The Good, The Bad and the Ugly of Internet Video

YouTube - www.youtube.com

The Good - YouTube is the king of traffic and community. It has basic syndication tool with a strong viral player that can be embedded and syndicated.

The Bad - YouTube still doesn't have a revenue vehicle that every content producers can tap into. There is the beginnings of such a development, but its focused on syndicators, not producers. Only US syndicators can access the program by linking their Adsense account to there YouTube accounts. A small number of premium producers have access to the other side of the YouTube ad network as a beta pilot that has continued for over a year.

The Ugly - Pirated content galore, and piles of poorly organized videos makes the whole site a mess. Even with Google's "King of Search" muscle, you can't find anything specific and end up floating around hoping to find stuff.


Revver - www.revver.com

The Good - Revver has the best syndication tools on the market. You can distribute in flash and quicktime over open API generated feeds, javascript and embed code. The ad network does an bottom margin overlay ad and a post slate of ads. This is currently the only open-for-all, 100% legal video and advertising delivery network.

The Bad - Revver's site itself doesn't have much traffic so you'll have to get out there and promote your shows. They have recently added a basic set of social networking features to a newly designed more powerful site, but the site still lacks in the traffic generation department.

The Ugly - Ad revenues have been falling and they have changed the way the revenue is calculated. Now CPM and CPC ads are calculated out across the genre into a eCPM, so everyone shares in less in relation to the number of ad impressions their videos get. You'll need huge numbers to be able to earn a living from the Revver ad network.

Metacafe - www.metacafe.com

The Good - This site had solid community and your videos will get traffic right from the start. You'll get 100 views before the submission process is over. There is no pirated content here, everything is reviewed by real people.

The Bad - Acceptance to the revenue program is based on a user rating system that is tough to crack. You need a rating of 3.0 and 20 000 views.

The Ugly - The community is very aggressive and competitive. Expect to get at least one of your video attacked by way of a nasty comment. The site is also very conservative and racy content gets rejected by the reviewers.

Veoh - www.veoh.com

The Good - If each company had to choose one aspect of the business to focus on, Veoh chose relationship building. They have signed deals with most of mainstream Hollywood and 6 months ago looked like the leader of the "Non-YouTube" contenders in the online video market. They also managed to avoid the kind of law suites that a network with as much pirated content as they have should face.

The Bad - Although Veoh has a decent embedable player, their main business model is a downloaded application player. This is a loosing model pretty much everywhere it's tried. Not only that, Veoh's application player is poorly coded without the courtesy features one would expect like control over the program's use of the Window's Taskbar. Three month's ago, much to the displeasure of pirated video viewers, Voeh switched their embedded players to a five minute preview, that would lead you to a download of that file.

The Ugly - As a result of this major change, the site's traffic has dropped significantly. The site hasn't even begun an advertising supported strategy having put all their money into the "Rent" or "Buy" to watch models.

Stage6 - www.stage6.com

The Good - Stage6 and Divx have the best player on the market. In fact when you upload to YouTube, your best option is to use the DivxHDi format. Its small file size and stable playback makes it a pack leader, but what makes it a star is the thousands of devices (mainly DVD players) that support Divx.

The Bad - The site is weak. Although it looks good it's often slow. On the syndication side it's quite good, so link sites have used it as a backbone for the distribution of pirated television and movies. In recent month's Stage6 has moved against the pirates and copyrighted content is pulled down quickly.

The Ugly - Stage6 has a secret. If you notice at the end of the video they have a clickable post slate with an ad for Divx. The company has not created their own ad network because their main business is licensing Divx to third part hardware manufacturers. Their site claims to be working toward a "Rent" or "Buy" to watch model that won't be successful. When asked if they will release that ad spot for content creators to insert their own advertising, they rejected that as never being an option. They want the sweet spot at the end of the video for themselves but aren't to sure what to do with it.

Blinkx AdHoc a Strong Alternative to Video Ad Insertion

Looking to squeeze a bit more advertising into your shared video offerings. Blinkx has a new easy solution, but does it work?

Blinkx is taking a different approach to their video advertising network. They are auto inserting contextual advertising into the shared embedded video from other hosting sites like YouTube, Revver, and Veoh. The process is so simple. You sign up for an account, which only requires your email address, a password and your paypal email. Then copy and paste the embed code from your favorite video hosting site and presto, Blinkx gives you a new embed code that will drive their advertising. You can choose to have the ads float over the top of the video or above video all together.

Blinkx states that the ads come from a variety of third party advertising networks providing CPM, CPC and CPA advertising, as well as Blinkx's own advertiser network which offers cost-per-click starting at $0.05. They don't say how much of that will end up with the publisher, but we'll find out and let you know in a future post.

On testing, no advertising was presented and it seemed to really slow down the video serving. Of the hosting sites tested only Stage6's embed code failed to sync with Blinkx's processes. Below are examples of the same video hosted on different sites displaying Blinkx advertising.

YouTube:

Revver:

Veoh:

If you notice any bugs when these videos stream, please leave a comment.

Veoh Player: One step forward two steps back

Even with rumors falling viewership, Veoh remains a viable player in the internet "shared video" market. And with the release of a sorely needed tech upgrade they are signaling a plan to continuing with the "Branded Player" model that is behind those quickly sinking statistics. No one really needs another "video player" to install on their system, and although the upgraded "Veoh Player" is a substantial improvement over its former offerings.

For those of you who watch pirated video on sites like TV-Links, will have noticed that a few months ago Veoh changed the playback of a large portion of their content to a 5 minute preview model, where you can watch 5 minutes then you have to load up the "Branded Veoh Player" to watch the rest. Now this was a pain because the old player forced the download of the entire video before playback, now you can stream the video in the player.

The main strategy that has allowed Veoh to remain viable has been its strong industry relationships. Those relationships have kept them out of court room even though they have continually failed to fulfill their promise to block pirated content through a "technological solution". But more troubling, they have continued to neglect the construction of a viable advertising network that would solve the dilemma those industry partners find themselves in (mainly that viewers want simple free internet television, but then how do you make money from that?). You can now see Google ads on the Veoh site. And then there are the Chinese who don't seem to care if Hollywood makes any money.

Veoh has toyed with the "digital video rental" model that was the core element of its branded player business model. But at this time we have still not been able to sign up for "Veoh Pro" as the form to do so either doesn't accept Non-US users or is just buggy.

Content Update: ComedyCaster and DramaCaster

We have added two very exciting shows to our directories. Prom Queen a teenage drama about getting ready for prom night, promises some big surprises for the big night.


Online Videos by Veoh.com

And Snowmen Hunters! A crazy comedy/reality tv spoof will surely teach you a few ways to hurt yourself. Don't try this stuff at home.