the Web Chef's e-Bytes

Web Tidbits - Advertising & Online Video

Ad Lab posted a link to AdSlogans and their advertising slogan hall of fame.  The top slogans were analyzed to see what characteristics made them work including "5 words; new brand mention; declarative; grammatically complete; contain alliteration, metaphor or rhyme".

Financial Times reports on the top 5 online video campaigns of 2007 (ranked by GoViral).   

I've embedded my favorite "WillitBlend".

Financial Times also had an interesting article discussing how online video is converging with television.  In the article they referenced a few video sites that might be of interest.  Unfortunately they don't provided links to the sites, something that I thought diministhed the online value of their story.  Among the sites referenced are the following:

• PurePlays - YouTube, VideoEgg, DailyMotion, Revver, Vimeo
• Video Verticals - FunnyorDie, DanceJam (coming soon), Jaman (world video)
• Media Companies - Hulu, Crackle, SyncTV
• Video Search Enginess - Dabble, Blinkx, Taboola (coming soon), Truveo, CastTv (invitation only beta)

For more on online video see my article "Lights, Camera, Action - the state of Online Video" on Wisconsin Technology Network.

New Video Advertising Technique

YouTube announced that they are going to begin selling ads within videos.  The new semi-transparent in-video ads, not to be confused with pre- or post roll ads that are attached before and after the video clip, will be sold only on videos that are provided by their content partners.  This should give advertisers some relief that their video ads won't be attached to questionable user generated content that could negatively impact their brand's perception. 

So what do consumers think of these ads?  According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, during testing of these ads in June and July, YouTube found that 75% of consumers watched the entire ad and that clickthrough rates for the ads were 5 - 10 times higher than typical banner ads.  eMarketer reports in a recent article that research from Piper Jaffray found that only 30% of viewers would be unwilling to watch a video ad, that 30% of ad viewers checked out the advertisers web site (Online Publishers Association data) and that spending on online advertising was projected to increase to $4.3 billion by 2011 (eMarketer research). 

For more information on some of the trends in online advertising watch for my upcoming column in Buzz Networks on Wisconsin Technology Network. 

To find out more about the advertising opportunities on YouTube submit your interest through their advertising form. 

Here's a sample video clip from YouTube that shows how these ads will work. 

Web Tidbits - Video, Music

It has been a big week in the web content world with announcements all week about new services and agreements impacting video, music, mobile content and other web areas.

Video - French YouTube competitor, Dailymotion has received $34 million in venture capital funding according to PC World. The Wall Street Journal reports that they have 37 million visitors a month.

Meanwhile YouTube has reached an agreement to license 10 million pieces of music for a flat fee from the UK-based MCPS-PRS Alliance according to Forbes.

Fox and NBC Universal announced the name for their new video sharing service - Hulu according to Digital Trends.  The site is scheduled to go into private Beta in October.

Music & Beyond - Not to be left behind, Nokia has launched a new web brand, Ovi (or door in Finnish) that will provide music downloading and other services in direct competition with Apple's iTune and other web service providers according to VNUNet.  The service is expected to go live in the fourth quarter of 2007 with music, games and maps according to the Nokia Press Release (PDF).

YouTube Video Embed in PowerPoint

My fellow blogger and Power Point expert Laura Bergells at Maniactive has a great posting summarizing and linking to 4 video tutorials on embedding YouTube video into PPT presentations using either PPT 2007 or 2003 with the videos linked and inserted in PowerPoint when you are presenting offline or online.  I know that this is a hot topic judging by traffic to my prior postings on PPT - Powerful Presentation Techniques that covered this topic with a link to step-by-step instructions for converting and inserting video at tiara.org.

I've taken the liberty of embedding one of the video clip instructions that Laura references on how to add a YouTube video to PowerPoint when you are planning to be online when you make your presentation.

I also experimented with the conversion directions in the YouTube video for offline insertions of presentation of YouTube videos using Video Downloader and ErightSoft's Super and found that it worked fairly well.

Kudos to reponzo01, a 24 year old YouTuber for his simple and well done instructional videos.

For more tips on creating Powerful Presentations that sing and zing, see my blog PPT - Powerful Presentation Techniques.  I'd be happy to talk to you about my PPT - Powerful Presentatiojn Techniques Workshops and presentations.  Please give me a call at 608 266 4092 or e-mail if I can be of assistance.

Paul Gibler
the PPT and Web Chef   

Web Tidbits - Video Update

Real Player 11 Video Recorder - BusinessWeek author Stephen Wildstrom reports on how Real Networks soon to be launched RealPlayer 11 will offer a record feature to allow users to download YouTube and other video for later offline viewing.  This feature could be a very popular one for those seeking to view video clips and programs when they don't have ready Internet access.  The caveat is that the video must not be copy-protected to allow for the downloading and replaying of the video and you must be prepared to view the pre-roll or post-roll ads that are often being attached to the uploaded video.  The interface is such that a button labelled "Download this video" will show up in both Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers according to the article.  Another problem the author reports on is the file naming convention is not the best given that the tags and file names attached to the video online do not transfer with the download.

YouTube Global Launch - In other video news, YouTube announced the launch of nine global sites in Brazil, France, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the UK according to CIO Today magazine.  The initial sites will offer translated content with future efforts designed to localize content and encourage local video uploads.  YouTube also entered into major content deals with content providers including broadcasters and football clubs to create some immediate local content.  There is some concern that YouTube could find the different standards of acceptable online content difficult to monitor given some of the experiences they've had with global content that has offended local sensibilities.

Thought you'd enjoy this cute and popular video of otters holding hands...

Video Growth - The amazing thing about the online video revolution is how quickly it has happened.  According to Business Week, fully one third of Internet traffic today is video, a jump start from almost nothing in 2000.  Among the winners has been Videoegg, a service that is provided to social networking sites that has grown to serve up over 15 million videos across 70 sites daily according to the article "Back from the Dead".  Video transmission takes up 1,000 as much bandwith as sound, a fact that has the telecommunications companies scrambling to add capacity and video players to add servers.

AT&T Video Share - The final video news was the launch of AT&T's new service Video Share that allows for video sharing between mobile phone subscribers.  The service will initially be available in Atlanta, San Antonio and Dallas according to CrunchGear and The Wall Street Journal with service expansions expected in July to other 3G (3rd Generation) mobile markets.

 

Web Tidbits - Clorox Microsite & UGC Contests

Clorox has a new microsite Mealstogether about families spending their meals together according to AdFreak.  Although I'm not in the target audience, I suspect that this one won't do much for the family of brands.  The site has a bunch of tips with little connection to the food-related Clorox brands it is designed to support.  I found the user interface of the smiling family a bit creepy.

YouTube has "packaged" User Generated Content contests in a community section of their site.  Right now they have Heinz, TLC and Samsung to name but a few.  Meanwhile the New York Times reports on the less than stellar results being experienced in these contests, accompanied by high costs for reviewing entries and the potential for brand attacks as companies open their doors to consumer generated content.  One campaign referenced in the article is Heinz's Top This TV challenge where the top 15 campaigns will be placed on the website for votes and winnowing down to 5 to generate one winning campaign.  Here's an example of one of the ads.

Web Tidbits - Online Video & Marketing Trends

The Wall Street Journal reported that Meredith Corporation had launched a new online video site called Better.tv (tagline Home. Family. Life.).  It will feature "20 channels on subjects such as gardening and parenting.  Each will carry short, made-for-the weeb shows baed mainly on content drawn from Meredith's 15 magazines". 

In other video and marketing trend news, Business Week reports that "65% of advertisers have produced a YouTube video to promote their brand".  The results were from a survey of 121 marketers judging the Effie Awards.  The same survey reports that television advertising would take the biggest hit in the budgets of 42.4% of the large advertisers participating in this survey.  The survey found that online would see the largest increase.  Here are some charts and figures from the survey.

Video New, News and Views

Red Herring has an interesting story titled "Panning for Video Gold".  In the article, they referenced a couple of video sharing sites that I wasn't familiar with - Divvio "suggests videos based on personal viewing habits" (sounds like the Amazon recommendation algorhythm at work) and Network2.tv: "your guide to tv on the Internet".

Another interesting video site that I've come across is ExpertVillage, a compilation of "how to" videos where the experts are supposedly paid $20/video submitted.

In other video news, Red Herring also announced that Michael Eisner, of Disney fame, has jumped on the content creation bandwagon with the launch of Vuguru, a production house that will focus on creating video for cellphones, broadband distribution and other new channels.  The first of their efforts "Prom Queen" was launched earlier this week with episode 1 "The Long Walk", the first of many over the next 80 days being sponsored by Hairspray on Ellegirl.com, Veoh, Verizon's vCast and YouTube.  I thought you might find the initial clip interesting.  Although, I'm not the target audience, being a 50 year old male, the pre-prom clip does have the dramatic build-up, female angst and a lot of cleavage thrown in for good measure. USAToday called the series "a blend of love, gossip and betrayal in the two months leading up to prom." 

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Campaigns in the Web 2.0 Era

2007 brought forth some seminal moments in politics with Senator Allen's Macaca Moment captured online and distributed widely among the more memorable moments.  Not to be outdone, MySpace is jumping on the political bandwagon with the announcement of their online primaries to be held on January 1 and 2nd of 2008.  The idea was reviewed in a recent posting on TechCrunch, where they revealed that Barack Obama was leading the pack with 89,465 MySpace "friends".  With the number of registered MySpace accounts creating a virtual community that would be the 11th largest country in the world, it will be interesting to see how this online primary shapes the real ones a few weeks later. 

MySpace has also launched the ImpactChannel, an online video channel focusing on the 2008 Presidential primaries according to the New York Times (registration required).  As of this posting, 11 Presidential Candidates were "working the streets" of MySpace. Missing from the list of angels, flip floppers, scoundrels and all around communicators was Wisconsin's very own former governor and recently declared presidential candidate Thompson.  Hmm is he campaigning for President or some other position>

In other political video news, we're seeing the growth of PoliticsTV.com, an online video site dedicated to covering the political scene.  As of this posting, they had an Alexa ranking of 478,248, an increase of 185,252 over the past 3 months.  Here's a clip of an anti-Senator Susan Collins ad that was posted on PoliticsTV and YouTube.

Not to be left behind, YouTube launched their political channel called YouChoose.  Also missing from the list of candidates was Tommy Thompson...

YouTube Award Winning User Videos

YouTube announced their award winning user generated videos in a range of categories including:

1. Best series - Ask a Ninja
2. Best commentary - The Wine Cone
3. Best comedy - Smosh
4. Best music - Terranaomi
5. Most inspirational - Free Hugs
6. Most adorable - Kiwi
7. Most creative - Ok Go

I've inserted the most creative video Ok Go - a 3 minute dancing music video on treadmills that also won a Grammy for Best Short Form Music Video. When I viewed it over 13.4 million people had done so.