Two significant announcements

Adobe Systems intends to add support for a video compression standard that will bring high-definition video to Flash-based streaming content on the Web.

The updated Flash Player also will be able to take advantage of hardware acceleration in most PCs' graphics cards and is optimized for dual-core processors. The new features will be appearing as part of an update to Flash Player 9 in the latter part of the year.

A new YouTube ad model. YouTube will introduce a new type of video ad, which it said was unobtrusive and kept users in control of what they saw.

The ads, which appear 15 seconds after a user begins watching a video clip, take the form of an overlay on the bottom fifth of the screen, not unlike the tickers that display headlines during television news programs.

A user can ignore the overlay, which will disappear after about 10 seconds, or close it. But if the user clicks on it, the video they were watching will stop and a video ad will begin playing. Once the ad is over, or if a user clicks on a box to close it, the original video will resume playing from the point where it was stopped.

It will be fascinating to see what reaction this creates! Dick Stroud

Video sub titles

Now this is a very smart idea. The above video is about “Creative Commons”, an organisation that provides free tools to let authors, scientists and educators mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. The video will explain all.

The video has had multiple language sub titles added via dotsub.com – another free service. This is a really easy way of providing your video in multiple languages. Dick Stroud

Explaining complicated products products

Communications USA sells two way radio wireless kit. Rather than relying on a product spec sheet the company uses video to explain what the devices do and how they differ from each other. The content was created by Groovy Like a Movie.

I am sure we will see a lot more use of video for this application. Dick Stroud

Video’s use in crisis PR

It is interesting to see that Mattel are using video as part of its response to the mass recall of toys.

I have to say that I think it could be done a lot better and given more prominence on the site but at least the company has recognised video’s role.

This is Mattel's CEO Bob Eckert talking about the product recall. Dick Stroud

Who pays for the bandwidth demands of video

The BBC reports that ISPs are getting worried about the surge in Web video and its impact on their networks - more accurately on what they can charge for their services.

If the BBC ever gets its iPlayer working properly (and that is a big if) it will join the host of companies that are already providing Web TV and that will create a need for more bandwidth that somebody has to pay for. Let me guess that it won’t be the BBC.

Here are a couple of interesting statistics from the article:

The BBC iPlayer is about 30 times as bandwidth hungry as a YouTube video.

By 2011, according to Screen Digest, the number of pieces content viewed across the net will explode from 520.2 million (today’s figure) to 2.3 billion.

There has been an assumption that the Internet has a limitless ability to absorb whatever volumes of traffic that new media create. It sounds to me like the alarm bells are being to ring.

This theme is the subject of an article in the Wall Street Journal. According to Cisco Systems, US Web video sites now transmit more data per month than the entire Web in 2000. Wow. Dick Stroud

The transition from amateur video producer to professional

This article in Internet Video Magazine is the best one that I have seen about ways in which the amateur video maker can make a few bucks out of their video productions.

The article starts … maybe you are an upcoming video producer, shooter or editor. You recognize that the web is the wild frontier of video and film and you want to get a piece of it. Or maybe you are running a business and you are smart enough to recognize that maybe you can make some additional money by leveraging your products and services via web video.

Yes, you can make money in web video. You don't need to be a big-time producer with deep pockets. You don't need to have graduated form a top notch film school. You don't even need fancy video cameras and video editing gear.

Yep, this is definitely all about Guerrilla Video. Dick Stroud

'Factlet' Web video

I read about commoncraft on Karl Long’s blog, which in itself is certainly worth a visit.

Commoncraft produce short videos that explain what things are and how things work. This, “I need to know” training mechanism certainly works for me. This example is about social bookmarking.

You can see lots of other examples on the commoncraft YouTube channel. Dick Stroud

Dynamite Surfing viral video

This viral campaign has been doing the rounds for some time.

Martin Lindstrom, a guy who has written zillions of books about branding, has an interesting interview with the CEO and founder of GoViral, the team who developed the media plan that achieved the phenomenal word-of-mouth success of Quicksilver’s viral marketing success.

The video has been viewed by more than 20 million people online around the world. In Lindstrom’s view the video exemplifies brand engagement in the digital world.

The ad was made by Saatchi & Saatchi Denmark.

Nearly forgot (and I suspect I am not the only one) it is promoting Quiksilver, the clothes company. Dick Stroud

Video and the top performing online campaigns

Dynamic Logic has announced the most effective online advertising campaigns of 2006 (UK and US) by evaluating how well each campaign achieved its branding objectives.

The thing that most interested me was the following statement:

Interestingly, most of the U.S. campaigns utilized some form of video ads, which previous Dynamic Logic research has shown can effectively cut through the clutter, yielding higher awareness for brands on average compared to online advertising in general.

Video ads can also provide a successful format to communicate to consumers. Many of the video ads appearing among the top campaigns happened to be repurposed TV spots that were adapted for online, and also implemented a variety of video formats, including pre-roll, in-banner and interstitial ads.

Companion units were placed near the video, allowing viewers to interact with the ads and maintaining constant brand presence while the videos were playing.

The top U.K. campaigns included two cinema campaigns for Adrift and The Sentinel, which utilized video as part of the campaign assets. You know there must be something in this video thing. Dick Stroud