Larry Kless' Weblog: June 2011

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Getting Online Video to Measure Up - Dan Piech, comScore

2010 was massive year of growth for online video, throughout the industry and the way consumers accessed video content. Analysts are seeing a sharp rise in online video viewing compared to traditional television, which has huge implications for online video advertising and marketing. Digital media measurement firm comScore noted in its “The 2010 U.S. Digital Year in Review” that eCommerce spending in 2010 grew 9% to $227 billion in sales. Social networking site continue to drive views as audiences build, share and engage on sites like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Tumblr. For businesses, there's no other tool more important than online video analytics to capture how your video content is consumed on the web.

Dan Piech, Senior Product Management Analyst with comScore says, the best way online video publishers and marketers create and sustain value is through differentiation, and the way you do that is through your data.

"It's not just about understanding your audience," Piech says, "but then putting together a pitch that sells that audience to advertisers."

Piech says that online publishers will not have the reach of a television audience, and for small publishers it will be even harder. So he suggests that publishers find that niche audience, develop it and sell that niche based on what you've learned about it from your metrics, because the agencies are not going to do that for you. He says that digital market intelligence services like comScore help you better understand your audience.

comScore believes that they have the most accurate methodology for measuring digital media. Each month, the digital media measurement firm comScore releases its Online Video Rankings from its Video Metrix service, with the most recent comScore May 2011 U.S. Online Video Rankings, that showed 83.3 percent of the U.S. Internet audience (176 million) watched online video content in May for an average of 15.9 hours per viewer. Video ads accounted for 12.6 percent of all videos viewed and 1.2 percent of all minutes spent viewing video online.

How comScore gets at the data is a secret sauce merged from two sources. The first source is a panel of two million Internet users worldwide that they track their behavior. One aspect of that behavior is watching videos. So they're able to understand where they are watching videos, how long they're watching videos, get a good sense of unique viewers , and project that to the total populations. The second source is census-level data collection method, commonly referred to as unified digital measurement, and comScore works with all the top publishers in the video and media space to get that data. In the method, publishers send data every time a video is viewed.

"By that we're able to get a very census-level, total population look at the video activity on that site," Piech says. "and furthermore, break that video activity down to very granular levels."

As an example, for clients like NBC, CBS or MTV, comScore is able to break down how people are engaging with those shows on a a census level from that unified digital measurement, as well as on the panel. Like Nielsen, comScore tracks that activity across all screens and as Piech notes

"Obviously we're paying close attention to the cross-media space and the three screen developments that are taking place. Because at the end of the day, content is king, as you always hear and to the extent that that's the case, we have to follow that content wherever it goes."

Piech says, currently that's mostly online but we're at a turning point in the space where mobile and OTT are growing very fast. So comScore is working on developing the indicators to know where the space will be in five years, mostly through surveys that help forecast audience perceptions. In a recent survey, comScore was working to understand the level of ad loads that users would be willing to watch, or rather willing to endure. What they found was that online viewers are perfectly willing to watch twice as many ads for their content. Piech says that when it comes down to it, the numbers are people, and by putting a face to the numbers puts an emphasis not just on numbers, but attitudinal changes happening in the space which helps publishers better understand how their content is consumed so they can best monetize it moving forward.

As the current trends in online video continue to show massive growth, so does the opportunities for online video publishers and marketers. Many analysts say that for the last several years we've reached a tipping point for online video.

"We've reached a state in the online video space now where almost everyone online is watching video at some point in the month," says Piech, "so we've now got that reach. But what's interesting that we're finding out is that now that everyone is watching online video, people are starting to watch a lot more."

He says it's more than doubled in the last year and is fascinated by the trend, because online video is still a small part of the overall activity of any individual day as compared to television, but what's happening is that's growing incredibly fast. Engagement levels are up, number of videos views are up and that's across all demographics and all across the board, and it's happening at a very high rate.

"So if you do a simple extrapolation that, in the very near future where online video is a major, major player out there," Piech notes, "and that's what makes me really excited about the space. We're not a dying industry, we're in our birth and really high growth state which makes this a very exciting space and a space that changes quickly."

This interview in this post was conducted at the Online Video Platform Summit where Piech was a panelist on the session, Online Video by the Numbers: Analytics, Reporting, and Metrics. He was joined by an all-star panel that examined what type of important data you should be collecting and how to use that data to improve the effectiveness of your video and increase your ROI.

Piech also spoke earlier this year at OMMA Video on, The State of Online Video, where he provided a picture of today’s online video consumer which can be viewed in the video below.

Video streaming by Ustream

"Who is watching, how engaged are they and what has changed over time? Where are we seeing the biggest shifts – long-form or short-form videos? What impact is online video having on traditional TV viewing, and when it comes to online advertising how are consumers’ preferences shaping the market?"

About comScore
comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) is a global leader in measuring the digital world and preferred source of digital business analytics. For more information, please visit www.comscore.com/companyinfo. Follow comScore, Inc. (comscore) on Twitter

About Dan Piech

Dan is a Senior Product Management Analyst at comScore, Inc. and President and Founder at evoxio. At comScore, Dan manages comScore’s online video measurement products and is responsible for ensuring that measurement insights support the growth and development of the online video industry. Previously, he was anInteractive Strategy Intern at McKinney, Project Manager at HG Media, Inc and Advertising Intern at Success Communications Group. comScore is a marketing research company that provides marketing data and services to many of the Internet's largest businesses. Follow Dan Piech (danpiech) on Twitter

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Thursday, June 9, 2011

Funny or Die's Recipe for Success: Great Content, SEO & Social Media - Patrick Starzan, Funny or Die

Core to any good video content strategy is a blend of ingredients that compel and engage viewers to discover and share your content. You can have the most compelling content in the world, but if people aren't aware of it and can't find it easily, it won't make any difference. According to Patrick Starzan, Vice President of Marketing and Distribution for Funny or Die, its recipe for success is a combination great content, search engine optimization and social media. I caught up with Starzan at the Online Video Platform Summit where he discussed how Funny or Die developed its content strategy and some of the common mistakes publishers make with online video.

Funny or Die is both a video content site and brand focused on funny videos, and since its founding in 2007 by Will Ferrell, Adam McKay and Chris Hench, it has become one of the top destinations for comedy on the web. It's known for celebrity-driven comedy and has a steady stream of topical viral hits, including its most viewed video, The Landlord, with over 76 million views that features Ferrell, McKay and McKay's two-year-old daughter Pearl who plays the foul-mouthed landlord that berates Ferrell for overdue rent money. Other celebrities are featured regularly in Funny or Die exclusives, such as Zach Galifianakis' hilarious web series Between Two Ferns. The October/November 2010 issue of Streaming Media magazine features an in-depth cover story on Funny or Die, The Art and Science of Funny or Die - Streaming Media Magazine, that chronicles the rise and success of the popular comedy website, which Streaming Media editor Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen calls, "a shining example of marrying the best of Hollywood to the best of Silicon Valley."

Starzan says:

"For us, social media has been a core part of how we get our content discovered, and it's something we've working on for years."

How Funny or Die got there, Starzan says is that:

"Everything starts by defining your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and your metrics and what's important for your company's success. So we did that and we went out and developed a content strategy, separately for each of the platforms, understanding that the type of person on each platform is consuming and engaging in content in different ways. We really follow a strategy of building social capital, trying to give more than we get, trying to interact with the user, trying to give them a platform for access to Funny or Die, but also a platform where we can celebrate who they are."

Starzan says the Funny or Die team spends a lot of time working on their content strategy, about eight to nine hours a day on each of the platforms, because they feel that users are more engaged with content they want to watch.

"After your content strategy," Starzan suggests, "you start with your acquisition strategy and figure out how to target more people to come to join each of your platforms."

For many brands, the question of whether or not to drive traffic to its own site rather than establishing a presence on YouTube is quite common. For Funny or Die, its content strategy was to first establish its brand and then go to YouTube.

As Starzan explains:

"For us, coming out of the gate we really wanted to establish Funny or Die as a brand and we took a very walled garden approach. So we really wanted to control the experience and optimize the experience to out users, until we felt we had a brand that had a solid foundation. We didn't want to dilute it by actually going out and doing a lot of distribution, especially with YouTube. Once we felt we had that brand equity, that's when we went to YouTube and established a windowing strategy of our content over on YouTube, because obviously YouTube has a huge, huge audience."

Funny Or Die's photo: This is our new social media expert: Robobot.

Starzan says though that YouTube distribution hasn't cannibalized its brand or the video views on its own website and sees about the same amount of consumption on YouTube as on its our own site.

So for Funny or Die, it's now about exposing its brand to the largest audience. But as Starzan notes, a lot of Funny or Die's traffic comes from search and they've done a lot of work optimizing their video players and the specific type of keywords. Direct traffic though continues to grow as Funny or Die has become more of an established brand. But by far, social media has been one of its critical success factors for audience building and has a presence on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, StumbledUpon, Reddit, and so on, which are all places that people can search and discover Funny or Die's content.

By the numbers, Funny or Die's social media presence continues to prove successful by doubling its number of followers in the last six months, with 2.2 million Twitter followers and with 938,749 Facebook fans (but more than 3 million Facebook fans along with co-founder Will Ferrell), 40,000 followers on Tumblr and 468,306 subscribers to its YouTube channel. The website is also getting 2,000 “Likes” per day with an overall audience reach of 32 million through its social media channels.

"We make funny videos with celebrities in it," Starzan laughs, "and it lends itself well to the social media world."

The advice he offers to online video publishers and marketers to get their content discovered is that:

"It's about really having a comprehensive strategy. I don't think you should look at one, search over social media, as two different things, or two different variations of what's important. They're both just as important as the other. Because at the end of the day, you want to have your content discovered as quickly as possible by relevant audiences… So, put as much time into both of them as you can."

Starzan admits that they've learned a lot from trial and error, and for search, he recommends that you make all your content embeddable; that you have links coming back to your site; and that your tags are using the optimal keywords that you want to be discovered for, because it becomes a huge back linking strategy and you define what people are seeing when they back link to you. He says it's about making sure you do the simple things; like making sure your sitemaps are indexed with all the search engines and identifying the keywords that drive traffic to your site or to specific pages. If they'e driving a lot of traffic, go to that page and optimize that keyword for that page so you can rank better in search.

For publishers looking to build out their platforms using social media, Starzan says that it's not just about driving traffic to your site but about being a part of the community. While Funny or Die has an edge over other media properties through its celebrity power, he says it really comes down to the basics, which first and foremost, is to make great content.

"You have to have great content if you're ever going to survive on social media," he says, "and make a lot of it. Then just make sure you're in those communities. I think a mistake a lot of people make, and we made it in the beginning, is we just put up these pages and we'd put content up there and expect people to engage with it, share it and do everything we wanted them to do with it, but it just dies. You have to be there everyday – it's just like any other social interaction – you have to be there, you have to have that conversation, you have to listen as much as you talk. So take the time to learn all the nuances and definitely realize that, a lot of people say social and SEO are free, organic ways of driving traffic, but it take a lot of time in terms of resources to really develop these platforms and really optimize them."

Funny or Die recently introduced a new feature to its video player to help drive traffic from social media sharing by adding a clickable embedded Twitter hashtag. According to NewTeVee's Ryan Lawler, the latest episode of Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifinakis features the new social media element which is located in the bottom right corner of the video player.

"The embedded hashtag is a call to action that enables viewers of the video to share it with their friends," says Lawler, "Once clicked, it launches Twitter with a link back to the episode and the #btwn2ferns hashtag."

In an email to NewTeeVee, Starzan wrote:

“We are pretty excited about the potential of the in-video hashtag in driving usage and overall Twitter traffic. Since no one else is doing this it’s the first video we tested in, [but] I expect usage to increase as our users gain more exposure to it.”

Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis: Will Ferrell from Will Ferrell

About Funny or Die
Since its inception, three years ago, Funny Or Die has emerged as an award-winning, top destination for comedy on the web. With hundreds of exclusive celebrity videos and a steady stream of huge viral hits, Funny Or Die has become the "place to be seen" for comedic celebrities, and the obvious destination for a daily comedy fix. Funny Or Die's founders are Will Ferrell, Adam McKay and Chris Henchy. Judd Apatow is also a principal partner in Funny or Die. http://www.funnyordie.com

Follow Patrick Starzan, VP of Marketing, Funny or Die

Head of Marketing @FunnyOrDie. I tweet about the interweb, marketing stuff and the FOD. I like coffee, tobasco, punk music and you!

Starzan (starzan) on Twitter
Things I Think | Tumblr

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