My latest article just went up at The Industry Standard – YouTube, Hulu & Joost: Is there room all three video sites? Go give it a read.

In that article, I cite some statistics from Compete.com and point to the graphic on those stats – here it is:

I wasn’t really able to go into all the pros and cons of the various services in that article, but thought I would take a bit of time to break things down a bit more here. First of all, YouTube is kicking all other video services butts, and will continue to do so. It has momentum, users and let’s be honest – it’s fun (and easy) to use. Not to mention that YouTube is owned by Google so there is bound to be continuing innovation with the service, which Robert Scoble claims is in the pipeline as I write this.

Joost is in some trouble. The main issue, as far as I can tell, is that they require users to download their proprietary player in order to watch any Joost videos. I was on the site and wanted to check out an episode of MacGyver (who doesn’t?), but I didn’t because I didn’t want to take the time to download Joost to my computer. This will kill them if they don’t fix it.

I love Hulu so far. I am a sucker for a clean design and easy-to-use interface, and Hulu has both. Plus, there were a bunch of TV shows and clips on the site that I was interested in watching, and with a simple click, I was in business. It was easy to use, the video was high-quality and my experience was great. But Hulu isn’t perfect. For example, it’s not available internationally (there are licensing issues), and it has a limited number of videos available at any given time. Perhaps the weirdest thing about Hulu is that although it features embeddable videos, after a period of time those links break because the videos are pulled off the site. Weird. But even so, I really like Hulu.

In fact, here’s a clip from Hulu for your viewing pleasure (at least it will be pleasant if you like The Office). And this is another user testimony for Hulu – even though I know that this video will no longer be available one day, I like the service so much that I am willing to risk it.

My latest article for The Industry Standard is now up online: Three online video formats for the future. In the article, I take a look at the current state of online video advertising, and make some suggestions about where video advertising might be able to head in order to stay relevant to the medium and to move beyond traditional ad formats.

In the course of researching for the article, I came across a lot of great online video stats. These are in addition to some earlier articles about online video that I posted to this blog. Those articles are here:

Online video stats for September 07
Video is not going to kill the Internet in 2010
Some more YouTube stats

The new data covers a wide variety of information, from online video usage to online video advertising metrics. I just am going to include it here because it’s great information for anyone who is following online video. I’ll also include links to all the sources so that you can explore the information in context.

Online Publishers Association – Online Video Advertising, Content and Consumer Behavior (PDF)

This report contained a great deal of useful data, particularly about audience reception to online video advertising, including the following statistics:

• Over 40% of U.S. online video users watch online video on at least a weekly basis; over 70% at least monthly.
• 80% of U.S. online video users have watched an advertisement in an online video. Of those people, 52% took action after watching that video; 28% looked for more information; 19% clicked a banner ad that accompanied the video; and 16% bought something as a result of the ad.
• 56% prefer that the advertisement is related to the video content.
• Both 15- and 30-second pre-roll ads are effective at lifting brand awareness; 30-second ads outpace 15-second ads in “likeability.”

Advertising.com – Bi-Annual Online Video Study: First-Half 2007 vs. Second-Half 2006 (PDF)
This study bills itself as the “who, what, when and what works of online video consumption and advertising.” The most surprising data from this study is the age range of online video consumers.

• 31% of 18 to 34 year olds watch streaming video; 69% stream video more than once per week
• 69% of consumers 35 and over watch streaming video; 47% stream video more than once per week
• 95% of those surveyed are streaming video at home (vs. 4% at the office and 1% at school); 45% of streaming takes place in the evening.
• 42% of consumers have forwarded a video clip to a friend
• 94% of consumers would prefer to view ads than pay to watch a video
• 63% of consumers would prefer ads that are shorter than television ads
• Consumers are 8% more likely to view a 15-second advertisement through to completion (vs. a 30-second advertisement)
• The 30-second pre-roll slightly outperforms the 15- and 5-second ads when measured in terms of click-through rate

BtoB – Interactive Marketing Guide

comScore – More than 10 billion videos viewed online in the U.S. in February (08)
This is the most recent data that I could find – the highlights:

• U.S. Internet users viewed more than 10 billion videos in February; this is a 3% gain vs. January, and a 66% gain from February 2007
• 135 million U.S. Internet users spent an average of 204 minutes watching online video in February
• 72.8% of U.S. Internet audience viewed an online video
• The average online video duration was 2.7 minutes
• The average online video viewer consumed 75 videos

Online video is already huge and getting bigger all the time. At least 75% of Internet users watch videos online and 8 hours of video content being uploaded to YouTube EVERY MINUTE. But there is a problem with online video because no one has (yet) figured out a long-term viable advertising model that will work with video. Google (which owns YouTube) is certainly working on it, but all the models that have debuted so far – pre-roll, post-roll, sponsorship – have fallen short because none of the formats have taken advantage of the inherent interactivity of the Internet. That is, until now.

I just took a look at what Revision3 and VideoClix have teamed up to put together and it’s great. Not only is the ad format interesting and cool, it’s also fairly unobtrusive and seems tailor-made for the Internet’s interactive format.

The first video to debut with the new technology is Diggnation (although all of Revision3’s videos will have the technology shortly). Watchers are able to interact with the video as it’s playing. When a viewer clicks on an item in the video that has additional information included, an area is displayed to the right of the video that has the details about the item, as well as room for advertising or additional vendor information.

This is clever. For one thing, the information that was provided was fun and interesting. (For example, I found out that the Lloyd Hotel in Amsterdam has rooms that range from 1 to 5 stars and one of the rooms has a shower in the middle of the room.) I wanted to click every link in the video to find out more about the video that I was watching, the clothes that the hosts were wearing, and even to see what computers they were using. Since my clicks didn’t stop the video, I was able to click around when something was happening that I was less interested in watching and I didn’t have to miss anything that I didn’t want to miss.

My prediction – this online advertising format will be viable and long-lasting, particularly in the consumer market. Clickable video is here to stay.

Just saw this item about a new video series that helps Google users who are concerned about their privacy. “The Google Privacy Channel” on YouTube offer various hints about things like:

• How to unlist your phone number from Google
• How to get rid of objectionable StreetView images

and my favorite:

• The Google bloopers reel, which shows the usually-smart and frequently-rich Googlers making mistakes and looking occasionally awkward. (see below)

The Google privacy debate is ongoing, but these videos are timely considering recent objections and concerns about new social networking features that are being added to Google Reader, Gmail and Google Chat.

Incidentally, the most popular videos (according to the number of people who have viewed them so far) are about the following topics:

1. Unsubscribing your phone number (2,089)
2. Using Picasa (1,892)
3. Removing images from Street View (661)
4. Controlling your history settings (400)
5. Managing your Google calendar’s share settings (322)

Here’s that Google blooper’s video for your viewing pleasure:

I just saw that ComScore has released statistics for online video usage for September 2007. The following are the most interesting stats:

– 75% of U.S. Internet users watched a video online, averaging three hours of video per person during the month.

– Nearly 2 out of 5 U.S. Internet users watched a YouTube video during the same time period.

– The average online video duration was 2.7 minutes.

– The average viewer consumed 68 videos, more than two per day.

This last number seems really high to me. If you take the average video duration and the average number of videos per month, this means that the average U.S. Internet user is watching just over three hours of online videos per month.

This is still nothing compared to the television watching habits of the average American, however, who watches 4 hours and 34 minutes of TV per day, according to Nielsen Media Research.

When I was browsing the advertisements in this weekend’s paper trying to get some inspiration about what to buy the people on my Christmas list, I spotted this in the ads from Best Buy:

I did a bit of hunting online, and it appears that this line of YouTube-ready digital cameras has been out for some time (available since August 07 in the U.S.), but I have to admit that this is the first time that I have seen them.

This positioning strikes me as being a little bit of marketing genius from Casio. There are at least 65,000 videosposted to YouTube per day, and eight hours of new video posted per minute – so there are a large group of power users out there who would love a camera that is set up to make it easier to send their videos to YouTube. That is, if the cameras are any good.

Here’s a roundup of some of the reviews that I found online:

Digital Camera Review- “The other feature worth noting here is that the V8 includes Casio’s YouTube Best Shot movie capture mode. In this mode, movies are captured at settings optimized for publishing on YouTube. Movies captured this way are also placed in a separate folder on your camera’s memory card so that the supplied YouTube Uploader software can easily find the movies. This software, provided by Casio allows you to upload multiple movies directly to your YouTube account.”

PC World- “The cameras are the result of a deal between Casio and Google, which owns YouTube, that gives Casio exclusive rights to the YouTube features until the end of this year.” 

“While it’s not particularly difficult to upload clips manually to YouTube, the software certainly makes it much easier, especially if you have several clips to put online.”

Becky Worley’s Vlog – “You want a digital camera, and you want to be the next YouTube celebrity. Have I got the camera for you.”

About.com- “You won’t shoot the most dazzling images every time, but this camera provides powerful features for the money. As with other cameras in the Casio Exilim Zoom line, this camera makes it exceedingly easy for even beginners to capture great images.”

Laptop Magazine – “An impressive set of features makes this digital camera well worth the price.”

“YouTube fanatics will enjoy the convenience of filming video that’s ready for the Web with no editing at all. In fact, it might even lure some first-timers to the video-sharing site.”

GeekSugar- “These new digital cameras not only come with the YouTube uploader that accesses your clips from a flash card to the web, but they also have auto-tracking face detection technology, image stabilization for movie mode and anti-shake blur reduction.”

I didn’t come across a single negative review of the cameras.  

This may seem like a beginner tip to many of you long-time WordPress bloggers, but the first time that I tried to embed a YouTube video into my WordPress blog, I couldn’t figure it out. (If you don’t want the back story, just skip to the end of this post for the how to.)

Here’s what I did. I am sure that many first-time video posters can relate. I went to YouTube, found the video that I wanted to include, pulled the code from the “embed” area, switched to “code” from “visual” mode in the WordPress editor, and pasted the code. This didn’t work. It displayed an empty box where the video should be, with the broken link x.

I then proceeded to search through the WordPress manual and help forums for about an hour and still had no luck. I finally found this site, which provided me with the answer.

HOW TO EMBED A YOUTUBE VIDEO INTO YOUR WORDPRESS BLOG:

1. Click on the “Users” link in the Admin area of your WordPress blog.
2. If you have multiple users, click “edit” next to your profile.
3. Turn off the “Use the visual rich editor when writing” feature.
4. Write your post. You’ll see that the options for “visual” and “code” are gone. You can now paste the YouTube embed code into the post and it will display perfectly.

One word of caution – you can’t switch back to using the visual rich editor after you paste the YouTube code or you’ll have the same problem. You need to publish your post before switching back to the visual editor.

Just for fun, here’s a video about blogging that I found thanks to Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist blog.

Online video may or may not be leading us down a path toward future Internet slowdowns, but there is no debate that the Internet’s infrastructure needs an upgrade to accommodate today’s online usage patterns and multimedia content. But what exactly are the technical issues that are causing the infrastructure problems?

The bottom line is bandwidth. Bandwidth is the amount of data that can be passed along a communications channel in a given period of time. It is typically measured in bits per second. The hardware that is used to transport the data has a limited capacity (bandwidth), which varies depending on the technology that is being used (Ethernet vs. dial-up vs. T1 line). It is this limited bandwidth capacity that is causing concern.

Michael Kleeman explains the bandwidth issue quite well:

“The problem is that we have reached a point of disconnect between the traditional Internet’s architecture and the needs of today’s customers. The traditional Internet’s architecture was not designed, nor can it be expected to handle, the demands being placed on it. Bandwidth demand is growing rapidly, outpacing supply. It’s as if every home in America suddenly needed 10 times more water at 10 times the quality coming out of the same size faucet.

“Today, the average home uses as much bandwidth as a major office park did a few years ago. Remember when you used Internet access for just e-mail? Now, chances are you e-mail photos, download music and watch videos, often all at the same time. The bandwidth consumed by a popular YouTube video, “The Evolution of Dance,” downloaded 54 million times, equals an entire month’s worth of data network traffic in the year 2000.”

Upgrading the infrastructure to support today’s bandwidth needs is going to cost a lot of money – $55 billion more than planned, according to Nemertes Research.

“The bottleneck will be where Internet traffic goes to the home from cable companies’ coaxial cable lines and the copper wires that phone companies use for DSL,” says the research firm (by way of USA Today). To fix this issue, cable, phone and wireless providers are going to have to run new high-capacity lines and rethink the way that they are set up to serve bandwidth to their customers. Currently, most Internet providers are “devoted to sending data to users — not users sending data,” says the USA Today article. “They’ll need more capacity for the latter as more people transmit homemade music, photos and videos.”

I posted this story about online video yesterday, which included a number of stats about YouTube, but I just came across a few more today that I wanted to add to the discussion. According to Nigel Hollis at MediaPost’s Online Video Insider, who is citing stats from Jeben Berg, product marketing manager at YouTube:

– An average of eight hours of content is uploaded to YouTube every minute.
– That content comes from only 2% of the site’s user base.

I just saw a pointer to this over at Boing Boing. The Webby Awards site has posted a list of the 12 most influential online videos of all time. Included are classics such as 2000’s All Your Base Are Belong To Us and JibJab’s “This Land” (Chris made me watch this one more than once). Enjoy!