YouTube introduces "skippable" video ads. Uh oh.
Well it was good while it lasted. While television networks and advertisers morned the introduction of commercial fast forwarding on television, they have found solace online, where consumers have consigned themselves to sitting through pre-rolls and interstitials if it means streaming high quality video content.
YouTube is trying to change all that. The video giant today announced today that it is launching "skippable" pre-roll ads on some of its videos. The move will help YouTube create better ads, charge better rates for the ads that are seen and improve its ad model. It could also lead to further erosion of video ad views overall, which networks won't be happy about.
The good news: networks won't have to worry about that for a while.
The internet is not responsible for rude customer service
Before the advent of the internet and social media, citizens and consumers had little recourse when they spotted injustice or suffered abuse. But that's all changed. Thanks to ubiquitous mobile phone cameras and internet content sharing services, when something goes down, there's a good chance it will recorded and posted online.
A customer service assistant for London Underground recently learned that the hard way after he hurled harsh words at an elderly passenger. The incident was 'caught on tape', uploaded to the internet and an uproar ensued. Consequently, the customer service assistant is voluntarily no longer employed by London Underground.
Viacom has 'smoking gun' evidence in YouTube lawsuit: report
According to Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Google willingly paid a $1bn premium to acquire YouTube back in 2006. And if Viacom has its way, he'll soon be paying another $1bn 'premium'.
In the search giant's legal battle with the media giant over copyright infringement, Viacom has fired a potentially devastating salvo: it claims it has evidence that YouTube employees were uploading copyrighted content without authorization.
Q&A: The marketing duo behind New York's social media hotel
The Roger Smith Hotel may be the most social media savvy hotel in New York -- if not the world.
There's a blog. A Facebook fan page. A YouTube Channel. Over 3,000 Twitter followers. A Flickr photostream. And two guys behind all these efforts, both of whom winnowed their way into overseeing online marketing for the property following stints in food and beverage services at the hotel.
We caught up with Adam Wallace, the hotel's new media marketing manager, and his sidekick Brian Simpson, whose official title is still assistant food and beverage director, to find out how they built a family-run, independent hotel into a digital force to be reckoned with.
YouTube looks into online movie rentals
YouTube's quest for professionally created content is about to get interesting. The Wall Street Journal reports that the video giant is in talks with movie studios to stream movies to its users for a fee.
That will bring a shift from its free video supported by advertising model, but could go a long way toward helping the site turn a profit for Google — and possibly change the game for online film viewing.
YouTube opens up more viral videos to advertising
The key to success for YouTube lies in monetizing more of its videos, and the company made a step toward doing that today by opening up its Partnership Program to creators of one-off viral videos.
Starting today, the video portal will allow any video creator with popular, approved content to add advertising to videos. While this won't be the silver bullet to YouTube's success, allowing viral video creators to make money from all those page views makes a lot of sense.
20+ more mind-blowing social media statistics
The social media statistics I posted a few weeks ago seemed to strike a chord amongst the digital community, especially in highlighting just how big an issue this particular area of online currently is. So I’m happy to say that I’ve trawled around the internet to bring you some more snippets of useful data and awesome figures.
Google acquires the most important online video company you've never heard of
On2 Technologies, a major player in the video compression space, is being acquired by Google in a stock deal worth approximately $106.5mn.
On2 may not be a recognizable brand but it's arguably amongst the most important companies on the web as its proprietary video codecs are used extensively in the online video space. Its VP6, VP7 and VP8 codecs have brought high-quality (and high-definition) video to computer screens all over the world.
20 + mind-blowing social media statistics
Social media remains the hot topic of the digital world and I often get asked about the various statistics involved. This in itself is fairly difficult, as this particular online sphere is constantly shifting, evolving and growing at an astronomical rate. But I’ve pulled together some interesting (and hopefully useful) data for a couple of the bigger players in the market...
Blip.tv: It's all about the distribution
A major inhibitor to video revenues online so far has been audience size. Despite advances in the quality, quantity and length of videos on the web, most people aren't watching them. To date, 99% of all video viewing is still happening in front of television sets.
But online video network blip.tv is looking to get bring its content where the audiences are. Today the company announced a partnership with YouTube, Tivo, Verizon and Vimeo among others to get more of its content around the web and to television sets.
The company has long been working to distribute its content across as many platforms as possible. And today's announcement marks a big jump in the size of the company's footprint. That strategy is the key to the success of blip — and the online video marketplace.
Social media: the best and worst of 2009
Email marketing: six steps to improving customer engagement in 2010
Web 2.0
Graham Charlton
Strategy & Planning
