YouTube’s U-Turn + The Power of Online Video

 
YouTube does U-turn, plans to intro pre-roll ads

After trying to monetize the video site with a variety of new-style ad programs, Google may be caving in and giving the green light to good, old-fashioned pre- and post-roll advertising on YouTube.
by Helen Leggatt, BizReport
“It appears that buzz targeting, demographic targeting, AdSense for Video, geo-targeting and even revenue share couldn’t bring in enough ad revenue to keep pre- and post-roll advertising from YouTube’s door.

Things really must be tough if recent reports are true that the online video site is to adopt an advertising format that, according to its own survey, most of its audience dislikes. [...]

It will be interesting to see whether this move will see a backlash from YouTube users or perhaps a migration to other online video sites.”

[Also read: "Hulu is kicking Youtube's Ass" from Marc Cuban, Jun 16th 2008 8:30PM]

 

The holy trinity of traffic, conversion and repeat visitation demands your attention on:

Benjamin Wayne on the “Power of Online Video” (Chief Marketer):

[...] Take Big Plush, for example. The retailer—which makes giant stuffed animals such as seven-foot teddy bears and six-foot gorillas—has a unique market niche. They wanted a way to communicate not just the product, but also the reaction of new toy owners to their giant fuzzy friends. To do this, they built out an entire video “vault” complete with clips of the production process and the reactions of astonished recipients of their oversized toys.  [...] The result was dramatically increased sales and pass-along, with visitors sharing videos and enticing new customers to experience the product and the brand.
[Nobody said we appreciate the style - but we do appreciate the essence of the concept.]

Location, Location, Location
There are three places publishers need to think about getting their video assets—the site itself, search engine placement and viral propagation.

Within your site itself, consider the home page, galleries and calls to action. Video on the home page will attract clicks from more than half your users, and can be a great tool to draw visitors deeper into the site. Consider including videos that are instructional in nature, or include a message from the company to introduce a new visitor to the business. [...]

[...] Most publishers understand the importance of SEO, but few realize search crawlers are incapable of reading Flash tags, meaning that despite the fact search engines now feature videos in their results, most videos fail to appear. In order to take advantage of SEO opportunities in video, publishers need to submit their video assets via MRSS, a service provided by many video-hosting providers. Since the pool of videos currently indexed is small, this is an opportunity all should explore.

And don’t neglect viral propagation. [...] Viral reposting of video puts your brand, your watermark, your video and a link to your site into locations, blogs, wikis and forums you could never reach on your own. Some publishers see over 50% of their video viewership through viral propagation.

Implementing a video strategy doesn’t have to mean big bucks. Today’s Web visitors are looking for clips that help them understand a product or service, not a lengthy infomercial or short film. [...]

The Mobile Ecosystem (2): M-Commerce is not a Lovesong + Leaders in Mobile Search + Payment via NFC Mobiles

 

 

 

Nine Million U.S. Mobile Users Have Used Their Mobile Phone To Pay For Goods Or Services

Nielsen Mobile presented an overview of the opportunities in mobile commerce at the Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition in Chicago, IL (June 9 – 12, 2008).  Among the findings presented:

• As of Q1 2008, 3.6 percent (9.2 million) of US mobile subscribers use their phone to pay for goods or services
• Men are more likely than women to use their phone for commerce: 4.5 percent (4.9 million) of men and 3.0 percent (4.3 million) of women say they have made a purchase using their phone
• Adults ages 25–34 are the most likely to have made a purchase using their phone: 5.4 percent (3 million) of adults ages 25–34 have made a purchase, compared to 3.6 percent of all mobile subscribers

Mobile websites are one popular way consumers make purchases over the mobile phone.  Of the 40 million active US users of the mobile web in April 2008, 5 million accessed mobile shopping and auction websites – up 73% from April 2007, when just 2.9 million mobile users did so. Auction site eBay.com is the most popular shopping or auction destination on the mobile web, with 3.4 million unique visitors in April.

Purchasing items via text messaging is another growing form of mobile commerce.  Some services allow consumers to send text messages to a phone number or mobile shortcode in order to be charged for goods or services directly on their mobile phone bills.  Already, 6.5 million US mobile consumers say they’ve used text messaging to purchase an item.

Nielsen’s study reveals that security is the number one concern among those mobile data users not yet participating in m-commerce: 

• 41 % of data users who do not participate in mobile commerce say security is their biggest concern
• 23 % say they worry about being charged for the airtime
• 21 % say they don’t trust that the transaction will be completed

 
Nielsen Mobile provides Google and Yahoo! Mobile-Search Data as Well

Google leads in mobile Internet search provider share followed by Yahoo!, together accounting for 79% of the mobile Internet search market.

Top 3 Mobile Internet Search Providers for Q1 2008 by Provider Share
1.  Google  (61%)
2.  Yahoo!  (18%)
3.  MSN  (5%)

• 65% of Google search users and 63% of Yahoo! searchers are male.
• At 9.0 searches per month, Google users search more frequently than users of any other mobile Internet search provider.  Yahoo! is the third most frequently-used provider, with Yahoo! users searching 6.7 times per month.

contextualize

NFC mobiles on track in Asia

Payment via phones outfitted with near field communications chips will happen, industry players assure, and Asia is expected to get the technology first.

By Victoria Ho, ZDNet Asia, Friday, June 27, 2008 06:41 PM

The day you can pay for goods with a wave of your mobile phone is nearing, slowly but surely–and this will likely happen first in Asia, say NFC (near field communications) industry players.

[...] Chia Yong Choon, regional marketing director (Asia-Pacific and Korea) at NXP Semiconductors said in an interview with ZDNet Asia: “NFC is very affordable. The cost is comparable to designing other features into handsets, such as GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, FM radio, et cetera. Certainly, cost will not be a barrier.”

The bigger barrier, say analysts, is the underdevelopment of the payment ecosystem around NFC-enabled phones.

[...]

M-commerce still three to five years away

By Victoria Ho, ZDNet Asia, Wednesday, June 11, 2008 07:54 PM

[...] According to Mehta, for many countries, regulation is often the deciding factor for mobile payment implementation.

“Regulatory issues will either hold back or propel mobile commerce, by either making it difficult to implement or make it mandatory…China and India are still struggling with regulations, for example,” he said.

In terms of technology, Mehta said an area that needs addressing is the standardization of payment interfaces across handsets. “Implementing Web standards will help ensure the experience is the same for everyone,” he noted.

Another issue, said Mehta, is security, which should be a top priority as hardware and software makers develop devices and applications for m-commerce.

Research firm Informa predicted early last year that m-commerce would generate US$359 million by 2011. Most of the revenues will come from the Asia-Pacific region, according to Informa principal analyst Nick Lane. [End of Article / Quote]

Great Web_2.0 Tools (4): TouchGraph’s Relation + Connection Visualizations

The TouchGraph Google Browser reveals the network of connectivity between websites, as reported by Google’s database of related sites.

[Entry 4 above: "All Countries"]

The TouchGraph Facebook Browser lets you see how your friends are connected, and who has the most photos together.

Go, make some relation-maps yourself – it’s fun… !

ReadWriteWeb of course did an astonishing list of visualization tools in March already.
“Visualization is a technique to graphically represent sets of data. When data is large or abstract, visualization can help make the data easier to read or understand. There are visualization tools for search, music, networks, online communities, and almost anything else you can think of. Whether you want a desktop application or a web-based tool, there are many specific tools are available on the web that let you visualize all kinds of data.” Nearly all of of the best to be found there!