Tag Archives: youtube

Featured Articles, Ratings Analysis, Social Networking

Content-centric Communities

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Bernard Lunn, at Read/WriteWeb wrote an interesting article about the failure of Eons.

Eons is a social networking website aimed at the over-fifty crowd, headed by the founder of job-site Monster.com. After raising $32M, Eons is now cutting it’s workforce in half – not exactly a measure of success.

In his article, Lunn touches a point I’ve been making for a long time: people gather around content, not around demographic variables (see “The Advertiser’s Dilemma”, “Rethinking Ratings” and “Why Google Should Buy YouTube” for my previous articles on content-centric ratings analysis).

Lunn think the problem lies in Eons’ strategy to connect people around age, a traditional demographic variable, and not around content or common interests. He’s hit the nail squarely on the head:

“…people want to connect around content, not around age. Connecting around content is what Blogs do. You connect on something that interests you. (…) As you get older, you get a more varied set of interests and human relationships across all ages.”

Age/Sex/Location is not a social network

Demographic variables allow advertisers and their clients to easily target their products to artificial segments of the population that probably have very little else in common, other than age/sex/location. In a small-town-world these variables may have been good enough to create desirable advertising targets, but we now live in a connected world where people of all ages and genders interact and share common interests on a scale seldom seen before.

And while you can still use demographic variables to target your product, you’d be missing a much more interesting target, one capable of creating die-hard fans and viral awareness of your product, by ignoring content-centric connections.

As for social networks, look at the successful ones and the “glue” that keeps them together:

Building a social network around content will not magically make it successful, just like putting wings on a box won’t make it fly; but those wings sure help once you put the rest of the airplane together.

The Content-centric Connectivity Chart

The following chart is an example of how people of different ages, genders and cultural backgrounds gather around common interests (caveat: networks are not drawn to scale, connections do not attempt to imply actual traffic for these sites, and age/gender/race were limited by the avatar icons I could find on the net).

Content-Centric communities chart

The Content-centric Connectivity chart highlights two key ideas:

  • Successful networks are built around content, not around demographics.
  • There’s a huge opportunity for anyone who learns how to target their products around content-centric communities.

Conclusion

There will always be products that need to be targeted around demographic variables (e.g., feminine products, some toys, acne-medication, denture products), but the opportunities and tools for expanding your product’s appeal have never been this good.

Ratings Analysis

New Tools for Tracking NBC vs. CBS at YouTube

TubeMogul, the awesome online video traffic analysis tool, now (finally guys! 😉 ) offers embeddable charts, as well as a number of new social features.

Here’s the latest month of YouTube data for NBC and CBS, showing NBC’s continuous lead over rival CBS.

I’ve set the chart to show data from May 13 to Jun 12, 2007 – but you could just as easily set it to continuously auto-update and show the last thirty days.

TubeMogul – Empowering Online Video.

Featured Articles, Ratings Analysis, Social Networking

The Advertiser’s Dilemma

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The typical life of an internet video goes somewhat like this: someone uploads the video to a video sharing website (YouTube, Google Video, Metacafe, Dailymotion, your pick) and sends links to his friends telling them to watch the video. One of them thinks it’s funny and passes it around. Some other guy finds it on the website, writes a comment and shares it with his contact list. If the video is really funny, sometimes (not always) it will explode and become an internet hit (like the Star Wars kid or Pinky the Cat). Millions will watch it and pass it around. And eventually it’ll become old and die a natural death (sometimes to be resurrected further down the line).

As an advertiser, you’d want to identify these runaway hits before they become a success (thus minimizing the number of eyeballs lost to your message). As a content producer, you want to convince advertisers to buy space on your video, before you lose the advertising value of all those eyeballs.

So, how do you maximize your return on advertising on web videos?

Traditionally, we could say advertisers have it easy (though I’m aware how hard ad buying really is). Television networks have been around for a long time, have time tested products, experienced programmers deciding what gets on the air and when, and a captive audience. They also have a company (AGB Nielsen) that measures all these shows down to the minute, reporting on the age, sex, location and income level of the viewers.

The internet, however, presents a whole new set of unknowns. Most content delivery websites have no control over their content producers nor do they know who these producers are. There’s no experienced programmer deciding what gets showcased (CurrentTV does, but they have a different business model and approach to web video); instead, other users rate the videos according to their personal tastes (and with a little work this system can be gamed very easily). Finally, there’s no real measuring going on (I’ve written about this particular issue here, here and here). Most websites simply tell you which video has been viewed the most, or ranked the highest (again, with highly suspect numbers). And what they know about their users is usually limited to their email address, what they’ve published, viewed or ranked and maybe an IP address that can suggest where they connect from (which used properly can be a very useful variables).

As an advertiser, you’d want to optimize your purchases (as opposed to buying ads on every conceivable video and hope one of them becomes an internet sensation). But by the time you can tell a video is a runaway hit, you’ve not only probably lost the majority of your potential audience (sort of like entering a pyramid scheme at the bottom), but you’ll also have to pay a premium to advertise on that now world famous video.

We need tools that can track the spread velocity of a video, their viralness, so to speak. We also need to define new demographic variables, based not only on age / sex / location / income but more importantly on interests and social connectivity. When you have 14-yr olds playing online games against 30-yr olds, age and sex are no longer as relevant as what interests these people share.

Of course you can simply blanket every uploaded video with your advertising, but would you rather be that ad on every lousy home video, or that cool ad on the hilariously popular video-du-jour?

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Social Networking

An Informal Chat with Second Life Creator Philip Rosedale

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The first Forbes MEET Conference was a blast. The panels were great and the people attending were even better. The conference is more than worth the price of admission for the networking opportunities alone.

On day one I had the good fortune of sharing a lunch table with Chad Hurley and Chris Maxcy of YouTube, Neil Kleinman, Dean of the College of Media and Communication at UArts, Janet De Vries (Director of the President’s Office at UArts) and Philip Rosedale, the creator of Second Life.

Neil is doing some wonderful stuff over at UArts, including getting the College of Media Communications online and the students interested in all that the new media technologies have to offer. It would be great to see art students presenting their creations in a Second Life exhibit or theatre majors opening their shows on Second Life‘s version of Broadway.

Second Life, for those unfamiliar with it, is -to quote their website- “a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents.” You travel to Second Life’s world by downloading a small program from their website and registering your “avatar” or virtual representation. Once inside the game, you decide whether you want to be male, female or something entirely different, like a bug. Choose your clothing, change your looks… anything you want. You can also buy land to build a house on (or a cabin, high-rise or space station). Set-up a clothing store and sell your shirts to other Second Life residents. Anything is possible here…

Many companies (Sun, Pontiac) have set-up shop inside Second Life, several residents are making good money buying and selling stuff (houses, cars, condos), and even Reuters has sent one of its reporters full time into Second Life – which I find mind-boglingly wonderful.

I don’t really have all that free time at the moment, even if I could build a lucrative business inside Second Life. So I asked Phil when will I be able to send my Second Life avatar to do work for me and report back at the end of the day. Phil laughed… this simply isn’t possible, yet. But, wouldn’t that be great? I guess that, eventually, avatars will be programmable to follow certain scripts and maybe even interact on their own with other avatars. Maybe then I could create for-hire armies (ok, or gophers) inside Second Life and rent their services out for a nice sum.

On a more serious note, Phil did mention that great things are coming to Second Life’s audio/video functions, including 3-D audio, which would allow you to determine where a sound is coming from (much like you do in games like Counter-Strike).

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Social Networking

San Francisco Updates

Just a quick update from San Francisco.

Tomorrow is my last day in San Francisco. In just a couple of days I’ve really gotten a nice feel for this town and really like it. There’s so much happening in the tech front… you could actually say they’re building the future here. Classes, conferences, companies… you name it, it’s here.

I went to the Exploratorium today and had a wonderful time. It’s great to see such a big museum built expressly to awaken the children’s imagination, curiosity and aspirations. And it’s not just for kids…

And now on to more blog related stuff…

The Forbes MEET 2006 conference was great. The panel format they used is simply outstanding and lends itself to very insightful conversations among the participants. The Forbes editors did a very good job of guiding the conversation and keeping things on track. I’m really glad there were zero powerpoint presentations (which usually end up being self-serving company ads). I’ll be posting details and observations of each panel as soon as I get back home.

Apparently, Comedy Central has asked YouTube to remove all of their material from their servers. Interesting. No talk yet of a Comedy Central YouTube Channel, a la CBS, although they are already selling their content on Google Video.

To wrap things up, it seems Google’s AdSense audio version is almost ready for release, which should give a nice boost to the podcast industry.

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Social Networking

Conference Over

The MEET 2006 Conference is now over. Live blogging was neither practical nor possible, but I will be posting my comments over the next few days. My laptop is acting up, so bear with me while I fix it. I had the chance to have lunch with Philip Rosedale, the creator of Second Life, as well as the YouTube gang (Chad Hurley and Chris Maxcy).

Michael Eisner interviewing Barry Diller was both hilarious and insightful. So was Brad Grey’s interview. The conference’s panel format was great, as it lends itself for great conversation, insights and personal dynamics. It’s refreshing to come out of a business conference without having seen a single powerpoint presentation.

Featured Articles, Ratings Analysis, Social Networking

Rethinking Ratings

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Summary: An analysis of current television ratings methods, why they’re inappropriate for the timeless internet and digital video recorder era, and suggestions for improving them.

Traditional television ratings reports let TV executives and analysts study the behavior of a particular show or series, displaying the number of viewers each show had, broken down by demographic targets. This allows the television industry to determine which show won a particular time slot (e.g., Friday 9pm to 10pm), how it performed among a particular demographic (e.g., Males 18-34yrs) and how it has evolved (in the case of serials) over time (e.g., Are there more or less people watching it).

But what happens when viewers can watch any show at any time? When viewers don’t have to choose one show over another on a rival network? What happens when you can’t tell for sure who your viewers are?

The internet and TiVos give the viewer unprecedented freedom over when, where and what to watch. Soon it won’t be possible to tell for sure how many people are watching any given show, using traditional ratings tools such as AGB/Nielsen‘s Peoplemeters. Programming executives won’t have to worry about what the rival networks are showing at the same time as their new hit show. And ratings analysts won’t be able to track a new series’ behavior by simply looking at how each episode did on its air date.

Two hit shows going head-to-head on rival networks? Not a problem: watch one and record the other for later viewing (or get it from the Net). Missed last week’s premiere episode? No problem there either: watch it online, download it off bit torrent or pay for it on iTunes. Some of this you can easily track, but some you can’t.

Analysts will need to track each episode over time and then track the series as a whole. A VERY SIMPLIFIED graphic might look something like this, with a running total for each episode over the time of the series:

VERY simple ratings graphic

Any viewer can watch any episode from its air date to the end of the series (and beyond). This allows viewers to catch-up after the series has started or to catch any episode they may have missed. Of course, the whole concept of missing an episode disappears in the TiVo/Internet model. But in addition to tracking how many times a particular episode was watched or downloaded, you should also be tracking what’s happening with the rest of the show’s internet presence. Are viewers reading the characters’ blogs? Are they discussing the show in the forums? Are they setting up fan websites? Linking to the Myspace profiles? Uploading mashups of show clips? Not only must you track the show’s behavior over time and over several distribution methods, but you must also track and measure the user experience surrounding the show.

And finally, how do you solve the demographic problem: if you don’t know who your viewers are, how do you target them? The answer is both simple and complex. I believe that traditional demographic targets are on the way out. Social networks and special interest groups are the new targets… and these are much easier to track via the Internet than the old ones. You may not be able to tell whether a particular viewer is male or female, young or old, wealthy or not, but you can tell what news s/he reads, what games s/he plays and which people s/he hangs out with (to a certain degree, of course). One minor detail… you can’t (or shouldn’t) add apples and oranges. Traditional television ratings data categorizes viewers by demographic targets such as age, sex, location and income (because someone takes the time to visit each household in the sample and verify this information). And whereas traditional ratings analysis has always relied on a sample set of data subjects, internet traffic and behavior analysis has always examined the whole dataset. Eventually it shouldn’t be too hard to homogenize both sets of data, either by linking traditional television viewers to their online behaviors, or simply by expanding their interviews to include enough data to categorize them.

Currently, Google and YouTube limit their video data to a traditional web-traffic analysis mindset: most viewed, most recent, most subscribed. Coming from an Internet world, they fail to see the need (or maybe even the possibility) of better, more detailed reports (Yes, it could also be that they keep these reports hidden from the outside world).

As for me, I’d love to know how the most watched videos on YouTube evolved over time. Have they peaked? Are they growing? Who watches them? How about a Google Finance like chart, linking views to blog/news mentions? Which video has been linked-to the most (this one is actually on YouTube)? Which videos have been dugg and how many diggs did they get? Actually… I’d just love to work there and get it done myself!

Digital Media Strategy, Ratings Analysis, Social Networking

CBS Launches YouTube Channel

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CBS, one of the US leading television networks, has launched a YouTube channel. So far the content is limited to short clips from late night television, sports highlights, program promos and news items.

CBS Launches YouTube ChannelI’m not particularly impressed with the available content (no full length shows yet) but I really like the fact that CBS has taken this initiative. Late-night clips were already showing up on YouTube, so why not offer them straight from the source?

As of this writing, CBS’s YouTube channel has about one thousand subscribers and 33,000 views. As more -and better- content from traditional networks goes online, it’ll be interesting to see how they compare with user generated content. Will they reach the 37 million views attributed to smosh or surpass lonelygirl15‘s fifty thousand subscribers?

It’s great to see the traditional networks embrace their fears and venture online. CBS already has content distribution deals with iTunes (Lost is sold on iTunes for US$1.99 per episode), but I’m guessing they’ll release their shows for free on YouTube under a Google advertising supported model.

Interesting times, indeed.

Digital Media Strategy, Featured Articles, Ratings Analysis, Social Networking

Why Google Should Buy YouTube

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Google and YouTube LogosThere’s been a lot of speculation lately about a possible Google buyout of Internet video website YouTube for US$1.6B. A lot has been said about the potential value (or lack thereof) of YouTube and its future success (or demise).

But why, exactly, would Google drop one-and-a-half billion dollars on YouTube? After all, Google already operates a similar service, Google Video, complete with money-making functions such as advertising and pay-per-view/download.

What value can YouTube bring to Google?

The first obvious answer is market share. According to some estimates, YouTube serves up 60% of the online video market… more than 100 million videos per day. But you’d think with $1.6B Google can boost their own market share (estimated at 10%).

Content would be the other possible answer, but I don’t think YouTube’s collection of user generated content is worth that much, even if you manage to place advertising on them.

Some people have gone as far as suggesting Google simply needs to invest some of their war chest money and somehow came upon YouTube as an acquisition target. If that’s the case, then let me suggest Google should buy lottery tickets instead.

The rest of the theories revolve around Google buying a YouTube to eliminate competition. While a valid point, Google hasn’t normally resorted to gobbling up competitors, usually preferring to buy companies offering services that complement rather than compete with Google.

So, what does Google see in YouTube?

I like to think Google is a smart company with big plans, so I analyze them with this in mind. Think Big. Think Smart.

Google wants to dominate online video distribution and with it, online video ratings. Without ratings you can’t really sell highly-profitable advertising. And without a majority of distribution market share, you can’t really accurately measure ratings.

Google is allegedly interested in competing with Nielsen in the ratings market and in collaborating with Apple on their upcoming iTV product. I’ve written previously about Google’s potential as a Universal Personal Video Recorder (Tivo on steroids). And just recently Google held a think tank with the top US media executives (YouTube was also present). Something’s definitely cooking.

YouTube offers a quick ticket to this online media distribution empire, because YouTube has the market share but, more importantly, the data.

YouTube has over a year of extensive viewership data, detailing how / where / when and what people like to watch. Make no mistake, this is VERY valuable data. In a country with an estimated 110 million television households, YouTube’s 100 million videos served daily provide a treasure trove of data, ready to be mined, analyzed and monetized.

Buying YouTube would give Google a majority share of the Internet video market, along with the important rating’s data to monetize these videos via Google Ads.

More importantly, owning a majority share of the video market would allow Google to collect and commercialize CREDIBLE ratings data, which it could then share with the major networks and content owners, distribute their videos online, and get a cut of the ad revenue.

The Copyright Issue

A favorite argument of late is that as soon as a big player buys YouTube, said player would be sued into oblivion by copyright holders. While that may hold a grain of truth, YouTube has actively policed the website for copyright violators when alerted by the rightful copyright owner. YouTube has also signed agreements with major players, such as the one recently signed by my good friend Alex Zubillaga of Warner Music, for content distribution and revenue sharing via YouTube.

I believe Google has even better relations with these major players and with credible and comprehensive ratings data to share could easily sign distribution and revenue sharing agreements with them.

The Big Picture

All of this won’t certainly come together over night. Too many loose ends need to be tied, agreements need to be made and signed, and technology needs to be put in place. But I can certainly see a road map outlining the steps ahead for Google.

1. The first stage involves the acquisition of YouTube and its integration into Google Video. Agreements with the major networks and content producers will allow the distribution of videos via Google. Most of these players already distribute their videos online for free, so a bigger potential audience combined with ratings data would certainly be appetizing.

2. Stage two would involve integration with services such as Apple’s iTV, allowing viewers to play downloaded content (along with ads) on their televisions. Google could combine viewing history with search history to further finetune the ads displayed.

3. Stage three would allow viewers to record programs on Google’s servers and watch them at a later time. Additionally Google would have the capacity to allow revenue sharing agreements with local network affiliates, according to the viewer’s geographical location.

Of course all this depends on whether Google is indeed interested in taking a shortcut by buying YouTube. And if YouTube is not yet aware of these ramifications, if I were them, I’d certainly start raising the price.

Comments are always welcome. I’d love to discuss these ideas.

UPDATE: Shortly after writing this article, Google did indeed proceed with the purchase of YouTube for US$1.65 Billion in stock… which I actually think is a bargain. Stay tuned for a post-buyout article.