At a recent Massachusetts Innovation and Technology Exchange (MITX) event regarding online video distribution and discovery, I was struck by the wide range of companies that were represented in the audience. There were technology companies, manufacturers, merchants, and nonprofits, and their interest was all aligned around using media to further their businesses.
After the panel discussion, it occurred to me that the meteoric rise of YouTube and the online consumer’s embrace of video show that virtually every company has woken up and realized that it needs to be a media company.
What I mean by this is that in a market where video is increasingly inexpensive to produce and highly efficient at communicating a message, a company able to embrace the medium and make it a core competence can establish a distinct marketing advantage.
This paradigm shift is driven by three primary factors:
1) Online video consumption: The U.S. market for online video is currently 238 million unique users, according to Comscore, and is projected to be 168 million by 2011. YouTube alone has more than 40 million unique visitors.
2) Online video production: Google now offers video ads for its AdSense campaigns, and Google has recently reported that video AdSense ads receive a higher click-through rate than traditional text ads. At the same time, an entire market is sprouting around democratizing the use of video by the small merchant, with companies such as SpotRunner and TurnHere creating platforms for “instant” video ads, including the ability to purchase media slots across cable networks and internet inventory.
3) Online video distribution: Google’s integration of YouTube videos into its main search results is also creating the need to consider YouTube “optimization” as a marketing capability. By next year, YouTube is likely to deliver more than 40 percent of all video streams online, almost 10-times the next-largest competitor. In addition, sites like Vator.tv and Techcrunch.com now accept video pitches and marketing pieces, and they create social networks around various topics to enable a marketplace for video promotion. Yellow Pages sites like superpages.com are now allowing video advertising as part of their package of services for local merchants. In addition, new solutions for video search engine optimization are making it possible to drive the same kind of organic discovery and traffic from search engines as is currently practiced in the text world.
Implications These new realities force us to re-think our approach to getting our messages out. Paid search advertising taught us that the line between advertising and information was entirely dependent on the context of the user and that highly relevant information to a user’s query could generate significant interest, whether paid-for or not. Video extends this even further. A marketing message now needs to be thought of as an opportunity to inform a user about a specific topic rather than just shill for a product.
In an offline world where we have relatively little choice over what ads we have to view, the need to inform is less imperative. In an online world, there is infinite competition for users’ attention, and the need to ensure that your media is discoverable where your users are likely to be looking for it -- and delivers a timely and informative message when they find it -- becomes crucial.
In a world where every company is a media company, the medium and the message become equally important.
Certainly video is inexpensive to create, and what the heck, storage capacity is also inexpensive now, but there's another reason for this proliferation:
People don't read anymore! Why get information and entertainment through words, which might involve thinking, when you can get it passively through moving pictures with sound?
It is true that every company is a media company and reason is the ofcourse demand. To add to some of the motives behind this turn can be :
1)people are getting more awareness and getting clever and so it is more challenging to attract the coustomers for thier products so fancy video ads attracts many than a boring text ads.
2)There is higher chance of triggering the needs (mostly not actual needs) by making veiwers visualise how important thier product are to thier life.
3)Moreover the trend of text is kind of dying when it comes to the video which takes less time to capture the whole point along with giving a good stuff for "time-passing"....
"Internet Evolution" can also be a "Media Company" (For sale of good ideas...)by making a move towards keepning these discussion in some video kind of stuff and see how more minds are involved and can evolve even better.
Very good observation... This might be true for the time being, but it won't be for long, at least till the Media Company's wakeup and upped their game, by producing content that are of superior quality and of more relevance to the audience, also must appeal both at the intellectual and emotional level... Till then, for now we can all pretend to be Media Company.
I agree, especially with your description of what the value video brings: entertainment, etc. -- not just information. I would say, emotion.
And on average, certainly for larger companies, a multimedia agency. However, the other aspect of YouTube is the vast volume -- and popularity -- of amateur video. With video cameras so cheap, and editing software cheap and easy to learn, anyone can create a video: customers, children, employees, and yes, ad agencies. But the latter will have to, already are having to compete with consumers.
might be more accurate... I still want my auction provider to specialize in running auctions, and my bookseller to know books, but companies will need to find good advertising partners to stay on top of the newest multimedia presentations. I think good media companies that know how to create compelling, attention-grabbing, informative, and entertaining short ad spots will be in great demand in the coming years.
Tom, you mention several tools and technologies in your blog that are enabling Google users and others to raise their video profiles. Has anyone else out there heard of others? I've heard of Visible Measures, Veeple, Clashorama. Any more?
The ThinkerNet does not reflect the views of TechWeb. The ThinkerNet is an informal means of communication to members and visitors of the Internet Evolution site. Individual authors are chosen by Internet Evolution to blog. Neither Internet Evolution nor TechWeb assume responsibility for comments, claims, or opinions made by authors and ThinkerNet bloggers. They are no substitute for your own research and should not be relied upon for trading or any other purpose.
As the Web continues to evolve, there has been one key constant: the importance of text in driving search and navigation across the Internet.It’s not surprising that text remains the most efficient and effective method of communicating “meaning.”As we move toward a “Semantic” Web, text becomes no less important.But how will the Semantic Web account for the vast amount of audio and video moving onto the Web?
Getting to Work on Smart Work: How IT Is Transforming the Implementation of the 'Internet of Things' Organizations in all industry sectors are becoming more instrumented, interconnected, and intelligent -- and that's changing the way they approach virtually every facet of their operations. It's up to IT to help organizations adopt a "Three I's" approach that leverages the emerging Internet of Things and enables them to work smarter. READ THIS eBOOK
your weekly update of news, analysis, and
opinion from Internet Evolution - FREE! REGISTER HERE
Wanted! Site Moderators Internet Evolution is looking for a handful of readers to help moderate the message boards on our site – as well as engaging in high-IQ conversation with the industry mavens on our thinkerNet blogosphere. The job comes with various perks, bags of kudos, and GIANT bragging rights. Interested?
To save this item to your list of favorite Internet Evolution content so you can find it later in your Profile page, click the "Save It" button next to the item.
Saunders is wrong on Hulu, Fritz thinks. By most measures it's been
a success, and there's no reason this model won't become even bigger in the next three years. Oh, and he hates Steve's hat.
The problem with telepresence is that it's not universally accepted, because video calling isn't. While we can all do video calling, we also apparently worry too much about how we look. If we want HD telepresence in our future, we have to dress down, mess up our hair, and dive into our online life.
AT&T showed off lots of improvements to its IPTV service this week. The overall message: IP, Good! Cable, Bad! Phil predicts what it all means for the broadcast proletariat.
Ireland has joined two other countries in enacting a three-strikes disconnect rule for folk caught file sharing. But 80% of perps don’t even know they are doing it!
There's a public-policy war on copyright that nobody is winning, and inconsistencies in viewpoint and interpretation seem to be multiplying. We need to step back and think our policies over again, or we risk having a strategy that fails everyone.
Ultraviolet is an industry-wide attempt to standardize video content delivery across multiple platforms. Apart from the fact that it’s based in the cloud, relies on the DRM system, and isn’t backed by Apple… it sounds great!
The FCC's Sixth Broadband Report has a hidden secret. But here’s a hint: The regulatory body plans to regulate broadband as a telecommunications service.
Once defined by epic journeys, planning, and maps, the phrase "on the road" takes on new meaning in a digital age, where we can make all our decisions using our connected devices en route.
Digg
Del.icio.us
Reddit
Email This
TWEET THIS
