[Inside AdSense] An effective pairing of AdSense and e-commerce

Imineo.com is a French video-on-demand site offering a wide variety of videos in different formats. In 2005, the site's owners decided to use Google AdWords to drive qualified traffic to their site. After setting up their first campaigns, they implemented conversion tracking to evaluate their overall return on investment. More recently, the company added AdSense to their site. As co-owner Jean-Baptiste Sers told us, "Our business model is not based on advertising revenue -- but in order to increase our AdWords spend, we wanted to use AdSense."

For an e-commerce advertiser, this might seem risky. Some might think that integrating AdSense could have resulted in a sales drop because of users clicking on the ads instead of buying one of the videos. But as Imineo team implemented AdSense, they noticed that qualified visitors came to the site with the intention to buy the videos and did not click on the sponsored links, while other visitors usually clicked on one of the relevant ads.

Imineo's strategy highlights how e-commerce sites can use AdSense to monetize traffic that usually exits the site using the URL address bar. Overall, the use of AdSense can help sites like these increase overall revenue without changing their current business model. As Jean-Baptiste put it, "AdSense has helped us monetize the visits of these other visitors and therefore increase the overall revenue/client ratio."

If you own an e-commerce site, here are a couple of suggestions.

• Try testing AdSense first on your exit pages, and then evaluate the effect it has on your sales.
  
  
• If, like Imineo, you find that adding relevant ads on your site does not affect your conversions, we encourage you to increase the coverage of AdSense on your site. The additional revenue coming from AdSense can help you generate more qualified traffic and therefore increase your overall sales.
  

You Must Be Streaming

In a sudden reversal of fortune, newspapers have taken to online video and might just beat TV news at its own game.

Illustration by Ateliér 444

W e think we know that the professional news media, especially newspapers, are obsolete, that the future is all about (excuse the expression) you—media created by amateurs. But such PowerPoint distillation tends to overlook the fact that mainstream media are not all simply shriveling and dying but in some instances actually evolving. And in evolution, there are always fascinating transitional iterations along the way. Such as newspapers’ suddenly proliferating forays into online video. (And now magazines: Time Inc. just announced a new “studio” to develop Web video.)

Whereas the YouTube paradigm is amateurs doing interesting things with cameras, the newspapers’ Web videos are professional journalists operating like amateurs in the best old-fashioned sense. One of the Times’s new Web-video stars, David Carr (as the jolly-noir, movie-tasked Carpetbagger), recalls that when the Times’ video operation started fifteen months ago, his bosses said, “ ‘Let’s give it a whirl.’ Which is the exact opposite of the Times’ usual DNA. ‘Let’s give it a whirl’—that’s not something that comes up a lot.”

At their best, the newspapers’ online videos are, minute for minute, superior to TV news. As I write, CNN is airing a live press conference by Anna Nicole Smith’s lawyer and a loop of Smith vamping, while a significant breaking news story—the U.S. claim that Muqtada al-Sadr has left Iraq for Iran—is running in tiny type across the bottom of the screen. Given the dumb-and-dumber choices, I can easily imagine newspapers’ Web-video portals becoming the TV-journalism destinations of choice for smart people—that is, in the 21st century, the dominant nineteenth-century journalistic institution, newspapers, might beat the dominant twentieth-century institution, TV, at the premium part of its own game.

The medium is too new and unsettled to have anything like a best-practices rule book. Everyone is making it up as they go along. And a few of the on-the-fly inventions are awesome. The most attention-getting MSM Web video so far was the very meta one posted last month by the Times about a Washington Post columnist—the slickly produced, thirteen-minute-long “Hi—I’m Art Buchwald and I just died” obituary.

The Times’ and the Post’s strikingly different Web-video paths are illustrative of this flux moment. At the Times, the strategy is to merge operations with the regular newsroom, and convert as many of its journalists as possible to part-time videography. But the Post and washingtonpost.com remain distinct entities—a sore point for some people on the Web side. The Times highlights its several fresh daily videos prominently on the home page; the Post hides them beneath a tiny, generic “Photos & Videos” button.

The quality, of course, is all over the map. An amateur spirit is exciting, but amateurism in action is … not necessarily so. I get no added value from watching A. O. Scott and Ben Brantley deliver abridged versions of their written-for-print reviews. Washingtonpost.com’s extemporaneous version, a nervous editor interviewing wooden film critics, could be a public-access cable clip. Often, the Times reporters’ videos are like tentative, so-so versions of TV-news spots, unremarkable sound bites interlarded with scripted blah-blah boilerplate.

The lessons seem obvious: Don’t do Web video if you don’t have anything interesting to show, and don’t compete with TV unless you can do something they can’t or won’t. In other words, use the medium.

The Times’ fashion-show coverage worked well because hearing and watching designers gives one instant tastes of the various flavors of gay Seventh Avenue affect, which Times prose won’t convey. On the op-ed page, I mostly skip Nicholas Kristof’s columns about sexual slaves in Asia and genocide in Darfur; watching his video pieces shot in Cambodia and Sudan, I was riveted. Online video can also exploit the “long tail” in ways TV can’t. There may not be many of us who want to watch a hep Romanian mayor justify prejudice against Gypsies (the Post), or Sarah Vowell’s illustrated ode to the architect Louis Sullivan (the Times), but I adored both. If documentaries are hard to get shown in theaters and on TV, imagine the obstacles faced by serious shorts. But now, in the online archives of U.S. papers are thousands of videos, among them dozens of exceptional short docs, more like miniature Frontlines or public-radio-with-pictures than like network-news segments, available anytime. This is video-journalism-on-demand years ahead of digital television: Because I elect to watch a story, then see it on a computer screen eighteen inches from my face, I focus in a way TV doesn’t require.

At the Times, with its more TV-esque model (the video unit morphed out of Times Television), on-camera talent is king. Among the best is technology columnist David Pogue. He cheerfully performs: In a piece on the Apple iPhone, he’s frank about his excitement, and uses the medium well to demonstrate how to zoom in on pictures by physically pinching them. “There are people in this building,” Carr says, “that are really good at video and others who aren’t. Is it just the hambone gene

Measuring simultaneous internet viewers P2

its no surprise that those who own or sell advertising on internet video sites didnt respond favorably to my last post. Its far more profitable for them to sell 1k views an hour for 24 hours than to have to deliver 24k viewers in an hour or even worse, at the same time.

The number of simultaneous viewers should be the ONLY number that matters to advertisers when selecting where to place an internet video ad. Why ?

It shows the max number of users that a show can have at a point in time , which advertisers will evolve to in buying time critical ads (movie buys on Thursdays before opening on Friday). If an advertiser for Shrek 19 or Saw XX needs to reach 10mm people online before their movies open the next day, knowing the maximum and average number of simultaneous viewers for the content you are buying gives you the proper constraints required to do the math on the buy.

The number of simultaneous viewers a site can support also tells you what happens to your ad if something unique happens. Its hurricane season. Lets say there is amazing footage from a hurricane or some other event, maybe a Paris Hilton prison break and one site has the capacity to handle 1mm simultaneous viewers, the other 100k. If your ad is on one, you might be ok. If its on the other, you might be out of luck. Your ad is delivered at a snails pace if at all, with users seeing more buffering then ad.

Then there is the issue of cheating. its easy to cheat on views. Youtubers game their views all the time, as they do on all video sites. To advertisers, each site defines a view differently. is it when an ad is viewed for 1 second, 10 seconds, to its entirety, to its entirety without buffering ?

If you buy an average of 1k simultaneous viewers, thats a much more difficult number to cheat. The advertiser can get a link into the serving of their ads and monitor how many people are watching at any point in time which is something they can learn from. Which of course scares the hell out of web video hosts. If an advertiser were to see that at 9pm EST only 17 people were watching their ad on the site. Thats not so good compared to TV.

The number of simultaneous viewers also tells the "intensity" or heat of an ad or content. 1mm simultaneous viewers has a completely different impact than 100k per day for 10 days which is different from 1k per day for 1k days. Tracking the number of simultaneous viewers gives you the true feel of the viral nature of the content and it smooths out much of the cheating by video uploaders

Finally, the number of simuls give you a reference point to TV . what is the maximum number of simultaneous viewers that Youtube, or AOL , Yahoo, MSN or ??/ VIdeo have supported in aggregate across all their content ? What is the maximum number of simultaneous viewers that any given piece of content or advertising has achieved ? Thats a number thats easily comparable to a TV rating. The number of views isnt.

Back in 1999, when we broadcast the Cubs during the day, a 6k audio stream could get 25k plus simultaneous listeners and often peaked past 40k. Telling an advertiser that they could reach 40k people at once was powerful. Far more powerful than the number of views or listens content had.

its time we start to use average and maximum number of simultaneous viewers as the benchmark for video .

Danielson/Animal Collective @ South Street Seaport, NYC 6/1/07

For most who made the trip way downtown for the River To River / Seaport Music Festival kick-off show, it was the official start to NYC's summer concert season. And you couldn't do better, opening with the uniformed Danielson and his familyre sounds 'til dusk, and the extraordinary avant-everything strawberry jamming of Animal Collective. For free. Love NYC.

Friday night AC were a trio; Panda Bear, Avey Tare, and the Geologist graced the Seaport stage, while Deakin did not. Well not technically; after moving around to a rear-view of the performance platform, friends pointed out Deakin sitting behind the PA system, on stage but out of sight to the crowd, just watching. We're told that he's not on this tour, but this has us pretty confused. Which is to say, we were at an Animal Collective show.

The set was dedicated to Sung Tongs and the forthcoming Domino-released LP; after a fantastic jaunt through "Who Could Win A Rabbit," Avey announced they'd be playing "some new songs." With a crowd pleaser and the slowly setting sun out of the way, the Seaport got its first taste of Strawberry Jam, sitting somewhere between Tongs' madcap bluster and Feels' inviting structure. Unlike their Webster show last year, which saw an already divisive band split its own fans into the frustrated and the fawning (the Geologist was "feeling it" that night, morphing every tune into a looping, abstrat sound collage), Friday's set rang true to most of the massive crowd gathered by the water.

To complete the set's Sungian symmetry, the Collective capped off the night with a perfectly spastic "We Tigers" (Geologist's whiplashing staredowns in full effect) and the classic, psychedelic vocal exercises of "Leaf House" -- but the trance-y calypso of new jam "Chores" ended up the night's post-show conversation piece. One of the year's best shows, easily, but being a free show, with one of the world's most creative bands, showing off excellent new material ... how could it not be? Lots of pics from both sets after the jump, plus a game of "Where's Deakin?" for your enjoyment.

DANIELSON

ANIMAL COLLECTIVE

rcade Fire Stole My Basketball"

It's a crazy post-Stop Peter Bjorn & John world we're living in. Got a problem with an indie rocker? Start a blog about it! Dave writes in to tell us about a slow-brewing blog beef between some dude who claims to have had his basketball stolen by Win Butler (find him at arcadefirestolemybasketball.blogspot.com), and Butler-brother Will, who claims that, in fact, Arcade Fire didn't steal this dude's basketball (and you can find him at arcadefiredidntstealdudesbasketball.blogspot.com).

Given this is all entirely unsubstantiated internet hearsay, we'd like to add this fact to the controversy: In the recent Rolling Stone (P. 67, para 2, Issue 1027 -- Depp/Richards cover), Win told Gavin Edwards that "he tries to play basketball at least once a week, even on tour"! (Emphasis added for additional sensationalistic effect.)

Sounds like Win is totally guilty.

First Look: Microsoft Surfacing Computing!

18:15

About a year ago I gave a presentation to a group of journalists about gadgets of the future and showed a video about a theoretical multi-touch computing system. When asked when we would see something like that in the wild, I optimistically ballparked 5-7 years. You can imagine my surprise when I walked into a room at Microsoft and found a fully functioning Microsoft Surface Computer (more than one, actually.)

I played with it long after the shoot was over. It's incredible. And I know many of you have the same question I did; when am I going to have one of these in my house? Surface computers will start with Microsoft partners getting first shot at various public applications, you'll most likely see them in action in Las Vegas first. Eventually prices will come down and production will go up and I expect we'll all be waving through our playlists on our coffee table before we know it. You'll also see in this video that wifi on the Zune can be used for more than just bursting a song or picture to a stranger.

Captivity

Seems like only yesterday, the streets of Hollywood were filled with billboards depicting a grizzled old Samuel Jackson holding scantily-clad Christina Ricci on a big, chain leash. Little did we suspect from the controversial ad campaign that BLACK SNAKE MOAN was sappy Sundance fare to the core, more LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE than MANDINGO. Oh well, I’m sure those ubiquitous softcore billboards caused Dov Charney to run a few stop signs.

Time to make way for the latest sadomasochistic Hollywood ad campaign! Even by my depraved standards, the billboards for CAPTIVITY are way over the top! As reported in yesterday’s LA Times:

The ad consisted of four panels:

Abduction, in which a terrified young blond woman has either a gloved or black hand over her face, as if she’s being kidnapped.

Confinement, in which she’s behind a chain-link fence and appears to be poking a bloody thumb through the fence.

Torture, in which she is flat on her back, her face in a white cast, with red tubes that resemble jumper cables running into her nostrils.

And Termination, in which her head dangles over the edge of a table, the murder complete.

I wonder how the MPAA gave a pass to the CAPTIVITY billboards, but blocked last year’s much milder ROAD TO GUANTANAMO poster? Was it an act of political censorship? And what to make of the fact that CAPTIVITY is directed by leftist Roland Joffe (THE KILLING FIELDS) and scribed by Larry Cohen, the master of socially-relevant schlock? Willl CAPTIVITY have a Gitmo/Abu Ghraib subtext? Or will it be just another bad SAW clone?

Whatever the answer, Lionsgate has pissed off a lot of parents. The studio is scrambling to remove the offending billboards by tomorrow. So if you haven’t seen them yet, go out and take a gander at the most brazen marketing gimmick since Vincent Gallo got a hummer (little “h”) on Sunset Boulevard.

Perhaps it goes without saying that this poster for HOSTEL 2 doesn’t stand a chance of finding its way onto the bus shelters of Babylon.

Cellular Message Movement Captured On Video

ScienceDaily reported on scientists who have captured on video the intracellular version of a postal delivery service. Reporting in the journal Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications (BBRC), bioengineering researchers at UC San Diego published videos of a key message-carrying protein called paxillin moving abruptly from hubs of communication and transportation activity on the cell surface toward the nucleus. Paxillin was labeled with a red fluorescence marker to make it stand out in live cells.

"It's amazing to us. We thought the cell was so simple," said Shu Chien, the senior author of the BBRC paper and a professor of bioengineering at UCSD's Jacobs School of Engineering. "But it's really very complex and I'm not sure we're covering much as yet. We certainly don't know all the interactions among these molecules that bring the cell into action."

Most do not take the time to look at the stunning design of living systems.

More...

Game Videos With Fraps

Hello Everyone!

I've been trying to Encode / Compress some game videos I've made with Fraps
and I'm pretty sure that I'm not doing it right, because the image quality takes
some serious damage and does not look good at all.

I've also been searching around on this Forum as well as some others for some
information and guidence in order to pull of a nice Encoding of this file and one
thing that many seem to agree on is that XviD is the better choice.
So I tried digging deeper into that and see if I could find some information how
to make good XviD Encodes and I found some information about "Presets" and
"Scripts" which kinda made this all feel even more complicated since I have no
idea how to program or script things.

I also found some information about a program called "Enc" which apparently
is supposed to help you find a good "Preset" for you just by running some test
as I understood it.
Now I seemed to be on the right track and figured I'd go ahead and try it out
and see if I could learn a thing or two hehe

Sadly as soon as I started the program and was about to follow this little guide
on the site, it turned out I needed some kind of .avs which I'm guessing is some
kind of video file and the video I have is .avi so the journey ended before it even
began

Now that was a lot of chit-chat, sorry about that but I'm really on the edge of
being completely frustrated about not getting anywhere with this and I'm hoping
that maybe some of you guys here who are experienced with this might be able
to lend me a hand to better understand the process with encodings.

So right now I have this video I made with Fraps, it's 577mb in size and has the
resolution 400x300 with 60 FPS and image quality is superb right now and it has
a really nice flow and I couldn't be happier with the way it looks right now and
all I want to do is to preserve this quality the best I can and shrink the size of
the file by A LOT.

Ah yeah, I also found some information about this thing called "2-passes" which
seemed to perserve quality better then 1-pass, sadly I don't know how 2-pass
works exactly, when I tried using it I got a black screen and audio. The only good
thing there was that the filesize became very small, 185kb to be precisely

Anyway, I would be truly grateful if someone could help me out with this.

Many thanks in advance!

Win 50 Euros Calling Credit with Voipbuster video competition

Voipbuster has launched a video competition with participant having the opportunity to win 50 euros calling credit they can share with their family and friends. To take part all you have to do is to create a video to show how you take advantage of voipbuster low rates or create a demo video explaining how to use voipbuster to people who have'nt. Post these video on youtube and send the link to voipbuster.
The top 10 videos will each receive 5 VoipBuster credit vouchers of 10 euros each they can share with family and friends. So if you have been using voipbuster to make free or very cheap calls here is the time to give something back and win calling credit in the process.
More information is available at http://www.voipbuster.com/en/youtubevideocompetition.html

Looking For Cat Videos?

The social networking phenomena YouTube and Google Video offer a free video sharing service and they have not left cats behind. For example, of the over 5 million videos on the Google Video site, there are approximately 158,000 cat videos and on YouTube, there are over 144,000 - many repeats from Google.

YouTube was founded by three former PayPal employees in 2005 and was purchased by Google in 2006. Both sites are still active and have excellent search engines to help you find the cute cat videos. After joining either site, you are entitled to upload and view videos.

Videos are uploaded using software provided by the site administrator. As videos are viewed, they are rated. The rating helps you discriminate videos that others find worth your time from those you probably want to pass up.

In addition to the ranking, you will also learn how many people have viewed the video. You will find videos on talking cats, funny cats, cat musicals, even cat cartoons. So, take a quick humor break during your busy day and appreciate the work of the creators. But, be careful at work, because you may find yourself laughing out loud.

Online video editing

JumpCut is a simple-to-use video editing application which students even down in primary schools will find simple and effective to use. If the video is not going to be hugely complex, forget MovieMaker or iMovie! This great application puts together stills and video clips with consummate ease, and allows the addition of titles and sound in a really intuitive way.

Pictures can be uploaded from Flickr or Facebook accounts as well as your computer. Fades can be added, editing is simple, and the final product is published straight to the Web for immediate viewing across the globe - a great motivator for children! If your students have never made movies, now's the time to try. The possibilities offered here extend right through the whole curriculum, and timid teachers don't even have to know what's going on! Our web-savvy students will amaze them.

SVSi Battery and LCD Viewfinder accessories review.

Today we take a moment to review a batter power pack and a LCD Viewfinder from SVSi.

As I’m sure most of you know, most of these high-speed cameras are not very portable. It is not standard procedure to include a viewfinder with the camera- in order to view what it is you are filming you have to be connected to a computer (in LucidMovement’s case, usually a laptop) or an analog/digital video device. This can make filming difficult and time consuming, as the amount of light required to film high-speed means that you will often be filming in daylight, which as most of you will realize means that an LCD based screen is going to be really hard to see. In short, filming with a high-speed camera as they are designed currently is not an easy task by any means. The setup requires that you have multiple connections setup in order to view and focus your video stream, generally located a decent way away from the camera itself. In addition to your data/video connections you are also tethered to a power connection.

You can see that this becomes complicated quickly. Imagine trying to setup for a shot in a reasonable amount of time or trying to catch a shot a goo distance from a power source. That is where these two wonderful little devices come into play. These two little tools make your filming life much easier!

The Battery
The AV-BATT, portable battery pack is a NIMH battery operating at 24v @ 9Amp/hr. The battery is 3.5″x3.5″x14″. I was really amazed at the battery life while running both the camera and the LCD Viewfinder. The camera will run without a hitch for just a tad over six hours on a three hour charge. In addition to allowing you to be completely untethered from power it cuts down the time required to setup a shot. Ordinarily you would have to haul out the extension cables and whatnot, with this you just clip it up and off you go. The only downside to the battery is it is a bit hefty at right around 10lbs. It has a nice little handle that allows for easy carrying. The unit ships with a charger and sells for $635usd. This is an excellent addition for this camera and allowed me to get several shots I would have otherwise been unable to get.

The LCD Viewfinder
The LCD Viewfinder I found to be incredibly useful for filming. This allows you to frame and focus your shot a lot faster than normal when having to refer back to an external monitor. The viewfinder can be attached directly to the camera which allows you to work it as you would any other camera, a definite bonus. The LCD is 3.5″ and operates in high-contrast black and white which makes seeing it in daylight a lot easier than a laptop LCD. You can mirror the image via a switch on the side, which is a useful feature for certain applications. The power for the LCD is an inline adapter that ships with the unit. This makes life easy as you don’t have to keep up with yet another power cord. This is another must have addition for a high-speed camera in my opinion, primarily in the time it saves you having to run back and forth between the camera and the computer. I would recommend this for almost any application in which you would be using this camera. The LCD Viewfinder and included breakout box sells for $695 and is worth every penny. I only had the viewfinder for a few weeks and I was able to capture nearly twice the number of shots on a given shooting day than I was able to without it.

To sum up, both of these accessories are incredibly useful and I would highly encourage anyone who currently has this camera or who is considering purchasing one to pick them up. I found them both to be indispensable. They really help reduce the setup and shot times considerably. Below I’ve included some photos of the battery and the LCD Viewfinder.

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Estonia’s scary little war with Russia

One phenomenon I’ve been watching with interest is the growth of video as means of mass/individual communication. I’ve commented frequently on how effectively the Coast Guard uses video as part of their public affairs operation and other companies, such as Starbucks and JetBlue have used video effectively as key part of a crisis management response.

My thoughts on this this morning were further spurred by watching yet another political video. I won’t provide a link to it because that would make this blog more political than I want. It showed a mock ad on a Fox news program promoting a drug that will help you get over your symptoms of ambivalence over one prominent candidate.

The point is not the particular ad–it is video and its increasingly pervasive, creative, powerful and ubiquitous use in today’s communication. Video production has become democratized. New easy to use video capture, editing and publishing tools are emerging rapidly. (To prove this point, I just made a quick video on my Mac laptop, uploaded it and here is the link to the Quicktime version.)Video conferencing via web is being built into all laptops and is part of the increasingly popular meeting applications. YouTube and other video publishing sites are spurring on the use of video with surprising rapidity.

This political season is being driven to a remarkable degree by online videos. Some candidates like John Edwards are leading the way in terms of use of YouTube as well as videos on their websites. And since politics is mostly driven by those who detest particular candidates, the opponents of specific candidates are filling the Internet with all kinds of videos–like the one referenced above–demonstrating their animosity as well as creativity.

Politics once again provides leadership in adapting to and innovating new means of communication. Those in business or organizational communication ought to be paying close attention to what is happening in these campaigns. Because what candidates face today particularly related to those who hate them or oppose them, is what you will face tomorrow from your activists and opponents. Business competition may look like this. Activist action will undoubtedly look like this as it increasingly does today. And just plain old every day communication between boss and employees, between CEO and the leadership team, between a company and its customers and an organization and its stakeholders will look like this.

How to Promote Your Videos on YouTube

I’m getting lots of questions about how I’ve managed to crawl up the “most subscribed” list on YouTube and get a lot of views on my video. I am pretty jazzed that I’ve passed ParisHilton (see graphic).

First, let me assure you that it took a lot of patience. I was on YouTube for almost a year before I even had 100 subscribers, and most of my videos were lucky if they got 10-20 views. Just last Thanksgiving I was thrilled to reach 200 subscribers (see video). Beyond being patient, however, there are a few things you can do.

Remember It’s a Social Network. The most-viewed creators often got popularized by interacting with other frequently-watched YouTubers. Zipster08 got his start mocking Renetto. Renetto got famous by addressing other YouTubers. So you’ve got to socialize on YouTube. It’s not just a video-sharing site, it’s a commune.

Keep it Short. This is an ADHD generation. This is so, so, so important. I’ve violated my own rule lately, but I can’t stress enough that people don’t want more than 3 minutes. And if you can do it in 30-60 seconds you’ll get twice the views. I often won’t even start a video that’s more than 5 minutes. It’s just not yet a long-form platform. Maybe AppleTV will allow us to consume longer videos, but short is good.

Avoid Tricks. You can fake views and do random video replies to popular videos, but that will typically make you look desperate (if not get busted). So stick with authentic promotion.

Collaborate with YouTubers. Find other YouTubers in your area and participate in a video together. You’ll pick up some of their subscribers and vice versa. Everyone wins.

Get “Honored.” I’m fortunate that many of my viewers are kind on the ratings and comments. So I frequently get pushed (temporarily) to the top comedy section. There I’ll pick up a second wave of viewers for a period. Since that’s hard to do initially, you may want to focus on smaller categories. It’s easier to create the most-watched animal video than music video.

Promote Your Video Off YouTube. Get it “digged.” Get it blogged. Remember that many YouTube views are not occuring on YouTube.com.

Video Reply. Video replies are a great way to get views- especially if you’re fast. Make a video response to a popular video and get it up immediately. You’ll get overflow views. Just be sure a) your response isn’t spam- it’s relevant. b) recognize that many people don’t know replies are waiting. So they cue silently and aren’t always approved quickly.

Imagine Yourself at a Party. Are you the guy jumping up and down for attention screaming “looook at me”? Or are you the one that’s hanging out by the keg telling interesting stories? Are you the one desperately hitting on every hot woman? Approach YouTube in the way you’d approach a party (or highschool) and you’ll better understand how you’re being perceived. This vibe will come across not just in your videos but in your interactions (comments & messages). By the way- I’m the guy at the party that drank too much, then went to sleep on the bed covered with coats.

Create Decent Stuff With Frequency. I think my frequency (almost daily) of videos helps. I know I could do better videos if I planned them, but I don’t like overcomplicating videos. It’s a lot more fun to be subcribed to somone who is posting with some frequency (as long as it’s entertaining) because you don’t forget about them. You look forward to watching them.

Get Ready for . Don’t forget- there are as many people that will your videos as will love them. I get a lot of messages, and a number of people that subscribe and unsubscribe. Eventually you build a group of people that relate to your style. And that’s when it gets really fun.

Pixelodeon Video Fest at AFI/LA this weekend: June 9-10

Pixelodeon -- From the Computer Screen to the Big Screen is taking place at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles on June 9th and 10th. Over 300 Videos from independent, online creators to be screened over 2 days. 4 keynote speakers including:

-Fred Seibert, founder of channelfrederator.com
-Dan Harmon and Rob Schrab from acceptable.tv
-Kent Nichols and Douglas Sarine from askaninja.com
-Jon Phillips from creativecommons.org

Tickets on sale now.

Schedule of Events and Screenings

More about Pixelodeon

Pixelodeon is an annual independent video festival recognizing innovation, inspiration, and community in global online video. This is our inaugural year! Over 300 videos, four keynote speakers, two dozen curators, and several hundred people interested in independent media will get together in one weekend to celebrate the diversity and talent of online video content. If you want to see what's happening online and meet the people who are making it happen, this is the place to be.

Digital Rights Management - Go, No Go, or just behind the curtain?

In the late 90's, the music industry fell victim to rampant P2P file sharing applications that made copying and sharing music a fairly common practice. One could consider this but the first shockwave of the digital era or perhaps it was simply an inevitable next step in a new not-so-obvious and not-so-welcome change in the fundamental business paradigm. No matter the view, the days of buying the Beatles Rubber Soul album are long gone and today we have at least two generations that have used PC's and widely available ripping software to copy and in some cases distribute music entertainment. It continues today though policing actions have been more effective. Nevertheless, today there are teens and young adults out there who have never purchased a CD or a DVD … and the music retailers continue to lament the digital age for lost CD sales and unchecked rights violations.

And so what is the future for video and for television? Video content providers have been zealots with respect to Digital Rights Management-DRM … especially after witnessing the woes of the music industry. But now we reckon with new announcements from Amazon about Unbox, a premium video downloading service … and from Apple, an iTunes Plus DRM-less audio content service at $1.29 per track. The music industry it seems may be moving down the DRM-less on demand pathway. Is this a shift in DRM philosophy or a changing business paradigm with DRM implication for music? And what of video and containing video downloads?

The truth of the matter is that video is subject to many of the same digital toolsets that allow a skilled user to make copies and share, albeit, with some generation loss in video quality. The difference is that when it comes to video, its more work for ripping video applications, with typically large file sizes, and the occasional user probably does not make for an immense problem (yet). Of course major violators will always be castigated when caught ripping major video titles such as first run movies etc.. But what of this move by the music industry to remove some of the DRM focus …. to make it easy for users to do what the music industry once fought …. and for an upfront fee? And what is the deal with emerging pay for video download services and how is DRM containment achieved? Are we witnessing a new video business flavor … or a seismic change? Last I checked, DVD titles and television DVD titles were a huge revenue source. Ahhh… just finished downloading an Amazon video title …. and yes I have the title …. took a while because of bandwidth … and yes I guess I can move the title to a portable viewing device …. but darn it, the proprietary player won't let me burn the title to DVD! Seems that Windows DRM got in the way. Curses!

The Popularity of Music Videos on Mobile Devices

No one can really doubt the success of MTV up until now. People like music videos. But I'm left confused when I look at music videos being sold for download on mobile devices such as phones and iPods, and sold at a premium.

Watching music videos on TV is something I only do if I'm doing something else at the same time and just want some background (I don't say background "noise" because I think it's safe enough to say many people now look for background sound and video at the same time, strange as it may sound). As for actually spending money and downloading a music video to my phone or iPod, with those tiny little screens and in the case of mobile phones, horrible sound quality- is surely the worst possible way you could watch a music video?

It makes sense for content providers to pick music videos to test the waters of mobile download services because even though what you are getting might be considered pretty cheap and nasty, you get around that because the band itself adds value to the proposition through association. The content itself is not really all that much better (and often not as practical) as an mp3, after all, pretty much all of these music videos have had the visuals made for the music, not the other way around. This is all subjective of course.

How popular are the sales of these things? Are they just a stop-gap until some (dare I say) "real" content is available. Many products are showing that there is a market for a variety of quality commercial/free content when the downloads are both paid and free (iTunes in the U.S. has movies and TV shows and Joost has free content everywhere, to name two such entities). In particular I'm enjoying the "iTunes U" offerings, which include free university lectures in video format. I'm of the opinion that music videos will see a serious plummet in popularity as these other types of content become more accessible, but as always, I could be proven wrong; but the way things are heading, having to pay to see them will certainly disappear as with almost all downloaded content, with movies being the last to topple. iTunes claimed back in Q3 of 2006 that it had seen 35 million music video downloads... are you one of these people?... did you feel a little bit ripped off or satisfied?

I haven't even touched on the cross-over areas of content here, namely trailers and user generated content. I think both of these have more merit and monetary value when it comes to paid downloads. Trailers serve the dual purpose of entertaining and also letting you know if you want to spend more money (and more importantly, time) on going to see a movie, and user generated content is often perfectly designed to entertain for those few seconds. They are also pretty well suited to share with others in social situations.

So what's the deal with download content for mobile devices? Have we just been testing the water and the purse-strings of those early adopters, or is there a future in music video downloads?

Please feel free to leave votes for or against music videos on mobile devices, and any comments you have on the topic.