Player Review: Revver

Those of you who have been working with Revver’s video player and advertising network, will know how powerful the service’s syndication tools are and the upgraded Revver player puts it back on top of the online video game (at least now that Stage6 has closed its doors). The new player was release a couple of months back, first on their site then on the sites of their content producer’s and syndicators.

Be for we examine the benefits of the new player, its worth mentioning that 2007 was a difficult year on many fronts for Revver. Unable to sell enough advertising to properly service their massive video library, Revver abandoned their sales effort and turned to third party ad networks (first Adbrite, now Google Adsense). At the same time ad value for “video” and video related keywords fell sharply across the web making it very challenging for producer to create a higher standard of short form production.

The new player, and its slick black skin, incorporates a number of functions found in competitor players that greatly increase its viral capabilities. The player now has a “menu” button that provides information on the creator, embed code, email sharing and related videos which can be viewed in a list or on a thumbnail gallery. The player is highly customizable, including the ability to brand the player with your show’s logo. But at the root of it, the Revver player provides the same high quality video you’ve come to expect from this great service.

The complaints about the player are twofold and both relate to the advertising portion of the Revver network. Ads are now displayed as overlays along the bottom of the player, and at the end in a block of three ads. First, even if your viewer completes the video and sees both the overlay and the post roll adblock, the publisher gets credited for just one impression, not four. The ads are also accompanied with arrow buttons to allow the user the option of viewing more ads, but that also does not result in additional impressions. Second, if Adsense is driving the advertising within Revver videos, then why are those impressions not reported within our Adsense accounts? It is currently impossible to see how one video is doing in relation or user interaction with the advertising, a well developed feature of Adsense.

As a side note, revver has quietly mothballed its podcasting capability. While still offering the service, it is rare that ads are served into iTunes the way they once were. This is likely do to the ongoing debate about the compression formats used, and which should prevail. Web based catchers prefer flash video, while iTunes continues to push its quicktime H.264 iTV compression format. Fortunately video publishers still have a choice to use both formats within Revver driven RSS feeds.

Results on Binkx Adhoc Network

So the results are in on how the Blinkx Adhoc network operates. Although the process for adding the ads and posting the ad enabled video is simple and easy, there is a major problem with the amount of communication from that goes on between the network and the site while the page is loading, causing a major load time delays.

As for payout, you'll get somewhere between 3 and 4 cents per click. Not bad considering the starting price for advertisers on the network is 5 cents.

Another issue is that some of the video posting sites will actually strip out the ads before displaying the video on their site making it a lot less "viral" than other networks.

All in all, its a interesting development that may be suitable for sites with only one video per page, but is not viable for video centric blogs that will display a number of videos at once.

Revver the next Google purchase, or maybe Stage6?

Google has build an empire on buying up the best innovations and integrating them into a vast advertising network. Providing free content and making billions for it. In a lot of ways Revver has what Google wants, a better player, CPC based auto insertion ad technology, and a pile of copy-right responsible content.

At T-Cast, we like the Revver model and wish them success. But there are problems with the things as they are. There is still no analytic reporting for video syndication and the revenue from those clicks is not broken down for either the syndicator or the content producer. Value of clicks are falling, but then are still better than most of the adwords content market with pay-per-click of $0.12 to $0.27.

It would seem to be smarter for the content producer to sell their own advertising, and the T-Cast producers asked Stage6's Divx support team for just such an opportunity only to be disappointed with the response. No question that the Divx authoring software is the best encoding software out there for under $50, and the Stage6.com site has proven that the player is post-roll clickable. Content producers could be running their own advertising campaigns off a wide variety of CPC, CPM and CPA advertising networks, and Divx HD quality video would be everywhere. Stage6 could be Revver for the masses.

Google needs to figure this out or it could get away from them. And there are other divx encoders out there. One of these companies has to put internet video syndication and dynamic advertising together before some hacker does.

Podcasting for Revver Ad Delivery

There is no doubt that podcast and rss distribution can drive a show's viewership, but is it effective ad delivery? RSS tracking from Feedburner.com is a great way to understand your podcast or blog viewership, and revver files are supported by iTunes and most podcast directories which provides a turn key solution to hosting and syndicating video podcasts. But in our experience the powerful distribution combination, does not convert advertising clicks in an effective way.

For our original production, The Retired Porn Producer's Guide to... we have many methods driving viewership.

Podcasting
Our podcasting feed is directed to Episode 5 (the latest episode) of the series, which downloads (or as Revver puts it "views") when the podcast is subscribed to. Roughly 30% of those go on to download another episode and 10% download them all, but in general podcasting drives 30% of our daily viewership. That episode however has performed poorly over the last month with a click through rate of 0.15%.

Adwords Promotion
Our adwords promotion efforts are directed to a landing page where Episode 1 is embedded. This activity drives 40% of our web traffic, which is about 50% of our total embed code traffic. This episode is shorter and designed to bring in viewers in general, and we have already examined episode length in relation to click through rates. The episode converts clicks at 2.5%.

The series averages a click through rate of 1.31%, so you can see podcasting drives traffic but not necessarily advertising revenue.

Producer Tip: Short is King!

If you're a film director you really want to be able to "get your vision out" but there is always that producer standing behind you saying, "do it faster and cheaper". Well if your producing or directing for the internet there is one more demand on that list. Make it short! On the internet short is king.

One of the goals of the T-Cast Network is to get a real grasp on how to create and market fiction based internet video. And then bring that knowledge back to producers and the community at large. We use a number of services like Revver reports, Google Analytics and Feedburner tracking to make observations in our "Producer Tips" stories.

So...

Lesson Learned 1 - Short is King!

In our original series The Retired Porn Producer's Guide to... we have four episodes:

Blogging
- 2 minutes, completes views 11% , converts clicks 3% of the time

Office Meetings
- 2 minutes 20 seconds, completes views 13%, converts clicks 0.7% of the time

Water Cooler Chit-Chat
- 3 minutes, completes views 10% , converts clicks 0.4% of the time

Biking to Work
- 3 minutes, completes views 8% , converts clicks 0.2% of the time

and one promotional episode
A Complicated Man
- 1 minute, completes views 21%, converts clicks 2% of the time

Since posting the videos to Revver, the promo episode, which is the shortest, viewers complete the view 21% of the time, nearly doubling the average. But the Blogging episode, which is 2 minutes long and completes views slightly better than average, converts clicks far better than the promo episode.

But is shorter really better, if so what is the best length? We also have two random un-promoted clips to test the shorter is better theory.

Stop-Animation: Joggling
- 9 seconds, completes views 37%, and converts clicks 2%

My Alien's Not to Bright -
1 minute, completes views 16%, and converts clicks 3.1%

Here again we see that the shorter the video the better it completes views but that a moderately long one minute episode converts more clicks.

If you want to make your video more financially successful you need to keep the clip length under a minute, but make the clips substantial enough to draw users in and entice better advertisers.

Video Sharing Evaluation: Revver - Part 2

Revver.com is a trail-blazer in terms of advertising supported video syndication, in the first part of this evaluation we explored Revver's Website and syndication services which identified a number weaknesses but over all proved it to be a great syndication service. In this posting we will evaluate the service's monetization and promotion tools.

Monetization
With the release of Revver's new reporting took it is now possible to see which videos are downloading, but more valuable than that you can see which videos are holding viewers to its completion and which videos are converting clicks. This has radically changed our understanding of revenue streams on Revver's service.

When you look at revver's download numbers you will find that they are a fraction of that of other video sharing services, but as it turns out this is because until last week Revver only reported completed views. Now that the details are out we can see that only 10-20% of views started were completed, this is a huge factor in the success of a video clip as there is little chance of converting a view to a click if the viewer doesn't actually the clip long enough to see the advertisement. Conversion rates for completed views are actually quite good (10-50%), with some clips vastly out performing others.

Payment per click averages $0.25 - $0.30 which boils down to $0.03 - $0.12 per view for completed views. Shorter clips had many more completed views than the longer clips, while one of our clips entitled "Blogging" converted almost 50% of completed views into clicks. Metadata was the same for clips in the series, suggesting that file title has a large impact on the quality of advertising presented at the end of the video.

Over all average revenue for all views (completed or otherwise) calculates to less than $0.01, making it comparable to MetaCafe's per impression payment of $0.005. There are factors however that impact Revver's revenue potential including, video file length, title, metadata and relative entertainment value. If a clip is short, well put together, holds the attention of its audience to its completion and is positioned properly with suitable advertising, revenue potential on the service could be much higher.

Promotion
Promotion is the biggest problem facing video producer's large and small. What's the point of earning pennies on your videos if those pennies never add up to the thousands of dollars that are required to producer high quality content. So how does Revver promote your videos?

I already mentioned the problems with Revver's website and the strength of its syndication network, but Revver goes beyond that by promoting your clips on their iTunes channel as well as providing permlinks that can be used in RSS feeds for podcasting. Revver has deals with cellphone carriers, most notably Verizon, that can generate higher revenues than advertising.

Revver also supports syndicators like the T-Cast Network by providing 20% share of click through advertising revenue. No doubt all the video sharing services will eventually institute similar programs as a way of ensuring large amount of consistent traffic to videos.

Service Update: Revver

Revver has finally upgraded its revenue reporting system, and has even more plans in the works according to Sean Boyd (Revver Member Services Coordinator). This upgrade was sorely needed, and will provide producers a more detailed evaluation of their content's advertising potential. If you've been reading our blog you know our estimated earnings off of Revver has thus far been approximately $0.025, but this upgrade changes and elaborates on this calculation.

We will be posting an assessment of Revver's entire service shortly, please check back.

Video Sharing Evaluation: MetaCafe

MetaCafe is another video hosting and syndication service that provides revenue to producers. Like AtomFilm, MetaCafe is a selective content distributor and all submissions must be approved by a selection committee before they are posted. The site doesn't detail exactly the type of content they are looking for, but we've had our animation rejected for its frank sexuality which I guess was to racy for even the adult filter section.

Also like AtomFilms revenues are generated on a per view (instead of a per click) bases. Canadian Press reported on March 29^th that MetaCafe "offers creators $5 for every 1000 views." For those of you who aren't that good at math, I'll break these numbers down for you.

$5/1000 views = $0.005 per view or $0.01 for two views

That's a fair bit behind what the click through service Revver.com that in our experience averages $0.025/view. These royalties are paid on consistent and predictable bases, which makes it very attractive. But does MetaCafe have the traffic to make it worth while?

An examination of the site's most viewed content reveals MetaCafe's revenue potential. The most viewed clip, "Animals vs. Humans" has 11 528 064 views over 17 months, or $57 640; the second most viewed clip, "Freaky Women in an Elevator" has 9 313 248 views over 11 months, or $46 566. Many clips have enjoyed 200 000+ views or $1000.

So MetaCafe could be a great revenue generator for producers and the clips syndicate easily on the T-Cast Network. The video ads are post roll as opposed to AtomFilms pre-roll model, which is nice because viewers aren't really all the patient. Thank you MetaCafe, for creating such an innovative service.