YouTube
Feature Tells Video Creators When and Where a Clip Is Being Watched
NYTimes.com
By
STEPHANIE CLIFFORD
The company hopes the new feature will turn YouTube from
an online video site into a place where marketers can test their messages.
profy.com
Let me start this by saying that many startups have tried to make a funny infomercial, but these guys actually succeeded. The fellow’s phony hair and thin mustache, the oldschool computer equipment, and the recognizable 70ies yellowish tone of the video - well, it made me laugh a couple of times. See the video below, and don’t forget - it’s just that simple! Overlay.TV enables you to place various text, graphics and animations over a video. The platform enables you to stream videos from popular video sharing sites like YouTube, MySpace TV, Google Video, Yahoo! Video, and College Humor. It’s somewhat similar to Ooyala, and it is also partly aimed at advertising, but it also adds some interesting features in the mix. One of them is shopping; for example, you can mark an item on a video and create an online shop out of it; a viewer that clicks on it will be able to buy it directly from the video. Another very interesting feature is a very simple one: if all those stuff on the video starts to annoy you, you can turn all of it off. It all works in both IE and Firefox; Safari isn’t mentioned anywhere, though. After the publishers are done with the video, they can share it via email or embed it on a website, blog, or a social networking profile. Overlay.TV has done its homework and signed deals with over 600 marketing affiliates which at this time accept user click-throughs from Overlay.TV, including Amazon, iTunes and Wal-Mart. And now, some marketingese for you: “By linking publishers, viewers of online video and marketers, Overlay.TV is transforming user-generated video content from a passive vehicle for entertainment or education, into an interactive vehicle for commerce,” said Rob Lane, President and CEO of Overlay.TV. “We’re empowering a whole new generation of publishers – a group we call ‘Generation P’ – with a user-friendly platform that will help them discover entirely new business models. The advertising industry has significantly shifted from traditional channels to web advertising. With the ubiquity of social networks, consumer-created advertising has more power and influence than anything produced by industry professionals.” |
Posted: 10 Jan 2008 09:53 AM CST
We appear to have two data points related to online video that are worth paying attention to. Number one: According to the BBC, Nielsen says that traffic to some online video sites has doubled since the Hollywood writers’ strike in October turned the TV into a wasteland of reruns and unfunny late-night talk shows (although it may be stretching things to call the Nielsen figure a data point, since I can’t find a report that has those numbers in it).
The second data point is a report from the Pew Internet Research project, a reliable and independent research group, indicates that almost 50 per cent of those surveyed had been to video-sharing sites such as YouTube (up from 38 per cent last year) and daily traffic to such sites has doubled in the past year. The number of people who said they had been to such a site within a day of being asked almost doubled to 15 per cent.
Ever since the strike began, there has been a debate about how much of a benefit online video might get as the fresh content on television became more and more scarce. Some have argued that most online video is crap, and therefore the boost would likely be minimal. Others argue that much of what is on TV is also crap, although the production values might be slightly higher, and that the strike might help to push some content creators to remake the industry in Silicon Valley’s image.
I don’t know where things will end up, but I do know one thing: I am hearing from more and more “average” people — i.e., not geeks — that they are watching more video online, and that they are finding things there they can’t on television (and some they can). The writers’ strike may be one of the forces that are pushing people to do that, but it’s not the only one. Increasingly, the boundaries between TV and online are blurring.
mathewingram.com
As more than one person has already pointed out, the demise of Wal-Mart’s video download service comes as no real surprise. In many ways, it was stillborn to begin with. Why? Simple. Even when it was launched, it was obvious (to everyone but Wal-Mart, apparently) that the service was too restrictive. Only Windows format, and only on one computer, with no burning? It would have been a miracle if it had survived.
As Ian Rogers of Yahoo Music said in his recent call to arms for online music, “inconvenience doesn’t scale.” Wal-Mart is the size of a Latin American country in terms of revenues ($370-billion) and population (it has 2 million employees), not to mention market capitalization ($200-billion), but it still can’t make something as crippled as its movie service was popular by brute force.
Wal-Mart’s massive size might have helped it get deals with the studios for their content, but it apparently didn’t help the retailer pressure said studios into giving up the handcuffs they like to place on that content — either Wal-Mart wasn’t able to convince them, or it didn’t try hard enough. Let’s hope the failure of its service doesn’t convince others that it wasn’t worth it to even try; Wal-Mart’s effort was doomed from the start.
Read/writeweb.com
From YouTube’s continued dominance, the television networks’
newfound willingness to experiment online, the rise of the desktop Internet TV
application, and a number of new PC-to-TV devices and set-top boxes — it’s been
a big year for Internet TV in all shapes and forms. In this post we look back at
2007 through the lens of last100’s coverage, highlighting some of the
important stories and trends, and how they point to what we might expect for
Internet TV in 2008.
YouTube dominates
While the market for Internet TV is growing steadily — survey after
survey shows that people
are consuming more video online than ever before — as 2007 draws to an end,
Google-owned YouTube is still the number one video destination site.
This isn’t just true in terms of traffic but also in terms of “mind share”; when people talk about online video they often refer only to YouTube. As a result, a number of hardware companies have added YouTube support to their devices in 2007, such as YouTube-compatible cameras and mobile phones capable of viewing and publishing video to YouTube.
And then there’s the strong relationship between Google and Apple, which this year has led to YouTube support being added to both the AppleTV and iPhone, with a change in the video format to boot. Apple successfully persuaded YouTube to start re-encoding its video catalog to the much higher quality (and Apple-preferred) H.264 codec.
Not one to rest on its laurels, YouTube introduced a number of new features of their own, including a redesiged player, the introduction of interactive overlay ads, better copyright filtering, and — like many Google properties — improvements to its mobile offering.
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