YouTube ‘snacking’ leading to video-related obesity?

At my video company Tap Bang we’ve been bragging for a while now to anyone who would listen about the number of videos viewed in the UK as a justification for why it’s so important to have a video presence online. The figures used to be impressive. Persuasive even. But now comscore have just released a bunch of stats on European online viewing figures that are simply startling.

They tell us that in the UK alone 32.5million people are collectively watching over 5 billion online videos every month. That’s 166 videos a month (or between 5 and 6 a day) for each of those 32.5 million viewers.  Let’s face it, 166 of anything a month is a lot.

YouTube unsurprisingly accounts for more than half of the videos viewed in the UK with BBC videos (including all the stuff on iplayer) coming in a distant second.

The time watching these all these 166 videos equates to 17 hours. That’s still a long way short of TV. The googlebox still lives up to its name with a staggering 120 hours a month of viewing for the average Brit. But the gap between TV and online video viewing  is closing fast. More importantly I’d hazard a guess that the engagement with the respective advertising from the four hours of daily telly is roughly equivalent to that of watching 6 online videos. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/may/04/thinkbox-television-viewing)

It seems the ever-rising number of video views is accountable to the habit of ‘snacking’ on a sequence of videos. In other words we follow a link to a video we think we might like. Once we’ve finished watching that video YouTube or the BBC suggest several other videos we might like to watch and we just keep clicking. A video ‘snacking’ session is typically 6 online videos in a row.

If we keep going at this rate we’re really only a few years away from the full-blown snacks turning into meals. Mmmmmm tasty.

New Hubble blog 3D web video or not 3D – that’s the question

I’ve started blogging on a site called the Hubble alongside some other London based entrepreneurs. You can check out my first article on 3D web video here.

Pod of Gold

My attention has really been grabbed this week by the potential of video podcasting. It all started when a friend recommended I watched Carpool with Robert Llewellyn – a simple concept of a TV show where Robert (Kryten from Red Dwarf/that bloke off Scrapheap Challenge as he’s perhaps better known) gives a well known public figure a lift in his car and chats to them along the way. Despite its low-def production Carpool has been a phenomenal success with over a million downloads on itunes, countless views on youtube and thousands of hits on Robert’s own site llewtube. But apart from engaging in the show itself the thing that really caught my attention was that he’s starting to make some money out of it – and not just small change either.

Robert Llewellyn's Hit Podcast 'Carpool'

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That got me researching a little more into podcasting and the results make for pretty startling reading. The revenue from podcasting is doubling every year while the costs are staying the same. 100 million people are downloading podacasts from itunes every year. Perhaps most interestingly advertisers are staring to fall over themselves to sponsor podcasts. Although they realise podcasts’ audiences are small, they also realise they are niche and very loyal. If someone has bothered to go to itunes, download the podcast, transferred it to their iphone and then watch it, they are pretty bloody likely to be interested in whatever the podcast is about and therefore also interested in related products.  In one very successful podcaster’s words why spend a fortune on advertising on a TV show with an audience of 5million when you really only want to reach the 100,000 people interested in your product? With podcasting you are spending a fraction of the money on a show that reaches your targeted 100,000 people in a much more measurable way.

This has huge implications for businesses. For me the way forward is to create a regular show around your brand that isn’t the traditional business podcast (i.e. what has our company been doing this year). Businesses have to start creating a piece of entertainment – like Carpool – around their brand that will get a wider audience riveted.

Do you run a pub? Why not create a series on the beers of the world? Do you run an accountancy firm? Why not create a series that gives out some great ways to save and earn money that everyone can implement? Resist the temptation to use your stiff CEO but instead go for proven on-camera talent (which is cheaper than you’d think). You can then sign up to a podcasting service that will split any resulting advertising revenue with you meaning you’ll probably make the money back you invested in the show (if not make a profit) and you’ll get your message/branding in front of thousands of potential clients. Plus there’s nothing stopping you putting this stuff on youtube and on your own website which is fantastic for search engine optimisation and will only serve to promote the show and your business further.

As I’ve said before, in the age of digital marketing great content is key. If you’re not out there creating killer content you can be pretty sure one of your rivals is. Regular video podcasting is a fantastic way to market yourself, make your marketing fees back and grow your business. I hate using business jargon but I can’t resist it in this case – podcasting is a no-brainer.

Does this mean Channel 4 won’t be Channel Poor?

YouTube has signed a deal with Channel 4 to make full length TV shows available on the popular video sharing site. Once they’ve been aired programmes like Hollyoaks, Skins and Peep Show will be available on YouTube  as well as its online catch-up service 4oD. It is expected that round 3,000 hours of programming will be available on YouTube in a few month’s time. This is pretty groundbreaking stuff.

Peep Show and loads of other popular Channel 4 shows are coming to YouTube

Obviously most YouTube viewers have at one time or another watched a TV show or movie that’s sneakily been uploaded to the site. But more often than not they’ve had to suffer a show that’s been split into 10 minute chunks that are of differing quality, are tricky to navigate and have dodgy Chinese subtitles. Well no more. Proper TV shows are coming to the most popular video repository on the web. But the really interesting news is that Channel 4 are getting some revenue back – in fact the split in advertising revenue is reportedly in their favour. If this is a success this could just save the broadcaster from the impending oblivion that has seemingly been on the cards for the last year.

For business owners who are considering putting some video content on youtube or have some up there already this announcement is big news for two reasons.

1)    It means that if you create great content that has an audience You Tube might be willing to talk about splitting some of it’s resulting advertising revenue with you.

2)    If other broadcasters follow Channel 4’s lead (and I can’t see why any commercial broadcaster apart from Sky, who get huge revenue from subscriptions, wouldn’t) the amount of quality material (i.e. not mobile-shot footage of lads having a pint drinking competition in the pub) available on you tube is going to go through the roof. This means more than ever that if you plan to have a video on YouTube representing your company it needs to be of a high standard so that compared to the slick TV content it sits beside it won’t look horribly crappy.

Either way it’s another indication that making quality video content is the wisest and increasingly the only choice open to businesses that want to exploit the proven power of online video.

HOW VIDEO BOOSTS YOUR GOOGLE RANKING

1. SITES WITH VIDEO ARE LISTED HIGHER IN NATURAL SEARCH THAN SITES WITHOUT VIDEO (AND SITES WITH MORE VIDEO ARE LISTED EVEN HIGHER!)

The chances are that all too often you’ve clicked on a link to a website that’s ranked in the top 3 in Google only for it to have nothing whatsoever to do with what you searched for. That’s because until a few years ago Google worked out its rankings largely by finding key words embedded within a website and by the amount of links to a certain site from other websites. But the Google boffins realised that keywords and links are at the mercy of evil spammers and internet ‘bots’. This meant that sites that had some devious computer programmers working on them but had nothing much to do with the search term entered could get right to the top of the Google rankings. This was a massive problem that needed fixing. So in May 2007 Google launched its ‘Universal Search Initiative’ to integrate listings from its news, video, images, local and book search engines into Google SERP (Search engine result page). This is a big departure and is changing the way that search engine optimisation works.

Now the world’s biggest search engine will focus on traffic and above all how media rich a site is to determine its place in the rankings.

The richest of all media is video. Hence video is consequently the type of media Google likes best and features the most (the incredibly costly acquisition of youtube by google proves there’s 1.65 billion reasons why video is so important to Google’s future). According to research by Emarketer 38% of all Google searches in 2008 were served video and it’s going up fast. Having pictures on your site can help a little, but the effect of adding video is dramatic.

Renowned US search engine optimisation specialist Bruce Clay (bruceclay.com) has gone on record to say that if the top ten sites in any search don’t have video and their rivals do, they could lose their ranking overnight.

2. YOUR SITE STANDS OUT MORE
When Google lists a site that it recognises includes video it will publish a little thumbnail image of the video next to that site’s listing. Sites that don’t contain video never get this thumbnail. Thumbnails have tremendous power to draw the eye on an otherwise bland set of google results. They are proven to attract clicks, even if you’re lower down the list. So the more clicks you get the more traffic you get and the higher up the google rankings you go.

3. YOU GET MORE HITS
Videos generate interest buzz, inbound links and website traffic which again increases rankings.

4. YOU CAN GET MULTIPLE GOOGLE LISTINGS
By posting your videos to video sharing websites like youtube and vimeo you can get listed for every site you’ve uploaded your video to (of which there are hundreds). Naturally all these videos will have a link back to your site meaning that a good video can potentially monopolise the top ten (or top 100!) listings on google.
Here’s an article about how a guy’s blog wasn’t showing up on the first page of google, but by embedding video into his blog and seeding that video out to video sharing sites he had 7 of the top 10 google listings a week later.

5. YOU’LL BE LISTED IN THE VIDEO RANKINGS
Increasingly people are becoming aware that the video search function on google returns a handful of high quality videos whilst the main google search often returns hundreds of thousands of bamboozling web pages. Modern web users know that the video content listed will almost always be specific to their search and will most probably be more fun to view than a boring text-only web page. Why trawl through hundreds of inaccurate pages when you can choose from a few accurate and specific videos?
It’s obvious but if you don’t have a video you can’t get listed on Google video search, denying your site the opportunity to be found in this increasingly popular search destination.
Watch this for more details.