Charmin’s UK 
features references to a bunch of the euphamisms for pooping.
Pictured here is someone “dropping a log.” My favorite is granny saying she “needs to sink the brown one” as she plays pool.
Category Archives: advertising
Jupiter: Online Video Advertising’s “Best Years” Not Until 2009 or 2011
According to eMarketer, Jupiter is cautious about online video advertising near-term’s growth. Jupiter is “advising that online video advertising’s best years may be yet to come, not until 2009 or 2011, when video is expected to become a standard offering of online publishers.”
The reason that online video ad revenues are not growing faster, according to a recent article in Media Life, is that currently “much of the video inventory online is haphazardly placed and users have not developed predictable viewing habits.”
Very important point by Media Life… it’s still hard to target an audience.
Our thoughts on Jupiter’s cautious estimate… this all depends on how you define online video advertising:
- Is it any online advertising that appears around online videos?
- Is it strictly rich-media ads with video?
- Is it pre-roll, post-roll videos with online videos?
Moguls of New Media According to WSJ
If you want a quick crash course on the abscure talent that have become famous from online video, blogs, podcasts and the like… check out this nice WSJ article by John Jurgensen. It’s titled “Moguls of New Media.”
Highlights from the piece
Christine Dolce, whose MySpace page boasts nearly one million friends — making her arguably one of the most connected people on the Internet. A 24-year-old worked at a makeup counter in a mall, and now has a manager and a start-up jeans company and has won promotional deals for two mainstream consumer brands.
![[image]](http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/it_podcast08102005141132.gif){kind=small}
NEW-MEDIA POWER LIST
• The Wall Street Journal’s John Jurgensen discusses new media’s digital entertainers.
• See who’s who among new-media celebrities.
Each week, about a half-million people download a comedic video podcast featuring a former paralegal. A video by a 30-year-old comedian from Cleveland has now been watched by almost 30 million people, roughly the audience for an average “American Idol” episode. The most popular contributor to the photo site Flickr.com just got a contract to shoot a Toyota ad campaign.
Here are some of my favorites from Jugensen’s list of the “new-media power list” (the term “new media” died about 6 months before Web 2.0, didn’t it?)
- Tiki Bar TV (Jeff Macpherson)- the first video podcast I ever saw.
- Amanda Unboomed (Amanda Congdon)- you love her or hate her. I do both.
- Ask A Ninja (Kent Nichols and Douglas Sarine)- resulted in the most tribute/ripoffs of anything else that crossed Gore’s world wide web.
- Evolution of Dance (Judson Laipply)- Will go down as history’s most popular video guy that never made a direct penny from his 30 million views. Let’s hope is new agent dances as well as Laipply.
- EepyBird (Fritz Grobe and Stephen Voltz)- First popular video (Diet Coke/Mentos) that actually made someone some money. Check out SaveMentosNow.com for the next evolution of this concept.
- Channel101.com (Rob Schrab and Dan Harmon)- I have to admit that I hadn’t heard of this one until the “new media” folks at WSJ pointed it out.
- Brookers (Brooke Brodack)- Seriously, Carson Daly is going to return your calls when your 15 minutes are up.
The YouTube Viral Broker, who helped many of these web celebrities capitalize on their fame, is somewhat offended that the Journal overlooked him. If you want to write Jurgensen and tell him he forgot about nalts, feel free: john.jurgensen@wsj.com.
Yet Another “Share Revenue” Video Site
The online video market is getting more crowded. Here’s another revenue-sharing model in the lines of Revver and Eefoof and Motion.tv. It’s called Flixya. I discovered it from some self-promotional comments posted on popular YouTube videos.
Looks interesting, but the proof is in the pudding. I’ve asked Marquis to post his earnings to date on various sites (and he hasn’t tested Flixya). We need more content creators to do this so we’re not all wasting our times on cool sites with no traffic. Here’s his report from this morning:
Got my earnings statements for July from Motion.TV and eefoof today. I earned .61 cents at Motionless and $8.64 at foofaddle.
He’s earned thousands on Revver, but he’s been posting since 2005 and has a lot more content there. We content creators all want to know where we can make the most dough in the easiest way.
A pure “what site can I make the most $” experiment will require the following:
- The same videos are uploaded during the same time period to multiple sites.
- Revenue is calculated for JUST that time period (recognizing the lag effect of payouts).
- If you publicize that video through other channels, you have to do it equally for each of the sites (for instance, if I feature my Revver video on CubeBreak or a blog… but not my Eefoof version, I’ve biased the study). For best results, don’t publicize any.
- You need to test at least 10 videos to mitigate the “confounding variable” of one site “featuring” that video and skewing the test.
- The other confounding variable is that the sites’ traffic is changing rapidly. So if one site becomes exponentially more popular in months ahead that changes our earning potential
I’m laying this out but I suddenly don’t have the time to do this experiment because I just took a new job. And Marquis is fixing his mom’s toilet. Anyone else interested in giving this a run? We’ll creative the “definitive guide to online video revenue-sharing sites.” Oh- don’t raise your hand if you’re going to do this. It will bias the study because the site might treat you like the chef that discovers the Food critic is at the restaurant.
Chad Hurley (co-founder of YouTube) and Michael Robertson (counder of MP3.com)
Here’s a video from ZDNet that features part of a round table about consumer-generated media at the AlwaysOn Stanford Summit in Palo Alto, Calif. At first I’m bored by Chad. Then Michael kicks in, and I almost think we’ll have an intelligent debate. But it seems like the themes are:
- YouTube is creating a stage that anyone can play on
- The copyright violations isn’t YouTube, it’s the submitters
- In the end, YouTube isn’t accountable as long as it agrees to remove something when a copyright owner complains.
Wrong, wrong and wrong. YouTube is amassing a huge audience. Will everyone have their moment, or will that go to the content that can sell the most ads? YouTube certainly bears responsibility for hosting videos that are clearly stolen. Do a search for any brand name or television show.
Finally… I’m getting sick of this “if they complain we’ll take it down.” That’s like me borrowing Hurley’s car and telling him that he can call me on my cell if he needs it back.
“Bald Lady at the Bar” Video
In the interest of search-engine optimizing this video, I had to give up the punchline in this post’s title. What happens when you meet a hot woman at a bar and she happens to be bald (or, uhm, suffering from “male pattern baldness”?
The video, titled “Awesome Bar Scene,” is hysterical, and worth watching twice. The first to see the gag. The second to watch the guy in the background as he takes great pleasure in screwing his friend.
The Revver version (quicktime)
The YouTube version (flash)
Source: Post 94 at TheStunners.com (this is one of a series of four that roll out in August).
P.S. Despite rumors this is not Jodi Applegate at the bar (after her hair fell out due to stress).
The Article That Popped the Online Video Zit
Kevin Maney of the USAToday wrote the article that might pop the Internet online video zit. And it needs to be popped. I can’t stop looking at it. I just want to take my thumbs together and pop that pulsating red and white pimple. Because only when it’s gone can we move to the interesting era.
This morning I decided to make a video in which I would dub myself YouTube’s “emperer is wearing no clothes” guy. Haven’t finished it yet, but the point of it will be that this space (YouTube especially) is overvalued. A BILLION for YouTube? That’s probably one-million-times earnings. Not a good ratio. I see about two or three viable online videos. The rest will vanish.
So here’s this article, which is a great read if you’re interested in the business behind online videos… it’s called “Mania Strikes Web Again: Video Madness Takes Off.” It’s the best piece of journalism I’ve read on this space (and believe me I’ve read my share in the past 6 months). We’ll soon see some me-too articles like it, and this could lead to the online video bubble burst. Eventually my sister (a freelancer at ABC) will realize this is newsworthy and she’ll pitch a story. Right now she’s like “whatever… YouTube is sooooo popular.” And then while the next era of online video is quietly building, we’ll continue to see 6 months of news stories that say what Kevin did today. At least the business articles. The entertainment stories will still be about how some kid got famous on the Internet.
Up until now the mass media has been in some sort of weird hypnotic trance. It’s all about the online videos, and nothing about the revenue or sustainability. But Maney comes in with this incredibly sober and well-documented article. Here are the highlights:
- Web video sites are proliferating like bunnies that broke into a vat of Viagra.
- Tech blogger Om Malik calls it “the madness.”
- In just the past year or so, Internet video sites have exploded from barely any to more than 240.
- New ones appear every week.
- Venture capital (VC) firms pumped $156 million into online video in the first half of 2006, according to Dow Jones VentureOne. That’s up from basically nothing a couple of years ago.
- VC firms have raised $18 billion for their funds this year, up 41% from 2005, according to the National Venture Capital Association.
Because fund rules state that the money has to be invested, the VCs are kind of like a guy who has been drinking all night and has a bladder the size of Lake Huron. They’ll go the first place that looks promising.
Interestingly, the following paragraph got yanked from the story that’s live now: “Analysts keep fanning the fire with outrageous predictions. PricewaterhouseCoopers released a report saying that by 2010, online video will be a $1.8 trillion industry. That’s about what the USA now spends on health care in a year. If PricewaterhouseCoopers is right, then if YouTube continues to control 60% of the market, by 2010 it will be a $1.1 trillion company.” A message on USAToday article PriceWaterhouseCoopers’ Entertainment and Media Outlook predicts that the entire entertainment and media industry will be $1.8 trillion by 2010. An earlier version of the story misstated PWC’s outlook.”
I prefer to accept the first version because I kinda like the idea of PWC totally overstating the online video market. Anyway, aren’t they IBM now? Kevin- thanks for correcting it, but I’m going choosing to remember the first one. Anybody ever go back and look at the Forrester and Jupiter 2000-2005 expectations on doc-com revenue that were written in 1999? Now THAT’s madness.
Join the YouTube Bubble-Burst Pool… no cash required and t-shirt and fame await you
NOTE: Log your votes on the above tab “YouTube Bubble-Burst Pool.”
We’re having a WillVideoForFood Pool on when YouTube’s bubble bursts. I’m saying 67 days. Here’s how the pool works.
You guess the exact days between now and the bust, and submit that number as a comment. The bust will be defined by any of the following:
- YouTube falls from the number one position for online videos (it’s leading by miles so this won’t happen first)
- YouTube announces its sale to a large media player, who ultimately over commercialize, sanitize and ride the business down a black hole. The deal doesn’t have to be complete for this condition to be satisfied.
- YouTube has a cover story on its failed business model by any of the following publications: Newsweek, Time, Forbes, or Fortune.
The day one of these things happen, I’ll return to the post and find the winner. That winner will receive a “I Guessed the Date of YouTube’s Demise” t-shirt (custom made at CafeExpress) and a special WVFF blog post that hails the individual as the great forecaster of the end of YouTube and the beginning of the next generation of online video. This burst is a critical step in the maturity of this market, and I want to get it over with quickly. That’s why I’m going with 67 days.
Put in your vote. You gotta vote to win.
Memo to Chad Hurley: Sell YouTube, You Moron
The New York Post ‘s Tim Arango reports that YouTube could go for a billion dollars. Chad Hurley, YouTube founder, could make $400 million in the transaction.
These YouTube guys haven’t paid a bit of attention to my rants since I’ve been blogging about them for the past 6 months. But trust me in that Chad Hurley will be the Internet’s poster child for morons if he doesn’t sell right now.
YouTube is wonderful pre-Internet-bubble puffery, and the big media companies want a piece of the online video space. YouTube is white hot, with the largest share of the online video pie and constant media coverage. No business model proven, and major copyright issues ahead.
Sell, Chad. In about 3 months you’ll be grateful for a tenth of that. I don’t know a lot, but I know two things well… entrepreneurship and online video. Trust me on this one.
Thursday Night TV Losing Its Reign?
I’m baffled why my agencies aren’t thinking like Jason Glickman of Online Video Insider. In 
,” Glickman writes:
…Advertisers can aggregate a reach of millions that rivals television. Many online networks even help with the translation between online numbers and GRPs so advertisers can slot the numbers right into their plans. Much of this reach comes during times when people wouldn’t normally be watching TV, given online video’s growing domination of the day-part audience. And broadening the marketing window into daytime hours can be put to profound use.
Many people know that Thursday night is the best for television, but don’t know why. It’s because Thursday night was traditionally the last high-reach opportunity to influence consumers before the weekend… when they’re shopping, attending concerts, and (most of all) deciding what movie to see. Not anymore, observes Glickman. “That title is now held by the Internet on Friday mornings and afternoons.”