Watching video is becoming age neutral

According to Nielsen Online, YouTube continued to rank as the No. 1 video Web brand with 5.5 billion total streams in April 2009. During this month, people between the ages of 35 and 49, was the fastest growing demographic in time spent viewing per viewer, increasing 29% during the past six months.

This blog posting discusses the issues of the changing demographics of Web video users. Dick Stroud

The rise of interactive video and its implications for online marketing

An interesting article.

According to comScore's US video metrics, 14.5bn online videos were watched during March 2009 - a massive 11% increase from February. The UK is probably exhibiting the same level of growth.

This article considers the implications of this massive growth and its impact on consumer expectations about their online video experience. The more people watch on line the higher their expectations.

I guess it is like the early days of the Web when animated graphics seemed amazing stuff – amazement rapidly moved to indifference that quickly changed to boredom before ending up in annoyance. There are lessons for us to remember when considering the way Web video will develop. Dick Stroud

Creating Persuasive Interactive Video for E-Commerce

The author of this blog posting asks the question: “should video interactivity be applied to e-commerce video”? His answer is that interactive techniques should be applied to video when shoppers are both highly motivated to engage in a behaviour we trying to drive (usually, but not always, this is a purchase), and when those same shoppers simultaneously have a high ability to complete the behaviour.

This all sounds a tad academic but the details of the posting explain all. A really good contribution to our knowledge about Web video. Dick Stroud

Google partners with agencies to research online video

This is an interesting development.

Google is seeking to increase its understanding of how users consume Web video and interact with advertising. To improve the company’s insight it will be working with agencies, focusing on YouTube.

Google is also working on an incentive programme for agencies to encourage buying across the company's video display network, and so drive Web video advertising growth and develop scalable and effective campaigns.

This development is to be welcome but hopefully all concerned realise that YouTube type hosting and delivery is yesterday’s use of video. Still very interesting, but it is looking backward rather than to the future.

Still you can’t blame the company trying to sell more ads. Dick Stroud

Do's and Don'ts of Online Video Advertising

Two things. Firstly, the Web video report can now be found as part of AdAge.

Secondly, the most recent edition contains an article about web video advertising from the marketing director of Turnhere the company I reckon will make a fortune from the Web video revolution.

It is a short sharp punchy article so I will not do it the disservice of trying to summarise. Just read it. Dick Stroud

YouTube tests geo video search

YouTube is apparently trying to improve its search features. It seems the company plans to broadly add geographic search to the site so that people can find video clips tagged with specific locations, according to a report from the blog NewTeeVee.

The company is already testing the geographic search feature by including a thumbnail of Google Maps in a search for a specific location, e.g. "London techy events," along with related videos from the area. People can also move the location dot on a Google Map to see new related videos in that area.

Over a year ago, YouTube began allowing people who uploaded videos to tag clips with a location. But the company had yet to offer the ability to search videos by geography. Meanwhile, Google Earth had started giving people links to location-specific videos in a YouTube layer.

Video and the future of the Internet

How many people would want to take the time to download from YouTube and listen to a three-year-old reciting the plot of the first Star Wars movie. Seven million people.

That is small beer compared with watching "The Evolution of Dance" on YouTube (87 million downloads) which is equivalent to transmitting 250,000 DVDs' worth of data across the Internet. Wow.

YouTube is just the tip of the iceberg. Netflix now streams videos to its subscribers over the Internet, and both Amazon and Apple's iTunes sell movies and episodes of TV shows online. Peer-to-peer file-sharing networks have gradu­ated from transferring four-minute songs to hour-long ­Sopranos episodes. And all of these videos are higher quality--and thus more bandwidth intensive--than YouTube's.

These examples are taken from the start of an excellent article appearing in Technology Review that is about how the Internet might, or might not, cope with the deluge of video that is washing through its backbone. Dick Stroud