Extreme Product Placement: Build.com Sponsor Rhett & Link Going Manly

It’s one of the most extreme versions of a product sponsorship, and it’s called “Epic Rap Battle of Manliness.” YouTube sensations Rhett & Link (Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal), held back no punches on this high-production music video designed to entertain and promote Build.com (and its YouTube channel BuildDotCom. The project is part of a trend…

Is a 2-Year-Old Book About Online Video Still Relevant?

We’re at the 2-year anniversary of my book, “Beyond Viral.” You may be interested to know that, until this morning, I have not read my own book since manuscript. It’s downright painful to read something I can’t still edit, and I was terrified that the information would be antiquated or poorly written. But during my…

Why You Should or Shouldn’t Be a Rat Jumping From YouTube’s Ship

I’ve gone dark here for a record 2 months… contrast that with my manic periods which included 3 blogs per day. Of course I have two excuses: a) nothing struck me as interesting enough, b) I couldn’t remember how to login to WordPress. Today I was struck by a piece Jim Louderback (Revision3/Discovery) wrote for…

How to Advertise on YouTube

We YouTube Partners require two things to make money: a large number of views, and advertisers. Thanks to Kalle Tompros of SearchEngineWatch for summarizing the options available to advertisers. These include promoted videos (which requires advertisers to have videos on YouTube), homepage takeovers, instream ads (prerolls), and text overlays. For more options, see YouTube’s how-to…