Usertainment Watch

Can User-Gen Video and Ads Just Get Along?

Even though user-generated video accounts for some 40% of online video views and is expected to grow to more than half of all views by 2010, it's downright inconceivable that a proportionate share of advertising revenue will accompany the shift.

Advertisers are still hooked on the predictability of conventional programming, even though that same predictability is attracting ever fewer eyeballs relative to u-gen video.

Marketers can spend (or withhold) their advertising dollars however they wish, but sooner or later, someone on Madison Avenue is going to wake up and recognize that in this reluctance is a missed opportunity.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and so do advertisers. It'll be a gradual process, but eventually, user-gen video and advertising will get a long better than they do today.

Online Video's Hyper-growth Phase Appears Over

ComScore Video Metrix reported Friday that online video viewership declined in January compared to the previous month, a finding that suggests online video's hyper-growth phase has ended.

ComScore Video Metrix reported 9.8 billion videos viewed online in January, compared to 10.1 billion in December 2007.

YouTube accounted for one-third of views. Fox Interactive Media was a distant second, with a 6% share.

No doubt there will be great interest in February figures as analysts try to determine whether January represented but a temporary pause in growth. Regardless, a decline after the rapid run-up of the past two or three years would appear to indicate that the big growth numbers are behind us.

User-gen Video's Long Tail Beginning to Look Fat?

A few observers, myself included, have begun musing about the nature of user-generated video's long tail. Will it prove fat (and thus more lucrative, per the thesis of author Chris Anderson's seminal book), or peter out disappointingly?

The difficulty in assessing online video's tail derives, of course, from the fact that it hasn't been around long enough to grow much of one. Time will remedy this, but what are we to think in the meantime?

Initial evidence is beginning to filter in. A recent report from AccuStream, "User Generated Video 2005-2008: Mania Meets Mainstream" (other findings from which were cited in my previous post), suggests that user-generated video's tail may prove surprisingly fat. "Almost 20% of total views generated in 2007 were delivered by videos published in 2006 or before," a summary of the report states.

Hmm. Something for marketers and advertisers to chew on as they try to figure out where user-generated video will fit in.

Can User-Generated Video Really Be This Big?

If several recent research reports are correct, user-generated video is a much bigger deal than most of us probably thought.

In "User Generated Video 2005-2008: Mania Meets Mainstream," streaming-video research firm Accustream contends that u-gen video "scored 22 billion views in 2007." True, u-gen video trailed views through "professional content sites," with the latter accounting for 33.5 billion views, but u-gen video grew much faster last year, up 70% vs. 50.3% for "professional" content, according to Accustream.

Similarly, NewTeeVee reports on a study by Screen Digest projecting that u-gen video's share of total video streams will grow from 47% in 2006 to 55% by 2010. (I must stay that I'm scratching my head over NewTeeVee's conclusion as stated in its headline, "User-Generated Video Growth Flattening").

Hollywood, We've Got A Problem

Here's a finding that literally could turn both the network revenue model and the outlook for advertising on user-generated video sites on their heads:

A new VideoCensus report from Nielsen finds that men 18-34 "are two-and-a-half times more likely to watch video from the top consumer-generated media Web sites -- YouTube, MySpace, Veoh, and Break.com" than are women in the same age group, as reported by Elinor Mills at CNET.

Women 18-34, meanwhile, were almost twice as likely to watch video on network TV sites.

Hollywood, we've got a problem. Network television's main target is men in this very age group. Nielsen's findings suggest that advertisers will be accelerating the pursuit of this demographic more actively at YouTube and other viral-video sites, at the expense of network TV. This, needless to say, is huge.

Usertising Contests Come to the Public Sector

Contests eliciting user-generated advertising have been around for a couple of years now, with most promoting a commercial product or service.

Now, the public sector has gotten into act via the California Department of Public Health, Tobacco Control Program's "Be a Reel Hero" contest."

The public can vote on entrants through Feb. 22. Submissions can be viewed at www.BeAReelHero.com.

The contest "invited all creative Californians to use their talent to save lives by producing a compelling 30-second television commercial that communicates California's anti-smoking message," according to a statement.

If California leads the way, can other public agencies be far behind?

New Features from Online Video Tracking Service TubeMogul

TubeMogul, the online video tracking and distribution service, recently announced the launch of several new free features, "our Premium Products, and a new TubeMogul user interface," advises Mark Rotblat at TubeMobul. 

"We’ll be starting to publish TubeMogul Industry Analysis reports as well – some macro-level data we’ve been collecting on videos uploaded through our service," Mark says.

Having been through the experience of developing corporate viral videos and then trying to determine their effectiveness, I can attest to the need for tracking. And since effectiveness is relative, anything that can provide comparative benchmarks should be helpful.

Over time, the metrics arsenal for online video will only continue to grow, bringing more science to the art.

A Make-or-Break Legal Case for Usertising?

If you enter video contests in which sponsors solicit user-generated advertising or if you're involved in that realm in any way, you'll want to stay abreast of a legal case involving a contest Quiznos ran in 2006.

The usertising contest was one of the first of its kind to my knowledge, and now it's landed in court, with Quiznos rival Subway taking issue with videos it contends were disparaging to its products.

Such objections, and subsequent legal action, are not unusual. But the new wrinkle here is the user-generated nature of the ads.

For more detail, read Louise Story's report in the New York Times last week.

The Times piece might lead one to feel that usertising itself could be threatened, but it seems to me that most user-generated contests and ads probably don't run afoul of the law. At the same time, the Quiznos-Subway case should help clarify the ground-rules for user-generated video contests, perhaps including making limits on claims and comparisons more explicit.

Usertising Service GlobeShooter Acquired

GlobeShooter, the social-network and gateway to advertising projects for videographers first reported on here last year, has been acquired by Spot Runner.

According to an email to GlobeShooter members, Spot Runner's objective is to "make TV advertising more affordable and accessible for local businesses."

The email adds, "We expect a much greater volume of work on projects with budgets ranging from $2-10K, including TV commercials, mini-doc-style videos and Internet ads."

For now, the GlobeShooter social network is down, but the email advises that "we will be restoring some of the social components of the network at spotrunner.com in the near future." (SpotRunner also was down at the time of this post.)

The Globalization of YouTube

Most of the heavily watched videos on YouTube are in English. But that's changing.

A quick glance at "Most Popular" lists reveals that YouTube has become an international (or at least, multilingual) phenomenon.

The YouTube page displaying this week's top 20 comedy videos, for example, includes three with foreign-language titles. The top video is titled "Pojemna paszcza" (above).

In recent weeks, some categories have shown even greater international influence.

We've seen video sites pop up in other countries to focus on local or regional tastes and languages -- but the internationalization of YouTube could make it into the global default.