DigitalMediaTrends.com

News Clips Most Popular Online Video Content: Study

News clips are the most popular form of streamed video content, according to a new study by Advertising.com. Meanwhile, 94% of survey respondents said they would prefer ads to subscription fees. More ...

YouTube's Ad Revenue Prospects

YouTube's make-or-break advertising system has finally been rolled out. Now it's time for the $1.65 billion video site to start repaying the massive fee Google paid for it last fall. So how much revenue will it generate? The answer, predictably, is not much -- not for several years anyway. However, over the long haul, the contribution could be very material, at least on the top line. Overlays along the bottom of videos can be ignored, which makes the ads a truly opt-in experience. According to data tests cited by the New York Times, 75% of viewers presented with an ad chose to watch the whole thing. And for advertisers, the starting CPM price is reasonable at $20. Remember, Google streams 2 billion videos per month, between 10% and 50% of those have ads, of which 33% to 75% are actually watched, with a CPM between $10-$50. With those figures, Google would generate 8 million in revenue, conservatively, or $450 million aggressively. Of course, five years down the road is more important than this year or the next, so assuming that the site grows in usage, expands its pool of ad-supported pages and keeps the same number of views, Google would make anywhere between $200 million (conservative end) and $13 billion (aggressive end). However, its net income would be significantly lower than for other ad formats; serving a video ad is far more costly than text. More ...

VeohTV Latest Headache For Big Media

Veoh Networks hopes its new VeohTV platform does for Internet TV what YouTube did for online video sharing: dominate. The product is a downloadable application that acts like a Web browser for video, which figures to be a practical way to organize the glut of video--both professional and amateur--that exists on the Web. VeohTV displays both clips from YouTube as well as full-length video from traditional media companies like NBC. But it could ruffle the feathers of big media, and open up the pathway to court. Unlike, say, Joost (a Web TV competitor), you can watch video from NBC, CBS, Fox and video from other major providers on VeohTV. Veoh says it doesn't need producers' consent because the product is simply a Web browser that filters out everything but online video. It also plays the video from the content maker's site, including any embedded advertising. Even so, founder Dmitry Shapiro says the company is open to striking advertising partnerships to ensure content owners' video can be delivered in the highest quality. Major media doesn't like the idea of appearing side by side with competitors. The Veoh product includes video advertising, but eliminates the banners that appears at their homepages. More ...

MSN's Live Earth Breaks Web Stream Record

Saturday's Live Earth concert, Webcast on MSN, broke records, attracting the largest online audience for an entertainment show by generating more than 9 million streams. The previous record was held by the 2005 Live 8 concert to fight poverty, Webcast on Time Warner's AOL, reaching 5 million Web users-which is not the total number of streams. More ...

Dailymotion to Pay Submitters

Dailymotion, aka "the French YouTube," has launched in the U.S. with a twist: it will pay its most popular submitters, according to Mashable. It is following the path of MetaCafe, Break and others in rewarding consumer creators. YouTube has plans to begin giving a select group of popular creators a cut of ad revenue. More ...

Microsoft's LiveStation Looming In Web TV Wars

New details have emerged concerning LiveStation, the peer-to-peer Web TV service being readied by Microsoft and Skinkers, a British software developer. Presently in controlled beta testing, the service is an extension of Microsoft's recently launched Silverlight plug-in media player, and is seen as a latent threat to recent Web TV entrants such as Joost and Veoh. More ...

YouTube Traffic Surges Since January

YouTube may have been getting negative press for copyright suits and pulling videos, but new data from Hitwise shows that the online video giant is kicking butt. Since Google purchased it in November, YouTube has seen its U.S. traffic rise 70% between January and May, a Hitwise survey revealed Wednesday. Combined, traffic to the top 64 video sites beneath it rose a paltry 8%. "As of May 2007, YouTube's market share was 50% greater than those 64 sites combined," says Hitwise report author and research director LeeAnn Prescott. Indeed, YouTube's share of online video traffic mirrored Google's share of search, at 60.2% in May. The survey showed that MySpace, the number two video site, had a 16.08% share. Google Video was third with 7.81%, Yahoo Video fourth with 2.77% and MSN Video fifth with 2.09%. The Hitwise report tracks total visits to these video sites, not video streams or embedded videos, which account for most of the video viewing on MySpace. More ...

Is the 'YouTube Killer' Worth $1 Bil.?

NewTeeVee reports the NBC Universal, Fox video distribution service, still unnamed, is trying to raise $100 million from venture capitalists. The joint venture is looking for a $1 billion valuation, rich but far less than the $1.65 billion paid by Google for YouTube. Yet "NewCo," as it has been dubbed, does not yet exist, even though the companies announced it tk months ago - an eternity in the fast-moving digital space, as NewTeeVee points out. More ...

Blinkx Beats Google With Speech-Based Video Ad Net

Google has been working on AdSense for video, but little is reported about its progress. That may be because it's original partner, Viacom, is now suing the company for $1 billion. Big G's legal problems have opened the door for smaller guys to create the much-needed networking products that could make online video advertising a force. London-based blinkx is readying such an ad platform. Called blinkx AdHoc, the new product will launch next Monday as way to target ads alongside or in Web videos based on speech-recognition technology. The program allows advertisers to buy specific words spoken in videos as well as categories created by analyzing its overall context. The ads--pre-roll, mid-roll or post-roll--will then be delivered to videos appearing on a publisher's site, selected from their own advertiser inventory, that of an ad network, or blinkx. More ...

Apple iPhone Will Play YouTube Clips

Apple, Inc. is getting closer to Web industry leader Google. The companies on Thursday announced that videos from Google's YouTube would be available for play on Apple's iPhone, which goes on sale next Friday. YouTube clips were made available on the company's Apple TV service a few weeks ago. Easily the most-hyped consumer electronics product of the year, if not the past five years, the iPhone marries the media-playing capabilities of Apple's iPod with a Web-enabled cellular phone running on AT&T's wireless network. iPhone users will be able to download music and video, but it will also be able to stream YouTube and other media clips--and at relatively high speeds. More ...