With the recent news of YouTube deleting more than 2 billion “unnatural” views from the website and regardless of which side you’re on in the debate of whether or not this actually happened, it’s apparent that the video platform has had it with the violation of “TOU #4 Section H”.  Each of the users who has violated the code, received a warning email clearly stating that this is a breach of YouTube terms of service and that if they are caught again, their account will be terminated. To put in brief, YouTube has had it with black hat views.

How does this relate to you and your brand?

There have been cases where videos have received up to 60, 000 views with just $50; however, you definitely “get what you pay for”  to put in nicely. Views can be received with automated bots that can manipulate the count to make it look like someone really watched the video, when in reality it was played without any eyeballs gracing a screen.To get the views, the services use a relatively simple system. First they embed the given video on a random website somewhere and set it to autoplay. Then they use bots to direct thousands of rented IP addresses from around the world to the web address. Since the video autoplays, each hit the site gets racks up another view.

There have also been cases of “link tricks” which do not count – where a call to action on a link takes someone to a completely irrelant video (eg. “click here to win $100″ taking you to a video about a cat) similarly presenting bogus numbers to clients.

One of the ways to catch these fakers is through YouTube  Insights – just imagine the embarrassment experienced when those who had purchased fake views had no statistics showing up and yet somehow had over 100, 000 views! Another way is through the traffic source or by viewing the comments  - again, just imagine the embarrassment  when very clean and corporate companies use Adult or Casino or when a video has a high amount of views with zero comments.

-Analytics screenshot from one of VMG distributed videos. 

How can you avoid fake views on YouTube?

Make sure that your approach to online video distribution is legit by following these steps.

Work with professionals who have a good track record. 

What other videos has the agency distributed and what was their success rate? How did they go about doing it? Was the agency behind the “Evan Longoria’s Crazy Bare Hand Catch”  7 million view viral hit that helped the razor makers to jump their previous YouTube videos from fewer than 20,000 views to seven million? Perhaps the agency has assisted leading food brands in distributing cooking videos to a target audience of women, or an opening of a grocery store targeted a demographic who lives in the surrounding area to attract new customers with a coupon? Whatever it is, make sure they can walk the talk.

Get a guarantee.

It’s okay to be hesitant when entering a new realm or hiring on a new company. As an example, VMG offers a video marketing service guaranteeing at least 500,000 views in four weeks. If a video fails to reach that—which has yet to happen—VMG will charge a much lower rate tied to the number of views.

Communicate your expectations. 

What exactly are your goals with the video? Do you want brand awareness? Or, would you like more engagement with the video in forms of directing viewers to your website, estore, or Facebook page? What demographic would you like to engage with the video? Make sure to communicate your expectations so you can track the success.

Good luck!
VMG

Clicks are out and engagement is in. 

Earlier in May, the YouTube video chart was released:

Since December, views on YouTube have dropped 28%, and March views are only slightly above what they were a year ago.

However, this trend is an intended shift by the Google-owned channel.

After a $100 million investment in content channels, the focus has shifted from a video search engine filled with “snack size content” like skateboarding dogs and LOLcats to enticing, full fledged, engaging videos.

And this also not by fluke is more appealing to advertisers.

Cristos Goodrow, YouTube’s director of engineering, specified that the goal is for users to watch more and click less. Over the years, YouTube has gathered data about which videos were getting views, to serve up recommendations and get users to click on another video. The site would track the length of views up to 30 seconds, primarily to make sure each click led to an actual view. Now it’s tracking across longer timeframes to see if viewers watched two or three minutes of content.

It appears to be working. While views have dropped of late, the amount of minutes users spend watching YouTube has grown over the past year by 57% to more than 61 billion minutes in March 2012, according to ComScore. The average length of a video view has grown a full minute to four minutes in the past year. The consumer is ready for longer content.

So what’s the motive?

Well, like any organization, YouTube has a business to run and there’s corporate motive at play. Longer viewing means more opportunity to show viewers ads, either through strings of videos that play automatically with ads in between or longer videos with TV-like breaks. And engaged viewers are also thought to be in a more receptive mind-set for brand advertising.

This move also helps take YouTube videos outside the desktop computer. YouTube is in the process of trying to get its channel guide standardized on all apps and devices that carry YouTube, such as tablets, smart TVs and set-tops such as TiVo. It is also available as an app on 350 million non-PC devices, including iPhones, Xboxes and Samsung smart TVs.

To put it simply, YouTube has invested in restructuring its video measurement metrics to help advertisers connect with the right consumers. Those consumers who are more willing to spend watching a 15 minute engaging video rather than a 30 second viral clip. It’s much more effective when the right eyes in the right frame of mind land on your video rather than by a “clicking accident”. Targeted views and engagement are everything. 

It’s not just about a single video but rather your channel and engagement strategy as a whole. The goal is to drive engagement and connecting viewers with the best content by starting out with targeted views and continuing with targeted engagement.

We’re ready, YouTube!

Source: AdAge

It’s safe to say that having online video as part of a company’s marketing efforts is finally universally accepted. 

Measuring online video Return On Investment (ROI) is not much different than a traditional marketing campaign. If anything, it presents opportunity for analytics that a traditional campaign would not be able to deliver with a much more targeted reach. When videos on YouTube are able to receive millions of views within days and Comscore releases reports stating that on average a person watches 14.8 hours of online video a month; it’s not the matter of trying to prove that online video marketing is effective.The quick pace of new media in today’s marketing landscape has us trying to keep up with the latest trends more often than not with C-levels wanting to see numbers justifying these efforts. The C suite wants to know that the marketing dollars are achieving the highest value and ROI while receiving the desired results.

So how do you measure ROI of online video?

No matter what kind of video initiative your company wants to execute – whether it’s internal communications or consumer oriented – you’ve got to be able to show the results. Here are some tips that can help you.

1. Know your objectives.

The most essential component of executing a campaign successfully is having clear goals. The simplest way to measure return on what you’re investing is knowing your target audience and what message you are trying to deliver.

Your objectives may vary. For example, if you’re trying to promote product sampling, your objective may be to have individuals register for a coupon on your website after viewing the video. On the contrary, if you’re executing an online video for internal communications between various offices, your objective may be saving on travel costs. Whatever it may be, figure it out prior to execution.

2. Use Available Analytics.

With various analytics tools, it is easier than ever before to evaluate how others are interacting with your video. You are able to examine which videos are being watched until the very end, at what point others may drop off, the demographic of your audience and how far the video is shared.

You are also able to create a model to calculate what the engagements are worth based on your messaging objective and how others are interacting with your video. If you’re looking to promote sampling and want to calculate what the engagement is worth, assigning a value for each sign up is a great way to measure success. For example, every person who watches your video and engages fully by registering for your sampling promo can each equal to $100 of investment. Working with these numbers will make it easier to draw comparisons between media channels.

Similarly, ROI doesn’t necessarily have to equal a dollar figure. It can be social interactions, conversations around your brand and those very important recommendations by your brand ambassadors. If your video is getting shared by your target demographic and this audience is recommending your video to their friends, the reach and engagement is just as valuable as a dollar figure.

3. Partner up with experts.

There is no point in producing expensive high quality content without a distribution strategy. Online platforms have an advantage over traditional platforms in being able to target the right demographic and this is something your campaign should benefit from.

It’s rare that a video goes viral and is shared without a push and without a doubt, a successful online video campaigns require the same level of planning for a targeted distribution to ensure desired exposure to a relevant audience.

If you are able to, it’s beneficial to partner up with experts to help your campaign achieve maximum return – whether it’s perfecting your analytics or helping your video receive the target views it needs. Video marketing agencies like VMG Cinematic specialize in not only producing broadcast quality content for the web but also ensuring that the video gets in front of targeted eye balls.

Let’s take Canadian luxury fashion retailer, Holt Renfrew, as an example. At one time, The HR YouTube channel hosted 22 videos with a total of 92,000 video views; however 84% of those views came from only 2 of the 22 videos with the help of VMG. Furthermore, these two videos have also accounted for total of 84% of total consumer interaction on brand’s channel. 

Partnering up with online video industry leaders can provide you access to numbers and reports that provide in depth analytics and more importantly, results that justify your online video ROI.

4. Don’t be afraid to get creative.

Measuring online video ROI isn’t always an exact science and with a non traditional platform, you have room to come up with creative and different ways to validate your efforts.

Online video can often drives traffic back to your website and one way is to look at what that traffic would have cost if it had been acquired by a push advertisement.

For example, comparing the pay per click model and the received traffic you can use the following:

Running banner ads on a website with $3 per click which results in 300 unique visitors to your website. This traffic of 300 people to your website is then worth $900.

Although this approach offers an easy dollar figure, it’s crucial to note that the difference in pay per click banner ad traffic and organic post video engagement differs greatly and the value through organic engagement is much higher.

To conclude, online video enhances and creates the most engaging online user experiences. When it comes to ROI, the measurement metrics differ greatly depending on the specific goals. However, success lays in in the ability to target a specific audience based on demographic, geographic and contextual parameters.

I have been hanging out with a lot of kids lately. It’s my age, it seems. The tables have turned and there are no longer get-togethers with friends and family in which small offspring are not involved. I have been watching them, in their new lives, as my parents and their parents before must have also, with fascination. Marveling at how different the realities of their childhood will be from my own. A case in point, my parents didn’t own a computer until my later years of elementary school and Duck Hunt was the biggest, most technologically advanced thing to happen in my living room!

Children of the current generation are already on Facebook just days, sometimes minutes (serious social media dedication on their parents’ part) after birth. They comb through playlists searching episodes of Dora the Explorer from their strollers in the grocery store. They sit tucked in bed curled up with an iPad alphabet game instead of a book. This is reality and, understandably, new parents are wondering: is this ok?

In chatting with friends and in researching more scholarly debates, schools of thought on the subject of social media and kids are as varying as Twitter handles. Some believe that children should be shielded from social media, and media overall, for as long as possible. They argue that social networks fail to really educate kids about the real world, substituting video games for books, cyber chats for community or human interaction and promoting mindless consumerism over serious learning.

Others feel that media-savvy kids are genuinely unavoidable and necessary. They feel that it is a modern parent’s responsibility to allow their children to be on social networks, because children should learn about the world and technology – and media and the worldwide web are highly effective and realistic ways of doing so.

Of course in any debate there are many sides. I do appreciate them all and not being a parent myself, I have yet to come to any truly definitive social media child rearing intentions. However, having invested a career in marketing and social media communication, I appreciate and recognize the fact that it is only going to play more of a role, not less, in the future of our society. This being the case, perhaps efforts to keep children from it might be fruitless?

I was most surprised by the concerns about “reality” (and social media’s detachment from it) that came up in some of the perspectives I uncovered on this topic. I recognize that video games and TV are not reality, and that children should be taught the difference. But online social interactions with other individuals, be they Facebook comments, YouTube responses, or general emails, are very much real. Rather than shy away from social media, for fear of it not being a meaningful interaction, shouldn’t children be encouraged to recognize that what they put out into cyberspace is in fact received by other people in the real world? Most importantly, they should be taught that there can be both positive and negative repercussions when interacting via online forms of communication, which can mirror those of speaking face to face.

Like any other lessons in life, the next generation will need to be taught the values and risks of social interaction online. How to be safe. How to communicate, yet at the same time harbor discretion for personal protection and privacy. How to embrace it, as an enjoyable and positive element of their social development, a forum for creativity and expression. Most importantly, we should help our children understand that they can all hurt, anger, influence and inspire with the messages they send and persona they project online.

At times kids can surprise us, in their ability to digest information and entertainment with an exceptional level of candid maturity. They have the ability to distinguish reality from fantasy, right from wrong. This is made evident through one of my subscribed YouTube shows, “Kids React to Online Videos”. Their responses are not only hilarious, but also showcase how easily they recognize non-sensical entertainment for just what it is.

Charlie Sheen

Fred

Undoubtably there are media dangers: teens posting unmonitored material, lost cognitive skills through video game comas, and it is true that these are unique to our generation as parents. However, risks in child rearing are not new. My grandmother, in the mid-fifties, used to let her children out for the day into the once suburban woodlands of Mississauga and just hoped that they would show up for dinner. That must have been a bit concerning too!

In summary, a child can be safeguarded for only so long. After all, documentation of their formative years no longer live in dusty basement albums, but rather on their parents’ Macs or, more likely, Mum or Dad or even Grandma’s social media page. What hope do they really have of avoidance? So for now, I aspire to offer my future children opportunity, confidence and wisdom in all aspects of their life. With some diligence, if such principals are applied to a strong and dedicated Social Media upbringing, perhaps my kids might just blog and tweet for the better!

I have to admit I haven’t heard of Greg Jarboe before, but I sure as hell liked what he had to say in this video. And yes you should check out the Monty Python YouTube case study he mentions because it is truly eye opening to the potential of YouTube as a direct marketing and sales conversion tool (Monty Python DVD sales went up 23,000%!).

Here’s the link to the full Monty Python case study

Check out my recent Q&A in Toronto Marketing Blog with Sandra Bekhor on the topic of marketing professional service firms with online video: http://torontomarketing.blogspot.com/2009/09/marketing-professional-service-firms.html

- Evan

YouTube is the premier destination in watching and sharing online videos. Increasingly companies have been jumping on the bandwagon and using YouTube in order to reach their target markets, as well as develop interactive relationships with their audience. It appears as though everyone has migrated online.

The core reasons for YouTube’s success lay in unique areas that cannot be covered by traditional marketing methods. YouTube is more effective for both the consumer and advertiser because of an instant lead to a product/service through a website, an interaction with the audience (unlike TV + print), cheaper cost,  and it’s unrestricted availability 24/7 at the consumer’s convenience. What other method of advertising can you say that about?

Success stories:

“ Family Guy”
Seth MacFarlane of “Family Guy” and Media Rights Capital knew they needed to be creative and break through the online cluster so they created a web-only collection of episodes called ‘ Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy’. Instead of simply building a website and hoping people stumble upon it, they pushed the content to the public by creating YouTube channels that were distributed through out YouTube and Google’s Content Network.
End result? In just a short time, ‘ Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy’ became one of the most popular phenomena on the web.

Lionsgate
In promotion of “ Forbidden Kingdom”  Lionsgate  did not simply want to be airing trailers on TV. They also made sure to take their Internet presence beyond simply the film’s website. The Google ad network extended the reach everywhere from search ads to buzz targeting. It gave a reason for the audience to “come back” to view the brand. And come back they did, 3 million times.

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I recently read an article from the Wall Street Journal about Viral Video that instantly sparked some interest. It focused mainly around Judson Laipply, or as most would know him, the guy from “The Evolution of Dance” video. The article explains that when he uploaded his video on YouTube in the spring of 2006 he had little to no idea what a viral video was or the amount of success he was about to receive. Without any advertising at all the video spread across the Internet eventually reaching 100 million + views.

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Nintendo has an interesting spot up on their Experience Wii YouTube channel. It doesn’t seem that special at first, but give it 30 seconds – it’s pretty surprising.

How do they do it? Well without getting too geeky on you…

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YouTube just launched a new addition to their Insight metrics package called “Hot Spots”

Hot Spots lets you drill down into your video’s timeline, giving you an unprecedented look at how audiences feel about each moment of your content. (more…)