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One Small Step for Video Ad Standards. One Giant Leap for Creators and Brands. May 7, 2008

One of the factors that has limited the growth of online-video advertising is the production and traffic work. Mike Shields of Mediaweek reports that the Interactive Advertising Bureau this week introduced a set of guidelines to standartize online-video advertising and make the medium “easier for advertisers to buy.”

The new guidelines cover three basic forms of online video ad formats: linear ads — interruptive video spots which are typically of the pre-roll variety, non-linear ads — which include the increasingly popular ‘overlay’ ad units, and companion ads — bannerlike ads that appear alongside video as it plays on the Web.

The guidelines, writes Shields, are the product of work conducted by the IAB’s Digital Video Committee, which is composed of 145 leading media companies, including Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. “This is a historic day,” IAB president and CEO Randall Rothenberg said, likening the announcement to a similar set of landmark guidelines put in place for banner advertising in the late 1990s. IAB senior vp David Doty said he thinks leadership and marketing, predicted “seismic shifts” would occur in the online ad business as a result of their adoption.

So while the viewer in me isn’t too excited to see the new “interruptive video spots,” the creator and marketer in me looks forward to the possibility that this may unlock some of the potential of this medium.

In related news, tech writer Leah Messinger writes about other sites beyond YouTube that offer advertising models brands can consider.

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RIP for Paid Content (bring on the ads) April 17, 2008

It’s pretty clear that consumers are hesitant to buy professional video content much less amateur content. Given that I’ve sold exactly 13 copies of my “best of Nalts DVD” it’s no surprise to me to see that Brightcove is abandoning its “pay for content” model:

On July 31, 2008, we plan to discontinue the Pay Media (Beta) functionality within Brightcove. The Pay Media functionality allows publishers to rent or sell their content directly to consumers. Since its beta release in January 2007, less than 1% of our customers have tried the feature and an even smaller percentage of our customers use it routinely. Given the minimal adoption of Pay Media and the feedback we have received from the market, we are going to discontinue this beta functionality.

Too bad. I was thinking about selling “White Bucks” for $250.

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How Many of the 10 Billion Videos Viewed in February Did YOU Watch? April 17, 2008

We watched 10 billion videos in February, according to ComScore yesterday. That’s a 66 percent gain from February 2007, and apparently about 73 percent of people online are watching videos. Which means the other 15 percent are losers that are too busy brushing up on their math skills.

35 percent of this activity is on Google/YouTube, followed by about 6 percent by Fox and 3 percent by Yahoo. So if you want the “long tail,” go diggin’ into some of the big-media entities that top the list with one percent share.

I’ll be on YouTube.

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It’s Your Fault if You’re Bored Online April 17, 2008

Now it’s your fault if you’re bored online and can’t find anything good to watch (besides Nalts crap).

Tilzy.tv aggregates and lists a lot of the top episodic programming, and may especially helpful as a transition drug to online-video. Especially for you noobs who still think television is more interesting.

The name, branding and tagline “guide to television on the web” a oddly retro, but that’s the point we suppose.

Good content as well as stories, like this recent news about Rabbit Bites getting sponsored by Purina. You go, Bunns and Chou Chou!

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Southpark on Monetization of Digital Content April 4, 2008

Kyle from Southpark puts it well in this 30-second clip from “Canada on Strike.” The clip’s called “The Promise of Future Revenue.” Thanks to Jan for finding it.

Boy I’m sure glad that’s over with. Me too. Yeah, but you know I learned something today. We thought we could make money on the Internet. But while the Internet is new and exciting for creative people, it hasn’t matured as a distribution mechanism to the extent that one should trade real and immediate opportunities for income for the promise of future online revenue. It will be a few years before digital distribution of media on the Internet can be monetized to an extent that necessitates content producers to forgo their fair value in more traditional media.

In this part of “Canada on Strike,” the Southpark folks meet some YouTube weblebrities (the cliche one-hit wonders). There’s something pervursely symbolic to see all of the Internet stars — laughing baby, sneezing panda, gopher, Chris Crocker, Chocolate Rain, Tron guy, Numa Numa — end up in a bloody mess on the floor.

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Why Media Buyers Are Stunting the Growth of Online Video March 21, 2008

Balding white marketer desperately wants to meet smart, strategic media buyer. If you’re one, please recognize you’re not the target of this rant. But the rest of  you are just so friggin’ short sighted and clueless.

There are some amazing online-video series that could be incredible opportunities for smart brands wanting to engage with early adopters of a medium that is changing the way we relate to content and brands.

Brands can reach depth and relevancy with their target, even if it’s not driving total significant awareness and immediately creating ROI through driving intent, store visits, and trial.

I give you exhibit one. iChannel.  A mere 8000 people are subscribed to this series on YouTube, but the views of the weekly series are roughly three times that (I’m the inverse of that with 30,000 Nalts subscribers, but some recent videos ranging in the 8-15K views). So it’s a healthy and highly devoted and interactive audience. Episode 31 had 180K views alone.

And it’s deeply philosophical, well acted, intelligently scripted and short and addictive.  I had the pleasure of appearing in one last May.

These guys spend more time setting up one shot than I do on my entire post production. The audience is like a microcosm of those watching Lost. Or The Office. They’re engaged, passionate, and hold their breath waiting for the next episode.

So why would a media buyer pass on this?

• It’s not a big media deal. No hot AOL ad reps are pushing it.
• The audience isn’t big enough. No scale yet.
• The conversion from the episode to a bloated brand microsite wouldn’t be great.
• They can just advertise on YouTube’s invideo ads and get there.

Why should an electronic manufacturer dye to have sole sponsorship?

• They could probably own it for the equivalent of pocket change they dug from the back of their marketing budget couch.
• It would be ground breaking.
• The audience is perfect, and the level of product engagement would be far richer than an ad we’re trained to ignore.
• It sets the stage for a new model where advertisers contract directly with creators of content (who carry fixed audiences). No worthless intermediaries clogging the pipes between.

What’s the solution to grabbing these types of opportunities? Have these deals championed by someone outside the regular media-buying job. While I was at Johnson & Johnson, the big deals between media players (networks and magazines) were done by folks that weren’t inline marketers like me, but had influence over the way media budgets were set across the many brands. After all, J&J couldn’t get interesting deals if each brand fended for itself, and the interesting partnerships required someone that could step outside the short-sighted world I live in when charged with P&L of a brand.

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What Does Google’s Acquisition of DoubleClick Mean to Online Video? March 11, 2008

Google closed on the acquisition of DoubleClick today, and issued this statement to address concerns (continued Dart service, as well as privacy provisions).

As a buyer of interactive media (primarily paid search but also targeted display), I like this deal. Google’s muscle, innovation and discipline from the paid search origins means this could enhance the metrics around otherwise cute but unaccountable display ads. I’m tired of the “let’s do another bloated consumer survey to find out what display does to awareness, recall and intent.” There’s got to be a way to get conversion rates tied better to display, and if anyone can now prove the “one-two-punch” theory of paid ‘n display (think chocolate and peanut butter yummy), Google now can. And should.

Oh, I almost forgot. Here’s my “Enlightened Stupid Marketers” video I posted this morning to spoof my profession, and it touches on the impact of friggin’ newspaper ads versus paid search.  Did you know that stupid marketers have two choices: to remain stupid, or pretend not to be? The core YouTube audience really doesn’t care much for these niche videos, but readers of WVFF might.

Where was I? Oh. Now here’s the challenge. This deal kinda makes some online media buyers a little twitchy, as some get threatened by consolidation downstream. Some of those flickering-bulb types (you know- the pretty ones that talk too much if they talk at all) will feel they’re one step closer to being as obsolete as their moms or older sisters who were, naturally, travel agents. Maybe they should be doing PR afterall?

In reality, the online media mix is dynamic and will always require smart, strategic buyers. It’s just that they’re only about 10 of them in the world, and 7 of them lose their charm exactly 6.5 days after they win the new account. Like Candycorn, the first few handfuls are delicious, and then suddenly you feel like you’re eating sweetened candles and can’t stand the site of them. You loved the little puppies in the litter, and now they’re just pissing on the furniture, biting the couch and barking all night.

So get to the damned point, Nalts. What does this acquisition mean to video? Well, probably nothing initially. But long term it’s good news for two reasons:

1. Text ads are currently more relevant than display ads around videos. Since Revver hasn’t been selling many single-frame display ads these days, we’re seeing the Google-run text ads (Adsense) served “InVid” style. Guess what? They’re actually relevant and capture my attention more than current display ads. I watch a lot of videos, and have developed ad anethesia for the limited number of CPG companies doing “run of site” ads across YouTube. Don’t stop, guys. I owe my YouTube partner income to you.
2. Since it’s Google buying Doubleclick (and not the other way around), we’ll see display develop some of the maturity of paid search. Harnass the visceral medium of InVid (quarter frame ads) with their sister display ads, then add the relevance of text relevancy. And if the databases can be merged in ways that don’t freak out the privacy people, then ads become even more relevant albiet sometimes creepy.

Now Google has two more challenges to make video advertising really interesting.

1. The Google account teams have to grow beyond paid search. This is not an easy transition. SEM (search engine marketing) buyers have a very hard time with CPM (cost per million- a term for buying for an ad based on impressions not performance). Meanwhile SEM sellers need to be trained to talk to CPM junkies. It’s kinda like being bilingual. You need a translator around for a period. Currently, it’s a buyer’s market for video advertising. I am convinced that the “marketers are afraid of buying ads around CGM (consumer generated media)” hype is a big, fat, stinkin’ red herring. It’s just that nobody is showing marketers how online video ads and more creative sponsorships can move their business. Google plus YouTube plus DART should be able to pull that off, but it’s going to require behavior and organizational shift.
2. Now the big challenge. If I get a CPC (cost per click) based on text ads around my videos, then I’ll tag them all with free Viagra, mortgage, loans, lawers and digital camera.  So we need that ever-evasive “text recognition” technology that turns my droaning voice into targetable text. Blinkx was supposed to be doing this years ago. Then, of course, I’ll just start saying all those tag words as part of my scripts.

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The Marketeter’s Cheat Sheet to Viral Video February 19, 2008

You’re running a brand that is trying to “dip your toe” into social media and online video, and you’re facing some important questions:

• Is my brand right for this?
• How can I experiment without ending up as a “case study” failure?
• Can I convince my company that we should do this?
• What are my options for developing compelling content and distributing it widely?

Here’s a quick guide that encompasses a lot of topics we’ve covered on this blog. It’s the “least a marketer or agency needs to know” about online video, and will give you a roadmap for a good program.

1. Step 1: Determine if your brand is right for online video. Is your brand compelling and simple, or complex and direct-response oriented? If you’re a consumer-product goods (CPG), it’s a no-brainer. If you’re in a complex, crowded, regulated and boring industry, it’s going to be more difficult.
2. Step 2: Keep it quiet. The more senior management and attorneys you bring into a pilot, the more internal battling you’ll do before experimenting. Get some “air cover” from an executive sponsor, and avoid excessive internal scrutiny.
3. Step 3: Let go. Your marketing message is critical to you, but if your content is driven by an advertising objective it’s at risk of being a flop. If you want to go viral, you’ve got to entertain first and promote subtly. There are countless case studies on this, and it’s an inarguable fact. If you buy media, your ads can be boring. But if you expect people to share your video, it better be entertaining, provocative, sexy, funny, outrageous or at least interesting.
4. Step 4: Develop a creative brief. Don’t make it too narrow, but give it some focus. If you ask people to make a funny video that includes your brand, you’ll get a lot of stuff that may or may not support your objective. But if you require creators to insert a series of “unique selling propositions” then you’ll end up with ads instead of entertaining videos. With my smaller clients, I develop the brief. Larger clients often already have one, and simply need ideas or video content.
5. Step 5: Engage creators. You have four options here.
   • Option one, you can hire your agency to create video content. This gives you control, but most agencies (advertising, online, and public relations) lack experience in social media and online video in particular. I’ve found this to be extremely expensive, and often the agencies lack the expertise to make the videos “not suck” and get the videos widely viewed and “seeded” in the right places.
   • Option two, you can hire individual amateurs. This gives you access to people that know the medium and have established audiences. Some smaller brands (and larger ones) contract directly with people like me, InvisibleEngine, Rhett & Link and Barely Political (just a few creators that are interested in building entertaining, promotional content). This keeps things safer, but requires some oversight since you’ll need to interact individually with these companies or people.
   • Option three, you can run a big, public contest. These are still quite common, but rather expensive. You’ll spend a lot on media to promote the contest (money I’d prefer to see brands use to promote the brand itself). You’ll also get a lot of lame content, but hopefully a few winners.
   • Finally, you can contract with a third party that can represent a variety of proven creators. For example, a few large brands have contracted with Xlntads to help reach a collection of experienced amateur creators (note: I consult with Xlntads, and run its creative ad board). There are probably similar brand/creator models that offer this service, but I’m less familiar with them. I see this as an evolving industry that can either contract directly to brands or via agencies. For instance, Daily Motion has brokered between certain major advertisers in France, and works from the agency’s creative brief to identify, engage, pay and leverage the presence of appropriate creators that produce content on the site.
6. Step 6: Get the videos seen. If you want to buy media, you can run your videos as advertisements on a variety of sites. The second and third tier video sites are especially receptive to giving prominence to promotional content in fairly inexpensive media buys. If your content is good enough, you can hope it will travel “viral” style: people will share it with friends, post it on their blogs, feature it on their websites. There are three magic tricks that make this work:
   • First, your content has to be good.
   • Second, it really helps to leverage the distribution and audience of known creators. If an amateur has a popular blog or YouTube channel, this gives you a much better chance of wide distribution.
   • Thirdly, you can “seed” it yourself or have the creators, third parties or agencies do it. This “seeding” involves reaching out to appropriate online properties, channels, discussions, forums and blogs. If it’s good content and you reach out to people politely your chances increase. I’ve seen bad videos that get lots of attention, and good videos that die. So this third step is non trivial and often overlooked.
7. Step 7: Evaluate. Did the videos get lots of views and positive feedback? What did the comments say? Did people take a measurable action after watching the video? Keep your expectations in check: few marketing videos break into the millions of views, and very few of those viewers will take an immediate action (visiting your site, and making a purchase). These videos will, however, help your rankings via Google and other search engines. So maybe the next time a prospect is searching for your brand on Google, they’ll find your brand-friendly videos instead of a competitor’s content or disgruntled customer. This is a powerful and often overlooked outcome of a good video pilot.
8. Step 8: Scale as Appropriate. Most online-video marketing projects are simple experiments to help brands learn and “test the waters,” and few have scaled radically. However some brands have been so excited about results with online video that they return annually with programs that are hard to miss.

With a few exceptions, I haven’t yet seen many online-video pilots driving significant, immediate sales for a brand. But I have seen online-video initiatives that have increased the awareness of the brand, and changed the attributes and preference of target consumers (as measured by awareness trackers). Most of my clients have enjoyed an online presence they wouldn’t have gotten on their own and found it a good investment. A few have confided that more people watched my stupid video than visited their big, bloated agency-developed website (which contained a variety of expensive videos they produced). It’s much easier to reach people on the highway of YouTube than to hope they’ll stop at the little rest stop you create (which is usually a huge expense and a “throw away” at the end of the project).

Other suggestions? Bring ‘em on. This is a blog, for crying out loud.

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Bubble Bursting for Video Creators Hoping to Monetize Content? February 17, 2008

Online-video creators are sobering up after an intoxicated 2007, as they realize that the “road to riches” via online video is fraught with challenges. Business Week proclaimed “amateur video hour” as over in December. Crackle and other sites migrated from UGC (user-generated content) some time ago. And here are some quite recent data points that, alone, aren’t really newsworthy but tell a sad story together:

• Metacafe set a higher bar for revenue-sharing “Producer Rewards” program, much to the dismay of some creators who saw their popular videos drop from the program (see Metacafe forum).
• Revver, the pioneer of online-video revenue sharing, was sold for pennies.
• The initial participants of YouTube’s Partnership program (which shares revenue with creators) hit their one-year anniversary in March. Although YouTube and its creators are not permitted to disclose the specifics, I do have sources that reveal early participants received fixed fees that (in some cases) allowed them to quit their day jobs. The rest of us joined when YouTube had adjusted the program so that we’re paid a percentage of ad revenue, and I can’t disclose specifics. Compared to nothing, it’s welcomed cash. But it’s far from enough to live on.

For sure, some creators are doing well with sponsored gigs, DVD sales and rare television contracts. I’ve managed to augment my income by creating sponsored videos, and have done fairly well in the past 6 months. But it’s certainly not enough to quit the day job, and I’m not patient or risky enough to hold my breath for a lucrative television contract.

Solution 1: Pay for Content?

With few exceptions, viewers don’t yet pay for amateur content. This is especially true for early adopters of online-video, who have enjoyed free video, including amateur stuff, copyrighted material via YouTube, and free movies & music via P2P sharing. As the mainstream audience moves in, the market for paid content will increase, but mostly for professionally produced and well marketed video. Perhaps we’ll see a third-party aggregate some second-tier amateur content and develop a paid subscription model (especially if that content can be fed into PC, mobile and television). However an individual amateur would inarguably lose the vast majority of their audience if they required the audience to even move to an alternative channel (their own ad-supported site) or charged for it. Even Howard Stern lost most of his audience when he moved to Syrius. So it’s no surprise that I’ve sold only four copies of the “Best of Nalts” DVD.

Solution 2: Ad-Supported Content

As much hype as we’ve seen about consumers avoiding ads, this is the most viable, sustainable model. Simply put, good content won’t sustain for free, and amateur content hasn’t a prayer unless it’s supported by ads. Currently, this model is rate-limited by two sad realities. First, advertisers have been slow to buy ads around amateur content — even YouTube doesn’t appear to be selling its full inventory of InVid (overlay) ads. Secondly, there’s not yet broad enough distribution of this content.

I’ll argue that good video content and consumer demand exists, but people there aren’t yet enough viewers of amateur content to warrant significant dollars from advertisers. And we’re in dire need of an easy vehicle to view UCG via our mobile and television boxes, which will increase both viewer demand and advertising inventory (my next post will explore web/TV devices, which I believe are the lynch pin here).

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Diet Dr. Pepper Cherry Chocolate Wins Our “Viral Video Marketer of the Year Award” February 14, 2008

Well actually WillVideoForFood doesn’t have a “viral video marketers of the year award,” and even if it did, we’d wait until December to give it out. Still, this “Cherry Chocolate Rain” video sponsored by Diet Dr. Pepper’s Cherry Chocolate is a near perfect case study on smart online-video marketing.

First, it leverages the viral fame of TayZonday, who sprung to viral fame with his deep voiced “Chocolate Rain” (more than 14 million views on YouTube).

Proof of the viral-video campaign’s strength is in the (chocolate) pudding…

• TayZonday cost relatively little relative to typical CPG ads (but probably wrote the biggest check the unsigned 25-year-old musician will ever cash).
• The brand identified a producer/director to help the singer, but gave creative freedom away… and kept the branding to a bare minimum. Had the branding been more overt, the pass-along would have dropped precipitously.
• The spot is funny, self-deprecating, transparent, tantalizing, and engaging. It includes music, pretty women, a bedazzled amateur with talent, and chocolate being tossed on squirrels.
• This same video posted by Dr. Pepper (instead of posted on TayZonday’s popular YouTube channel) would have been viewed maybe several thousand times at best, but it’s already up to nearly 3 million views since its November launch. By comparison, my most popular video was 4.5 million views and not sponsored. That view count is quite rare for a sponsored video –  if each view is worth a nickel or dime to the brand, the program has probably paid for itself already.
• More importantly, it’s been featured on television which is equally rare for an advertisement. This alone probably justified the moderate cost of the program, and in fact may be worth more than the viral view.
• Check out the Google search results for “cherry chocolate dr pepper.” The video outranks the Dr. Pepper website, where a visitor will fumble through a bloated flash interface before finding the Diet Dr. Pepper Cherry Chocolate page and not even find the video (an intentional move). So the brand has a better experience now for curious consumers.
• While a few criticized TayZonday for “selling out,” most of us were happy to see an amateur capitalize on his talent. It’s a bit long for my taste, but it made me smile and made me aware of a brand I didn’t know existed until now (despite the fact that Diet Dr. Pepper is my second favorite drink after Diet Mountain Dew). Say, that reminds me. The Mountain Dew site is pretty cool, but they sure could use a viral video about farts.

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• About...

  Kevin Nalts is one of the most-viewed YouTube comedians with more than 650 short online videos seen more than 25 million times. By day he's a Marketing Director at a Fortune 100 company, and he speaks, writes and consults in the area of online marketing and viral video. To contact, please see details in ABOUT NALTS.

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