Category Archives: Yahoo Video

Comparing and Rating Video Search Engines

videosearchsites.jpgWhile Google/YouTube may change the dynamic of video search, it’s still hopelessly frustrating to find a video online. Wall Street Journal writer Jessica Vascellaro wrote a nice article on video search today. I liked it not just because it was the first time I’ve been mentioned in the Wall Street Journal. The article shows that companies have made significant efforts to address search. Ironically I can’t find the article online. But it’s titled “Finding Tom Cruise (Not Cruise Missiles). Have a go.

Inspired by the piece, I did my own comparisons of the online video search websites she referenced (and one she didn’t- Videoronk.com). My methodology was simple. I searched on my username (Nalts) which I also use to tag every video I upload to any video site. If nothing showed up, I can assume that the engine is crawling neither the username nor the tags, which means it’s not effective. If that failed, I tried a few of the unique titles I have for my videos.

In general all of the sites were poor at finding my videos. Results were incomplete, and they are based purely on the metadata (titles, tags, etc.) which I provide when I upload them. Eventually sites will convert speech to text and that will help. But it will be a long while before these operate with the success of search engines looking for text.

The ratings are in the image above. The winner by a mile is Videoronk. While it only indexes a small portion of my videos (and other people that have tried it), it’s still outperforming the other search tools). Purevideo was in second place because it also has links to each online-video site’s top videos. Pixsy was marginal, and Blinkx.com has actually gotten worse since the last time I used it.

Honorable mentions go to AOL Video and Yahoo Video — both video sites index videos beyond those on their site. Ironically, Yahoo Video ranked my Blip.tv videos higher than those that I uploaded on Yahoo Video. Revver seemed to be the online-video site that was most searchable by these engines. All but Blinkx.com found my Revver videos (which is ironic because Blinkx.com established a partnership with Revver earlier this year).

I didn’t include Metacafe in this test because it’s a destination site, but it’s planning some advanced search features like language translation in search. We can only hope that Google will start to do a better job of indexing YouTube videos and videos on other sites.

For now the easiest way to find a video is to start with YouTube, and then hit Videoronk if you don’t find it. 

He “Wrote the Book” on Viral Video

hemmingway.jpgI’ve decided to write a book on viral video — aimed primarily at marketers and advertisers since amateur videographers and film makers don’t have enough money to buy books. Naturally I haven’t written a book before, but I sometimes read them. So I figure I’m pretty qualified.

The working title is: “The Profit (Prophet) of Viral Video,” and it comes with access to an extranet that hosts updates and links to case-study videos.

To you, dear readers, I pose the following question:

  1. Can I write a book despite having a full-time job that occupies no less than 12 hours a day? And without compromising my wife and kids? I’m willing to sleep less.
  2. Any better ideas on the title? It’s a double entendre.
  3. How do I find a publisher? Of the 1,000 of you that read this I have to believe someone knows a friggin’ publisher that focuses in mainstream marketing books. I don’t feel like self publishing. How about forwarding this post to your buddy at a publishing company and help him discover his next New York Times best seller?
  4. I want to follow the lead of Hemingway (pictured here), but I will be using shorter sentences and not killing myself when I’m done.

Here’s the synopsis of “The Profit (Prophet) of Viral Video”:

virus.gifThe online video market is exploding, with incredible surges of consumer-generated online video, and dramatic jumps in the videos viewed on such sites as YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo Video, AOL Video, Revver and Metacafe. Online video has surpassed cable television as a medium and will soon merge with traditional television viewing in ways we can hardly anticipate.

It’s the end of the 60-second spot. Marketers can no longer rely on creative advertisements that are thrust on consumers “interruption style.” Advertisements have to do more than hold attention, they must create a viral effect in which the video is so good the viewer will share it with friends. As we consumers take control our viewing habits through online video and time-shifted viewing (TiVo), the only videos we’ll elect to watch (when we have an option) are those that inform and entertain us.

buttcrack.jpg(Here’s the part where I toot my own horn): Viral video creator Kevin Nalty has shared more than 200 short videos online that have been viewed my millions online and featured on prominent sites like Yahoo and Google. His videos have appeared on ABC Nightline, Good Morning America, CBS News, CNN and BBC. Nalty shares his learning from creating videos and maintaining the most popular blog on the subject of online video profiting. His background in television and marketing – including participation in some of the most viral video campaigns – gives him unique insight into what works and doesn’t in the new age of short-form, demand driven video. He also makes a side income by producing videos for Revver and Metacafe, which share their advertising revenue with creators.

  • dog.jpgIn “The Profit (Prophet) of Viral Videos,” Nalty provides the tips you’ll need to:
  • Understand the impact of online video to advertisers, marketers and brands
  • Create appealing viral videos that get forwarded and shared
  • Market your promotional and entertainment videos through prominent online video channels
  • Develop ways to measure the views and impact of your videos
  • Profit from vehicles that that share advertising revenue with video creators (like Revver and Metacafe)
  • Build your own video site without any technical expertise
  • Stay on top of the rapidly changing online-video landscape

Target Audiences:

  1. Advertisers looking for ways to create viral videos for their clients
  2. Marketers wanting to understand how to play in the new world where the consumer can be your best marketing channel
  3. Amateur video creators looking to make a side income doing what they love
  4. Filmmakers who are not sure how to approach the online space

P.S. Don’t steal the idea please. I’m trusting you. I’ve already got about 10 chapters outlined with sub bullets, but I thought I’d better not give the whole thing away or you won’t buy the book.

P.P.S. Post comments or contact me via the e-mails listed in the “about me” section of this blog.

Best and Worst Site for Getting Your Videos Seen Fast

In my unscientific study I have identified the best and worst site for getting videos viewed quickly. This is based on my own experiments as well as feedback from some of you that have found this to be true as well.

Best site for getting views quickly: AOL Uncut (the consumer-generated portion of AOL). Example- something I uploaded 2 hours ago has more than 100 views. The exception to this would be when Metacafe, Yahoo, or Google feature you. Then your views rock.

Worst site for getting views: Eefoof (a company that shares ad revenue). Example- videos I uploaded a month ago have accumulated fewer than 10-20 views each.

Is this consistent with your findings? The winners for most-viewed appear to be (according to my videos):

  1. Metacafe (if your video is featured). I’m still making very decent money when they feature my videos. Dig the new logo.
  2. Google Video (slow and steady increases over time… a video never seems to die there)
  3. Yahoo Video (better than YouTube, and if they feature you your video can skyrocket- but that’s only happened to me twice)
  4. YouTube (really hard to get traffic there… 50-500 views seems about the average. Too much competition). I’ve had 250K views total at YouTube, but I’ve done much better on Google (million) and Yahoo (nearly million).
  5. Revver traffic is modest, but that’s because it’s up to the creators and affiates to get the video seen. Significant views don’t happen at Revver.com because it’s an infrequented website. All those EepyBird Mentos-Coke views occured on EepyBird via Revver. Not at Revver.com.

Remember that only four sites are paying (Revver, Metacafe, Eefoof, Blip and Lulu). I’ve had no luck with Eefoof and Lulu, but Blip should be “one to watch” if they embrace paying content creators.

Now we can only hope that our videos on Revver and Metacafe get as much traffic as the more trafficked sites.

Debunking the Mythical Value of a Video “Subscriber”

Fifteen years ago I worked at a small newspaper in Georgetown. I was on the editorial side, but I used to hear my colleagues on the “dark” side of advertising boast about our subscription rates. They were 3 times the quantity of newspapers we printed each week! I asked our chief lying officer (CLO) about this, and he said it was based on each reader “passing along” to friends and co-workers. We paid homeless people to deliver the papers to the affluent members of the Georgetown community and usually found bundles of the papers under bridges and in dumpsters. This paper went out of business in 9 months.

newspaper.jpgFolks, the value of an online-video “subscriber” is about the same. I once got excited when I watched my YouTube subscription base go from 20 to 40 and now 90. Since I don’t view most of the videos to which I subscribe, I didn’t have great expectations. But it gave me some hope.

But I’m here to shatter any hope you’d have that subscriptions are going to boost your views. Not going to happen.

3870 people subscribed to my Yahoo “studio.” Want to know how many people have seen the “Angry Commenter” video I uploaded 2 days ago? 34. That’s less than once percent of my “subscribers” if you assume nobody but subscribers watched it. Yahoo’s UI buries “favorites” and “subscriptions,” so this might jump when they decide to give subscriptions the prominence on a log-in homepage that YouTube provides.

Here’s what subscribers CAN do however. They’re your fans. They’ll start the buzz if you have a good video. And they’ll generally give you better ratings and comments than the rest. Plus they can jumpstart your video since there’s virtually no way to catch any views in the “most recently added” section of big sites like YouTube or Yahoo. Being the most recent video on a site with a good viewer/video ratio may help. But it’s marginal.

So celebrate your subscribers with caution. And hope that each viewer is passing on the video to three friends.

YouTube Falls to #3 Online Video Site

According to ComScore, YouTube has slipped to the #3 site for online video viewing. This news doesn’t count as a YouTube “bubble burst,” but you may want to revise your entry in the pool.

So here’s the poop according to MarketWatch’s Bambi Francisco. I’m not kidding. That’s her name:

  • 3 out of 5 Internet users are watching online videos. We watched 7.2 billion videos in July- about two videos per day on average.
  • Since there were 7,182,000,000 million streams initiated in July and 106,534,000 of us “unique streamers” we’re viewing 67.4 videos a month. Which I’m guessing is a very steep bell curve since there are lots of OCD viewers and probably a decent about of dabblers drawing the curve out.
  • angryking.gifThe number one site in July was MySpace (owned by News Corp). 37.4 million people watched 1.4 billion videos on MySpace, and that doesn’t include the embedded YouTube videos.
  • Yahoo ranked number two with 812 million video streams, and number one by an inch for “unique streamers.” What’s a “unique streamer?” The video equivalent to “unique visitors” and sounds like “unique steamers.” I think Bambi made that term up. Maybe Thumper at Comscore.
  • YouTube comes in with 649,000,000 videos “initiatied” and an average of 21 videos viewed per viewer. If I did my math right, they serve 11% of the videos That’s .7 videos a day. Did you watch your .7 YouTube video today?
  • Interestingly Google ranks 8 for now, but remember they weren’t highlighting video results back in July. They’ll sneak up in August. eBaumsworld ranks nine. The rest of the sites are big media sites.
  • Dear Comscore… please track consumer-generated video separately from media sites. Putting MySpace and YouTube next to VIacom and Time Warner is like comparing Amazon traffic to CNN.com.

YouTube’s data probably doesn’t jive with this. ComScore Media Metrix operates based on a sample of individuals. So I suppose it’s statistically valid but not bullet proof. The self-reported data from sites is always suspect, though, and it’s nice to have a neutral third-party represent data. I hope Hitwise refreshes its report since Hitwise monitors 10 million households in the U.S. via ISP data.

Psychology of Online-Video Commenters

angrycomputer.gifI’ve been studying online-video comments for a few months, and I’d like to share my unscientific but well-documented conclusions. Online-video commenters come in three segments:

  1. Angry cynics (66%)
  2. Supportive fans (23%)
  3. Self promoters (11%)

For some of my videos it would take more time to read the comments than it did to shoot, edit and submit the video. But I’ve scanned almost all of them, and here are some typical responses:

  1. I’m a bad dad for encouraging my kids to do x, y and z (few consider we’re acting and the kids understand this)
  2. I’m a good dad for spending time with my kids
  3. I’m a f**k p**s moron idiot (I get a lot of that)

In general the people that slam are also the ones that don’t have any of their own videos posted. So they’re kinda the mini version of Ebert except angrier. I don’t remember seeing any of Ebert’s films. Now here’s the interesting thing. The commenters are more or less acidic depending on the online-video site.

  • Revver: Always positive. Because they don’t allow comments.
  • Yahoo: Downright encouraging and kind- with an occasional exception.
  • YouTube: Mixed angry and not. Usually dissappointed with the humor level.
  • Metacafe: Extremely supressed and disturbed, with some exceptions.
  • Live Digital: Satanic. Not posting there anymore.

Context is the biggest factor in the commenter’s response. If they’ve found my video while searching for silly kid videos then they’re clearly positive. However if it shows up randomly (like the homepage of Yahoo) then they mostly don’t understand that it’s a viral video and intended for humor. Most of all, if it’s featured in the middle of extreme, risque or irreverent videos, mine usually get a lot of “gay” and “wtf” responses. I once posted a spoof with my kids on a rap contest on Live Digital. I had to pull it down because the reactions were demonic.
How do I respond? Mostly with intrigue. The only thing I don’t like to see is “yawn” or “you’ve done better.” I’d rather a reaction- positive or negative. My favorite is when people analyze a video far beyond what I’d ever imagined. There was once a debate as to whether I was representing George Bush in a video. It reminded me of 9th grade English when we’d look for meaning in a Hemingway book that Hemingway never probably even considered.

Would welcome further diagnosis of “commentitis.” Maybe someone should launch an “angry online video site” just for repressed folks who don’t make videos but like to critique. I’d submit.

Most importantly, I’d encourage people to develop thick comment skin. It comes easier with time. Tuning into them will discourage you and make your videos worse.

Mandatory Reading for Journalists Covering “Online Video”

Dear regular WillVideoForFood readers: permit me to speak directly to the media in this post. Read this if you wish, but most of it’s not new to you.

angry.jpgMy friends in media. You’re under deadline. You want to do a story about online video. Your instincts tell you to package another human interest story about the popularity of YouTube. But you know better. The story isn’t just broken it’s shattered.

Now you want a new angle. While some people are happy being popular online, others are looking to make money. And they are- little folks that have day jobs but talent that once never left their living rooms. You’ve read about the EepyBird folks that made the Diet Coke Mentos fountain, and earned probably $50K by now via Revver. So how does this new “consumer generated video”  turn to profit?

The most important thing I hope you’ll take from this post is that all online video sites are not the same. Are eBay, Monster and Amazon the same company because they all sell via the Internet?

There are 4 distinct classes of online video.

Please don’t confuse them, because you know the folks at the other network will. Which is probably why you left that network (in addition to the fact that the psycho who ran the booking department was totally hitting on you). Four classes:

  1. Popular Stand Alone (YouTube is ahead by miles according to Hitwise, Comscore, Alexa, etc.). Probably 30-40 percent of online videos are served from this San Mateo company based in a loft over the pizza store (be sure to add that to your YouTube story because only 4% of stories about YouTube neglect to mention that. Don’t forget to enter our YouTube “bubble burst” pool while you’re here, because it’s not yet a viable business.
  2. Top Online Sites with small but growing online video status (Google, Yahoo, AOL)
  3. Revenue-Sharing (aka pay-for-content) sites (Revver, Metacafe, Eefoof). These folks sell advertisements around the video and give the video content owners (mostly amateurs) a piece of the action.
  4. “Destined for Bankruptcy” sites… like my own CubeBreak and Chapter11TV.com.

Now you know that you can’t really compare “revenue-sharing” sites with YouTube. And I know your EP is asking for a story outline in 15 minutes, but let’s make sure you know the difference between the three “revenue-sharing” sites. I’m going to save you the trouble of taking boring calls from PR people (while you daydream about hte moron that just got promoted to EP because he sucked up to your bosses’ boss).

revver.jpg
Revver: The first site to split ad proceeds, Revver debuted in beta mode late in 2005. In the next few weeks it will officially launch, and it is unique in that it’s not a destination site. Think of it as the Visa for online video. It facilitates people sharing their content without digital-rights management. When someone clicks the ad at the end of the Revver video, I get 50% of the advertisers payment to Revver. I’ve made about $2000 on my 200 plus videos since January. Note that you have to market your videos to get clicks because Revver’s monthly traffic doesn’t touch YouTube’s daily traffic. For press inquiries contact Revver’s Queen of Content Relationships, Micki Krimmel, via the Revver Blog because she’s nicer than the PR person. Ask them to let you interview Steven Starr – the co-founder who has really big muscles. Revver’s new site is a technical dream (flash, advanced sharing, etc.) and the company is partnering closely with major media players for advertising and content partnerships.

metacafe.jpg
Metacafe: A new entrant to the “revenue-sharing” space, Metacafe launched last week a Producer Rewards program in which it provides video owners with $5 for every 1,000 views a video gets. This amounts to somewhat less per view than Revver but Metacafe has lots of traffic. It’s in the top 10-15 most popular video sites depending on source and when you check. Within the past several weeks I’ve made more than $2000 on the 4 videos they’ve accepted and featured. For press inquiries contact Dan Sevitt (and I’ll insert his PR agency’s contact later today). They’re in Israel so they can you can call them at 3:00 EST as you’re eating old Chinese Food and wondering if you should change professions because your boss is such an egotistical jerk.

eefoof.jpg
Eefoof: Eefoof is a small startup that’s in a beta mode now. Eefoof allows creators to submit photos, audio and video. At the end of the month, Eefoof takes its piece of the advertising revenue and then spreads the rest out to creators based on views. I just started using Eefoof but my videos haven’t received much traffic. I know others that have experimented with Eefoof and made about $7 in a month. Contact CEO Kevin Flynn (here’s his appearance on CNBC). Contact here.
Note: Google’s new contract/terms suggest it will soon share Adsense and Google Video revenue with content creators, although it hasn’t officially launched yet.

So now you’re ready for the story. All I ask is that you consider using some of my videos in your b-roll. Oh- and feed your cameramen and PAs beause they’ll be your boss one day.

Online Video Sites: Upload Scores (and Pet Peeves)

Those of us that upload videos frequently have certainly developed a preference based on speed, convenience and “instant gratification” (ability of a site to show video soon after uploading it). Let’s review the common online video sites based on how well they facilitate uploading/posting of videos:

  • YouTube: Used to be faster. The past few weeks I seem to get a delay whereby my video doesn’t show thumbnail for a while even if the video is there. Search terms don’t appear to be indexed quickly either. B-
  • Metacafe: UPDATE: Now takes .mov files (as of 9/11). Also allows you to tag and add descriptions while the upload occurs (the only site so intuitively designed). Still has minor bugs but went from F to B- in the past week.
  • Revver: Often slow, but improving. Terms are searchable as soon as it’s live, but upload-to-live time can take hours or even most of a day. C-
  • Google: Used to be the worst- required multiple phases with horrendous delays. Now it’s almost instant. A- (from an F just weeks ago)
  • Yahoo: Seems pretty good. Don’t think I’ve encountered problems, even if there is sometimes a minor delay. B+
  • Eefoof: Tried a dozen of my videos over the weekend- quite easy. Would be an A but for the annoying requirement that the file name not have spaces. B-
  • BlipTV and iFilm: I can’t remember. Anyone?

Note to video sites. We have some UPLOAD PET PEEVES.

  1. Let us identify the video on our hard drive (assign name/location) before we clasify it. It’s logical, and YouTube goes backwards. If I upload several videos I like to do them by date so I don’t miss one or upload twice, and that requires starting with file search so I can check the “saved on” date of the file.
  2. If you’re not going to make it live immediately, tell us where it stands. Otherwise we’ll upload it again and get error messages… I did that three times on YouTube this weekend.
  3. Don’t force a naming convention that’s “off the beaten track.” I won’t mention any names. Eefoof.
  4. For goodness sakes settle on a tag convention. Commas or spaces, people? We don’t care, but you’re making us think too hard by having different rules. And if you give us a limit please don’t make it fewer than 10-12 words.
  5. If we need to clasify it by genre, give us more choices (some sites only offer 6-8 options). And allow us to give it multiple genres. This will be very important as people want to refine searches.
  6. Would someone PLEASE develop a software that automates submissions to multiple sites?