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."
It was eight years ago today that YouTube's first video, Me at the Zoo, was uploaded by Jawed Karim on April 23, 2005. Karim had co-founded YouTube with Chad Hurley and Steve Chen just a few months earlier as a way to share videos with friends and family far away. The video is only 20 seconds long and was shot by Yakov Lapitsky at the San Diego Zoo, and little did the video creators know that it marked the dawn of the UGC (User-Generated Content) online video age. YouTube wasn't the first video sharing site, but since Google purchased it in November 2006 for $1.65 billion, it has revolutionized video sharing across the Internet and has become the top online video content property, with more than 1 billion unique users visiting the site each month.
Just last week, YouTube won its second legal battle against Viacom in federal court with the dismissal of Viacom's $1 billion copyright lawsuit. The ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Louis Stanton in New York stated that Viacom had never proved that YouTube was aware of copyright infringement by its users, and upheld his original ruling from June 2010 which leaves in place the current understanding of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. Stanton also ruled that YouTube didn't act with "willful blindness" and had previously responded to Viacom's requests back in 2007 by removing 100,000 copyrighted videos a day after Viacom notified YouTube of the infringement.
Google Senior Vice President & General Counsel Kent Walker said that the ruling marked an important day for the Internet.
"This is a win not just for YouTube, but for the billions of people worldwide who depend on the web to freely exchange ideas and information."
Happy birthday to the first video uploaded to YouTube! While you're not too exciting, you started an online video revolution.
Also to those born on April 23rd, I want to wish a special happy birthday to my daughter Marley Rose, my niece Rebecca and my good friend Steve Dung, owner of Visions Plus video production service in San Francisco!
I'll be back soon with more online video analysis and video conversations.
Hosting your videos on a free, video sharing website such as YouTube, Blip.tv, Vimeo, Dailymotion or even on a social networking site such as Facebook has many advantages for reach, higher visibility on search engine results (SEO) and of course, the fact that's it's free all the content delivery costs are paid for by the sharing site. This option for video hosting is one of three that Jan Ozer recently wrote about in his indepth article, Choosing an Online Video Platform. He referred to free video sharing sites as UGC sites and pointed out several pros and cons saying, "These UGC sites relieve you of the encoding and player-creation chores and assume the task of hosting and distributing the video for you. You can still embed the video on your own website, but by offering your video on a UGC site, you also expand the number of potential viewers, which can help from a marketing perspective. However, there are some negatives to consider, as well as some benefits..." (more)
For those interested in the "hyper-syndication" model of distributing your video to multiple video sharing sites there are a number of free and premium choices which are covered in two recent articles.
Written by Robin Good, the guide used the following criteria to compare the services:
Distribution: Video-sharing sites where you can automatically upload your content
Analytics: Viewership information gathered from supported video-sharing sites
Upload: Publish to video-sharing sites accepting videos bigger than 300MB
Premium: Price and extra features of premium accounts for supported video-sharing sites
Migration: Export of your content from one video-sharing site to another site without download
Robin included this interactive map with links to all the services in the Mini-Guide. Full descriptions and comparative details on capabilities and cost are here.
The only service I use to distribute my videos to multiple sharing sites is TubeMogul. You can read more about their new TubeMogul 2.0 capabilitieswhich "democratizes video metrics" here. I haven't tried any of the other services but would be interested to hear from anyone who has.
A few other options that came up in the comments on these two articles worth checking out are:
Leading web video distribution and analytics company TubeMogul recently launched TubeMogul 2.0 which "democratizes video metrics" by providing free video tracking capabilities that were once exclusive only to large media companies and advertisers. TubeMogul's powerful InPlay technology, incorporated into their platform from their acquisition of video analytics firm Illumenix, was previously only available to sites hosting their own video, but is now integrated on 15 of the Web's top video sharing sites, including Brightcove, DailyMotion, MetaCafe, blip.tv, Break.com, Howcast, eBaum’s World, Graspr, GrindTV, Sclipo, Webcastr, Viddler, 5min, Streetfire.net and Sevenload -- with more to come soon. TubeMogul says they are in talks with YouTube, who along with Hulu are not among the sites included.
So for the first time ever, video publishers can gain access to a single, standardized set of rich, census-based analytics that can be seen and compared in a single dashboard, aggregating data from the Web's top video sites, unlocking rich, standardized data measuring far beyond the metric of video “views,” including per-second audience dropoff, what sites and search terms are referring viewers, audience geography and much more. TubeMogul hopes that this public, census-based data will democratize viewing behavior online far more than the simple metric of video “views,” which are counted on most sites as soon as a video stream starts.
These metrics will be free to most of its 85,000 users but commercial sites and ad agencies will have to pay. As TubeMogul indicates, "In a world where panel-based data can yield such wildly divergent numbers, it’s important to have an independent, census-based standard, which we hope to become."
Liz Gaines points out that a lack of standard measurement has led to conflicting reports and in light of the recent controversy surrounding the war of numbers between Nielsen and Hulu and the Nielsen-funded Council for Research Excellence's Video Consumer Mapping Study report this past week which stated that online video usage is "vastly overstated" it's clear that TubeMogul has taken a huge step to lead the effort towards standardization.
I spoke with Mark Rotblat, VP of Sales and Marketing for TubeMogul back in March and he gave me the scoop on the upcoming release of TubeMogul 2.0. Mark said that TubeMogul 2.0 was always part of their plan and their acquisition on Illumenix helped them acheive their goal of providing a powerful analytics suite for their worldwide customer base. Mark also talked about TubeMogul Marketplace and said that more than anything TubeMogul is a promotion platform.
Tim Street shared his 3 reasons why he hates TubeMogul 2.0 and recorded a video with Brett Wilson, CEO and Co-Founder of TubeMogul who describes the exciting news and what it means for independent producers. "In the industry, this level of data was previously only available to large advertisers and top video destinations, and usually only for their own site," comments Brett. "We now track this type of data globally and are giving it away."
Michael Greer, VP of Product Development at The Onion, which beta-tested the product says that TubeMogul 2.0, "has allowed us to understand our audience better, as well as to more precisely monitor our business needs." Additionally, Jim Louderback, CEO of Revision3, who has been a strong advocate for honesty and transparency in online video metrics also beta-tested the product, echoed similar feedback, "Knowing which shows are the most engaging to viewers is helpful in selling advertising and devoting resources."
About TubeMogul
TubeMogul is the first online video analytics and distribution company serving publishers large and small who need independent information about video performance on the Internet and automated upload to the Web's top video sharing sites. TubeMogul's analytic technology aggregates video-viewing data from multiple sources to give publishers improved understanding of when, where and how often videos are watched. TubeMogul offers tracking far beyond the traditional metric of video "views." TubeMogul InPlay, which can be activated within minutes, tracks rich viewership metrics such as audience engagement, attention span and site performance -- all in real-time.
