Tag Archives: advertising

advertising, book, YouTube

How to Buy Advertisement on YouTube

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It took me quite a bit of research via Adwords (advertisers buying ads) and Adsense (publisher tool to make money) to discover how to buy ads on YouTube. If you want to place an “Invideo” ad (one that sneaks up along the bottom) or other ads, you’ll need a lot of money.

According to Google’s Adwords help, Direct YouTube advertising contracts for US advertisers targeting the US require the following cost commitments. You’ll need to contact an advertising representative, and can learn more on this site on YouTube.

    • YouTube General: $50K or greater spend on YouTube within 90 days.
    • YouTube Brand Channels: $200K or greater spend on YouTube only.
    • YouTube Contests: $500K or greater spend on YouTube only.
    • YouTube Homepage Roadblock: $175K/day flat fee plus a $50K incremental spend on Google and YouTube over 90 days ($225K or greater total spend). Premium flight dates may require a higher initial flat fee.

But what if you ant to advertise on YouTube for less?
Fear not! (And select “more” below for details)

    1. Follow the sign-up wizard instructions to create your campaign until you reach the ‘Target ad’ section.
    2. Select List URLs from within the Target Ad Site Tool.
    3. Enter ‘youtube.com’ in the text box.
    4. Click Get Available Sites

    • If you’d like to advertise on YouTube for a lower cost commitment, you can sign up for Google AdWords for as little as $1 CPM (cost-per-thousand impressions) for targeting the entire YouTube site, or $2 for targeting specific YouTube content categories. To get started with AdWords, visit https://adwords.google.com and begin by creating a site-targeted campaign. You can then follow these steps to target your ads to YouTube pages.

    These “run of site” or “run of category” ads deliver impressions but are easy to ignore (hence the price).

    I think I might try some ads just for fun. I figure if I have to look at a Fred ad on my videos, I might as well try to see if I can get one of mine on his channel.

    Continue reading How to Buy Advertisement on YouTube →

advertising, book, Diet Coke, Future of Online Video, Killer Video, Making Money, Making Videos, YouTube

Alka Seltzer Viral Campaign Taps YouTube Weblebrities, Cewebrities

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Rhett and Link’s Alka Seltzer road show (see previous post) hit Philadelphia recently, and it didn’t take them asking more than once to convince me and a bunch of YouTube Cewebrities to hit Pat and Gino’s to appear in this video. I picked up CharlesTrippy, ShayCarl, TheMightyThor1212 and those gals to stop by before the YoTube events. We did it for fun not profit, but Rhett and Link were classy enough to feed us, and even send us off with beer money for that night (thanks, guys).

Favorite moment? The nervous look on the face of the agency account manager as she reluctantly handed me a Speedy statue. Don’t worry, agency lady. I’ll behave with him.

Admitting my bias, I’m still putting this promotion down as one of the top three smartest viral video campaigns of 2008. It joins the ranks of BMW’s Rampenfest and Diet Dr. Pepper’s Cherry Coke promotion of TayZonday.

It’s funny, entertaining, balanced well (promotion is subtle), it’s leveraging the charasmatic appeal of two video stars who have been provided creative control of the series. Rhett and Link give us a perfect example of advertising content that is first entertaining. And the branding finds a happy medium between, on one extreme, dominating the video, and on the other relegating itself to ignored pop-ups or lost entirely. The topics are related to food, the tone revitalizes an otherwise stale brand, and Alka Seltzer’s differentiator (the plop, fizz) is not lost. Bringing back Speedy was brilliant too.

The only thing I’d say about all three of these campaigns is that they probably could have been done more cost effectively. Diet Dr. Pepper got TayZonday for a song, but had some production overhead (it was also hampered by the reality that the drink tastes like the smell of a chocolate scratch and sniff, and that’s coming from a hardcore Diet Dr. Pepper guy).

The Alka Seltzer road show was fairly shoestring for television and advertising rackets, but still could be leaner (do you need 5 or more people beyond Rhett and Link at the shoot?). I don’t know about Rampenfest, but it looks very, very expensive (guessing $500-$1,000 MM).

 

 

book, Online Video

Televisions Obsolete. Online Video Takes Over.

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No I’m just kidding. Television isn’t dead yet (but I’ll let you know when it is).

You didn’t waste money on that high definition set, and you advertising executives still have a little shelf life.

But here’s a new tidbit of research that verifies that online-video consumption is eating into our television viewing time. Courtesy of NewTeeVee (who I’m quoting way too often since they became my top RSS on iGoogle) and the folks from the Integrated Media Measurement Inc. (IMMI) (click here for full report via pdf):

Based on its tracking of primetime content across the major networks, IMMI has generally found that up to 20% of episodic content viewing occurs online, depending on the genre of the content
and the amount of time the show has been on the air. This amount is higher now, than last Fall
and in a few cases, is higher even than DVR viewing of the broadcast content.

This shift won’t soon reverse, or continue slowly. So that means it’s officially time to find a viable advertising model for free online video (and explore a fair paid model too). :

Try forcing a long preroll, and the advertisers have bigger problems than DVRs allowing people to zip through 30 and 60s (as if they weren’t running off to pee before time-shifting). But the good news is that the music industry helped us transition from copyright pirates into, to some extent, people too lazy to hunt and download free music. In time, it will be easier to pay a small fee or accept some ads as long as I can watch good quality video on my own time.

Now that the industry is maturing, watch for: bigger audiences, a better ad model, and more professional content. The amateurs are already losing share to professionals (check the YouTube most subscribed charts for proof), but the pie is continuing to grow. And as long as the economy doesn’t starve marketing innovative budgets (and force marketers to resort to proven but dying media) then I’m still bullish on the opportunities for advertisers, creators and audiences.

Keep in mind the pretty charts by IMMI are a little deceptive. Like this ‘ere chart. It does not tell us that 50% of an average American’s time is moving to online video. Rather it says that half of us — upon being assaulted by a survey — acknowledge that, at some point, we looked to the Internet in lieu of television. I’m surprised that number isn’t higher. Most of us early adopters are probably close to 50/50 online-video vs. television right now.

But keep in mind that even though we’re all still watching television, our brains are clinically dead during this time (well, maybe just more dead than when we’re watching online video or pretending to care about the person rambling in that meeting).

 

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.

 

advertising, book, Making Videos, Nalts, Video Business

Canadian Internet Starlet Meets Viral Video Genius

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Sophia (aka Mugglesam) goes to a Canadian Internet conference and meets the viral video genius. So fascinating to relive this day through the eyes of a shorter child than me.

And if you’re marketing to kids or parents, help me understand why you wouldn’t make Sophia your spokeperson. Because otherwise she might be a tractor when she grows up.

advertising, book, TechCrunch, Video, Video Advertising, Video Business

“Secrets of Viral Video Marketing” at Yahoo! Conference

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Your Uncle Nalts will be talking about viral video and marketing at the Yahoo! “Big Screen, Little Screen” event July 9 in Toronto, Canada. My topic is “The Secrets of Viral Video Marketing.” The funny part is that I was a late edition because Dan Ackerman Greenberg couldn’t make it.

Seriously. I couldn’t make something like that up. In case you don’t recognize the name, he’s the guy who wrote the TechCrunch article about how marketers can “game” YouTube with fake thumbnails, fake comments, et cetera. This blog called him the Wicked Witch of the West to my Glenda the Good Witch, and that’s something you don’t soon forget.

Dan- do you want me to renew the URL I parked (www.viralvideovillain.com) pointing to your LinkedIn page?

P.S. Y’all like the new masthead designed by The Most Excellent Gage Skidmore? He’s with Cosmic Flight.

willvideoforfoodnewbanner

advertising, book, Making Money, Profit, Video, Video Advertising, YouTube

Sponsored Fun or Selling Out? Comedy Duo On Road Trip for Plop, Plop, Fizz, Fizz.

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rhett and link buffet songRhett and Link, comedic video amateurs, are mountaineering above the overhang of “The Great Cliff of New-Media Sponsored Advertising.” They’re harnessed to each other with a taut rope, knotted with creativity. The friends swing effortlessly to the next hold in a pendulum traverse. Rhett knows the objective danger as he firmly grabs his nub, and Link’s total attention is committed to spotting him. Their eyes lock, then gaze slowly down upon the falling spree at the mountain’s base. It would be a perilous drop to their death (is that ZeFrank’s skeleton?). But they both smile, knowing full well that they’ll live to see another climb.

[Editorial addition 6/20 9 pm EST: Rhett and Link have an insightful comment below] In their latest celebration of corporate sponsorship, the singing and acting duo present this hysterical video called “The Buffet Song.” It’s a song parody about all-you-can-eat buffets. Now there’s *every reason* I should have known this was a sponsored video:

  1. It was clear on the video’s description and it was a reply to a video about the Alka Seltza tour.
  2. I received this from them via e-mail, and it was explained as a video that it’s part of their of “Great American Road Trip Series” sponsored by Alka Seltzer.
  3. Heck I even last week agreed via e-mail to meet them in Philly (Pat and Gino’s Cheesesteaks) for a video that they said was part of some Alka Seltzer series. They wrote, “It’s part of our Alka Seltzer road trip gig…. We’re still developing the angle so if you’re interested, you can weigh in as we develop it.” I took that as a fun challenge, and began soliciting others to collaborate. See- sometimes it’s not all about the money. Maybe they’ll have free samples.

But then, like, Yipes, Scoob… I opened this video above, and all of that awareness vanished — just like those pain pangs of overindulgence when met by a delciously effervescent glass of heartburn and indigestion medication.

In fact, I’d like to take you sequentially through my experience, which is something I can’t stand in a conversation. I’m always telling my wife, “you’re burying the lead again, Jo… I don’t need to know about how much change the post office gave you before the freak you saw on the way out. Just tell me about the freak.” But now I digress…

To read about my sequential experience wrapping my small brain around this video campaign, click MORE (bottom left corner of this blog – right above the “share” link”). Trust me, it’s worth it.

alka seltzer

Continue reading Sponsored Fun or Selling Out? Comedy Duo On Road Trip for Plop, Plop, Fizz, Fizz. →

advertising, book, Online Video, Video Advertising

Murketing is a New Word. Let’s Use it Correctly.

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NewTeeVee refers to Rampenfest as murketing and Newsweek recently used the term to refer to the BWM GINA campaign.

I may be wrong, but I believe murketing is starting to be used to refer to the “advertorial-like” corruption of marketing and entertainment. That’s not its origin. The fairly new term was coined by Rob Walker in his book, Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are).  Murketing refers to being vague — not deceptive or lacking transparency.

Whether NewTeeVee or Newsweek meant to tweak murketing’s definition isn’t important. We still need a term for advertising that pretends to be something else. Let’s agree to a word — and Wickipedia better damned well credit me for this because I’m making them up right now on Thursday, June 26 at 12:05. Frankly I’m disappointed that a marketer has to create this instead of some PETA-like anti advertising group.

The word should point to the futile attempts that brands have made to promote through social media and video, but not be transparent or honest. It’s branding, but pretending to be entertainment. It almost invariably results in backlash, and it’s quite worse than advertorial (the unhealthy blend of editorial content that is funded by advertisers). It’s the topic of my “CashtoBuzz” parody last year. It was brought to mainstream when a PR firm was exposed for being a silent creator to an anti-Gore penguin parody.

So here are a few shots: 

  1. Masqueradvertising
  2. Trojan horse marketing
  3. Amway Friend
  4. Benedict Arnold entertainment
  5. Rose by Another Name
  6. Advertainment
  7. Enteradvertising
  8. Grim Reaper with a Propeller Hat
  9. Snowmotion

I need some more caffeine to improve these. Feel free to develop it yourself. I won’t steal your word without feeling guilty. After all, I’m a murketer.

Online Video
4 Comments

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.