Tag Archives: permission

book, Online Video

5 Ways to Make Star-Sponsored Videos Flourish on YouTube

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Daisy Whitney’s “New Media Minute” covers the ongoing story of YouTube, its partners and advertisers. Prompted by MediaWeek’s “Placement Police” article, it seems the Wild West is getting settled.

Whitney shows some of my Fox “Fringe” parodies, and discusses Hitviews, for whom I’m chief strategical officer.

med men on youtube

Here’s what I believe is “the least advertisers and YouTube partners need to know” about sponsored videos via YouTube “stars”:

  1. YouTube hasn’t yet, to my knowledge, deleted a video or terminated a partner over this. They have the right, but don’t want to alienate the portion of banwidth (partners) that is revenue producing and keeps audiences returning.
  2. It’s really unethical for an advertiser to get an idea about a YouTube “star” from Google/YouTube sales person, and then circumvent YouTube to avoid media spending. I’ve said no to the terms of one attractive ad deal when I learned that my Google advocate (who brought me to a leading brand) was being “shut out” of a deal he created. We’re still working it out.
  3. A sponsored video should never be “monetized” with additional overlay (InVideo) or Google text ads. This could create conflicting advertisers, which is good for neither YouTube or the sponsor (if you’re Coke commissioning a sponsored video, do you really want to see a Pepsi pop-up ad)?
  4. When a partner cuts a deal directly with an advertiser, the distributor (YouTube) is “shut out.” Therefore YouTube has no incentive to promote the video through a variety of means now available to other “monetized” content. This isn’t sustainable or scalable.
  5. Eventually we’ll have ways to scale programs… and ensure the partner, YouTube and advertiser benefit. One way might include a sponsor also buying InVideo ads… or other pay-per-view, pay-per-click, pay-per-impressions to help get the video scale beyond the partner’s audience. This will help a sponsor’s video with a specific partner get far more reach, and ensure that YouTube as the distributor is fairly compensated for promoting and paying that bandwidth bill.

Thanks for the congratulations, Ms. Daisy Whitney. Glad you’ve got a mess full o’ sponsors yourself, and I applaud their targeted marketing (versus the old “rent an ignored booth at the giant trade show” method).

Here’s a sneak preview of the new NaltsConsulting site. It needs some work, and the name is rather dull. But I’ve had a number of people advise on sticking with the Nalts brand.

book, copyright, YouTube

What’s “Fair Use” in Online Video?

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Copyright Law is probably the most misunderstood of all law pertaining to copyrights. I wrote that myself.

So it helps to get some guidance from Mark Levy, who specializes in intellectual property law, and wrote a piece on “What’s Legal: Producer’s Rights” in a recent issue of VideoMaker.

The least you need to know:

  • Copyright law protects you as a video creator, and gives you the right to authorize (or not) your stuff for reproduction, derivative works and distribution for sale or rental.
  • Fair use allows users to copy portions off a work for purposes of illustration or commentary. Journalist can quote speeches, but courts consider four factors to determine the fine line between fair use and copyright infringement:
  1. The nature of the work: If it’s factural not creative, it’s more likely to pass.
  2. Purpose: commercial or non-profit has obvious implications.
  3. Amount and substantiality of excerpted work. The more you use, the greater the risk. TheStranger can probably use my image in this “Undies” award promotion. But the jackass that keeps ripping popular YouTube videos, posting it on their own channel, and linking to their stupid website? YouTube seems to be policing that well.
  4. Potential effect on the value or potential market of the original work.

Be careful out there, kiddo.