The monetization of traffic goliath YouTube has been a hot topic ever since Google bought the online video destination a few years back. This week YouTube made two big announcements in regards to new revenue streams that not only make business sense but more importantly doesn’t impact the user-experience.
On Wednesday YouTube announced YouTube Sponsored Videos, basically the same sponsored links strategy tied to Google web search but specific to YouTube content. “Sponsored Videos is a self-serve advertising platform that will allow you to promote your video to the audience you are interested in reaching in an easy, effective, democratic, and affordable way. Then, when people use YouTube to search for videos, YouTube will display the most relevant, compelling videos alongside the search results. These videos are clearly labeled as “sponsored videos” and are priced on a cost-per-click basis.”
Here is the offical video explaining how Sponsored Videos works:
Yesterday YouTube also announced that they will be serving overlay ads in their embedded partner videos. This obviously wont have the same impact as YouTube Sponsored Videos but is a strategy that makes sense regardless of how much revenue it adds to the bottom line. Up until this announcement was made YouTube only ran overlay ads against partner videos running on YouTube, allowing the monetization of partner videos no matter where the video is being played is a win-win for both YouTube and the content producer.
TechCrunch just posted leaked screenshots of Brightcove’s latest web-based video distribution platform - called Brightcove 3. The new platform will give video publishers more options and a better, more intuitive user-experience.
About Brightcove: “Brightcove empowers content owners—from independent producers to major broadcast networks—to reach their audiences directly through the Internet. At the same time, we help web publishers enrich their sites with syndicated video programming, and we give marketers more ways to communicate and engage with their consumers.” “Most importantly, we give people the freedom to easily find, watch and participate in a broad range of video content—when and where they choose.”
Some of the new feature of Brightcove 3 include:
New dashboards
New video customization features
Expanded advertiser options
Ability to create multiple renditions of videos in different standards and bit rates
Check out the rest of the screenshots at TechCrunch.com
Youtube has been busy the past couple days launching new features, yesterday came the video upload enhancements, today they announced some new features to their YouTube Insights tool. Youtube Insights enabled video uploaders access to detailed information about their videos. The new feature takes video insight one step further by showing actual traffic details and user interactions of the video itself. This new feature called “Hot Spots” allows video uploaders to see details like what part of the video people dropped off and what part people watched over and over again.
“The Hot Spots tab in Insight plays your video alongside a graph that shows the ups-and-downs of viewership at different moments within the video. We determine “hot” and “cold” spots by comparing your video’s abandonment rate at that moment to other videos on YouTube of the same length, and incorporating data about rewinds and fast-forwards. So what does that mean? Well, when the graph goes up, your video is hot: few viewers are leaving, and many are even rewinding on the control bar to see that sequence again. When the graph goes down, your content’s gone cold: many viewers are moving to another part of the video or leaving the video entirely.”
So what does this mean? Well for the average user uploading random clips this probably doesn’t mean that much. However, for anyone that works on building a viral campaign or social media strategies the new insight can give a tremendous amount of detail on why a video is popular and can lead to a better (and more popular) video production in the future. Basically this should be treated by anyone interested in driving more views to their video like any optimization technique used for other web elements.
You can read the entire announcement over at the Google Blog.
If you are looking for best practices in regards to building an online video destination look no further then Hulu.com. Since Hulu launched in private beta last year it has become the gold standard for what a video website with professionally produced content should be - from content, to ad monetization, to social syndication with their embeddable player, Hulu has gotten it right from day one while other competing services have missed the mark. Today Hulu announced feature enhancements which will further increase their user engagement.
The new features of Hulu include:
Show recommendations
Topic specific discussion forums
Actor based search
Genre-based channel browsing
The timing of the new features come not long after rival video aggregator Joost announced they were going away from the downloadable app and going all browser with a focus on social networks. Hulu doesn’t go as far as Joost but does take some of the wind out of their sails with their new community features. Along with the new features listed above, Hulu also launched 17 new content channels including comedy, horror and anime.
Bottom line is that there are no shortages of online video destinations - whether UGC / professionally produced or short-form / long-form. The power of online video, especially when you factor in Video SEO, is not being lost on the masses. However, the majority of these video destinations focus either on content with no long-tail benefit or make the user-experience a complete disaster. Hulu has the content people want to watch and has focused on the UI so that content discovery comes naturally: content + discoverability = winner.
I have been a huge fan of Hulu ever since they launched in private beta and continue to view them as the trend setter when it comes to all aspects of online video. Last night I was online watching full episodes of my favorite shows on Hulu.com, something I do on a regular basis, and saw something that I have not seen before - not just on Hulu, but anywhere else online. Before an episode of The Simpsons started a screen came up giving me the choice of how to view this video in regards to advertisements (see screenshot below). I could either watch the full movie trailer of “Ghost Town” and then have no commercial interruptions or watch the video with normal commercial breaks. This is an absolutely brilliant move by Hulu to not only increase the value of their ad placements but also engage the user on a whole different level.
When it comes to professionally produced long-form content it is a widely accepted practice to force ads however the website sees fit. This after all is premium content so commercial breaks, overlay ads, or any other form of content monetization is viewed as a necessary evil. However, by giving the user the option Hulu is creating a automatic engagement with the website beyond watching videos….choice, regardless of what it ecompasses, is a powerful thing.
GigaOm.com had an exclusive this morning on how Joost, the P2P video distribution service, is going to kill its desktop client - the official announcement from Joost has to be made. Joost is abandoning its downloadable software is favor of launching a “browser-only” player, a similar path being taken by Veoh and Jaman.
The Joost desktop client was launched last year to much fanfare and buzz…however user-adoption, content and technical issues seemed to doom the client from the start. The soon to launch browser based service will rely on the same Joost P2P technology but will work through a embedded plug-in. The utilization of a plug-in will allow for higher quality video and a faster experience when compared to other video search engines.
Personally I was a huge fan of the desktop client and the possibilities in brought in terms of expanding into the multi-screen / device space, but I became disappointed in the lack of content and soon it became just another icon on my desktop. Basically Joost, and other companies that offered the desktop client, were ahead of their time. The general online public was and is not ready to consume mass video content in this manner. Right now the growth, and attention, are on web-based video destinations like Hulu, Fancast, TheWB and numerous others. The growth of people coming online to consume professionally produced long-form is only starting to be realized. As more and more people come to rely on their computer for watching this type of video content, pushing them to a desktop client - which offers more control, functionality and technical flexibility - is the next logical step for video (2-3 years away). The desktop client can then extend to set-top boxes and create a truly a seamless online-to-computer-to-television experience.
Meanwhile TechCrunch has a sneak peek at Joost’s new browser based P2P video service. It looks awesome from what I can tell, I especially like the “social” integration. However, no matter how cool the service, when it comes to video it is all about content, content content.
The new TheWB.com relaunched today with the goal of being yet another online video destination. So what is my immediate reaction? It is no Hulu and the user-interface gives me a headache. The good news is that TheWB.com will combine full episodes of established content like Friends, Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars with original web programing. That level of content, especially when talking about a cult show like Friends, will drive significant traffic to the website. However, I feel when looking around the website, that they are confused at what they really want to be. The user-experience is a jumbled mess and seems to purposely go against the clean / ease of Hulu.
I would love to give a more in-depth review of the website, including their video search and embeddable player functionality - both areas Hulu excels in. However, they aren’t rolling out all features just yet and the site seems to be crawling at a snails pace at the moment. I will do a follow-up post once they fix their site issues and all of their planned functionality are up and running.
Since Hulu launched in private beta not so long ago I always felt their video search engine product was a step above everyone else’s. Hulu’s video player and user experience was one of the best within the online video space, which is crowded with amateurish efforts. Yesterday Hulu took another step towards creating a true global video content destination by focusing on content discovery within their embeddable player…and they almost hit it out of the park.
As you can see from the screenshots below the Hulu embeddable player now has a search box in the upper right hand corner. I am a huge fan of content discovery and was very happy to see this. The search box within the embeddable player allows a user to search for a video and have the search results come up in the player - when clicked, the video will play within the same embed. If within the search results the video is not on Hulu, when clicked it will take you to the website that contains the video.
However, here is the opportunity they missed out on. When you are done watching the video why does the search box go away (see screenshot)? Yes, as YouTube does, they offer related video’s but why not offer the same search functionality you get when you are watching the video? Doesn’t it make more sense to have a search box once a user is done watching one video so they can discover more? Would love to understand the reasoning behind this decision.
However, I still believe that Hulu’s embeddable player is better then most offerings when it comes to content discovery. YouTube lacks the search box and just offers the standard recommended / related videos at the end of the clip. For me having a search box within the embed makes much more sense since people are primarily embedding quick clips - adding search would allowed them to quickly find related (or unrelated videos).
While I am on the topic of embeddable video players, CBS launched this week their new player which has the embed functionality. Check out the live example of their embeddable player at the bottom of this post. IT IS HUGE. I would love to know what the CBS Digital team was thinking when they made it. Who wants to embed a video that size? Would it even fit within most blog templates or even within MySpace? A better option would have been to offer various sizes of the embed - let the user decide.
On top of the embed size CBS, like Hulu, monetizes the video through advertisements. CBS runs ads spots at various time points within the video (Hulu has a pre-roll). I am all for monetization but back to my previous point who is going to embed this into their website? The purpose of giving fans / users the embeddable option should be to drive brand awareness and / or to drive traffic back to the main site. Why do YouTube videos go viral (besides the content)? Because they are easy to embed and get right to what people want to watch - which then drives people back to YouTube.com for further content discovery. On top of all of that, once a video plays CBS’s video embed has no additional content discovery, not even the standard recommendations - I am assuming this will be fixed in the near future as this is a first release.
For your viewing pleasure, below are live examples of YouTube’s, Hulu’s and CBS’s embeddable players. Outside of the pure UI of the video wrapper which one would you want to embed into your website / blog?
The head honchos at Brightcove, a leading Internet TV service / platform, put together a very interesting article the other day discussing the current and future state of Internet TV. A must read for anyone involved in the creation, distribution and optimization of rich media / online videos. Read the full article, but below are some key points I found to be the most interesting in regards to 2008 trends:
Branded destinations will compete with the major aggregator by offering consumers a more focused experience.
Content owners will step up their efforts to to develop distribution strategies that enable wide distribution of their content - with advertising attached.
Audience monetization will hit prime-time via targeting.
