OK, I’m not one to take too many potshots, but I will take a little one. YouTube was able to convince the venerable Advertising Age into writing …. and I quote, “More important, …. , YouTube is selling ads against more videos than its nearest competitor has total views.” The article can be found here.

Hmm. If you’re going to make a statement like that, then you should be up for some criticism. Take a look at the following on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTuk5Uloyjg to see my problem. Take a Nike ad, and run a banner next to it, coupled with an overlay on top. I guess that counts. This is why people hate ads.

Also, does YouTube count the banner ad next to the video content into the “selling more ads” statement?

- Jayant Kadambi

So, I was forwarded this Google blog post on the future of online video. First time I’ve ever looked at the Google blog, to be honest. Anyway, not surprisingly, Chad Hurley is quite sanguine about the prospects for online video. Go figure. But seriously, given YouTube’s history over the past 3 years, it’s a pretty safe bet.   

As I’ve mentioned on these pages before, I fancy myself to be a photographer, (mostly wildlife and nature, not portraits), not that you cared. Why do I mention this?  Well, it’s amazing how when I have a video camera or a camera in my hands, people will mug for the camera, do silly things, pose, and then rush to see what it looks like and then ask if they can have a copy so they can send it willy nilly to friends and acquaintances alike. It seems human nature loves video and the social interaction that comes with sharing video. So, yes, we agree with the assessment that video has a good future.

The question on the table in our minds is really which of this video is monetisable in a systematic way that will allow the cost structures for uploading, streaming, delivering and syndicating this video content all over the planet to be supported by a method other than charity from Google’s search business. Will advertisers actually place ads in, around, over and generally associate themselves in order to make this video distribution and content creation business really blossom? Or will there be another business model around it?

Interesting times, for sure.

- Jayant Kadambi

In the past few days, both TechCrunch and the WSJ have reported about how both YouTube and VideoEgg are trying new ad formats. YouTube is rumoured to have finally capitulated to pressure and run a pre-roll. VideoEgg announced a raft of new formats. Saying I told you so is fairly pompous, bombastic and sophomoric, but I’m in that mood at the moment. Readers of these pages have heard us repeatedly state that the ad formats are not the issue. You need to find the right environment which consists of three things, the content, the user and the ad; and it’s the mix of all three that will determine the success or failure of an ad campaign. And to put a finer point on it, the ad could vary from user to user and from content-to-content. Yes, carried to the extreme, it’ll cause mass confusion and may have scalability problems, but as the market fragments and user’s can choose whatever they want, we’ll all just have to deal with that problem.

A few specific comments on the VideoEgg announcement along the lines of “I told you so” is that we’ve been running their LIVE, RICH and LOCAL ads for over a year now. Wonder when they’ll start running pre-rolls?

- Jayant Kadambi

YuMe welcomes a great addition to our music channel: Baeble Music.  Baeblemusic.com is a destination for fans of live music concerts – visitors can check out online videos of the hottest bands playing at the best venues around the country.  Baeble’s community of twenty-something music enthusiasts view concert footage, review shows and compile band profiles for emerging acts such as: The New Pornographers, Blond Redhead, Ben Kweller, The Bravery, Shout Out Louds.   In addition, Baeble Music distributes the shows through Youtube, Imeem, Veoh, Vuze, Blinkx, Babelgum, as well as key music destinations on the web.

- Rosanne Lee Vathana

Mr. Malik writes that YouTube is reportedly not making as much money as it should and if that’s true, I’m sure there are a battalion of Googlers remedying that situation (or trying to), so I won’t pontificate about that. (OK, I will, a bit). We’ve already gone on record as saying that in our estimation, advertisers want premium safe content, in a safe environment, and we’ve got tons of that. But what struck me as more interesting was the last two sentences, reproduced here for your reading pleasure - “In comparison, the number of visitors to YouTube continues to rise, making it by far the most dominant player in the market. So much so that even Hulu decided to set up a channel on YouTube to attract traffic to their site.”

Even Hulu he writes. I’m not sure how to interpret that, since CBS and others have been populating trailers of their content for some time now in an attempt to drive traffic to their destination site. In fact, at iMedia last week, Patrick Keane of CBS went on about how CBS are purchasing and producing made-for-the-web shows and populating YouTube and other sites in order to drive traffic to CBS’s audience network.

OK, now I’ll finally get to my point, which is this whole concept of seeding the online-ether with teasers that point to the real meaty content that people want to watch, presumably at your destination site or your “affiliate or audience” network, is an interesting tactic that will only increase and morph. Already there are several companies with search technologies that will promote your content on search engines, RSS Feeds and the like to get your “page-rank” higher. What I wonder is whether this method of getting more viewers is as affective, more effective or complementary to a straightforward syndication of your content to known partner sites.

- Jayant Kadambi

So I’m sure many of you have read about the recent influx of how-to video sites like 5min.com, wonderhowto.com, expertvillage.com and videojug.com. The concept is simple and there is certainly an audience for this type of content. But these niche sites are being funded by VCs, which means they’ll eventually have to become bonafide money-making businesses. They need a way to monetise these videos so people around the world can fine-tune their do-it-yourself 5-minute skills. What is the most likely way to do that, you ask? Maybe I’m a little biased, but it seems the most obvious way would be – you guessed it - through relevant contextual adverts inserted into, over or around the content.

Targeting has always been important in advertising. But just because the site is niche, micro-niche or even nano-niche (such as targeting people who are interested in learning how to patch a hole in a wall, hold a 6-month-old or even make the coolest origami paper airplane) doesn’t necessarily mean advertisers will flock there. The content must be useful to the targeted audience. The trick, though, is to reach those audiences in aggregate. With hundreds of micro-niche and nano-niche sites popping up, it’s unlikely that any will have YouTube’s reach. Advertisers don’t want to have to search through 500 niche sites looking for the perfect audience – maybe the 30-something homeowner who would be interested in the products on special at Home Depot. These advertisers need aggregation and transparent targeting.

To improve the reach, many of these sites are syndicating their content across different sites, such as blinkx, blip.tv, veoh, youtube, and others. We hope the site operators retain their advertising rights. Here at YuMe, we can hyper-target their content in aggregate and deliver meaningful reach to a very valuable audience. Because we have a large network of sites for which we’ve integrated advertising insertion, we also can help syndicate that content. As the largest dedicated online video ad network, we’re delivering million of ads. That means we’re also delivering millions of videos. For the micro-site, that increases the reach. For the advertiser, it translates to additional value. That’s what I call maximizing the niche.

- Jayant Kadambi

A stork, clearly while en-route to deliver the package to someone more deserving, mistakenly dropped an LCD flat panel Sony Vaio  PC (VGC-LT16E) on my doorstep a few weeks ago.  Rather than take the time to return the Vaio to its rightful owner, I hurried back inside the house cradling it.  Oh come on, it was really cold outside. 

It happens to be one of those computers that everyone and their brother are selling that is really a PC masquerading as a sleek flat-panel LCD TV.  Or is it a TV masquerading as a PC.  In any case, this particular one can’t be differentiated from a mid-range LCD HDTV.  It comes w/ a TV tuner, has a myriad of TV inputs, as well as the usual complement of PC paraphernalia.  So, is this really a TV with an integrated web/Internet connection, such that I can lean back in my easy chair and watch live or time-shifted TV, as well as watch downloaded online videos from NBC Direct, streamed videos from Microsoft’s Internet TV or watch big screen versions of youtube?

 Almost, but we’re not there quite yet.  From a user standpoint it looks like a TV and works like a TV, but switching between the TV usage and the PC/computer usage is fairly cumbersome and definitely not seamless.  It’d be great to have a Picture-in-Picture (PIP) capability where either the computer would be visible in a window while the “TV” was running, or vice versa.  Also applications that let the online videos (either streamed or downloaded) appear, as it were, on the TV or DVR scheduling would be a great addition.  And if weren’t for the fact that my home has wiring for cable, phone, and wired Ethernet in every possible location, I would have had wires everywhere and the installation wouldn’t have been politically feasible at all.  

Now that I’ve stated why it isn’t perfect, I must admit, it’s a fantastic improvement on a PC.  The aesthetics are great and since I have pre-installed cabling in my house, I wall mounted the PC (or is it TV) where I normally keep my desktop computer and had an electrician install a plug point behind the PC so that there are no wires showing at all.    None.  Zero.  It’s wirelessly connected to my Internet router, and plugged into the RF satellite receiver plug behind the TV.

So, now, I can lean back and watch both traditional TV, as well as Internet TV and sort of flip back and forth between the two.  I wonder whether streaming Jackass 2.5 from Blockbuster onto my TV/PC counts as using the PC or TV?  And if we had an advertising network and platform that could figure out that when I watched Heroes on TV and when I watch the trailer or the next episode on NBC Direct and react appropriately, it’d be just fabulous.  Hey wait a minute, that’s what our vision at YuMe is.

Jayant Kadambi

Could the writer’s strike in Hollywood be misguided and premature? In a Q&A with adage.com this week, former Disney chief Michael Eisner slammed the writers for walking off the job to pursue non-existent revenue. The state of online video is still feeling its way through some growing pains as business models start to shift from teenage hi-jinks on YouTube to professional, network quality broadcasts on a growing number of branded Web sites, including abc.com and NBC’s Hulu venture.

But what really struck a chord with us at YuMe were Eisner’s comments on the pricing structure – or lack of – for that entertainment. To drive down the pricing, the audience needs to grow. And to grow the audience, you need a distribution platform. Hmmm…sounds a lot like what we do here at YuMe.

“There are no gatekeepers,” Eisner said. “You don’t have to be on iTunes, you don’t have to be on Comcast. You don’t have to be on ABC. You don’t have to get approval of anybody. And eventually, advertisers are going to see the benefit of content that’s produced in a superior way, with better emotional hinges, and those people will have a good business.”

That makes sense to us. And as the builders of that platform, we’re ready to help advertisers and content publishers to take online distribution to that next level.

Jayant Kadambi