Tag Archives: performance

Online Video

YouTube Statistics Via SocialBlade

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ReelSEO’s Tim Schmoyer interviewed Jason Urgo about his Social Blade, which helps YouTube creators track fellow YouTubers. The website captures public information from YouTube’s API and databases them — to help creators “stalk” top YouTubers, but also see what “competitors” are doing.

Here's a SocialBlade report on my recent history. I have access to this data as a channel owner. But SocialBlade makes it easy for people to look at a YouTuber's "health"

People are obviously interested in how much income YouTubers earn, and Social Blade provides a broad earning range based on total monthly views x estimated income per view (maybe 50 cents to $5 bucks per 1,000 views). There’s also an “SB score” that tracks YouTube influence (ala Klout). The site also makes projections around YouTubers hitting certain subscriber milestones, and provides simple graphs on any YouTube channels; these display data otherwise difficult or impossible to access (see chart).

Vidstatsx has a similar offering, but SocialBlade goes deeper by tracker YouTubers that are getting smaller viewers. Urgo also is helping smaller YouTubers become YouTube Partners, which gives them advanced functionality on their channel page. Here’s where you can become a Partner via Urgo and “RPM Networks,” which is a division of web studio Maker. Not everyone is approved, but it helps to have at least 1,000 daily views, clean content, and no copyright infringements.

See the video below for more info, and check out my Nalts page. You’ll see my ever-shrinking subscriber list (from 244K to 225K subscribers). I’m losing about 600 per day since YouTube is scrubbing out old, inactive accounts that subscribe. Obviously this won’t effect me since dead accounts don’t watch a lot of videos. By comparison, here’s the VidStatsx page on my Nalts account. It focuses more on top YouTubers and hour-by-hour changes.

The data sites continue to emphasize subscriber data, which to me is not as important as a) a channel’s total views to date, and b) the average number of views on a creator’s recent videos. The former drives a creator’s income, but the latter is important for brands looking to sponsor YouTubers. How many views can they expect on a sponsored video? To get an answer, look at the past 10-20 videos and average their views.

Online Video

Marriage Proposal Goes Viral: SUV Lip-Dub to “Marry You” by Bruno Mars

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She listens to "Marry You" by Bruno Mars, and gets 2012's most interesting proposal.

Watch on YouTube as Actor Isaac Lamb proposes to his girlfriend Amy Frankel to the tune of “Marry You” by Bruno Mars (which she enjoys on headphones as she rides a Honda CRV).

An ensemble of dancers join a street parade, punctuated by Isaac dropping on one knee. Learn more on Broadway World.

 

book, Online Video

Media Buyers Remain Afraid of UGC & Chupacabra

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Advertisers continue to fear user-generated content (aka consumer-generated media) and Chupacrabas, according to an eMarketer report. Instead of contextual ads or sponsorships, buyers are sticking with 30-second pre-roll ads that reduce purchase intent compared to control.

Media buyers prefer online video advertisements (versus sponsorships or branded entertainment) because “viewers dislike or distrust video advertising—even though they freely accept television commercials.” David Hallerman, who wrote the report, says that distrust is what wins over digital buyers who overlook the reduced intent test/control data because the CPMs (cost per 1,000) are irresistibly cheap, and media buyers can’t resist a deal.

“Even on their personal time, a good media buyer can’t overlook a sale,” eMarketer’s Hallerman said. “I have a neighbor who is a senior digital media buyer, and he purchases randomly sized dresses and skirts at Loehmans each weekend.” Hallerman added that despite his neighbor’s peanut allergy, he can’t resist the Jiffy “buy one, get the other 50% off“sales. But, Hallerman added, “He’s certainly financially disciplined enough to resist the paltry 25%-off sales.”

Chupacabra Sightings at Major Digital-Buying Agencies Have Created Near Hysteria.
Chupacabra Sightings at Major Digital-Buying Agencies Have Created Near Hysteria.

“Like last year’s study, media buyers remain afraid of the dreaded Chupacabra,” says to Hallerman. “Many of the top digital-media buyers we interviewed at such leading agencies as Digitas, Avenue-A Razorfish, OMD, UMI and even Scient and Viant are terrified of the goat-sucking beast. This is especially true of those Puerto Rican people, whose fear rose from 18% to 37% from 2008 to 2009.” Hallerman believes the Cupacabra threat may have originated via sales representatives of advertising networks and large media properties, who wished to keep their buyers safe.

“More than 78% of media buyers are taking protective measures against consumer-generated content and Chupacabra attacks,” says Hallerman. “It’s not very different from the swine flu, except that the swine flu actually exists.”

“In my country, many beautiful media buyers would having look at consumer-media,” said Marcos Sanchez of Cerebro Muerto Digital (CMD). “And they no coming back from night after Chupacabra eating their blood.” Sanchez said, under promise of anonymity, that CMD invests no less than 30% of its client’s digital media budget on low-cost inventory on websites that have not been operational in five years or more. “We finding on professional sites like “The Daily Reel” that they video prerolls get 500,000 impressions daily and viewers very, very engaged in banners with 94% recall.”

So… umm…. I’m kidding about only some of that. The preroll is all the rage,  while WVFF has showed how sponsored videos have measurable ROI. Did I ever mention on this blog that you can’t get reach without advertising near UGC (user generated content) because the VAST majority of views are of vloggers, YouTube stars, viral hits… not Hulu shows. Did I ever mention on this blog that you can actually pay a YouTube star a small amount of money to make a funny video about your product that you approve?

Anyway, some other key points for those that see online-video marketing as digital ads only:

  1. A 30-second preroll is not as effective as a 5-second preroll and lower 1/3 ad. In fact, purchase intent goes DOWN due to 30-second prerolls as compared to a control!
  2. People under 30 are far more likely to find an ad funny, emotionally touching or informative (3 proxies of purchase). Is that a function of their familiarity with the medium or the fact that many campaigns are targeting them?
  3. Below are other topics the full report hits. Feel free to send me a copy if you buy one. I can’t find a spare $700 of change in my couch. Plus they never interview me for these, so they can’t be that informative. Moo haa.

  • Why do many people distrust online video advertising?
  • What can advertisers do to overcome that obstacle?
  • Can social media and video advertising be an effective mix?
  • What ad methods are needed with short video content?
  • Is the online video audience as large as it appears?

book, Online Video

ROI Better on UGC Than “Professional” Video?

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My friend ran a digital media buying company and literally wrote a book on internet advertising. He told me three things I never forgot:

  • The best color for a banner ad (from a direct response point of view) is “clear.” That is, whatever blends with the publisher site.
  • It’s hard — if not impossible — to make money if you’re buying advertising to get traffic, and your revenue is purely based on advertising.
  • Setting aside demos, banners perform better on weather and gaming sites than higher-end publishing sites (like the Wall Street Journal). This point perplexed me, but he explained his theory on this maybe counter intuitive discovery. The viewer is less engaged in the games and weather content, thus more likely to ditch it for a relevant online ad. It helped too, mind you, that the CPM for a weather.com is presumably much cheaper than a WSJ.com.

So as a marketer I’d say — assuming you could reasonably target your demographic — you’ll probably get a better return on UGC (user generated content, or amateur stuff) than professional content.

A Nalts video is less captivating than an SNL skit on Hulu (and admitting that fact came a little easier than I thought). In the next year, advertisers will feel temporarily safer with Hulu because it’s a network site (and God knows the ad networks and reps will be greasing the palms of buyers everywhere). Brainless ad buyers in NYC will clamour for inventory on the “safe” sites, and drive the CPM artificially high. Meanwhile, there will be a growing inventory of amateur content as YouTube rolls out its “partner program” wider than the paranoid advertising market can handle. So it will invariably drop or maintain.

A study (reported here by NewTeeVee) by The Diffusion Group shows a gap on CPM (cost per thousand views) already emerging:

  • CPMs for professional long-form video are about $40 now and predicted to rise to $46 by 2013.
  • CPMs for professional short-form video are roughly $30 now and expected to hit $34 by 2013.
  • UGC vids currently get $15 CPMs and are seen rising a little, to $17, by 2013.

My short-term bet for advertisers? Buy ads against UGC content, but pick your channels carefully. Don’t buy Invideo ads on Nalts if you’re selling cosmetics, but if you’re Coke running a direct-response program via InVideo ads you’ll probably have better luck buying ads against YouTube amateur partners than Britney.tv (she’s actually entertaining to her audience). YouTube may content otherwise, because they have loads of inventory on professional players, and more at stake there.

For that matter, you’ll probably get a better awareness rating on amateur content because we’re less interesting than professionals. You may, however, get a higher attribute rating (as measured by something like Dynamic Logic) if you buy ads on killer content (like Universal) versus another Fred video. Hard to say there.

Note- I’m biased on this analysis for two reasons. First, I’m in the middle of business planning, and my right brain has been completely shut down as a result. I haven’t even watched a video in days. Second- as a YouTube partner, I have an interest in UGC CPMs (I get a piece of the advertising revenue).

Now the good news for creators and advertising. It’s not an “either or” proposition. The Diffusion Group estimates that $590 million video ad market today will be a $10 billion video ad market of the future. I’ll take a smaller piece of that growing pie.

 

Online Video
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IAB online video metrics standardsThe Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has now proclaimed metric standards in a PDF document available here. According to the report, “These definitions are part of a larger IAB effort to stimulate video industry growth by making the reporting of metrics for agencies and advertisers across multiple media partners more consistent”

Thanks to Mike Abundo of Inside Online Video for alerting me to important stuff like this that I might otherwise miss.

apple, Blogs on Video, Online Video, YouTube

Should You Buy an AppleTV? Only if You’re an iTunes and YouTube Junkie

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appletv review cheap amazonI’ve had an AppleTV for a while, and I was amused by New Media Minute‘s video report that is almost entirely positive on the AppleTV except for some criticism of the the manual search process (source: webvideoreport).

Don’t get me wrong. I really enjoy my AppleTV (Amazon carries the 40GB for $224, 160GB for $324… yes I put in an affiliate link, so sue me). But I only started using it after it was a desk ornament for months.

The bottom line is that if you’re an avid iTunes user (music and movies) and a YouTube junkie, you’ll wonder how you survived without this puppy. If not, you may want to buy a used one (not too less expensive), or wait for a future version which will presumably offer more functionality, content and certainly more storage and speed.

What I dig:

  1. tv in bedGroovin’ with the concept of a device that feeds on existing broadband without another annoying monthly charge. It gives me access to my downstairs Mac via my bedroom television! My wife is not as excited that I’m watching my favorite YouTubers before dozing off.
  2. I find the interface quite elegant (albeit spartan), and a recent redesign improved it and addressed some of my previous criticisms. I chew the remote, though, so I’d like one that was a little more sturdy.
  3. I love laying down while I catch up on YouTube videos, but I mostly resign to surfing the “highest rated” section because it’s so much easier than digging into my favorite creators through the clunky account options. The “top rated” section of YouTube is unfortunately also loaded with a lot of music videos that are simply ads for cell phone ringers, and the animated parodies seem to represent 50% of the top 70 list (oddly it doesn’t list the top 100).

Here’s what AppleTV needs to do before I’d recommend it for broader use…

  1. Make it easier to synch. I’m fairly computer literate but it doesn’t seem to pick up a lot of my media.
  2. Start the clock on my rentals when I start the movie. Not when I rent it.
  3. Improve the selection of movies for sale (it’s as robust as that of a fish & bait store in a small Southern town). I was at a lousy hotel in Nashville Saturday night, and the pay-per-view selection was dramatically better. Mac: Integrate with Netflix or Blockbuster and you’ll have a gem (okay- tough one to work out, but a girl can dream).
  4. YouTube via AppleTV needs a lot of work… four key considerations:

youtube on appletv

  • Allow me subscribe to more than a dozen or so creators. Show me their videos in thumbnails, and sort them by most recent. Keep these populated without as many errors (it’s buggy). To track my favorite creators I needed to set up a new account called appletvofnalts. I’m missing a lot of my favorite creators unfortunately.
  • I’d like to comment. I’m not crazy about the remote/keyboard, but I’d like the option. And I’d like to enlarge descriptions of videos so I can read them without sitting up.
  • Give the search functionality (and “related videos”) the same juice that YouTube gives it on the site. It appears these features are “watered down” for AppleTV.
  • When I find a good creator I want to subscribe. I can’t, so I end up favoriting the video in hopes I’ll remember to subscribe when I’m at my desktop.

AppleTV won’t yet replace your DVR or your cable TV, but it’s a nice alternative when you’re sick of the overcomplicated and slow Verizon Fios media box that doesn’t want to play any of the shows you recorded on the media base that’s downstairs because the poor man’s unit upstairs can’t handle HDTV. I love the access to YouTube, which represents about 80 percent of my use (followed by an occasional movie or television show).

Please take this seriously, Mac. There are a lot of us that want to see this model proliferate, and we’re ready to promote it to our YouTube audiences (for a modest price, naturally… we can’t live on food alone). More users means more content, and I look forward to being able to share recommendations and preferences with friends.