The big news today is Google’s acknowledgment that it will be incorporating “unobtrusive” video advertising into YouTube videos. After months of testing, Google has opted to truly begin monetizing YouTube through what it calls “animated overlays” that appear at the bottom 20% of YouTube videos, 80% transparent ads that if clicked open up a video advertisement in a separate window.
If the user ignores the overlay, it disappears after 10 seconds. If a user watches the video ad, the original video will resume playing at the end of the ad. The concept is to reduce as much as possible the irritation generated by pre-roll or mid-roll or end-roll video ads. (More after the jump.)
It’s a genius way to incorporate video advertising into online videos, one devised not by Google but by web video pioneer VideoEgg. But with Google’s ad prowess and YouTube’s seemingly unstoppable popularity, Google has probably just opened the floodgates that will divert some of the billions of TV advertising away from the boob tube and toward the Internet.
Google’s charging $20 CPM for the overlay ads themselves, but the search giant says that users click on the overlays ten times more than they do on regular display advertising. For now the ads are limited to content partners, those companies that have licensed their wares for YouTube distribution, and Google plans to split the proceeds with the partners.
And the ads are seemingly not now “relevant” the way Google’s current text ads are; that is, the ads aren’t necessarily tied to the content of the video. Scott Karp thinks that the low-relevancy could be a big problem for advertisers. (Thanks, btw, to Scott for the images in this post. They’re straight from Publishing 2.0 because Google didn’t make any available and I couldn’t find any examples of ad overlays running on YouTube videos this morning…a sign, perhaps, that Google is being very, very selective with the video overlays.)
He might be right in the short-run, but in the long-run Google will no doubt build in relevancy features to its in-video advertising program. That’s a no-brainer for the company that virtually created the concept of relevant advertising.
Moreover, some ads don’t need relevancy, just the right target market. Movies aimed at teens, for example, might spread their ad budgets across YouTube regardless of the video content — or almost regardless of the content.
Henry Blodget has taken a serious stab at estimating just how much revenue the new overlays might create for YouTube and the numbers are impressive in the long run. But as NewTeeVee’s Liz Gannes points out in the comments to Blodget’s post, Henry misinterprets the $20 CPM figure.
He assumes the $20 applies only to 1,000 video ads actually viewed when in fact it seems that the $20 applies to 1,000 video ad overlays viewed. In other words, Henry has significantly underestimated how much money Google might make by assuming that YouTube will charge only for actual video ads viewed.
Whatever the precise level of revenue Google can create with its overlay business, my gut tells me that a whole new buzzword will quickly be on the lips of every Madison Avenue, Hollywood and TV programming executive. The word, of course, is overlay.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 12:16 PM | Print | Comments (0)As my devoted readers will notice, I haven’t blogged in a week — the last blogging break of a summer filled with five blogging interruptus trips. I’ve been on a planes-trains-automobiles-subways-riverboats tour of the midwest starting in Chicago and ending in Detroit.
Travel is a nightmare for people whose livelihoods depend on the Internet. Even with mobile Internet connectivity through, say, Verizon Wireless’ EV-DO network, gaining access to a solid Internet connection is an exercise in severe frustration, particularly if you’re on the go. It’s not practical to haul a laptop everywhere and even if it were, firing up the thing takes forever and even with mobile wireless broadband service, connections are extremely slow.
Forget hotel Wi-Fi networks. With five hundred rooms sharing a single 3 Mbps connection, I was lucky to get speeds that top dial-up levels.
But the iPhone…how did I travel without it? It’s easy to carry, of course, and although the AT&T Edge Network leaves a lot to be desired, it does work, more or less, particularly in the midwest, where the carrier must have excellent facilities. The whole of the Internet was at my fingertips, not just the bits and pieces rendered for mobile viewing by only a handful of top websites.
Need to browse the New York Times? I stayed as up-to-date as I needed to be by scanning the newspaper of record in user-friendly, true Internet fashion. Need to check email? The iPhone is a snap for most users, although I have issues with spam filters that make it difficult for me to use my POP email accounts with the iPhone. But I use gmail as a corporate email back-up system and it’s a breeze to check gmail on the iPhone.
I navigated Chicago’s streets, booked tickets for a Second City performance, checked out Techmeme, conducted dozens of Google searches and idly watched YouTube videos while walking, riding, waiting and just hanging out. And of course I made dozens of phone calls with the iPhone.
I could have done many (but not all) of these things on the Blackberry, just not quite as easily and certainly not as freely because the iPhone entails no data charges. I even settled a bet (which I lost) about when the film “The Deer Hunter” was released while sitting in a Greek restaurant in Ann Arbor by whipping out the iPhone.
The one thing I couldn’t do was serious computer-required work, such as blogging, writing or researching. Those things still require a laptop and a better-than-Edge network. But still, based on this last trip, it seems to me the iPhone is a (domestic) traveler’s best friend, particularly in areas where AT&T’s networks are up to snuff.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 11:02 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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