Reel SEO Video Marketing

Consumer Generated Video Ad Campaign Tips

Christophor Rick — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 17:34:21 +0000

It’s the dream of all marketers and website owners, get the consumers, users or your target audience to do your work for you. Have them create the content and spread the word. So what better way to do that than by asking them to create media for your ad campaigns…

Recent research states that more than 40% of marketers in the US plan on asking their consumers to create content for ad campaigns according to Forrester Research. The requests will come in the form of contests and allow the marketers to get direct feedback from their users bringing them closer to understanding what it is they would like to see from the company and brand.

Forrester did warn that marketers need to keep expectations of interaction and brand impact low so as not to be disappointed since it’s still a somewhat unproven marketing tactic.

They also say that the contests need to be easily accessible and give it a more viral lean so as to get the consumers to do much of the heavy lifting.

The problem I see with that is if you are offering a small number of prizes many people may not tell a lot of others about the contest in order to keep the number of entries low. So perhaps an option for the contest might be to incorporate ‘tell your friends’ as a way to gain further entries or chances to win.

While the number of submissions might be low the contest could still generate a large impact on brand awareness and reach on the web so you cannot take one facet of the contest and expect it to be the results you need. Compiling all of the impact together would be a far better way to determine the ROI.

Forrester went on to give some further tips including demographics saying that 18- to 24-year-olds are most likely to upload video. 13% of users 18 to 24 report uploading online video monthly. Other age groups reported about half as much video uploading. If your product is not aimed at this particular age group you might expect far lower results and submissions.

CGM video contests are a prime example of that intangible benefit of online video we spoke about in another article. You, as a marketer get direct feedback from your consumers and it could generate further interest based on word-of-mouth. You might not generate direct revenue but it’s about getting your name out there and activating a base of consumers.

“CGM video contests can help marketers achieve traditional marketing goals, too,” as an example they put forth Tourism Queensland’s contest that generated an estimated $70 million in publicity.

Other things to take into account according to Forrester is the ability to reuse all of the videos that are submitted for the contest, using multichannel marketing, entrant self-promotion and inclusion of a charity or non-profit.

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Consumer Generated Video Ad Campaign Tips

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Paid Video to Overtake Free Video on the Web in 2009?

Mark R Robertson — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 16:30:17 +0000

According to a recent Strategy Analytics webinar, paid video will overtake free video online this year. Digital media analyst Martin Olausson believes that it will top it by about $800 million before the year ends.

He states that paid video will reach $3.8B while free video will only reach $3.5B and that growth will continue at an annual rate of 38% into 2012. Martin also said that he believes free video will grow at 37% per year in the same period while paid will grow at 39%.

“The economic downturn and diminishing advertising budgets have increased the focus on consumer paid content on the web in the last six months,” said Martin Olausson, Director of Digital Media Research at Strategy Analytics. “Increased consumer awareness and uptake of services, such as Netflix WatchNow and Xbox Live Video Store, in combination with new services such as the TV Everywhere initiative announced by Comcast and Time Warner Cable will also help drive the paid online video segment in the coming years.”

What do you think?

Here’s the link to the 21st Century Consumers & the Future of Digital Media webinar.

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Paid Video to Overtake Free Video on the Web in 2009?

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Delve Delves into Your Pocket for Self-Service Video

Mark R Robertson — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 16:09:00 +0000

Delve Networks has opened a new self-service, pay-via-credit-card billing option for their video platform aimed at business users. Now you can go from zero to online video hero in a matter of minutes.

The new option means you can sign-up, pay and have video on your company site within a matter of minutes without having to go through a lengthy and time-consuming sales cycle. However, you will pay for this feature as the Standard Package begins at $249 per month giving you drag and drop content management, brandable players, encoding, metrics player API and the Delve Ad Server.

But $249 a month for only 20GB of bandwidth and 5GB of storage space is pricey to say the least. Plus if you want any of the other packages you have to speak with a sales person and pricing for those packages is not readily available.

Delve also offers Professional, Premier and Enterprise packages of its Online Video Platform for customers that require advanced options beyond those offered in the Standard Package. If you’re interested in checking out all of their features you can sign-up for a 30-day free trial here.

The ability to simply sign-up, pay and go is a great idea. But the pricing on the package is borderline ridiculous when you consider what the costs for delivery are. One month will cost you five times what other places are charging and will give you limited storage space and bandwidth. It doesn’t seem like a good deal to us. Really there’s no feature that places them above and beyond anything that others are offering at a lower price. It does offer some well-integrated analytics and it can be integrated with Google Analytics, Nielsen and Omniture (no word on ComScore or others). It also gives you XML-based customization of the player but again, that’s not a differentiator in my eyes.

Overall you could probably save a lot of money by going somewhere else and not using your credit card to get instant access. Unless they manage to create some serious separation from the rest of the video platforms they will probably not draw as many clients as they are hoping for. Of course, they just annouced the program, so we’ll see how it changes as time goes on.

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Delve Delves into Your Pocket for Self-Service Video

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Vimeo Gives You More Features Now

Christophor Rick — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 15:10:24 +0000

Vimeo just announced one important change to their service and several new features. As they’re one of the big boys I thought it would be appropriate to let you all know.

The first thing is that starting on the 1st of August those of you with basic account will only have one week after upload to get your original source file. After that you will only be able to get the Vimeo encoded files. Files will still be available for playing in the Vimeo player and they will still provide that download link for the MP4 formatted file. All videos that were uploaded prior to 1 July will be available in the uploaded format until 1 August and then they’ll be gone. This was mostly a cost cutting feature as they found most people didn’t use it and it was a huge amount of storage.

Alright, on to new updates. They’d updated Vimeo Plus so now when you sign up you get about 25,000 HD embed plays so if you’re filming in full HD you’ll not lose that quality.

Additionally, the groups have been updated including privacy and more. They’ve also implemented Categories to help group up like-minded videos so you can find more of the same videos you like or so you can see.

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Broadband Adoption Rises Sixfold in Seven Years

Christophor Rick — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 13:58:25 +0000

A recent study has revealed that broadband adoption has increases more than sixfold from the period 2001 to 2008. Great news for all of us in the online video industry as that is what fuels the growth of our endeavors right?

Totaling over $32 billion in consumer benefits via education, health care, civil services and entertainment according to the Internet Innovation Alliance study released this week. The Alliance features members from non-profits, corporations and more including AT&T, Corning and others.

The study found that around 66.6 million households had broadband by 2008 versus just a meager 10.4 million in 2001. Meanwhile the dial-up connection numbers, logically, plummeted from 44.2M to 10.5M in 2008. Obviously many of those people upgraded thanks to better availability and lower cost. The study also found that people are unwilling to cut their broadband lines to save money, even after losing their jobs.

Those without internet have almost halved from 53.6 to 39.7 million which is also great news for us as it would appear that nearly all of them have broadband as well meaning they have a pipeline big enough for us to feed them video, video ads and more.

From a demographics standpoint no matter the ethnicity of people polled, Internet access is a highly valued part of life. However a large gap exists where Asian households are at about 82% while African-American households are at only 57% with broadband. Other gaps exist in age where 18-24 year-olds are 84% connected while seniors (65+) are only 43%. Education also plays a role as those with college educations are 83% and those with less than a high school diploma were at 38%. So it would seem that the majority of people with broadband right now are 18-24, with some form of college education and mostly Asian or Caucasian. The cut-off for value/no value was around age 44/45 where those who valued broadband plummeted.

As the National Telecommunications & Information Administration and Rural Utilities Service are on the verge of handing out billions in broadband stimulus money to boost adoption and deployment of broadband and the FCC is collecting feedback on its national broadband plan the study comes at a good time.

Hopefully these initiatives will use the vital information contained in the study to get the rest of the country into a more favorable broadband position so that everyone can enjoy Internet as a source of information and entertainment.

The study, commissioned by the alliance, was produced by Jonathan Orszag, former economic advisor in the Clinton administration; Princeton economic professor Robert Willig; and Mark Dutz, from consulting firm Compass Lexecon.

Here’s the link to the study itself.

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Broadband Adoption Rises Sixfold in Seven Years

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Online Video Industry News Resources I Follow

Mark R Robertson — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 19:00:29 +0000

With the online video industry in what seems to be a continual rapid growth mode, it is difficult to keep up with all that is going on with regard to news and information about online video platforms, online video marketing, video advertising, mobile video and everything else (see my recent tweet). Who knows what will happen tomorrow. It seems that everyday there is more and more news about the space.

I sincerely hope that you rely in part on ReelSEO to get our in-depth news, tips, and observations about the happenings within the industry. We try our best to provide objective news, research, tips, and do our best to assist in evangelizing and covering this exciting, and rapidly growing space. That being said, there are many other great sources out there that I suggest you take a look at. Consider adding the following sources to your daily RSS feed for keeping up on all that is going on with the online video industry. Additionally, I have provided a few good resources below these which I follow to keep up on all that is happening with regard to social media, digital media, and search engines.

I’ve listed these in no particular order. You can also grab this as an OPML here. I realize that there are tons more that are probably worthy of listing.. Feel free to add sources that you think are worthy in the comments below, and Ill take a look. Thanks to all those who provide these excellent publications.

My Favorite Sources for Video Industry News

The Business of Online Video – Dan Rayburn’s the business of online video
http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheBusinessOfOnlineVideo | @danrayburn

Online Video Watch – by Ben Homer & Corey Kronengold
http://feeds.feedburner.com/OnlineVideoWatch

KlessBlog - by Larry Kless, our good friend and Streaming Media All-star
http://feeds.feedburner.com/klessblog | @klessblog

Fierce Online Video – Covering the world of online video
http://www.fierceonlinevideo.com/feed

VideoNuze – Online video industry news analysis by Will Richmond
http://www.videonuze.com/atom/analysis/ | @videonuze

WebTVWire – All about the business of internet TV
http://feeds.feedburner.com/WebTvWire

Media Post Video Insider – From MediaPost, publishers of OMMA magazine.
http://www.mediapost.com/videoinsiderrss.xml

TV Over – IPTV, Internet TV, and online video news
http://feeds.feedburner.com/TVovernet | @TVoverdotnet

Web Video Report – From AdAge
http://feeds.feedburner.com/WebVideoReport | @adage

Beet.Tv – Focused on transformation of media (primarily about online video) – by Andy Plesser
http://feeds.feedburner.com/BeetTV | @beettv

1TimStreet – Written by Tim Street about observations on web video and social media
http://1timstreet.com/blog/feed/ | @1timstreet

iMedia Video News
Sorry, looks like their feed is broken, still a great source

Digital Media News Resources

Contentinople – Digital media industry news
http://www.contentinople.com/rss_simple.asp | @contentinople

TVWeek – Television industry news
http://feeds.feedburner.com/tvweek/News

Digital Media Wire Video
http://www.dmwmedia.com/taxonomy/term/617/all/feed | @dmwnews

Dedicated to Covering Web TV

NewTeeVee – Online video, primarily about web TV, by the GigaOM network
http://feeds.feedburner.com/newteevee | @newteevee

Tube Filter – All about web television news.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/tubefilterNews/ | @tubefilter

Tilzy.TV – Source for serialized content and news about online video.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/TilzytvNewsUpdates | @TilzyTV

Viral Video, Video Blogging, IPTV, Misc…

UnRuly Media Blog
http://www.unrulymedia.com/blog/rss.xml | @unrulymedia

Hot Air – VideoBlogging and Internet Broadcasting by Michelle Malkin.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/hotair/main | @hotairblog

WillVideoForFood – Authored by Kevin Nalts, the “Viral Video Genius”
http://feeds2.feedburner.com/willvideoforfood/NJWH | @nalts

Film Linker – Dedicated to creation and production for independent filmmakers
http://feedproxy.google.com/filmlinker | @filmlinker

IZZY Video – Digital video tutorials from Israel Hyman
http://feeds.feedburner.com/hyman | @izzyvideo

Ronamok, Online video and social media strategies, by Ron Ploof
http://feeds2.feedburner.com/ronamok | @RonPloof

News Videographer – Written by Angela Grant for journalists looking to leverage online video.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/newsvideographer

LostRemote – Future of TV and journalism, written by Cory Bergman
http://feeds.feedburner.com/LostRemote | @lostremote

CinemaTech – Scott Kirsner
http://feeds.feedburner.com/cinematech

IPTV Evangelist – Covering IPTV and IPTV technology
http://feeds.feedburner.com/IPTVEvangelist

IPTV Watch - News about IPTV
http://www.iptv-watch.co.uk/feed/

paidContent.org – Video
http://paidcontent.org/feeds/topic/video/

Video Company Blogs

Youtube Blog
http://www.youtube.com/rss/global/our_blog.rss

Permission TV Blog
http://feeds2.feedburner.com/permissiontv | @permissiontv

Miro Blog
http://feeds.getmiro.com/miroblog | @TheMiroFolks

Blip.tv Blog
http://theblog.blip.tv/rss | @bliptv

There are soo many here but these were just a few that I found particularily useful

Video Industry Magazines

Streaming Media Magazine
http://feeds.infotoday.com/StreamingMediaMagazine-FeaturedArticles | Print Subscription

Video Business Magazine
http://feeds.feedburner.com/VideoBusiness-News | Print Subscription

Digital Video Magazine
http://www.dv.com/rss| Print Subscription

Videography Magazine
http://www.videography.com/Rss | Print Subscription

Other Great Resources for Related Industry News

Master New Media – Robin Good’s news, tools and resources for web publishers
http://feeds.feedburner.com/Robin-Good-Latest-News | @RobinGood

last100 – Written by Steve O’Hear
http://feeds.feedburner.com/last100 | @last100

Mashable
http://feeds2.feedburner.com/Mashable | @mashable

Techcrunch
http://feedproxy.google.com/TechCrunch | @TechCrunch

Wired News Tech Biz
http://feeds.wired.com/wired/index

Download Squad
http://www.downloadsquad.com/category/video/rss.xml | @DownloadSquad

ScribeMedia (media feed)
http://www.scribemedia.org/category/media/feed/

Scobleizer.com - by Robert Scoble
http://scobleizer.com/feed/ | @scobleizer (PS, he follows back)

WebProNews
http://feeds.feedburner.com/webpronews/all | @webpronews

Search Engine Industry News & SEO/SEM

SEOBook - SEO guru and virtual friend – Aaron Wall – great tools, news, etc…
http://www.seobook.com/rss.xml | @seobook

Search Engine Land
http://feeds.searchengineland.com/searchengineland

SEOMoz
http://feeds.feedburner.com/seomoz | @SEOMoz

Bruce Clay SEO
http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/atom.xml | @bruceclayinc

Search Engine Roundtable
http://feeds.feedburner.com/SearchEngineRoundtable

Search Engine Watch
http://feeds.searchenginewatch.com/sewblog

Shameless Plug

ReelSEO - Please dont forget us – I know, sounds like just SEO, and we certainly love SEO, but much, much more.
http://www.reelseo.com/feed/ | @reelseo | @markrrobertson

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Online Video Industry News Resources I Follow

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Microsoft Silverlight 3 offers H.264, full HD, Dev Tools

Mark R Robertson — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 18:01:50 +0000

Version 3 of Microsoft’s video player is out and included a host of new functionality including H.264 and High-Definition video. The multimedia software is available for Mac OS X (Intel-based Macs), Linux and of course, Windows.
The new version has been redesigned with performance and hardware acceleration in mind. It will also run on desktops and supports H.264, AAC, high-definition video (720p) and both live and On-Demand IIS7 Smooth Streaming.

It’s also got some visual goodies for developers including new 3Dgraphics, animations and hardware accelerated effects to give more control over the look and feel of it when embedded.

Other technical improvements and features include, the ability to apply content to a 3D plane, more pixel shader effects, bitmap caching along with a new bitmap API, themed application support. Plus enhanced control skinning for branding purposes.

Included now are 60 high-quality, fully skinnable and customizable out-of-the-box controls such as charting and media, new layout containers such as dock and viewbox, and controls such as autocomplete, treeview and datagrid. For those who use their multimedia for more than just showing off they also included deep linking with RIA, SEO optimization and more

No longer is Silverlight tied just to the browser. Now it’s fully desktop stand-alone. No extra downloads or installations. Computers don’t even need to be online anymore to utilize the software.

Other features for developers include an updated designer-developer workflow, Photoshop and Illustrator import, new behaviors for better interactivity, and enhanced data support.

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Microsoft Silverlight 3 offers H.264, full HD, Dev Tools

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IE8 to implement Some HTML 5 Features

Christophor Rick — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 18:00:03 +0000

HTML 5 just gained another ally in its adoption…Microsoft. Sure it might still be some time before HTML 5 is totally ready for the masses but with such early adopters like IE, Firefox and Safari now, it should start getting a heavy push to become solid.

Microsoft isn’t implementing all of the new proposed specification which is no surprise given their track record in HTML acceptance over the years. At MIX08 they announced that four features from the HTML 5 draft have been put into the browser to help it better deal with Web 2.0 apps.

The first Beta is using the following pieces of the HTML 5 draft spec.

cross-document messaging
a client-side storage API
network connection awareness
window location hash so apps can be accessed via back/forward.

We’re told that Microsoft spoke with browser developers before they decided to implement these four features to make sure they were stable and going to be widely accepted. Firefox 3.5 betas also include the window location hash and the tag.

IE8 will also allow developers to work about any changes in the feature via it’s version-targeting features so mass re-coding would not be needed in the future. This gives the developers two options – full standards mode and a quirks mode which keeps backward compatibility with earlier versions.

IE8 will also support CSS 2.1 thanks to its new layout engine as well as some new productivity tools for its users.

Chief among these new features are the “Activities,” a dialog box that lists available Web services when a user selects text, and “WebSlices,” which allows users to subscribe to portions of Web pages, including Silverlight controls. These are accessible to developers via the new Microsoft Open Specification Promise and Activity XML.

Microsoft also promises to give both developers and end-users better tools built into the new IE8 in the upcoming betas probably to help speed adaptation. While Internet explorer is still a popular browser, with the likes of Safari, Opera and of course Firefox and Chrome also in widespread use I think they’re trying to set themselves apart somehow. We’ll keep an eye on it and let you know.

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IE8 to implement Some HTML 5 Features

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SES San Jose 2009 Offers New Focus on Social Media & Video

Mark R Robertson — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 19:41:10 +0000

The Search Engines Strategies Conference & Expo (SES for short) has got some big names lined up. It was recently announced that on 11 August, Clickz, Google and YouTube will hold an event (no not for Christophor Rick’s Birthday…though it’s the same day) in conjunction with SES that will be focused entirely on Social Media and Video Strategy.

Kristin Kovner, the Industry Marketing Manager at YouTube, posted the following on the Youtube Biz Blog,

“We’re excited to be a part of this first-time ever event. SES is one of the best places for businesses to learn about search; now that YouTube has millions of searches each day, it’s only fitting that ClickZ and SES are expanding the agenda to include a full day dedicated to video and social media.”

What? That is right, an entire day will be dedicated to Social Media and Video Strategies. Yipee. I’m going.

Social Media and Video Strategies – August 10th

SES San Jose 2009 is set to run 10-14 August at the McEnery Convention Center. The 10th is filled with half day workshops while Clay Shirky, Author of “Here Comes Everybody”, will kick things off on the first full day of activities with the Opening Keynote. Following the keynote, those that register specifically for the Social Media & Video Strategies Forum can attend the following sessions that day:

Marketing in a Social Media World
Going Social: Effective Advertising via Social Networks
In the Now: Conversational & Real Time Marketing
What Works: Online Video Advertising Made Easy With Google & YouTube
What Works: Best Practices / Case Studies for Online Video
A Social Visit: CMO Fireside Chat with Robert Scoble as the moderator

Our friend Greg Jarboe of SEO PR, will be presenting in the “What Works: Best Practices / Case Studies for Online Video” session. Greg is a though leader and has spoken at previous SES conferences about video marketing in conjunction with Youtube. Greg has been creating and optimizing videos for Youtube for many years, even before they were acquired by Google. Coincidentally, he just recently finished writing a book titled “Youtube and Video Marketing: An Hour A Day,” which will be published right around the time that the conference is occurring, mid-August.

“No, I didn’t know that Social Media & Video Strategies would be held in conjunction with SES San Jose 2009 when I started writing last fall. But I did know that YouTube.com was on its way to being the destination where 107.1 million Americans went to watch 6.8 billion videos each month, according to comScore Video Metrix. I also knew YouTube was on its way to becoming the #2 property where search activity is observed, with 3.2 billion search queries a month in the U.S., behind only Google, with 9.8 billion search queries a month.

In a few weeks, we will be writing a review of the book as well as featuring some guest posts and interviews with Greg about the subject of marketing video content via YouTube. Stay tuned. If you want to, you can pre-order the book here.

More about SES San Jose 2009 Conference and Expo

In addition to the opening keynote address, other keynotes include Nicholas Fox, Business Product Management Director, AdWords, Google and Charlene Li, Co-Author of Groundswell on How to Prepare for the Future of Search. The final day (14th) is a day full of SEM Training.

The event will truly be of interest to everyone in the search engine, SEO, online video and small to medium business areas (even Christophor expressed interest in attending but he’s still in the Balkans – haha).

The fifth year of the San Jose-based expo is aimed at marketing teams, executives and IT/Web personnel. Other sessions promising to spread the depth and scope of the expo include presentations from Facebook, Omniture, YouTube, Google and Clickz.

The full event is running about $2,000 with a one day pass going for about $900 and SEM training for $750-1400. If you just want to attend the expo it’s free (if you get the pass in advance) or $50 at the door. That will of course exclude you from all the really great content of the conference.

With regard to the Social Media and Video Strategies forum, you will need to register for that separately. If you register before August 7th there is a discounted rate of $144 for the day. I think they are offering the discount specifically in honor of my birthday, which is the 7th, but I haven’t confirmed that .

The Expo side of things is fit to see companies from around the web on display including the likes of search marketers (Search Marketing Standard, Idearc), ad networks, metrics giants (like ComScore), video search and platforms (Blinkx, Adfare Video Solutions, etc… ), public relations (PRWeb), software (network solutions, Rosetta) and social networks (Facebook)

Should you Go to this Event?

Hell yes! Whether your new at the search and online marketing game or an old hat this is surely a must attend event for people in business big and small. If you are unable to attend the full SES conference, at least consider registering for the Social Media and Video Strategy Forum. We are thrilled that they are offering this special day along side SES.

TubeMogul recently commissioned a study that helps to demonstrate why the focus on video and social media is a good fit for the conference.

How do people discover videos online?

45% of all videos are found on a video site, i.e. going to YouTube and doing a search or clicking around featured and related videos.
44% of all videos are found embedded in blogs.
6% of all videos are found with search engines, like Google.
2% of all videos are found in social networks, like Facebook.
2% of all videos found in social bookmarking sites.
Less than 1% of all videos are found with video search engines, like Google Video.

44% are embedded in blogs? That’s a very large percentage and means you need to have your videos available in some embeddable form for your readers. On the other end of the spectrum, only 6% are found with search engines…a problem with them or with how we’re putting our video online?

Find out at the conference!

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SES San Jose 2009 Offers New Focus on Social Media & Video

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The Focus on Monetizing Online Video

Christophor Rick — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:51:36 +0000

Gone are the day of just simply putting video online for fun (for the majority of us). Now it’s all about earning revenue or utilizing the video to push a product/brand. Sure it’s still in its infancy and we’ve got a lot of issues to resolve before it becomes totally mainstream, but just consider it like a ‘beta test,’ at least for now.

YouTube is still by far the leader in online video sharing and even they are just managing to drop in realistic monetization channels with new ads for some users and the call-to-action overlay. This after more than four years in operation. The problem is that for every good online video campaign there has been, a half dozen or more bad ones have been done.

As more people get bigger pipelines and pay less for their bandwidth, there’s no reason not to predict that online video will continue to grow right along with it. Add in the fact that mobile phone companies are starting to offer flat rate data plans and you’ve not only got the stationary market to think about but the handheld, on-the-go consumers as well.

If the industry continues to see growth as it has recently (11% last year alone), new companies will begin to market their brands via online video. But it’s up to us, who already exist in the space, to not only make the room for these newcomers but welcome them with open arms. We need to help continue the shift to online video which accounted for a mere 6% of all advertising last year in the US (~$303 Billion) while TV chalked up a healthy 22%.

The problem is that many advertisers still see no need to create online specific video and instead just bring over stuff from TV. That’s already been proven to not be a sound marketing tactic in the online space. Online, people are finicky and have short attention spans, that’s why we try to keep our articles short and broken into short paragraphs. They react very differently than they would normally to the TV advertising format.

While users are tolerant of pre-roll ads to get to the video they want to see they also don’t want those ads to be a major portion of the viewing time. If an average video online is from 7 to 11 minutes then a one minute pre-roll is certainly going to make them look elsewhere for that video.

It’s as much about interactivity as it is about balance though. With call-to-action overlays and buy now links, revenue can be increased so long as these tools are used wisely. Other services have also come online that are trying to leverage the buying power of the online video viewership. Viddler sells tags so when the tag you think is relevant to your product becomes relevant to the video, the ad shows up. Myspace started working with Autitude which is hooked into MTV Networks and puts a branded overlay on any video clips that are from MTV programs.

Storybids is giving product placement a whole new meaning. By identifying certain products in online videos (and soon standard television) they are able to create ‘more info’ buttons that can not only be used to find out more about the specific product but also could be used to jump out to a sales page where viewers might buy the product.

Interactivity is what is going to set online video apart from television. Sure with TV you can time-shift, but online you can time-shift along with a dozen other things that could help lead consumers down the path to purchasing and that is, after all, the goal…return on investment and retail sales or brand awareness impact.

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The Focus on Monetizing Online Video

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