When Google bought YouTube, the prevailing wisdom was that the #1 search + 1 video site would spell lights out for second tier video sites. VideoEgg, whose CEO Matt Sanchez I Interviewed some time ago, has been constantly innovating and evolving to ensure its livelihood.
The company’s done well by most accounts, having served, according to its website, over 710M videos on its partner sites. But, Google’s YouTube serves 3B streams per month… and more importantly, VideoEgg is a B2B player whereas YouTube is a B2C player.
But VideoEgg’s B2B strategy is focused on the social networking sites, a sticky area when it comes to marketers’ desire to associate themselves with the content. That’s why, I think, VideoEgg did a financing round with WPP recently, not for the money alone, but to try to get the old agency to flex its muscles and sway marketers to give UGC a second chance.
All to say, today YouTube announced that it would be introducing ad overlays on YouTube (disclaimer: WatchMojo.com is a content provider to YouTube). Video Egg replies with a parody ad reminiscent of the Apple jab at IBM ages ago when IBM finally introduced its first consumer-oriented PC.
Interestingly, VideEgg’s CMO Troy Young today reminded Google that it had filed a patent on “invitation-based advertising, but conceded that this might not mean much, for the patent has been filed but not granted. NewTeeVee pointed to the ballsiness of the tactic, too.
And even, if granted, I can just hear the legal muscle at Mountain View saying “so what?”
Bear in mind, when YouTube sold to Google, part of it was to shelter itself from copyright litigation, but invariably, video advertising is a thorny space with many contenders filing patents right and left.
Ultimately, history books will suggest that Google has a right to be bullish and not care, it paid off Yahoo! with warrants in exchange for allegedly violating GoTo.com’s patent on pay-per-click advertising (GoTo.com, renamed Overture, sold to Yahoo!).
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WatchMojo NewsletterA tale of two different companies:
According to MacWorld:
In an ongoing alteration of the consumer PC landscape, Apple laptop sales have surged to a new all-time high over the past 90 days - up from 12 per cent in June to 17 per cent currently. Apple desktop sales (7 per cent; down from 8 per cent) have been solid but unspectacular during that same time period.
But it’s the future that truly represents the change. A total of 28 per cent of respondents who plan to purchase a laptop in the next 90 days say they’ll get a Mac - maintaining the momentum originally observed by ChangeWave’s June survey. An additional 23 per cent say they’ll buy a desktop Mac.
While according to WSJ, over at Dell:
Dell Inc.’s first attempt to rebuild its consumer personal-computer business since founder Michael Dell returned to lead the company is having trouble sticking.
Persistent delays in laptop shipments caused by paint problems and supply constraints have put a crimp in the company’s turnaround efforts. Since late July, it has delayed shipments of some colorful models of its latest notebook computers, the XPS M1330 and its new Inspiron PCs. This latest incident — hitting right in the crucial back-to-school selling season — marks a significant setback in its push to rebuild its brand and business.
Apple is now worth more than Dell… ironically a few years after Michael Dell said Apple was basically better off shutting down.
I’d link to the PRWeb release, but that would just make me go into a tirade (Serenity Now, Serenity Now)… so here’s the press release.
Montreal, Canada (PRWEB) August 22, 2007 — Good things come to those who wait. Eighteen months after launching with five original video clips on January 23, 2006, http://www.WatchMojo.com relaunched this week on a new design, user interface and content management system.
Today, WatchMojo.com is one of the largest owners of original video content and boasts 4,000 original video clips; its syndication network reaches over 95% of the Web’s video viewing audiences with revenue relationships with the largest video-viewing destinations online, including YouTube, who today announced plans to introduce paid ads on the largest file sharing video destination on the web.
In addition to improving the user experience and implementing a more robust content management system (CMS), the relaunch accelerates WatchMojo.com’s viral marketing and distribution efforts considerably.
A unit of Mojo Supreme, WatchMojo.com is one of the biggest producers, publishers and syndicators of video content — with video clips ranging from 1 to 3 minutes — on topics such as Automotive, Business, Comedy, Education, Fashion, Film, Food, Lifestyle, Health, Music, Parenting, Politics, Space & Science, Sports, Technology, Travel and Video Games.
Mojo Supreme is a digital media, technology and services company that indexes, aggregates and produces content in the form of videos, Top 10 lists, contests, blog entries and search results (under the MetaMojo.com brand); but the company’s razor-sharp focus remains WatchMojo.com.
The relaunched site is powered by the Typo3 open-source CMS and for its new video platform, WatchMojo.com partnered up with Blip.tv, a video sharing site that has won critical acclaim in the episodic content niche of web video to provide its users with the ability to share videos online. Blip.tv is a next-generation television network aimed at providing services for the top independent content creators on the Web. In addition to its public services at Blip.tv, the company also offers private label technology solutions for traditional media companies who want to integrate its network’s content into their existing platforms. Customers include Turner Broadcasting and Conde Nast.
“Blip.tv has provided content creators with a world-class technology platform and infrastructure, it has also been on the cutting edge of online marketing tools and products that allow a producer’s content to be published and distributed seamlessly throughout the various outlets that make video content visible online,” explains Mojo Supreme president Ashkan Karbasfrooshan.
“WatchMojo.com is an amazing example of how far video content on the Web has evolved: it’s eclectic, it’s professional, it’s advertiser-friendly and it’s terrifically entertaining,” states http://www.Blip.tv COO Dina Kaplan.
WatchMojo.com has leveraged its free and high-quality programming to build one of the largest syndication networks of any online or offline video content company with relationships with YouTube, Joost, Blinkx, Roo Media, GoFish, Canoe, MySpace, Yahoo! Video, AOL Videos, Voxant’s TheNewsRoom, Azureus’ Vuze, Revver, Veoh, LiveVideo, Critical Mention’s Clip Syndicate and many more, reaching well over 95% of the world wide web’s video watching audience. Just last week, three more partners went live, namely Veoh, Revver and LiveVideo.
“Corporate partnerships are one thing; we needed to ensure that our users could publish our content where they wanted to, after all, consumers account for 2/3 of activity in the American economy,” jokes Karbasfrooshan. Until this relaunch, WatchMojo.com did not provide users with the ability to copy and embed its videos on other sites, be it personal blogs, news or media sites.
“While YouTube popularized the sharing and embedding features that are commonplace today, the fact of the matter is that these features remain popular with file sharing services that don’t own the underlying rights, such as YouTube, Veoh, Revver, DailyMotion, Break and others. Most content owners are still not very comfortable with making their content available on any site,” adds Karbasfrooshan.
Indeed, CBS precludes embedding to selected sites, NBC/News Corp.’s joint venture plans to make its content embeddable, but the site itself has yet to launch, so it remains to be seen to what extent users can run with the content and put it where they wish.
“When we launched in January 2006, we were uncertain of what route we’d take to grow and finance the company. YouTube had yet to make the embedding feature a no-brainer. We were unsure of how media companies and VCs would react if we opened up our content to allow for embedding … so we played it safe initially and disabled the option.
“Throughout 2006, we built one of the more eclectic, timeless and advertiser-friendly libraries of web video content around. In 2007, we ramped-up our syndication business by partnering up with some of the leading consumer distribution properties online who allow embedding. At that point, it simply became illogical to allow video embedding off of our distribution partner sites and not our own site,” concedes Karbasfrooshan, stating that, “we’ve built an insurmountable lead in video production; this move just makes our high-quality, informative and entertaining content more ubiquitous online and creates more viral marketing opportunities.”
In addition to Blip.tv, Mojo Supreme has partnered with other best of breed partners in its relaunch: its CMS is built on the industry-leading open source Typo3 software and the BloggerMojo.com blog network — consisting of 18 blogs — will continue to be powered by Wordpress.
Additional features include:
- Mojo Supreme’s complete database of content is now tagged to create a far better and easier user navigation experience.
- Users can now bookmark content to social bookmarking services Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Delicio.us, Slashdot.org, Furl, Fark, NewsVine, Blogmarks and many more.
- WatchMojo.com’s video player size has nearly doubled from the 340×190 size to 480×270 but remains in the widescreen, anamorphic 16×9 format. Recently, it was rumoured that industry leader YouTube would be adopting this format, too.
- The video player toggles to full-screen view upon demand.
- Cross publishing of all content on Mojo Supreme on all content pages.
- Feedburner’s services are now implemented across all blogs.
“We’re applying the upside of social media to proprietary content to create a compelling service to users and advertisers,” concludes Karbasfrooshan.
As the company continues to publish for the Web and build up its Internet syndication network, it has also begun to syndicate its content in the high-growth out-of-home digital network market and signed some deals to push its content onto television, which at $75B is a far larger advertising market than the web video advertising sector. Estimates for online video advertising market by 2011 have ranged anywhere from $4.3B according to eMarketer to $10B by Understanding & Solutions.
About WatchMojo.com
WatchMojo.com is one of the largest producers, publishers and syndicators of web video on the web, and has begun to extend its distribution in the wireless, out-of-home digital network and television markets. It is the Web TV unit of Mojo Supreme, a privately held, self-funded digital media, technology and services company launched in 2006.
About Mojo Supreme
Mojo Supreme is a digital media, services and technology company founded in 2006. The company indexes, aggregates and creates contextual content along the most popular vertical categories: Automotive, Business, Comedy, Education, Fashion, Film, Food, Lifestyle, Health, Music, Parenting, Politics, Space & Science, Sports, Technology, Travel and Video Games.
The company’s flagship property is the WatchMojo.com web video, one of the largest producer, publishers and syndicators of original video content. Its other units include the MetaMojo.com search unit (which includes both a vertical search network and video meta search engine); the StreetMojo.com contest community; TenMojo.com, the largest Top 10 reference website and the BloggerMojo.com news network, which consists of 18 blogs.
Contact:
Ashkan Karbasfrooshan
WatchMojo.com
514/448-1631
Ash @ MojoSupreme.com
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I’ve stopped watching TV. Don’t get me wrong, when I see how happy Big Brother [insert insanely high series number here] makes my wife, I am quite confident that TV still produces riveting programming. But many - present company included - can’t be bothered.
NewTeeVee points to an IBM study that claims:
The global findings overwhelmingly suggest personal Internet time rivals TV time. Among consumer respondents, 19 percent stated spending six hours or more per day on personal Internet usage, versus nine percent of respondents who reported the same levels of TV viewing. 66 percent reported viewing between one to four hours of TV per day, versus 60 percent who reported the same levels of personal Internet usage.
Consumers are seeking consolidated, trustworthy content, recognition and community when it comes to mobile and Internet entertainment. Armed with PC, mobile and interactive content and tools, consumers are vying for control of attention, content and creativity. Despite natural lags among marketers, advertising revenues will follow consumers’ habits.
To effectively respond to this power shift, IBM sees advertising agencies going beyond traditional creative roles to become brokers of consumer insights; cable companies evolving to home media portals; and broadcasters and publishers racing toward new media formats. Marketers in turn are being forced to experiment and make advertising more compelling, or risk being ignored.
“Consumers are demonstrating their desire for both wired and wireless access to content: an average of 81 percent of consumers surveyed globally indicated they’ve watched or want to watch PC video, and an average of 42 percent indicated they’ve watched or want to watch mobile video,” said Bill Battino, Communications Sector managing partner, IBM Global Business Services. “Given the rising power of individuals and communities, media and entertainment industry players will have to become much better at providing permission-based advertising and related consumer-driven ratings services.”
The steady growth of consumer adoption of digital music, video, and other entertainment services — though markets are still small by comparison to traditional media — show households are no longer “one size fits all,” and content providers and marketers must follow suit. 23 percent of respondents reported using a portable music service (e.g., iTunes); seven percent reported having a video content subscription for their mobile phones; 11 percent reported a PC-based music service; and 18 percent reported an online newspaper subscription.
Wow, seems like things are shifting to the Web faster than I thought… well, not sure if my wife thinks so too, she seems very much into Big Brother XIX, whatever that is.
So, the news is out and everyone’s adding their two cents:
Google will be introducing overlay ads on YouTube.
I’ll say a few things (We partner with YouTube as a content producer).
On the one hand,
- There’s nothing revolutionary about what Google is doing in video advertising with YouTube, suggesting that
- Google Co. seems quite content with its place as the leader of search and is willing to give up the video lead to someone else, thinking it can always buy them afterwards.
- But, I don’t think it takes something radical.
- After all, serving up text ads alongside organic results propelled Google to where it’s now, and that was already being done by GoTo and Mamma, amongst others (worked for Mamma in 2000)
- Then again, there are two major elements: YouTube’s size - at 3B streams per month - is as dominating in video as Google’s search queries were in search once it pulled away from its peers.
- Last year I ran some numbers on how much YouTube should be making per month ($7.5M) just off display ads, but it in fact sold $15M in all of 2006. Now that it has signed licensing deals with content owners, it can turn it up with more “effective” (read intrusive) ads, and charge more. Today, thankfully, Henry Blodget ran some numbers and while his range is pretty wide, it does offer guidance on what might happen. Ain’t it nice to have a former analyst blogging amongst us?
- With avoiding pre-rolls, YouTube is willing to risk not being at the forefront of video ads if it allows it not to rock the boat with users.- Why do I say that? I think content producers who use YouTube are on the same page: use the more effective (read high-paying) ads like intermericals and pre-rolls so long as it’s not overkill, because that’s why we don’t mind giving you content. Sure, the branding helps, but we want revenue. And to get revenue, we need ad formats that advertisers want.
- Will advertisers want overlay? Who knows. But Google did not apply display and CPM pricing models to search… so maybe an overlay will work, time will tell.
- Ultimately though, remember one thing: hitherto Google had very little demographic data on its users, it had all of the click stream data in turn, effectively, it had a lot of behavioral data, but by buying Youtube, where most viewers log in and create profiles, it can offer marketers video inventory based on content and demographics, that makes Google far more powerful.
-Donna Bogatin argues that this all makes YouTube less soulful… something that began when it created a tiered-system. I am biased since I’m in that supposed elite, mind you, but I think YouTube is so vast, so sprawling, that most users don’t care about the tiered system, and I’d doubt it UGC uploaders frankly expect advertisers to view their content as they would the content of a professional traditional or new media content producer. But, alas, I am very biased.
- Next, maybe YouTube could do something about the comment spam. Sheesh.
