Archive for the ‘Digital Video’ Category
Tuesday, October 11th, 2011
Reality TV has become superfluous. It’s cheap to produce, and highly addicting to watch.
But there’s a next level of “reality” that YouNow hopes to bring to Internet television. Where the television audience has multiple roles, including viewer, judge and even contestant. For instance, let’s say YouNow offers a Country Artist of the Week competition. You use your webcam to broadcast your talent. And in real-time, the Internet audience either votes you down (gong-show style) to skip to the next contestant, or votes you up to extend your airtime.
In theory, I love this idea. Especially the real-time audience-as-judge aspect. But, as this gains in popularity and you have 10,000 people vying for air-time, how do you decide on who gets air-time? But, if they can figure this out, I think it’s a brilliant idea.
Tags: internet-consultant, YouNow
Posted in Digital Video, Internet Marketing, YouTube | No Comments »
Monday, October 10th, 2011
You have to give them credit for trying.
Hulu is trying to their hardest at successfully monetizing interruptions. So now, if you don’t like the ad you’re seeing while watching Hulu, you can use Hulu Ad Swap to switch the ad. You won’t see that digital ad again (it’s clearly irrelevant or intrusive to you), and the online advertiser won’t be charged for that impression.
Here’s the problem. What’s the end game? Actual enjoyment? How often are you going to enjoy an ad so much, you would prefer watching it to skipping that?
No, it’s not impossible. But it requires an incredibly different view of advertising than exists today.
Maybe Hulu’s Ad Swap is the predecessor to this evolution of branded entertainment, as opposed to branded interruptions.
Tags: advertising-on-google, Hulu, hulu-ad-swap
Posted in Digital Video, Google | No Comments »
Monday, October 10th, 2011
The latest round of Google Panda updates - algorithm updates that affect the universal search engine rankings - have bitten again. This latest update, dubbed “2.5″, has resulted in a new tumultuous list of winners and losers.
The losers? Press release distribution sites, e.g. PRNewswire and BusinessWire. The winners? Google sites, including YouTube and Android.com.
Unfortunately, it’s a little hard to figure out the rhyme and reason to the winners and losers list, without understanding specific company practices. Industry thought leaders claim that authorship markup should be your next step if you are struggling to avoid Panda bites, as Google seems to be ever more concerned with original authorship of content. And dare I take a leap when looking at the winners list and say that Google is valuing video more and more?
Tags: 2.5, android, BusinesWire, google-panda-update, PRNewswire, Search-Engine-Optimization, search-engine-rankings, YouTube
Posted in Digital Video, Google, Search-Engine-Optimization, YouTube, android | No Comments »
Monday, September 26th, 2011
iMovie is specifically designed for the amateur videographer to put together aesthetically pleasing video projects. Easy to use. Intuitive controls. Designed around the basics.
A new start-up Magisto, claims to be one step easier. You give us your raw footage. We’ll make your movie for you.
Upload up to 16 video files. Add a title. Select background music if desired. And then, you’ll receive e-mail notification within 20 to 30 minutes that your edited video is ready for viewing. The proprietary technology is designed to automatically find the best footage in your videos, based on facial recognition programming, and help the average individual who uploads 15 minute videos of his kid’s soccer game that no one wants to watch.
Worth giving it a test spin to see if it edits better than your time is valuable?
Tags: imovie, internet-consultant, magisto
Posted in Apple, Digital Video | No Comments »
Monday, September 26th, 2011
What an awful month for Netflix. After introducing huge price hikes on the mailing side of their business, with direct and unapologetic PR to accompany it, Netflix’s stock and active customer list tanked.
Now, Netflix has actually separated the DVD-by-mail service to a completely different name and company, called Qwikster. It would be really interesting to know if this was Netflix’s gameplan all along, or a recent need to separate itself from the now unpopular pricing structure of their business.
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings explains the decision with “Most companies that are great at something…do not become great at new things people want (streaming for us) because they are afraid to hurt their initial business.”
Netflix is obviously forward thinking. They understand the importance – the everything that digital streaming is becoming. And those of us who had already moved to the online streaming only plan thought, “it’s about time.” But there’s that remnant. The remnant that haven’t yet changed and who don’t want to be rushed into it.
Netflix’ stock looks awful right now. The PR was ridiculously stupid. Yet, this is a company who has already led two industries in the past decade. Netflix will continue to do great.
Tags: digital-streaming, internet-consultant, internet-marketing-consulting, netflix, online-streaming, qwikster, reed-hastings
Posted in Digital Video | No Comments »
Friday, September 9th, 2011
The television and movie industries don’t want to change. They’re digging their heels in. Trying to hold on to the cash-cow of the past.
Think of the music industry a few years back before they finally resigned to the reality of digital music. Starz just walked away from its deal with Netflix in a bout of extraordinarily short-termed thinking. Apple hasn’t figured out how to work this out in a way that makes sense monetarily for both the content provider (the networks) and the viewer (you).
But in reality, the move to the cloud is inevitable. Let’s look at our music comparison again. We have less $10 million record deals than ever before. Because I can make a professional-sounding recording in my basement for $2,000. Now, making TV-quality content on the cheap isn’t quite available yet. Which is why we’re still having this discussion rather than buying a la carte episodes online of every show on television.
So, the question is, will TV quality go down if the same amounts of money aren’t there anymore? It’s hard to see how it can’t.
Tags: internet-marketing, internet-marketing-company, netflix, Starz, television
Posted in Digital Video, Internet Marketing | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 7th, 2011
Far and away, Hulu and Netflix are the most interesting players in streaming television right now. So, rumors of a possible Hulu acquisition have some TV enthusiasts a little nervous. What will that look like? Business as usual, or a potentially massive decrease in streaming TV content?
Well, it probably depends on who ends up making the best offer? If a direct competitor buys Hulu, such as DirectTV, you can probably say goodbye to Hulu Plus. An Amazon acquisition might mean less in-show advertising since Amazon doesn’t currently have a working ad platform. A Google acquisition is the most interesting in terms of technology, and in terms of Google’s long-standing tradition of providing quality free of charge – and monetizing the mass traffic that stems from it.
But if Hulu is reportedly one of the only streaming providers successful at monetizing their content, why are they trying so hard to sell? Because they can sell high? Or because streaming expensive content for free just doesn’t make economic sense moving forward? Here’s hoping it’s not that one.
Tags: google-advertising-professional, Hulu, hulu-plus, internet-consultant, netflix, streaming-television
Posted in Digital Video | No Comments »
Thursday, August 18th, 2011
Video utilization has been a Web best practice for a while now. It engages. People like video. Hey, beats reading, right?
But if you’re using video as a content replacement – a text replacement – how can you take advantage of the SEO benefits of video?
First, you need to understand that when you’re dealing with video, you’re dealing with two search engines, specifically the biggest two search engines in the world – Google and YouTube. Google will display videos directly within their standard search engine results in certain cases – so when you embed a video on a specific page of your site, make sure that video is optimized similarly to the page as well. That video may actually have a better chance of making the first page of Google than the content page itself.
YouTube makes it easy to optimize your video, including inserting a keyword-rich title, description, tags and even annotations.
Tags: internet-marketing-company, Search-Engine-Optimization, seo, YouTube
Posted in Digital Video, Search-Engine-Optimization, YouTube | No Comments »
Monday, July 25th, 2011
These are just rumors. But, Apple may be considering a purchase of Hulu, the online video provider.
Now, as a Hulu Plus subscriber, I’m not really thrilled with this news. I love Apple. But, they’re a closed system. They like keeping their music files on their own proprietary devices. And I’m afraid that an Apple purchase of Hulu will force me to buy an Apple TV to watch it on my HDTV.
The acquisition price is a fun number to discuss amongst friends, though, after the company decided not to go through with a $2 billion initial public offering (IPO). It also appears that the company who buys Hulu will own two years of exclusivity to Hulu content, including Walt Disney, News Corp. and NBC programming.
Tags: Apple, Apple-TV, Hulu, internet-marketing-company, NBC, news-corp, Walt-Disney
Posted in Apple, Digital Video | No Comments »
Thursday, April 28th, 2011
Someone made a joke the other day that now would be a perfect time to go rent every movie Blockbuster has and never return it. Netflix, with their video streaming, has officially killed Blockbuster. So, who’s their next competition? Well, traditional video stores still have one big advantage. They get new releases a month earlier than either Netflix or Redbox. That’s a big advantage, but apparently not enough of one.
Because online streaming is just simpler. It’s the path of least resistance for the lazy man, and that will always win.
So how will Hollywood evolve to this new industry winner, and what will that look like for Netflix? Premium Video on Demand is looking at the time advantage Blockbuster had, and trying to beat. For $30, studios can offer not-yet-on-DVD films via online stream. But this seems nuts, and depending on the size of your family would be even more expensive than going to the movie theater.
Tags: blockbuster, internet-marketing-company, netflix, online-streaming, premium-video-on-demand
Posted in Digital Video | No Comments »
