February has been a big month for online video. Google (GOOG) announced plans to incorporate video ads into search results. YouTube launched video ads in a big way. And Yahoo! Video (YHOO) re-launched with wider screen and enhanced social networking features.

Overall, the online video market grew 3% for the month. Compete tracks US-based traffic to 50+ online video properties.

YouTube continued to lead the pack, with a market share hovering around 50% since August.

Meanwhile, ManiaTV, which features indie music and news on Hollywood scene, caught attention with a 40% surge in visits on a 15% lift in unique visitors. Shows from B-list celebrities like Tom Green and Dave Navarro kept viewers coming back..

That’s good news for ManiaTV, especially since the 2nd string/niche video aggregators (think Heavy and Break) are tightening around 3.5 – 4M unique visitors.

Lastly, the new Yahoo! Video brings videos across the Yahoo! network and enables users to build out video-based profiles and join a community. On the February 15th launch, the site featured an exclusive: a trailer for the new Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

This post was originally from here.

Here’s one of the video players or streaming sites review posted recently. It compares Youtube, Jumpcut, Vimeo, Viddler.

To do this review I will use four criteria on which I will base my comments: First, in terms of Video Player we can find different types of interfaces, ranging from very easy to use for the users to others very complicated. A second important point is the quality; while the sound normally is very similar along the spectrum of possibilities, the image is very different. A third point is the community, a very important criterion when thinking about web 2.0 applications. In this case, we need to assess if and how the users are allowed to comment and create social networks around the services. Finally, it is important to assess the financial component: how these services can create a revenue model for those interested in using them to attract consumers.

You could click here the view more details about how the authors said about each service.

In conclusion if you want to be famous with a video you need to upload your video to youtube, if you want to create and edit videos Jumpcut is a good option, but if you are looking for a high quality service you need to try Vimeo.

I would add that other than those sites, we have this new emerging online interactive video market, such as Asterpix, Ooyala, Overlay.tv, etc. Service like Asterpix actually doesn’t host your video. You could still use Youtube and Vimeo to host, and use their free web service and enhance your video and provides interactivity. You could then share with your friends or add to Facebook, Myspace, etc. For example, here’s what you could do with Asterpix:

and here’s their embed player:

from asterpix.com posted with vodpod

Original post here.

Jim Tobin from Ignite Social Media Agency had posted recently on this interesting topic. Often the time, people will ask “Sure, Jim, you can get the video and put it out there, but do you really think people sit around and watch this stuff?”

Jim has given couple metrics in his blog:

“Um, yes. They do. And not just a little–a lot. Only 22 billion views of user-generated video in 2007. This is projected to rise to 34 billion views in 2008. So, yes, note to all clients, people are watching this stuff.”

According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project (as reported by e-Marketer), there is a clear age difference, with 30% of 18-29 year olds reporting that they actively visit these sites versus only 4% of folks over age 65.

Men are also about twice as likely as women to watch user-generated video than women (20% to 11%), but there is not much difference as you look at education level, income or ethnicity. Remember this is user-generated video. The numbers are different for all online video viewing. I’ll share those numbers in a couple of days.

The bottom-line lesson here is clear: There’s a tremendous opportunity for video to help folks with their social media marketing. If you do it right, people are clearly willing to watch.

Also, from the blog comments, Andrew Merchant from Liberate Media also mentioned about their success of iCrossing, which had over 1000 views just after a week of launch. They are using the web service Asterpix to try out the interactive social media video release. I have also blogged about their usage of interactive videos to create resume. Here’s my post and the interactive video:

from www.asterpix.com posted with vodpod

Original post here or here

Nobody will argue with me that this week’s spotlight is Microsoft 44B bid for Yahoo. Here’s some data…

Current search market breakdown:

List of Microsoft/Yahoo properties, including category ranking and share:

Financially,

Will Microsoft/Yahoo be a success and change google’s future? Or how does the deal affect smaller startups?

Here’s some other interesting photos I saw related to Microsoft/Yahoo.

This interactive video from Asterpix is a good demo of how links in video could help giving you more information.  It’s not time-based, which most of the other sites or tools could provide years ago.  This is object tracking, the rectangle or hotspot will try to follow your object pick as long as it could!

from asterpix.com posted with vodpod

According to a study by Burst Media, barely over half of all viewers of online video will tune out after seeing an instream. Here are some highlights from the original post:

According to Burst Media’s numbers, slightly more than half of all online viewers recall seeing an instream advertisement (defined as either a pre-roll, mid-roll or post-roll advertisement).

…of all respondents, 50.7% stop watching an online video once they encounter an in-stream advertisement, and only 43.2% stay to watch the ad and the rest of the video. The study didn’t delve at all into response ratios at all, which is one of the reasons I think the report tends to skew the results a bit too far into the negative category.

If under half watch the advertisement, and then 45% of those folks respond, you’ve got around a 25% viewer to response ratio, a not insignificant number. Likewise, of all the folks that will view a video, 12.9% will end up buying the product, requesting a free trial, or ordering a subscription.

Essentially, what I’m saying is that we’re looking at a glass half-full/half-empty situation here, but video advertisement still has the highest return on investment of all other forms of advertising when you disregard issues of targeting. As such, the results of the survey look much more like a net positive upon deeper digging than they might on first blush.

Original post here

Original post: Yahoo buying Maven Networks, to serve online video ads for big media

By Eric Eldon 01.31.08

Yahoo is buying a broadband television distribution company called Maven Networks, for $150 million, according to Techcrunch and for between $160 million and $170 million according to NewTeeVee.

If true, Maven will be a promising new way for Yahoo to sell more online video ads that run on large media companies’ videos.

Maven hosts videos for large media companies, then offers ways to syndicate videos, including video ads, online to other web sites well as high-definition downloads — at a tenth of the cost of rival formats, it claims. There are many such companies, meaning the market was crowded and the company sold for a relatively low amount, as WatchMojo points out.

The Boston-based company’s services are already used by Fox News, Gannett, Hearst, Sony BMG, Univision, TV Guide, The Financial Times and a long list of other big clients. Maven is now another reason for these companies to work with Yahoo for online video distribution, and online video advertising, instead of buying their own technology or working with a rival (such as Google or Microsoft).

Large media companies like Maven’s clients are trying to figure out how to distribute and make money on their large stashes of videos, as their television audiences stagnate. The sentiment in the media industry, as we heard from several executives at yesterday’s OnMediaNYC closing panel, was that they don’t care whether revenue comes from their sales teams or outside parties — outside parties like Yahoo, that has its own ad network. “Do you join [the tech companies] or beat them? Beating them is not an option, ” said Alisa Bowen, SVP at Reuters.

Sample Maven ad-insertion screen below:

 

Meanwhile, Maven is growing at a “breakneck pace quarter to quarter,” co-founder Hilmi Ozguc told NewTeeVee last fall. “Media companies have needs but they don’t have technology experience. It is rocket science, it’s difficult, and that’s what we’re very good at.”

Maven’s content management system was “designed for millions of video assets, millions of video transactions happening simultaneously,” Ozguc told Broadcasting Cable last fall in reference to the company’s deal with Fox. “[Maven] can handle anything from a few sites to hundreds, if not thousands, of sites that are simultaneously pulling video from Fox News, distributing it to a very large audience — both Fox’s own, as well as their affiliates.”

Of course, Yahoo is also a content creator that in some sense competes with these large media companies. “Some of [our media] brands will say “our content is great,” said Caroline Little, CEO and Publisher of The Washington Post and Newsweek Interactive, at the conference yesterday. “And I say, have you looked at Yahoo? It’s pretty good [content] too.” For more VentureBeat coverage of trends online advertising, see Julie Ruvolo’s post from yesterday.

Maven raised a total of $30 million in venture funding, from Accel Partners, General Catalyst, and Prism Ventures.

“PR is changing. We’ve already evolved.”

Interactive videos are changing our internet experience one by one, from education, retail, travel, etc. Today I came across this post Not the Social Media Press Release…but the Social Media Video Release, which about how the PR firm Liberate Media located in UK use Asterpix to promote Interactive Video Resume/Biography.

Each of the company directors filmed a video biography, and sourced additional online links referencing the credentials they talk about. These resources included visual cues for Flickr and LinkedIn, as well as downloadable photos that we hosted, and a PDF script for accessibility and fact checking purposes.

Our trials were so successful that we pitched the idea to our client iCrossing (formerly Spannerworks in the UK) for their re-brand announcement. They very much liked the idea but wanted a more polished finish, and more in-depth additional information.

Here’s the post Spannerworks announces iCrossing re-brand, and they distributed an interactive video release of global CEO Jeff Herzog, and CEO of iCrossing UK Arjo Ghosh, discussing the brand integration, and vision for iCrossing and digital marketing as a whole in 2008.

from www.asterpix.com posted with vodpod

The above video is interactive, offering links to other sources of information on iCrossing, our spokespeople, and some of the work that we’ve been pioneering in integrated digital marketing. Hover over the logos as they appear throughout the short film to view a description of the additional resource they provide, and click on them to open-up the information in a new browser. A PDF transcript of the video is also available as a download.We hope you enjoy the video, and continue to support us under our new brand.

I think there could be a lot more potential in this idea of using interactive video as the resume. Maybe pretty soon I will see interactive videos showing up in LinkedIn profiles. If you are interested, you could visit Asterpix to create your own.

This is another post from Asterpix CEO Nat Kausik talking about this idea.

How many times when you as a traveler watch a video clip of your vacation destination like Paris and you want to have more information about Eiffel Tower? And for an advertiser, I would like to deliver advertisement of restaurants on the sidebar when the video is describing food, or hotels when talking about accommodation. Now this dream could finally come true with latest technology like Asterpix, which provides hyperlinks/hotspots in video. Here’s one of the videos I found from their website:

from asterpix.com posted with vodpod

If you don’t know what Asterpix is and how it works, I strongly recommend you to read their learn more page. It’s a free web-based service which allows you to create hotspots and associate notes/hyperlinks/tags. Using their javascript based API, you could create your web page with a tour video and displays extra information of each hotspots when mouse over. Of course you could also display direct targeted advertisement related to the objects it’s showing. Comparing with YouTube’s overlay ads or other time-based ads, Asterpix provides more control on “object” level and improves the user experience with the video content.

Since wordpress doesn’t allow me to play around javascript, I couldn’t get a demo here. However, here’s a picture from Asterpix Pro and could give you an idea how it will look like.

Here are the top 50 internet advertisers in Nov. 2007. What do you think how “interactive videos” or “hypervideos” could apply to them and provide a totally new user experience interacting with advertisement?

The top Internet advertisers by media value. The data are provided by TNS Media Intelligence.

Top 50 Internet Advertisers by Media Value, November 2007
Position	Advertiser	Media Value ($000)	Sector
1	E-Trade Financial	16,421	Fin
2	LendingTre	13,659	Fin
3	Fidelity Brokerage Services: consumer service	13,522	Fin
4	Verizon ISP	9,424	Tech
5	University of Phoenix Online	8,664	Edu
6	Verizon Wireless	8,233	Tech
7	LowerMyBills.com	7,722	Fin
8	Scottrade: consumer services	6,800	Fin
9	Morningstar.net	6,200	Fin
10	Bank of America: consumer services	5,999	Fin
11	Privacy Matters Services	5,866	Fin
12	Classmates Online	5,770	Misc
13	State Farm Auto Insurance	5,621	Fin
14	ING Direct	5,399	Fin
15	BestBuy	5,148	Ret
16	Charles Schwab: consumer services	4,941	Fin
17	Target: disc electronics	4,937	Ret
18	Dice	4,897	Class
19	Chevrolet Autos: Malibu	4,635	Auto
20	University of Phoenix	4,378	Edu
21	Ebay	3,993	Auto
22	LasikPlus Laser Center	3,898	H/F
23	Pogo.com	3,756	M/E
24	Target: disc misc	3,755	Ret
25	LasikPlus Vision Center	3,646	H/F
26	Delta Airlines	3,571	T/H
27	True	3,560	Date
28	Monster.ca	3,486	Class
29	Infiniti Autos: M Series	3,367	Auto
30	Progressive Car Insurance	3,296	Fin
31	Progressive Direct	3,281	Fin
32	Dell: Inspiron computer	3,187	Tech
33	AT&T Wireless	3,186	Tech
34	BlackBerry Handheld Computer	3,160	Tech
35	Philips TV	3,120	Tech
36	Chevrolet: autos and trucks	3,114	Auto
37	MyCokeRewards	2,903	Misc
38	Wal-Mart: disc electronics	2,892	Ret
39	Holiday Inn Express	2,815	T/H
40	Freecreditreport.com	2,771	Fin
41	Saturn: Astra	2,763	Auto
42	Scottrade Online	2,729	Fin
43	Circuit City	2,696	Ret
44	E-Trade Financial: consumer services	2,694	Fin
45	McDonald’s	2,619	Misc
46	American Express	2,602	Fin
47	T-Mobile Wireless	2,565	Tech
48	Capital One: VAR credit cards	2,555	Fin
49	Sears: misc	2,537	Ret
50	The Wall Street Journal	2,516	M/E
	GRAND TOTAL	$241,262
Sectors: Auto – Automotive; Class – Classifieds; CPG – Consumer Package Goods; Date – Online Dating; Edu – Education; Fin – Financial Services; H/F – Health & Fitness; M/E – Media & Entertainment; Misc – Miscellaneous; Ret – Retail; Tech – Technology; T/H – Travel/Hospitality
View: Top 50 Internet Advertisers in October 2007

Original post from here