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YouTube's first live streaming event

Pete Wylie — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 10:11:48 -0500

YouTube is set to host its first live streaming event Saturday, as it seeks new ways to capitalize on its enormous audience. The event, YouTubeLive!, will feature commentary from popular YouTube stars like Michael Buckley, the Hollywood Reporter, and performances from recording artists such as Katy Perry and Black Eyed Peas member Will.i.am.

Will.i.am's "Yes We Can" online-only music video was one of the top viewed videos on YouTube this year, and Katy Perry, of "I Kissed a Girl" fame, is active on her own YouTube channel. Buckley started dishing about celebrity gossip and scandals two years ago, and has since attracted a regular audience of nearly 6 million viewers to his YouTube program.

YouTube only distributed a couple hundred tickets to the event in an attempt to draw viewers online. The video-sharing site selected the performers and hosts from polls of its users. YouTube marketer Chris DiCesare said the slate of personalities selected for the event have garnered more than 2.5 billion hits for their videos.

YouTube will provide multiple streams of the event to allow viewers to customize their experience and follow their personal favorites more closely.

Live event streaming is one of the potential growth areas for online video that has been exploited more in a broadcast-centric model to this point. Live online events have tremendous upsides in lower production cost and proven distribution channels, but the question remains how to make them a profitable addition to an online video site's repertoire.

Sponsorships leap to mind as one excellent way to find a mutual benefit for site and advertisers, as a huge built-in audience will see specific branding for an extended period. Ads obviously could run alongside the streams, but it seems as if such an innovative model deserves a more innovative approach to marketing.

Rest assured Google is parsing all of these options to try to figure out how to turn YouTube's 44 percent market share into the same sort of monetization ratio that Hulu is getting with just 1 percent market share (comScore figures).

For more:
- the San Jose Mercury News has an article

YouTube to sell video ads on search pages

Pete Wylie — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 12:03:33 -0500

YouTube made another play to monetize its enormous online video library Wednesday, announcing it will sell sponsored video ad spaces alongside video search results. The ads will be sold in auction style, a clear example of corporate parent Google's influence on the online video powerhouse.

The new service, to be called YouTube Sponsored Videos, will be managed by Matthew Liu. "What we're trying to do is bring the best parts of Google and the best parts of YouTube together," Liu told the Los Angeles Times.

Advertisers will bid for their created online video ad to run on the results pages for certain keywords. The system will be self-service, similar to Google's AdSense platform.

Early adopters of the service claimed high click-through rates and exposure for relatively little expenditure, according to YouTube. The price of ads, since it is auction-based, should increase as advertisers clamor to get placement next to hot keywords.

The new ad format is the latest in a string of innovations for YouTube, including a click-to-buy beta and the introduction of long-form, ad-supported content on the site. The company is trying new ways to capitalize on its industry leading 5 billion-plus video streams per month.

For more:
- see the Los Angeles Times article here

YouTube to add feature films

Pete Wylie — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 11:44:25 -0500

YouTube will add full-length feature films from a major Hollywood studio to its arsenal of short from user-gen and professional clips in 30 to 90 days, according to CNET news. It has long been speculated that Google-owned YouTube would make a play for this space, where News Corp/NBC joint venture Hulu has emerged as the clear leader.

The studio was not named, although it's safe to say that it's probably not Universal or Fox, as their parent companies are heavily invested in Hulu.

The other major studios, namely Paramount, Time Warner, Disney and Sony, have surely seen the success Hulu has had and know they need to embrace the trend toward online video. The CNET report states that the model will be ad-supported, but a major sticking point in negotiations has been whether Google or the studios will have final say in advertising methods and form over the content.

Google has been guiding YouTube in the professional content direction, as the immensely popular user-generated online video share site never drew gigantic profits from its gigantic audiences. Still, it has maintained 80 million unique visitors each month, and with lagging DVD sales, Hollywood execs are sure to want such a prime alternative distribution channel for their products.

For more:
- see the CNET news article here

Online News Hour/YouTube

Pete Wylie — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 10:36:17 -0500

The PBS series "Online News Hour" will join with YouTube to provide interesting user-generated perspectives on the election. The show and the Google property partnership, called "Video Your Vote," gave digital video cameras to 1,000 voters across the country.

The voters will report on their voting experience, polling issues, and general election situations in different states. This could be especially interesting in regions with tight Senate races, or in swing states in the presidential election.

The videos will be hosted on YouTube, and linked to the "Online News Hour" coverage, which will also feature streaming videos from correspondents and pundits.

Video Your Vote YouTube channel

Online News Hour coverage

Yahoo! sees big gain in videos streamed

Pete Wylie — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 14:13:27 -0400

Yahoo! moved into second place in number of videos streamed with 56 percent growth in September, displacing Fox Interactive, according to NieslenOnline figures. Google's YouTube retained its headlock on the top spot by a mile in September, clocking 5.3 billion streams, or 20 times Yahoo!'s 265 million streams. It's the first time YouTube, the user-generated short-form video behemoth, has streamed more than 5 billion videos in a month.

As always, critics point to YouTube's struggle to sell ads around its content, especially as it uses more and more bandwidth and server capacity that is not free. On the other hand, most of Yahoo!'s streams are ad-supported so there's a growing revenue -- ah -- stream coming in.

It wasn't a good month for the rest of the top five in total streams, as Fox Interactive (last month's second-leading streamer), MSN/Windows Live, and Nickelodeon, respectively, all had double digit percentage declines in total video streamed.

For more:
- see the Beet.tv article here

Google announces AdSense for Games

Pete Wylie — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 09:54:44 -0400

After announcing a click-to-buy feature in YouTube videos, Google continued to roll out big plans for online video ads this week, as it announced the release of a beta for AdSense for Games. With the new ad format, game developers will be able to drop text, video or image ads into their games and earn revenue in the process.

The ad displays are completely customizable, and developers are free to position them at any point in their games, such as between levels or after losing a life. Google reported that the ads would be targeted demographically and contextually, and that the ads would be sold through its AdWords sales staff. Google's 2006 acquisition of Adscape Media, which pioneered game ad placement, now appears to be bearing its first fruit.

Google is only opening the beta program to established game developers; to be included, a game must have 500,000 or more plays and derive 50 percent or more of its traffic from the U.S. and U.K.

It remains to be seen how successful or popular the ad model will be. Gamers are finicky and will complain if ads are at all intrusive. But when ads are integrated into the game experience, such as in the Grand Theft Auto series, gamers tend to have a positive response to the "reality" that real advertisements lend the game. Advertisers will also need coaxing to accept a model without significant click-through metrics.

For more:
- see coverage of the launch at Information Week here

YouTube adds Click-to-Buy

Pete Wylie — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 10:38:37 -0400

Google announced in a blog post entitled "I clicked to buy, and I liked it" that it has added a click-to-buy feature to YouTube's community features. When a user hears a song they like in a video or sees a video game demo that looks interesting, Google will provide links to Amazon.com or iTunes to enable a purchase.

Google is presently partnered with EMI Music, Amazon, and Electronic Arts in the project and said in the blog post that it wants to expand the program if initial feedback is positive.

"Our vision is to help partners across all industries -- from music, to film, to print, to TV -- offer useful and relevant products to a large, yet targeted audience, and generate additional revenue from their content on YouTube beyond the advertising we serve against their videos," the blog post said.

The large, targeted audience is certainly there on YouTube, and advertisers could benefit from the additional revenue generated by viewers of their videos making impulse purchases. Decreasing the time from interest generation to closing a sale is a big part of growing online economies.

YouTube also needs to diversify its revenue streams to justify Google's large investment.

For more:
- see the Google blog post here

MSN Video to roll out in South Korea

Pete Wylie — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 09:42:08 -0400

Microsoft has decided to challenge Google's YouTube Korea and South Korean local Pandora for market share in the growing South Korean online video market.

Microsoft Korea will launch a beta version of MSN video on its Korean site that includes a feature to upload user-gen videos, much like Google's YouTube portal. Company officials said the launch would happen sometime in the next month, but declined to offer a specific launch date. Microsoft has had success with localized MSN sites in Japan and some European countries, and it looks to capitalize on that strength in Korea.

South Korea, which ranked first in the 2008 ITIF Broadband rankings, could prove to be a goldmine for online video companies, as almost one person per household has access to fast and cheap broadband service. Also, 77.5 percent of South Korea's population has internet access, making it the world's internet leader. The ITIF study lists the average rate of download in South Korea at 49.3 Mbps/sec, compared with 4.9 Mbps/sec in the U.S. So Microsoft's play makes a lot of good business sense, as online video consumption both in streaming and downloadable form is always benefited by excellent broadband service.

For more:
- see the full ITIF broadband report, including individual country reports, here

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SPOTLIGHT: YouTube increases market share

Pete Wylie — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 16:46:44 -0400

YouTube continued to widen its enormous lead in the online video space, claiming 49 percent of all online video views in July. Its eight closest competitors, like Yahoo!, AOL and Veoh, all lost fractions of their market shares to YouTube.

YouTube's share increased 1.8 percent from May and 8.1 percent from the same month last year.

The online video sharing site, purchased by Google last year, also increased its unique monthly visitor count. Looks like smooth sailing ahead for YouTube, especially after last week's favorable Veoh and Paramount court cases.

For more:
- see the metrics at seekingalpha.com

Google rolls out new products

Pete Wylie — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 12:29:02 -0400

Google continued its campaign to claim market share on every conceivable digital frontier Monday with two important product announcements. The Palo Alto giant--once simply a search giant--announced it will offer a web browser, Chrome, to compete with Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox, and a YouTube-based video sharing site for enterprises that will compete with various smaller firms' offerings in that market.

Chrome was designed to be more stable and less-likely to crash when operating content-heavy pages, such as online video sites. The browser treats each tab as a separate process, lowering crash rates by allocating system resources more effectively. Chrome is based on open-source, allowing for the same cycle of innovation that has seen Google rollout dozens of web-based applications in the past few years.

The enterprise video-share platform will be offered as part of Google's Apps Premier package, which costs $50 per user, per month. The YouTube-based platform will allow for intrabusiness video sharing in password protected spaces so that company employees will have easy access to training videos and product presentations, while avoiding public access to sensitive material. Google announced it would not raise the price of Apps Premier, despite the addition.

For more:
- The Guardian has a comprehensive report

Suit against Veoh dismissed

Pete Wylie — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 11:38:16 -0400

Less than a week after another important online video court decision out of California, a U.S. District Court judge dismissed copyright infringement charges against Veoh. The charges, brought against the online video site by adult entertainment company IO, claimed Veoh infringed on IO's copyrights when some of IO's videos were posted to Veoh.

Veoh removed the videos in question, which was a major part of the judge's finding that Veoh was in compliance with safe harbor regulations included in the DMCA.

"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," Judge Howard Lloyd wrote in his decision.

Google and YouTube are already trumpeting the findings as a precursor to a favorable result in their suit with Viacom over similar alleged violations.

YouTube's chief counsel Zahavah Levine said in a statement, "It is great to see the Court confirm that the DMCA protects services like YouTube that follow the law and respect copyrights."

For more:
- read the full blog post from The New York Times here
- Tech Crunch offers the full ruling and tech-centric analysis of the victory for the "good guys"

The First Streaming Democratic Convention

Pete Wylie — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 10:36:14 -0400

TV networks, newspapers and magazines are all scrambling to forge a web presence for the highly anticipated nomination of Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention Aug. 25 in Denver, and online video will be a large part of most offerings.

The 2008 convention will see major departures from previous coverage styles, as online video has flourished since 2004 in the YouTube era. Google's "Big Tent," which the search company set up for bloggers covering the convention, will also host streaming video site UStream. UStream will provide live coverage of the entire convention.

Newsweek and The Washington Post will team to provide live online video from 4 to 6 p.m. and 7 to 11 p.m. each night of the convention. C-SPAN has set up a site that will allow bloggers and other non-affiliated journalists to upload YouTube videos and Qik streams they film at the convention, in addition to their traditional coverage.

The major TV networks are also trying to get in on the online action. CBS reported that Katie Couric will present special, web-only content through CNet.com, which CBS acquired in June. ABC News will also stream live video from the convention. No word yet on NBC and Fox's online plan, but they are likely to be doing their own spins with NBC using Silverlight (again).

For more:
- newteevee.com dishes on Democratic political streaming here

SPOTLIGHT: YouTube gets ad-mobbed

Pete Wylie — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 16:27:31 -0400

In an increased effort to recoup its $1.65 billion investment, Google recently increased the amount of ads running with video clips on YouTube players embedded in other websites.

Most clips viewed on the YouTube home site run without embedded ads, but YouTube players on other sites now have an ad space at the top of the player and a frequently updated overlay ad space at the bottom of the video itself.

Some analysts are concerned that this might take away from the clip viewing experience.

View Saul Hansell's blog for more.

YouTube's Future

Doug Mohney — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 16:19:43 -0400

Love it or hate it, YouTube is here to stay. I've read a lot of speculation over the past couple of weeks about what Google may or may not do moving forward. In no particular order:

Will Google dump Google Video? Wired makes an interesting case for The Goog to put up or shut up since Google Video is some tiny fraction of the total number of video views. On the other hand, Google Video supposedly has better search engine tools and handles long-form (over 10 minutes long) video BUT GV users say Google isn't putting squat into fixing any issues with the site.

Will YouTube reach a settlement with Viacom? Likely. CNET says Google "insiders" are talking up a vision of cooperation with Hollywood, ranging from piracy filtering to waiving carrots of new ad delivery and content tracking technology. It's all about the cash, with both Google and Hollywood wanting more revenue. Google could license content, then sell ad inventory on short-form clips.

Will YouTube go long-form? I'm not sure where the beef is here. With Hulu and Veoh as established syndicated sites and both Amazon and Netflix getting into the live-streaming to the TV biz, Google could dive into a syndication deal, but how much mileage would they get out of it? Some in Hollywood think Google will hop into the long-form pay-per-view/download video game with both feet, but they'd be better off acquiring/merging with Netflix.

Will Google figure out how to make money with YouTube? Sure, but they better figure out how to generate some good cashflow in the next six to twelve months or Wall Street analysts will turn on them.

- Doug

UK wants user generated content filtered

Doug Mohney — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 12:13:02 -0400

The U.K. government wants large web portals to pre-screen user generated content before it goes online, a task that is likely to drive YouTube crazy.

A report from the House of Commons' Culture Media and Sport Committee wants to assign a government minister to oversee Internet safety, as well as other issues like P2P file sharing and targeted ad systems. Concerns come from problems with cyberbullying, violence, and offensive material.

Google's YouTube depends on users to report offensive videos and remove bad ones that have been flagged within an hour, it told the committee. But the committee didn't like Google's claim that it wasn't possible to pre-screen all video content given the volume of video YouTube receives--10 hours of video every minute.

MySpace got kudos from the committee since it had several hundred people screening images and video, taking down offensive material within two hours with a goal to cut the time down to an hour.

The European Union's Ecommerce Directive doesn't require service providers to prescreen content, but that isn't stopping Italian prosecutors from threatening to file criminal charges against four company executives for allowing a video of a disabled child being bullied to get posted on Google's Video service.

For more:
- PC World reports on UK proposal for user content review

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Google Video Disrespected

Doug Mohney — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 11:19:51 -0400

There's YouTube, and there's everything else. So why is Google still carrying around its own branded video site?

More undiplomatically, "Why Won't Google Video Just Die?," wonders Wired's Betsy Schiffman. YouTube is on the lips of four out of 10 people, with practically anyone talking about Google Video (or MySpace, or iTunes, for that matter).

Sooner or later, The Google will have to get around to cutting its losses and just integrate GV in with the dominant YouTube brand. Users say GV has plenty of problems, but nobody at Google is getting around to fixing them.

On the other hand, GV supports longer--an hour or more--video pieces, while YouTube is short-form and capped at 10 minutes. If YouTube starts offering space for longer videos, GV might not have a reason to live.

Google is currently defending its own child by saying GV has better search engine technologies, but it's been saying that for two years. It also begs the question why The Google doesn't take all of its search engine mojo and pump it into YouTube.

For more:
- Wired Blog Network wonders why Google Video won't die

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Mad Mark Bashes Online Video (Again)

Doug Mohney — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:31:08 -0400

Mark Cuban is at it again, this time slamming YouTube's lack of a business model, the Internet, and the "fraud" of HD.

Interviewed by CableFAX, Cuban tees off on his favorite subjects. Broadband video over the Internet doesn't work because there's no QoS between providers and won't likely support even standard def video with a large broadcast reach. Cuban is remarkably bullish on cable operators having the necessary infrastructure to successfully deliver video, perhaps hosting Hulu-style servers within their networks and wrapping DVR functionality at the head-end of the network rather than having hard drives in everyone's home.

YouTube gets smacked because (no big surprise) it isn't making money, while Hulu rakes in green by selling ads. Mad Mark speculates YouTube would have to create a separate licensed content "Hulu clone" service to be successful. Digital cable networks come out ahead in the infrastructure department for service delivery and HDNet would "love" to partner in testing new services.

He also accuses major media companies of trying to "skate by" by passing off standard def programming as HD and doesn't see anything happening until the government comes in to stop the "consumer fraud" of upconverted SD broadcast as HD.

For more:
- Cuban's red meat rant on Google and HD at CableFAX

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Google Protects YouTube User Viewing Data; Employee Viewing Looms

Doug Mohney — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 11:03:17 -0400

Google has cut a deal with Viacom and the other parties suing it for copyright infringement to protect private information of YouTube users. Now, about scouring that 12 TB or so of data.

Viacom sought all YouTube viewing data, as well as YouTube's source code, business models, and its kitchen sink as a part of its discovery process for the court suit. Earlier this month, a judge ordered Google to hand over video-viewing data. Google and Viacom have been in negotiations as to how to do so. Viacom wanted everything, including IP addresses, but Google argued that providing such data would violate user privacy.

Under the terms of the deal, specific YouTube user data such as user IDs and IP addresses will be replaced by a substitute "unique value" so Viacom can correlate the data to what it wants.

Still looming over Google's head is what YouTube employees have viewed and uploaded and in what context. If employees were consistently uploading copyrighted materials, Viacom could make a clear case that YouTube was intentionally violating copyright.

For more:
- MarketWatch reports on YouTube data privacy deal

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Google and Viacom fight over YouTube employee records

Doug Mohney — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 12:01:40 -0400

In the latest fight over who knew what when over at YouTube, Viacom wants to know which videos YouTube employees have watched and uploaded to the site. Google is just saying no.

According to sources cited by News.com, the dispute over what YouTube employees may or may not have done is holding up a final agreement to anonymize personal information belonging to YouTube users. Knowing what YouTube employees did gets down to the nitty-gritty if YouTube (the company) either knew about copyrighted materials being on the site (Interesting question, since an employee would have to view a copyright work to confirm it was not supposed to be there before deleting it) and/or uploaded copyrighted materials. The latter means big bucks to all parties.

Google has been accused of encouraging massive copyright violations through YouTube, so if employees were intentionally "salting" YouTube content with copyright material, it means the company could be liable for billions.

For more:
- News.com reports Viacom wants YouTube employee records

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Google AdSense To Distribute MacFarlane Video Series

Doug Mohney — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 16:05:05 -0400

The buzz is swirling around details with Google's deal to distribute Seth MacFarlane's project though AdSense.

MacFarlane, creator of "Family Guy" on Fox, is going to roll out "Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy" this September to thousands of web sites with the appropriately targeted demographic. There will be 50 two minute episodes with new characters in the multimillion dollar production and advertisers are going to have to pay up lots more than if they generically placed the same ad through AdSense.

Options for advertisers will include prerolls, a banner to be placed at the bottom of the video or a simple "Brought to you by" note at the beginning with MacFarlane, the underwriting ad agency, Google and the website generating the click/view splitting the revenues four ways. For a larger fee, advertisers can animate original commercials to run with the series.

For more:
- Paidcontent.org breaks down the Google/MacFarlane deal

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