Online video, online video publishing, streaming media, OVP, OTT, web television, video advertising, marketing, startups, gadgets, social media, videoconferencing, collaboration and related topics are discussed here. Thanks for stopping by the "Klessblog."
The 2013 Video Marketing Summit was held on July 25-26 in San Francisco and is the largest and only annual event devoted to all things video marketing and video commerce. The sold-out event drew over 300 attendees and was co-hosted by ReelSEO and Liveclicker, and was held in tandem with the Liveclicker's Video Commerce Summit. This year's combined summit was Liveclicker's 5th annual and an inaugural event for ReelSEO, and drew a cross section of over 300 retailers, brands, and agencies attending either summit.
Over the last few years, I've interviewed attendees and speakers at the Liveclicker video commerce summit, and this year the tables were turned, when Tim Schmoyer asked me to share a video marketing tip for his weekly ReelSEO Creator's tips. He included me in the following video, with video marketing tips from Suzie Reider (Marketing Director, YouTube), Jim Louderback (CEO, Revision3), Reed Lucas (Director of Channel Management, Channel Factory), Rob Sandie (CEO, vidIQ), Sofia Stefou (Video Strategist, Sofina Media), Jason Cesare (Account Executive, Unruly Media), Jay Nolan (Producer, Ecommerce), and Anthony Bucci (Founder, RevZilla).
See my tip is at 1:15, "Tell a story and capture your audience, whoever they may be--marketers, consumers, your customers." Don't sell the product, tell the story.
For a full look at the event, speakers, schedule and video summit links, visit reelsummit.com. For a preview of last year's conference, watch this video with interviews I conducted at Liveclicker's Fourth Annual Video Commerce Summit.
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."
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.”
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!
Over the last several years live video streaming has become a powerful marketing tool for artists and brands. For Max Haot, CEO and Co-founder of Livestream, it's been interesting to watch the growing trend of brands adopt live streaming to market their products. I caught up Haot at NewTeeVee Live 2010 where Livestream announced its new Livestream For Facebook application that allows anyone with Facebook pages to launch a live broadcast within Facebook. Livestream launched this service based on the demand they were seeing from the market and developed an easy way to integrate live streaming into Facebook. Livestream and its competitors had previously provided this service for a fee, but Livestream decided to launch it in a DIY way so that anyone could launch a Livestream channel and embed it in their Facebook page.
Facebook launched its own channel, Facebook Live, in August 2010 powered by Livestream, and has hosted numerous live video and chat with Hollywood celebrities, musicians other high profile Livestream events. Most notable is a recent Town Hall meeting with President Barack Obama that was streamed live from the Facebook headquarters.
comScore noted in a September 2010 study, that the amount of time American audiences spent watching video for the major live video publishers (USTREAM, Livestream, Justin.tv, LiveVideo, and Stickam) had grown 648% since 2009 to more than 1.4 billion minutes. While that's just a fraction of the amount of time Americans spent overall watching online video content, comScore said that the sharp growth indicates viewers’ growing comfort with watching live content. Additionally, the comScore report indicated that live video sites have not only been successful in building audience, but also keeping them more engaged, with the average live streamed video view is 7% longer than the average on demand video view.
"What's interesting for brands to realize," Haot notes, "is the engagement time is on average twenty to thirty minutes, versus if you post a trailer, it's only two or three minutes… and then they have a chance of really creating a viral buzz on Twitter and Facebook, and get a lot of eyeballs coming to the live stream because it's trended on Twitter."
Content brands like movie studios, use Livestream to market the release of a new movie within social networks like Facebook and Twitter through a live broadcast of the red carpet premiere. TV networks like HBO are taking advantage of the Livestream's ability to host live video Q&A sessions with celebrities and show exclusive behind the scene previews. Other brands like Ford used Livestream to launch its 2011 Ford Explorer and hosts regular live events on its Facebook pages with Q&A sessions with customers and fans. Restaurant chain PF Chang hosts a live cooking show to market its Pei Wei Asian Diner brand and takes questions from the audience.
Haot says that working with brands and content owners drives content quality and revenue and is core to Livestream's mission to build a next-generation live cable operator. But the bigger goal of Livestream is to unlock every event around the world, from major events like red carpet interviews at the Oscars or the Royal Wedding, to prosumer events from a church, a small baseball game, or even a smaller conference.
"If you look at the world of events today," Haot says, "a very small percent of these events are being live streamed, so we offer the technology, the tools and promotion to hopefully increase the amount events owners that realize that they can use Livestream to extend their event online and connect with audiences on Facebook and Twitter."
Another goal Haot says, is to increase the production quality and reach across the various platforms by offering HD quality and enhancing the mobile offering by live streaming to the popular mobile devices, and on the web by enhancing it with multi-bit rate encoding and HD. Haot says that connected TVs are another growing platform that event owners can reach and that 80% of all TVs sold today are "connected" TVs.
In a related post on Beet.TV today, Andy Plesser spoke with Kevin Delaney, Managing Editor of the WSJ.com, about the value of live video streaming at the Wall Street Journal. The news organization is creating value in process and audience by connecting with viewers through daily webcasts. This is yet more evidence that live streaming has become a mainstream tool for publishers to extend their reach beyond traditional outlets. As more content creators, publishers and broadcasters develop their mobile and OTT offerings, and with YouTube finally getting into the live streaming business with selected YouTube partners, it's clear that live video streaming has become an integral tool for artists and brands to connect with fans and that demand will continue to grow.
About Livestream
Livestream offers brands a complete solution for your live streaming project on Facebook - Including : Custom Facebook application development with integrated live streaming that gives you everything you need to launch your own 24/7 television station (including Like to watch), Live video platform (including CDN bandwidth from Akamai, social enabled chat and player) and on-side production/encoding services if needed. Livestream streams more than one billion video minutes each month to a growing community of 20 million monthly viewers (with some 50,000 watching at any given time) to audiences on the web, mobile devices, and connected TVs. Notable content partners include Facebook, The New York Times, ABC News, CBS News, Associated Press, HBO, AT&T, IBM, Burger King, Nike, The Academy Awards, The Foo Fighters, Maroon 5, Ralph Lauren, and Diesel.
Livestream was cofounded in 2007 by Max Haot, Dayananda Nanjundappa, Phil Worthington, and Mark Kornfilt, and has received $13 million in funding from private angel investors & Gannett Co. It now operates with over 50 full-time staff members in 3 offices - in New York, Los Angeles and Bangalore (in addition to a globally-available production team). The service is available for free (advertising-supported) or as a feature-rich, monetizable, premium subscription for business. In May 2009, Mogulus re-branded as Livestream. Become a fan of Livestream on Facebook and follow Livestream (livestream) on Twitter.
About Max Haot
Max Haot is CEO and co-founder of video streaming company Livestream. Max is an expert in user generated content, broadcast technologies and workflow. He previously founded ICF a media asset management platform which was sold to Verizon Business in 2005. He held positions as VP of Digital Media at Verizon Business and Senior Vice President at IMG Media - the television and interactive arm of the sport marketing giant (www.imgworld.com). Max is a recognized digital content industry pioneer and is regularly invited to speak and contribute at industry events/forums for the broadcast, broadband and mobile industry. Max is a Belgian national and lived in London, UK between 1995 and 2005 before moving to New York. Follow Max Haot (maxhaot) on Twitter.
According to data in YuMe's new research report, “Online Video and Television Viewing Attitudes and Behaviors”, conducted with Frank N. Magid Associates, marketers not using online video advertising are missing out on reaching a growing audience of online viewers. The report is a random sample of 500 online video viewers across YuMe’s video ad network which found that video usage, users’ content preferences, and consumption patterns are shifting to online video and away from TV.
I spoke with Mike Vorhaus, President of Magid Advisors at consumer research firm Frank N. Magid Associates, at YuMe's roadshow event in San Francisco to get an overview of the report. Vorhaus says, some very fundamental discovery was found from the data collected among the YuMe audience shows that with online video, brands could reach viewers more easily, more often and with less expense than traditional TV. Overall, online video viewing showed a dramatic rise becoming a major platform for entertainment while TV viewing is on the decline.
Vorhaus notes that across the board online video viewing is up from last year and becoming part of most people's daily routine. Over the last 12 months 66% of respondents anticipated increases in online video viewing over the next 6 months and 48% in the next 12 months. This was not a generational shift either, as YuMe’s audience ranged from kids to grandparents, and compared to 12 months ago online video viewers skewed older, higher educated, single female.
"We found that the online video is growing, in terms of demographics, it's becoming more mass media. So you've got older women, younger women, older men, younger men, all now involved in the online video world. You have 75% of everybody using the Internet in the United States that uses online video."
YuMe believes that widespread adoption of online video for news and entertainment was brought on through the proliferation of connected devices. Online video viewing across all devices, from PCs to the iPad and smartphones, made it easy for viewers of all ages watch video content where they and wherever they wanted.
Vorhaus notes that a lot people are considering online video content to be as high quality as TV and short-from "snackable" video content reigned supreme. Online viewers were also more engaged with online video ads in contrast to the multi-tasking viewers do when watching television ads, which is twice as much for TV viewers.
Additionally, usage patterns indicate that consumers watch online video for the time-shifting benefits similar to how viewers use a DVR, and are not not worried about missing scheduled programs since they can watch them online whenever they want. For marketers this is a big issue because consumers skip more ads when watching TV than when watching online video. 49% of respondents skipped 75+% of ads on TV while only 29% of respondents skip 75+% of ads in online video.
Overall, Vorhaus says, the report paints a compelling picture that online video is powerful advertising medium:
"You put that all together and it's pretty clear that if you're a major brand advertising on TV, there are a group of people you're going to have to reach online because they're watching very little TV."
About Frank N. Magid Associates
Founded in 1957, Frank N. Magid Associates has provided strategic insight and direction for clients domestically and in 37 countries around the world. Magid has developed an international reputation
for excellence that spans multiple industries. Frank N. Magid Associates is a world leader in research-based strategy consultation. Its knowledge base is substantive, encompassing thousands |of research studies and consultation engagements. Its clients include Fortune 500 companies and leaders in their respective industries, as well as promising young companies looking to leverage the market knowledge Magid can provide to help them reach the top. Magid’s experienced professionals and operations staff serve clients around the world from offices in New York, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta, San Francisco, and Marion, Iowa.
About YuMe
YuMe is a video advertising technology company that makes professional video profitable for publishers and effective for advertisers. Its robust ACETM technology powers both its premium ad network and its industry-leading advertising management solutions, ACE for Publishers and ACE for Advertisers. YuMe’s premium ad network aggregates the best video content, representing hundreds of premium publishers. As a result, YuMe gives publishers and advertisers unprecedented reach, brand safety, contextual relevance, controlled syndication, and consistent delivery across all digital media platforms–Web, downloads, mobile, and connected TV. YuMe is a privately held company headquartered in Redwood City, CA and backed by Accel Partners, BV Capital, DAG Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Menlo Ventures and Intel Capital. For more information, visit www.yume.com, follow @yumevideo on twitter, or become a fan of YuMe on Facebook at www.facebook.com/yumevideo.
As the first week of 2011 comes to a close, many trends have already emerged. Each January kicks off with a spotlight on the latest gadgets and technology for consumers with the 2011 International CES in Las Vegas. This year the show will be known as the year of the tablets, 3D TVs, connected devices and mobile, and again without actually being at the show, Apple's news that iPhone will finally be coming to Verizon overshadowed much of the news coming from Las Vegas.
Each year also brings out the many predictions of how online video, social media and technology will shape the consumer and business markets and set the stage for the future. Online video has seen explosive growth over the last few years and continues to reach record levels with U.S. video views surpassing 30 billion in November 2010. Many predict that 2011 will be a breakthrough year for video advertising, with mobile devices viewing the majority of video ads. Advertising is also expected grow within social media with video properties emerging as the top ad networks. A number of voices in the online video space have already gone on record with their 2011 predictions. For a second year in a row, VidCompare assembled a number thought leaders from the OVP space to offer their forecast of the year ahead, consisting of: Brightcove, Magnify.net, Kaltura, Fliqz, RealGravity, Marcellus.TV, Wistia and vzaar.
Jeff Whatcott predicts more device fragmentation, increase in social viewing and sharing and continued consolidation of players in the space. Steve Rosenbaum says 2011 is the year we Connect, that Content = Commerce, and that we Curate. Ron Yekutiel says the demand for open-source solutions will be driven by user demand, further commoditization and a shift to the application layer, and more cloud solutions. Benjamin Wayne thinks Amazon will get into the device business, Hulu and Google will distribute feature films and the Asia will surpass the U.S. for online video consumption and monetization. Luke McDonough says video advertising will heat up, the industry will respond to connected TVs but it will quickly become irrelevant because of mobile and geo-location. Preetam Mukherjee predicts the Eastward boom to tap markets in Asia-Pacific, Africa and the Middle East, along with freemium video models and CDN wars. Christopher Savage sees many more sites defaulting to HTML5 first with Flash back up, a new swatch of SMBs embracing video and more vide production companies to service that market and the enterprise. Finally, Ian Snead sees more demand for security of online video, more consolidation between CDN vendors and full service OVPs and, improved content delivery methods.
Jim O'Neil of Fierce Online Video News predicts that DVDs will bite the dust, Netflix will conquer the world and get gobbled up by Google, Microsoft or Apple, more consolidation within the OVP space, cord cutting will be a hot topic and continue evolve, and Comcast will say 'aloha' to Hulu.
Nalts predicts that WebTV will be a bloodbath, video platforms will continue to get commoditized, the YouTube community will stay alive, video search will suck less, video greetings will get more awkward, video destinations will rival YouTube, we will need curation, online video will get more social, we'll pay more for broadband, and Google will go beyond YouTube. usinesses will continue to invest in social media for marketing and customer interaction. Curation tools will become the primary way people will use social media. Facebook will evolve as a E-Commerce platfor,
Metcafe CEO Erik Hachenburg offered his predictions on the industry in this article: MediaPost Publications 2011: The Future of Consolidation In The Online Video Industry, and says that since YouTube reigns as the the top video ad network and ad networks will need to consolidate to compete. But that's just the first step he says, and the next phase will focus on "content verticalization" so expect to see more consolidation among video companies, especially among video destination sites.
"With online advertising revenues at record highs and all eyes on online video as the key growth driver for the sector throughout 2011, the future looks bright as we prepare for the New Year. So what’s in store? Here are Metacafe CEO Erick Hachenburg's top-five predictions for online video advertising in 2011."
"2011 is going to be the year of mobile video commerce, with social playing an important role. Automated video optimization emerges as a key driver of video commerce, and video email will make meaningful strides forward, breathing new life into a critical channel for online retailers and brands that sell direct. The industry struggles to find a winning video format, restraining growth from explosive levels, but video reach increases as more marketers adopt Promoted Videos. Automated video continues to improve in quality, but remains confined to a small niche of overall e-commerce video. We’ll see one, maybe two, meaningful commertainment initiatives emerge, probably from a large lifestyle retailer that’s willing to make a bet. More retailers will grow their in-house video studios, and SEO remains a key component of an overall video commerce strategy."
For over the last month, I've been collecting 2011 predictions from around the web, and many of them can be found in this very well curated list from Search Engine Land: The Big List: 168 Marketing Trends, Predictions & Resolutions For 2011 that breaks it down by numerous categories – Industry, Paid Search, SEO, Local/Mobile, Email, Social Media, B2B, General Online Marketing, Web Design & Development/E-Commerce, Affiliate Marketing and Miscellaneous – or this massive list: What are experts predicting for 2011? | Samuel Parent's Blog that segments even more predictions by theme – Advertising, Ad Spend, B2B, Business, Consumers, Design, Economy, Email, Marketing, Mobile, Newspapers, Social Media, Radio, Tablets, Television and Video.
I've taken the same approach with my list below and include several videos and slideshows.
Online Video, Online Video Advertising and Marketing
100 things to watch in 2011 | JWT Intelligence - by Ann Mack - New York - Beer Sommeliers, F-Commerce, Objectifying Objects … just a few items from our list of 100 Things to Watch in 2011. It’s a wide-ranging compilation that in part reflects broader shifts we’ve been tracking over the past few years, notably the evolution of the mobile phone into an “everything hub,” a trend we’ll see play out in myriad ways next year. Other items reflect counter-trends—for instance, to balance out our growing immersion in the digital world, people will increasingly embrace face-to-face gatherings and digital downtime. Many of our Things to Watch are technology-centric, with smart infrastructure ramping up, the rise of tablets for tots and some truly futuristic-seeming developments (3D printing, virtual mirrors, electronic profiling). Web-wise, Things to Watch will include a growth in Facebook commerce, apps beyond mobile and more social browsers. The people on the list—from pop culture, sports, architecture, fashion and other sectors—have the potential to drive or shape trends in the near future. Check out our list, along with a little bit about what makes each item worth watching, below. (Or to download the presentation with fully functioning links, click here.)
That's all for now, we'll see how things shake out as the year progresses. But there's one thing we know for sure and that is, this year we're turning it up to 11, and it will be louder than last year!
The 2013 Video Marketing Summit was held on July 25-26 in San Francisco and is the largest and only annual event devoted to all things video marketing and video commerce. The sold-out event drew over 300 attendees and was co-hosted by ReelSEO and Liveclicker, and was held in tandem with the Liveclicker's Video Commerce Summit. This year's combined summit was Liveclicker's 5th annual and an inaugural event for ReelSEO, and drew a cross section of over 300 retailers, brands, and agencies attending either summit.
