Tobemogul Cracks the Definition of a Video View

What is a view? That's been a big question for the past two years. Tubemogul did the research and cracked it.

Check it out:
http://www.tubemogul.com/research/index.php?r=6

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.

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.

Cost vs. Popularity

It might be possible to produce a small cheap video, have it go viral and become the next big talent on SNL or be bought out by Disney for millions, but that's hardly the basis for a business of any kind. So how do you afford to make something worth coming back to again and again, something you can monetize over and over again into a internet savvy business.

Now I should start by saying that we haven't totally succeed in many of our ideas. Some of the pieces aren't quite in place in relation revenue shared syndication, or are on the verge of developing, and we have our own challenges with start up capital for relatively risky production. But we are well on our way to building a sustainable production model.

The problem is one of scale. You need a lot of episodes downloaded a lot times. Lonelygirl15 is an obvious example. With 150 episodes downloaded millions of times, its easy to see why its so successful. It has simple sets and characters, posts regularly, and has just enough production value to make it watchable over a longer period of time.

So like them, you'll have to start producing episodes long before you really make any money, but you also need it to download a lot. This is where the T-Cast Network Channels come in. They are simple link lists of shows, and random clips, syndicated from file sharing sites like YouTube/Google, Revver, and AtomFilms. It will help bring the number of viewers you need to make your show successful, using an adwords/adsence traffic engine. In future postings we will detail how producers can monetize their show with other advertising services.

These service are in the infancy so patience is still needed, but having the content is half the battle so check out some shows already posted, see what others are doing. And let us know if you've seen any shows that aren't on our list, we'll post them, details are on the "Contact us" pages on each channel.