Tag Archives: YouTube

Advertisers fight it out for YouTube’s homepage

By February 23 2010, 3:28 pm Leave a comment

Wow things have really moved on for YouTube. One time advertisers had little interest in the video sharing site and now they are fighting to own the video site’s homepage, which means a profit ahead as revenues leap.

Advertisers used to be worried about being associated with some of the inappropriate content that you can find on YouTube. Not it seems anymore according to this Adage piece.

YouTube’s home page sold out in the fourth quarter and film studios are now biding for space on what is a prime piece of video real estate to promote their latest movies.

Lionsgate and Twentieth Century Fox are among the studios that have embraced it. And what they have embraced is a site that is estimated to be serving as many as 1 billion videos per day.

Twentieth Century Fox bought the YouTube homepage in 15 countries for ‘Avatar’ to drive traffic for the trailer. Well something worked (clearly being a mega budget 3-D extravaganza helps).

Last week alone YouTube’s advertising partners accounted for 44.7% of the views among the top 100 videos, compared to 36.3% six months ago. That’s quite a change.

The piece quotes YouTube Ad Director Shishir Mehrotra, saying: “When I took this job a year and a half ago, people kept asking ‘What is going to be the equivalent of the Google text ad for YouTube?’. What we realized is there is no one ad format for video, because consumers come to YouTube to do different things.”

The piece makes a very good point in comparing it to MySpace circa 2006. Everyone talked about MySpace being the place where entertainment advertisers went. That was only a year after Rupert Murdoch bought MySpace for $580m. Now it’s worth…oh way less. Is it on a road to profit? Well it is on a road at least.

YouTube seems to have triumphed even as the market has become more competitive with the likes of Hulu and others taking a share of its market. It has been helped by more and more professional content being uploaded onto the service much by media companies and advertisers who have become adept at establishing their own channels.

What does all this mean in hard numbers? Well last month All Things Digital reported Barclays analyst Douglas Anmuth saying that YouTube will see a revenue jump of 55% to $700m in 2010 and that it will “start contributing positively” to the Google’s earnings. I think that means the long road profit has almost been reached.

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Google to add social media to Gmail to rival Facebook

By February 9 2010, 9:46 am 2 Comments

Google is reported to be set to add social media bells and whistles to Gmail in an effort to take on Facebook and Twitter.

Google will add status updates to Gmail as well as photo galleries and other sharing options, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

All Google has at the moment is its Orkut social networking site that is big in India and Brazil according to Wikipedia. Being big in India and Brazil is clearly useful as they are big, but considering we never hear about Orkut it can’t be that useful.

I wonder if what it is doing is enough. Sure it is a start, but it has a lot ground to catch up. I also wonder how much space people have in their lives. Do people want to share in multiple places? Well look at Yahoo! It made similar such moves allowing users to of Yahoo Mail to make status updates and clearly on its own that is not enough. As no on I can think of suddenly started raving about Yahoo!.

Sure Google owns technology like YouTube and Picasa but working against it is that too many people use Hotmail, Yahoo Mail or other rivals. Email has become like your bank account and the idea of moving is something most of us don’t contemplate.

I personally think Gmail is the best thing in email. I prefer it to Microsoft Outlook for work. That could be because of the clunking servers we have and the miniscule amounts of space allocated that is designed to make life difficult (yes IT overlords I am talking to you).

That said I use Facebook most days at work (for work; honest) and on the move on my phone. It is more immersive.

I’m not sure I have the time to do more social networking stuff. I mean if you throw in Twitter and blogging then I am just about done. I need the rest of the time to have a life.

The Wall Street Journal says that Google could announce the new Gmail features as soon as this week.

“Currently, Gmail has a chat bar that can display a short ‘away message’ for each user’s contacts,” WSJ reported. “But the new interface will have an area that users can click through to see updates from more friends in a stream — a format popularized by Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc., [Google sources] said.”

The move follows new design updates from Facebook last week to make life easier for its 400 million plus members. Apparently Gmail has around 176 million unique visitors. Many of those will doubtless have Facebook accounts as well.

We also heard last week that Facebook was chasing Google as a place where people read news. It is now fourth placed behind Google, MSN and Yahoo!.

Facebook has already over taken Google News and Google Reader. The changes it made to its design recently touch on email as Facebook chases Google on that front as well.

The spill over is putting the two head to head in an increasing number of areas and Google clearly feels the need to respond.

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Tory bloggers come up short on #Kerryout campaign

By February 5 2010, 1:00 pm 2 Comments

If you wanted an example of how negative digital campaigning can fail then look no further than the #Kerryout campaign that is seeking to oust Labour’s new media spokeswoman Kerry McCarthy MP.

Some Tory bloggers have already distanced themselves from it and one has warned it is childish and will backfire. After all the publicity and many blog posts mostly orchestrated by Tory Bear the campaign has managed to raise a grand total of £1,700. So little. So much effort.

As personal attacks go it has created only negative buzz around the Conservative candidate Adeela Shafi. You have to feel sorry for her saddled with such witless enthusiasts as those behind the Kerryout campaign. Bristol247.com described it as “embarrassing”.

All it has done is spurred others to engage in tit for tat campaigning and help raise money and sympathy for Labour (okay I am biased but I don’t think that is in dispute). It is all lamentable.

It has led to the story in the Daily Mirror claiming that “Tory star Adeela Shafi has £325,000 CCJ ‘debt”. I don’t have anything to say about that and I don’t know if it is true or not. It is besides the point. What is almost certainly true is that story is a direct result of the efforts of that many of Tory bloggers (Iain Dale among them) who have backed this campaign. Nice job boys (they are all boys).

What is true is that Adeela Shafi is like the poster girl for the next generation of David Cameron’s new generation of Tory MPs, but she is not helped at all by any of this. She has failed to distance herself from this campaign and to disown it. You have to wonder why that is and what that says about Conservative Party, its message and its politics.

What’s most disappointing is that the emergence of digital communications in political campaigning has largely been positive. That’s one of the things that came out of Blue State Digital and its work on Barrack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.

It showed the great power that digital has for positive change. It showed its strength in helping to organise and to unite people around common ideas. It showed how you can put the message in the hands of supporters as it brought people with common ideas together both digitally and in the real world. It created a huge groundswell via Twitter, Facebook, blogs, YouTube and Flickr.

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#Bobt – Online advertising sucks aka Big Thinking in free spaces

By November 27 2009, 9:28 am 1 Comment

Online advertising came in for a bit of a beating in this session that buried display ads and pushed the idea that the
concept of “free” is not viable – this was all about freemium, which
could well be the future of content of all types.

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Gordon Brown needs to consider his social media reputation

By September 28 2009, 8:28 am 6 Comments

Following on from Friday’s post on Labour’s Twitter lead, research says that Gordon Brown has a lot of ground to make up with Britain’s 30m online social network users as he looks to make his keynote speech at the Labour Party conference this week.

Of course, his social media reputation is not the only thing he and Labour needs (a fight back would be nice, but not the place).

Social media agency Yomego carried out a Social Media Reputation audit (a new service it is launching) of the Prime Minister’s online reputation looking across the spectrum at Facebook, Bebo, Myspace, Twitter and YouTube alongside other social spaces such as blogs, comments, ratings, reviews and user-generated content.

While the party might have more MPs Twittering and engaging with social media, David Cameron’s reputation in the world of Twitter, Facebook and the blogging community is ranked 20 points higher, which is of course ironic give what he thinks for instance of Twitter (“Too many twits might make a twat.”) although he really should come clean about Facebook as well (I’m just sitting here drumming my fingers waiting for that one).

Out of a possible 100, the Prime Minister scores 42.59 in the audit, which measures the volume and newness of social media chatter and whether it is positive or negative.

To be honest the recent week’s that Brown has been having that is almost better than expected. From here on out, and with his speech this week, the party and Brown have to get that higher.

According to Yomego, in Brown’s case there was lots of noise, but opinion was almost universally unenthusiastic with his “sentiment” score lower than that achieved by British National Party leader Nick Griffin (seriously? I find that hard to believe, but that is what the agency says).

Tory leader David Cameron rated a score of 62.49 with the level of noise on social media networks achieving similar volume and recency to the PM, but the overall sentiment rating more than three times better than his Labour counterpart. Well the Tories are between 13 and 15 points ahead in the polls depending on who you look at so that is going to happen.

A ray of light for Brown comes from the Liberal Democrat who should be soaking up the anti Brown/Labour chatter, but while leader Nick Clegg scores a respectable 54.13 he is let down by a low noise rating. You mean no one is talking Clegg? Apparently he is not exactly inspiring the Lib Dems to new heights as the party’s recent conference appeared to demonstrate (either that or Lib Dems don’t chatter/make much noise in social media).

Steve Richards, MD of Yomego, says that the audits carried out so far have underlined how important it is for brands (political parties) to manage that social media noise and sentiment around them.

“The noise around your brand may be deafening but if that noise is overwhelmingly negative, its reputation will suffer real damage. Conversely, if positive sentiment about your brand is drowned out by your competitors, you won’t see the benefits.

“For politicians, with nearly 30m people in the UK alone regularly using a social network, social media reputation is an important barometer for measuring whether their message is getting through and how it’s being received. That’s particularly true as we enter the party conference season and all parties start gearing up for a general election next year.”

Other stuff thrown up by the audit, but not strictly earth shattering (but here you are) are the high scores achieved by Barack Obama who scored 77.79 (shocker – he is the social media king, or president as he likes to be known) and French Premier Nicolas Sarkozy achieving 66.15. Does he Twitter? Do the French? I’m sure they do, but weirdly I don’t think I have ever followed/been followed by someone from across the channel. The rest of Europe yes, France no.

I digress, um here’s a bit of how they did the Social Media Reputation audit, which Yomego says is a first measurement system combining quantity and quality, with insight and will be officially launched at Mipcom 2009 (5th – 9th October).

 The result is a total score out of 100, representing an average of the level and freshness of noise generated and the nature and recency of sentiment behind what’s being expressed.

[Twitter]

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Saving Newspapers – The Musical

By August 21 2009, 9:41 am Leave a comment

It’s an oldie, by today’s standards, but still a goodie.
In April, the East Bay Express – a freesheet out of Oakland, California
released ‘Saving Newspapers – The Musical’, an underappreciated YouTube gem.

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NCAA fails in sideline Twitter ban

By August 20 2009, 10:49 am 1 Comment

A college football division (the American kind) has u-turned
on its policy that attempted to clamp down on bloggers and amateur
sportswriters, effectively ‘banning’ social media from its stadiums, by
prohibiting fans from recording sideline video, audio or photographs – oh yeah,
and the illegal Tweeting about games.

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Someone made money off YouTube! A wife-beater? Who cares!

By July 31 2009, 10:19 am 2 Comments

Okay, fine, YouTube figured out a
way to make some money – and now it’s boasting about it on both its Biz Blog
and papa Google’s main blog.

 

You see, the JK Wedding Entrance
Dance video – surely you’ve heard of it, has made a bunch of millionaires even
richer, and YouTube is rather chuffed.

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Social media and the Iranian election

By June 16 2009, 10:07 am 4 Comments

On Wired.com, Andrew Exum is wondering all about Iran and the explosive use of social media to organise, agitate and protest in Iran. He’s wondering how real it all is? And if it is the technological enabled few rather than the digitally deprived masses.

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It was the blogs that called Obama victory

By November 5 2008, 8:28 am 2 Comments

An historic election and a welcome historic victory for Barack Obama that was called online by some of the big political blogs and news sites before the US TV networks, which having been burned by exit polls in 2000 and 2004 took the cautious route.

There’s already been an avalanche written about how this election was one like no others in terms of its online impact through digital media – it being dubbed the social media election by some. The much written about uses of services like Twitter, YouTube, blogs all played a role so it is satisfying to see websites come out on top as the victory was called.

“Obama Wins the Presidency” Slate reported at 9:27 p.m a solid 90 minutes before the first of the networks called it. Right after Slate came The Page with “The Networks Won’t Tell You, but The Page Will: Barack Obama Will Be the 44th President of the United States”.

On its homepage Slate, said: “In proud Slate tradition, we bring you the exit polls bouncing around that they won’t talk about on TV.”

Although there was a hedging proviso: “They are not the real thing, nor are they guaranteed to bear any semblance to the real thing”.

It then showed all the data showing Obama ahead in Florida, Missouri, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

While the web called it at 9:30, the TV networks did not call it for another one and a half hours at 11pm after the polls had closed in the West and Barack Obama had the 270 electoral college votes he needed.

Charles Gibson on ABC News told everyone how it was going to be fore the networks early on when he said “We are not going to project a winner in this election until one candidate has reached the 270 number.”

You can understand why. Remember 2000? The networks called Florida for the Democrats and Al – loser – Gore before 8 pm based on exit polls and we all know how that turned. Ouch.

Same again in 2004 as John Kerry (who?) was shown to have a commanding lead over George W Bush. Exit for the exit polls. This time it was definitely going to be different.

The networks loss was the web’s gain. The Huffington Post as well called it early and in the process the sties racked up hundreds and hundreds of comments as people debate and engaged. In the UK, Harry’s Place where I blog racked up more than 500 comments as people debated throughout the night.

Despite all their supper splashy graphics the US networks held back and were restrained not following the lead of the web rivals, which must have been galling for many network TV journalists and presenters.

As the New York Times put it they held back “saying that exit surveys and actual vote counts did not permit them to proclaim a victor”.

“The headline is, well, there’s still no call in a number of key battleground states,” Katie Couric said on CBS News at 8 p.m., before ticking off a list that included Florida and Virginia.

An hour and a half later as CBS and others gave McCain the must win state of Ohio to Obama Couric’s on screen partner Bob Schieffer said, “I don’t see how John McCain can win now. I think Barack Obama is going to be the president of the United States. That’s just the shortest way I can put it.”

Couric replied “The cake is baked, in your view?”

“Yeah.”

Even with that, with the cake being baked CBS and its television rivals waited another one and a half hours, and did not officially call the race until 11 pm when polls closed in California and Obama’s electoral college tally passed 270.

It’s maybe then that you need a network to sum it up as Brian Williams on NBC drew the parallels with the Kennedy generation:

“There will be young children in the White House for the first time since the Kennedy generation. An African-American has broken the barrier as old as the Republic.”

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