Tag Archives: invideo

book, Online Video

ROI Better on UGC Than “Professional” Video?

11 Comments

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, Blogs on Video, book, Future of Online Video, Google, Making Money, Making Videos, Online Video, Viral Video, YouTube

Long-Tail Celebrities Won’t Get Famous and May Not Care

27 Comments

Here’s an excerpt of a wonderful post on Cracked.com titled “YouTubers That Will Never Be Famous.” It’s an opportunity for me to “clear the air” about being a self-proclaimed “weblebrity” (which is, you see, rather distinct from being a celebrity). LONG post, here, folks but this one is jam-packed with delicious goodness.

The internet is a big place, but there can only be so many Tay Zondays and LonelyGirl15s. Not everyone can become a crossover internet celebrity, and behind every one of these superstars there are a thousand others just like them, posting video after video and hoping one of them sticks. The following users represent only a fraction of a percentage of the YouTube users currently clogging up the internet tubes with absolute garbage – if you can think of others that deserve to be shamed, feel free to add them in the comments below. Or don’t, actually – additional exposure will only encourage them.

Let’s start by explaining that securing weblebrity status facilitates all the dysfunction of being a real celebrity, but none of the perks. You see, you receive hundreds of messages a day from viewers critiquing your work (probably more than many movie stars). The positive comments give you false self esteem, and the negative ones crush you like a lemon wedge. Eventually you develop thick skin, stop posting, or decide to find your self worth in a more healthy place (like at the bottom of a nice glass of vodka stired by a Xanax).

But, friends, there are at least 5 perks:

  1. We get constructive feedback about what people like and don’t like about our mindless short-form entertainment (so in theory we learn). People look forward to our stuff, and that’s encouraging. Remember that three years ago we bored dinner guests with our videos.
  2. We have a lot of fun. Shooting videos, editing them, collaborating, meeting fellow creators.
  3. Some of us actually get paid by YouTube based on a percent of the revenue it makes from selling ads around our garbage.
  4. We don’t really clog up the Internet. You see, there’s plenty of bandwidth around. It’s kinda like saying someone is wasting your sunshine (there’s an unlimited supply last I checked). Your tan doesn’t come at my expense… unless I have to look at your digusting, peeling skin.
  5. We don’t answer to anyone except our audiences. No producers to tell us to “dial it down,” or sponsors forcing awkward insertions. No “review team” or fear of cancellation.

Now let’s look at VisibleMode. Do I watch him daily? Nope. Does he watch me? Probably not, except when I happened to pick him for the YouTube Secret Santa (I sent him a mug so he could sell out like me).

VisibleMode is one of the top YouTubers in Canada, and Cracked.com’s pick for someone who won’t get famous. Obviously it would be even more interesting to see a Cracked.com list of the few YouTubers that actually might get famous (a harder list to write, and a shorter one).

So now I’ll get to my point, which Cracked might have overlooked. VisibleMode may not soon be in a b-grade film or even an extra in a television commercial. Heck even Michael Buckley (one of the fastest growing, and television-ready weblebrities) may fade like many stars. But VM tells me today he’s had 6,760,748 cummaltive views of his videos. If Google sold those InVideo ads surrounding his videos at $20 per thousand ($20 CPM is the list price), VisibleMode would have hypothetically taken a portion of more than $135,000 that advertisers would pay YouTube/Google. Let me say it again. Even if most of the ads weren’t sold, the CPM wasn’t $20, and VisibleMode only got a small portion, he’d be making decent take-home per month. Will it last? I’m the wrong guy to ask, because I would have bought Revver stock. But I’ll bet he’s enjoying the ride and not too worried about missing a red-carpet event in LA.

The sustainability of YouTube and weblebrities, of course, hinges on advertisers garnering an ROI on the ads that surround this content. They’re fairly targeted and hard to ignore. And they’re in the context of content you’ve chosen to view. So the branding benefit should be worthwhile (a cent or two an impression) even if the direct-response may underwhelm more transactional brands. 

So assuming marketers sell products (or believe they are) via YouTube promotion, the advertising revenue will flow. A shake-down of creators will naturally occur, but the audience of YouTube is growing in depth and frequency, and media consumption continues to fragment. There’s a volume of valuable ad inventory lurking in the long tail, folks…. so...

  • Weblebrities might enjoy a decent side income without ever becoming “famous.”
  • Viewers will have a greater selection of garbage to fit their unique tastes- some cheesy stuff blended with unique, unscripted and short entertainment.
  • YouTube/Google will make some money as well-backed middleman. Heck maybe they’ll buy Cracked.com.
  • Advertisers should enjoy a decent ROI in an emerging medium that’s bound to resemble future television buys more than current television ads will.

Nalts may or may not appear on SNL, but he’s having fun while this lasts. I just wish Cracked would have picked me for someone who’d never get famous. Hey- I know. I’ll do a sunburn video. Worked for ShayCarl.  

advertising, Blogs on Video, book, Future of Online Video, marketing, Online Video, Video Advertising, Video Business, YouTube

Ad Blindness and Online Video

4 Comments

Google Eye TrackerThe more we surf online video the more savvy we become about content versus advertising.

A marketer recently told me he was pleased by the impressions he got from a YouTube homepage advertising buy, but…” I finished his sentence for him.. “your featured video didn’t get a lot of views.”

I told him we’ve been trained that the YouTube featured video is an advertisement, and he said he was working on ways to produce a more provocative headline or thumbnail. This “learned ad blindness” (I just coined that) was true with Revver ads, where virgin viewers would click the end-frame ad out of curiosity while the regulars learned to move to the next video. Revver is now adopting overlays jam packed with what appears to be Google Adsense Ads. Meanwhile, Adsense itself is under performing. Jason Lee Miller of WebProNews wrote recently about performance declines of Google Adsense, and one of his theories is:

“People are ignoring ads at a higher rate, and this has been evidenced by eye-tracking studies, especially when the ads appear in the places they expect them to appear.” (Note: to reinforce Miller’s point, I’ve displayed an image tracker of where eyes go when viewing a Google search-results page… hot in the top of organic area and rather cold on the ads).

So what’s the solution? Is it constant rotation of ads so they masquerade as content or perpetually innovative ways to interrupt, arouse or tantelize?  YouTube’s “videos being watched right now” is a combination of sponsored videos and popular ones. They’ve changed the name of this section several times, but I believe it remains an advertorial blend.

YouTube ads versus contentThat’s not the answer long term. Your most trusted sources of media (television, print, radio, web) usually make it abundantly clear what’s an advertisement and what’s content. Google pioneered this delineation by giving a color to ads while some engines continue to advantage advertisers in the “organic” listings with something called “paid inclusion” that creeps me out. The “advertorial” game, where advertisers sponsor what appears to be objective articles, is for the bottom feeders.

My first job after college was for a small Georgetown newspaper where the editor literally put a small white fence between the editorial and advertising department. I proudly stood on the content side, and the newspaper went bankrupt in 9 months. It was what prompted me to attend business school and move to the marketing side. I’d need to shower more frequently, but I’d at least have some control of my destiny.

The solution to “learned ad blindness” (copyright Kevin Nalts) is making ads that appeal to viewers and targeting people based on relevancy. If I’m in the market for a car, I want your car ad. If I’m not, it better have dancing clowns, hot models and site gags. If watching videos about the new overpriced talking parrot toy in late November, I’m probably ready for a 20% Toys-R-Us ad. See my next post (Cherry Chocolate Rain) for an even better example of when advertising does indeed become content.

Initially advertisers were terrified by technology that would block ads — from FireFox plugins to TiVo remotes. I’d content the greater barrier is the technology of the human mind, which learns quickly to discriminate between valued content and noise.

Like my old boss used to say, “even an amoeba learns by repetition.”