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Posts Tagged ‘YouTube’

Let’s go to the video Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

Twitter has been getting all the media attention this year, but online video has also taken off in a huge way in 2009. Here are some interesting facts:

  • 62% of U.S. adult Internet users watch videos on YouTube and other video-sharing web sites, up from 33% in late 2006, according to a recent report from the Pew Research Center.
  • Also from the report: “Online video watching among young adults is near-universal; nine in ten (89%) internet users ages 18-29 now
    say they watch content on video sharing sites, and 36% do so on a typical day.”
  • Speaking of Twitter, check out how Twitter compares to online video consumption on the chart below:

  • According to a ComScore report, 157 million Americans watched 19.5 billion online videos in June, up from the 16.8 billion in April. The average viewer watched 124 online videos in June, up from 111 million in April. Google (read YouTube) still accounts for 40% of all videos viewed and more than half of videos viewed per user.
  • A report on ClickZ calls online video “the fastest growing medium in history, having gone from zero to mass market globally in three short years.” More good advice from this report: “Create ads that work as content. Create fun or arresting videos that tell a story and seamlessly integrate your brand.”
  • Another report from iMedia UK looks at the myths of online video and explains why it’s not as expensive, boring and unaccountable as you might think.

Self-actualisation through user-generated content: study Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

People consume and create user-generated content in different ways for different but interdependent reasons, according to research just published in the journal Internet Research.

The three main reasons are:

  1. to fulfill their information, entertainment and mood management needs
  2. to interact with content and with other human beings
  3. for self-expression and self-actualisation, which help to construct their own identity

The study’s author argues that entertainment is more important than information-seeking when it comes to user-generated content, writing that “YouTube and its many imitators have dramatically reduced entertainment content to light, bright and digestible ’snack food’ so that users can consume it with increased frequency and maximum speed.”

Pointing out that because people can fulfill their social needs through interacting online with each other, responding to content is “an integral part of community development since it can reinforce dynamic content creation.”

Blogging and vlogging “not only allows the significance of who one is and what one does to show himself/herself, but also enables one to control the impression others have of him/her.”

The study concludes that the three ways of using user-generated content are analytically separate but are interdependent. “They support one another, directly or indierectly, by helping people fulfill their respective social and psychological needs.”

The usability aspects of user-generated content - how easy it is to use and how much control is given to the consumer - allow users to contribute only a little while getting a lot back, such as quickly uploading one video to YouTube while being able to view thousands of videos of interest. The study draws parallels between UGC and utility theory, which suggests people desire those things that will maximise their pleasure.

The researcher argues that these kinds of controls appeal to people “not only technically, but also psychologically.”


‘Glimmer of hope’ for online ads in recession Monday, December 1st, 2008

Everyone agrees advertising overall is tanking as a result of the ‘GFC’ (global financial crisis), but how online advertising will be affected is a matter of intense debate. The online industry, naturally, is bullish on the prospects for online ad spend growth, but what do the battered finance and political media think? The Economist entered the debate last week, saying that although online ad spending in the US fell by 27% during the dotcom recession, ”the web has changed a lot since 2002. Back then, gaudy display “banners” on web portals such as Yahoo! and MSN were the preferred technology. These still exist, but they now account for less than 20% of online ad spending.”

As they pointed out, more than 50% of online ad spend now goes to search advertising, while in brand advertising, rich media ads are taking over from banners. Because these forms of advertising are easily tracked, spending on online advertising is now “much less speculative, so that it starts to be treated instead as a cost of sales. This is one reason why online advertising should suffer less than other sorts.”

This still leaves the problem of how advertising spend is transferred from traditional advertising to online. As the Economist points out, “At the beginning of the year Jeff Zucker, the boss of NBC Universal, a big television and film company, told an audience of TV executives that their biggest challenge was to ensure ‘that we do not end up trading analogue dollars for digital pennies’. He meant that audiences were moving online faster than advertisers, thus leaving media companies short-changed. Now, near the end of the year, the situation looks even worse, as the recession threatens to turn even the analogue dollars into pennies.”

The Economist points out that online traffic is moving towards sites where advertising has so far proved ineffective - such as user-generated content havens like YouTube and social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook - “and is therefore cheap. This, says Mary Meeker (an Internet analyst at Morgan Stanley), presents an opportunity for innovation and arbitrage by clever marketing managers as they cut their conventional ad budgets. It may also provide a glimmer of hope for the advertising industry as it enters recession.”


The Internet generation takes office Thursday, November 6th, 2008

The world has breathed a sigh of relief as the US has agreed with the rest of the world that Barack Obama has the best shot at getting America out of the mess it is in and engaging with the global community.

Politics aside, this election marks the triumph of the Internet and Web 2.0. Obama used skills honed as a community action group leader in Chicago in his younger days to build a powerful network of supporters, both financial and physical, through the Internet. His team collected a record amount of donations via the long tail of the Internet - a few dollars from a huge amount of people - and used email, SMS and YouTube to great effect. Nice to see someone of Obama’s advanced age (47) recognised the critical importance of online, particularly in organising youth support. A lot of businesses could learn from this example - I’m sure someone will write a book about it and make a squillion - I’d probably buy a copy.


When you can’t control ‘Whassup’ Thursday, October 30th, 2008

Like it or loathe it, Budweiser’s ‘Whassup’ campaign of a few years ago resonated throughout the world as an irritating but catchy and wildly successful way to promote the beer’s brand. Well, the Whassup guys are back, this time on YouTube, and they’re barracking for Barack Obama - and there’s nothing Budweiser or their ad agency DDB Chicago can do about it. Apparently when the ad’s creator Charles Stone III (gotta love those triple-barrelled American names - grandpa would be proud) came up with the concept, DDB licensed the concept from him for five years - an agreement which finished three years ago.

The Whassup ads first appeared in 1999, just before George Bush was elected US president, and the new video shows what’s up eight years later for the original characters - they’re fighting in Iraq, caught in a hurricane, unable to pay medical bills and attempting suicide as their stock portfolio tanks. In 2008, ‘Whassup’, is change, in the form of Obama.

I feel for Budweiser and DDB, but this is a classic example of social media at work - companies no longer have control over their brand and the way it is used. They just have to embrace it and see what the effect is on their brand and their sales. Look for more of this type of consumer power to come in the future.

You can see the ad, which has already been viewed more than 2 million times, here.