Wading into the sea of OVP

Over at the Video Compare site the above video gives a quick three point overview of what you should look for in an Online Video Platform (OVP). There are many OVPs to choose from so it's probable that there is one service tailored for your needs. Here's one that may fit the businesses that don't need a full blown service like Brightcove.

I'm still comparing and contrasting different OVPs myself so that I can better recommend them to clients. Wistia characterizes themselves as more of a Video Marketing, Sales, and Collaboration service than strict OVP. The Wistia blog has plenty of worthwhile nuggets as well! Here's a post on the pros and cons of using Free video sharing sites like YouTube.


Please share your OVP experiences and tell us why you chose the one you did, how long you've been using the service, and how it has impacted your business.

Web Video Predictions, iPad, Flash, and HTML5

In the most recent issue of DV Magazine, the cover story is a short, two page, web video state-of-the-union by James Careless. Andrew Maisner is quoted as saying,

'choice is in.' By this I mean that we will gradually change to a universe where we can view whatever we want, whenever we want, with or without commercials, via micro payment. For example, in the future, I will 'tune' in to watch the Lakers play. Before the images appear, I will be given a choice of seeing the game free with commercials or having my credit card debited 50 cents and seeing it without commercials.

Mr. Careless goes on to interview those who see a growing need for more and more web video from many kinds of businesses, but at the same time a need for education because web video standards are all over the place. Mr. Careless points out that there seems to be an unwillingness to push HD down narrow broadband pipes that are happily monetizing SD content at the moment. And finally he gives us a cursory look ahead to clickable hot spot events and better synchronization between embedded video and surrounding webpage elements. (Anybody remember EditDV by Radius? We could program hot spots into QT very easily back then!) Reading the magazine cover had made me flip right to this article, but after reading it I felt there must be something more to say about the future of web video...

While I was reading Mr. Careless' overview I found myself thinking what it would be like to read DV Mag on an iPad, just unveiled by Apple. The fact of the matter is that DV Mag is presented in Flash and the iPad, like the iPhone before it, won't be handling Adobe Flash. So what will online magazines do? Will they go the way of the NY Times (interestingly failing to mention that they themselves were part of the keynote demo!) and redesign themselves to take advantage of the iPad or will the NewBay Media's of the world ignore it? Apple seems to have something against Flash even though Flash drives the majority of video on the web. Flash is a cpu hog and may shorten web viewing on battery operated mobile devices, but isn't its exclusion market suicide? Apparently not for iPhone sales and by extension Apple is figuring it will not be a barrier to iPad sales either.

YouTube plays as H.264 on an iPhone and therefore just as well on an iPad, but down the road it's possible that HTML5 will wipe away the plug-in wars altogether because audio and video will be part of the specification, the core language of the web. Here is some more about it.

In Conclusion:
Watching 720p video on an iPad is where mobile web video is at right now. If you think you can get away with capturing and outputting marginal video because your final destination is the web or small mobile devices, think again... because the bar just went up!

Eye View's Video Marketing Quiz (2009)

Here's a Quiz that exposes a few basics about using video on your business web site.

It's only eight questions long so you needn't worry that it will divert you for too long.

But while you're at it, check out the Eye View blog. The January 14 posting is also interesting as it speaks to the fact that the way video has been monetized up to this point will soon change to a measurement based on performance rather than impressions. Here's the crux of the argument:

Using impressions to value video ads will not remain the standard for much longer. Apart from a handful of big-name, brand advertisers, companies will soon expect their video campaigns to provide ROI based on performance and how successfully they drive users through the sales funnel. As online advertising swings towards performance advertising, the effectiveness of video will be judged by increased conversion, not by impressions. There will be no need for a standard definition of an impression once everybody has abandoned the world of impressions for performance.
The above was in response to updated guidelines from the IAB, Interactive Advertising Bureau. Here's a typical news item from this organization's site (by way of the LA Times) that again points to the future need of organizations to require payment for previously free content:

Hulu ponders a partial pay wall

Hulu may soon begin to charge viewers for some of its previously free, ad-supported content. The site is reportedly considering a variety of plans, such as offering some shows' five most recent episodes for free but charging $4.99 per month for older content. A plan could be finalized within six months.

(You may also find this IAB document interesting... although it is already two years old!)

More On Monetizing

Many people are anticipating the coming announcements from Apple next week. Much of that anticipation is concentrated on the rumored introduction of an iSlate, tablet. Some have mentioned that there is also a likelihood that Apple will introduce a new pricing structure which would include subscription (this by way of @dboyll).

Perhaps due to the surge of interest for all things media relating to Haiti in recent days there have been renewed rumblings about making some newsworthy information worth something to the consumer, literally. Here are some excerpts from the article:

2010, by some accounts, may be the year in which this type of content will be placed behind pay walls, repeating an attempt from several years ago to charge for news content. 


Perez notes that the subscription model works well for Murdoch's Journal, which makes its op-ed content available for free, but charges for longer news and analysis pieces. Yet the question remains whether a regular newspaper could charge for standard news fare. (BTW, Murdoch also owns Hulu...)


One uncertainty in all of this, especially if the Times chooses to go with a metered system, is whether video content will command a higher price than print content. This concern is followed closely by the question of what makes up a news story: the video itself or a combination of a text article and the supplementary video clips.


"Of course, it is the established media, with their legacy of high operating costs and outdated technology, that face this problem," Perez-Pena noted in his blog post, citing the Huffington Post as one example of a "leaner, newer online competitors [which] will continue to be free, avidly picking up the users lost by sites that begin to charge." 

Eventually the web will need to pay for itself if we want to continue to receive high quality content with the click of a button.

Is Content King or Will Content Be King Once Again?

While reading a Streaming Media review of BoinxTV I clicked on an add for Twistage.Twistage is a platform that allows a business to keep all the aspects related to an online video initiative in one place. They work with businesses such as Fast Company (example of Fast Company TV) and Mochila (Twistage case study).

Digging a little deeper into the Twistage blog I came across a link to a piece that the CEO, David Wadler, wrote in the Huffington Post. The questions and examples Mr. Wadler presents in this article resonate with me and so I'm sharing them with you. In a world of "Free" how do we move on to sustainable business models before we've eroded too many professional livelihoods? What does the HBO model mean for your business?

No doubt future monetization will be some combination of ever evolving ad placement, pay per view, i-tunes model purchase, and/or subscription. What's working for you right now?

Using Web Video on your Business site: A Non-Profit Example

Many large businesses use web video to communicate with prospects, customers and employees. Medium and Small Businesses are getting into it too, but some are hesitant. Those who are implementing video may or may not be doing so with the proper tools in place to analyze whether this or that clip is drawing in prospects and leading to new customers. Whether you place video on your site to help market, sell, or educate, you'll be better served if you know who is watching and whether that video is having an impact. This is a no-brainer to a lot of people, but it's new to those who are still working off the assumption that a website is just a glorified brochure and video on that website is the same as paying a premium for extra fancy graphics on the pages of that brochure.


Here's the example of m/Oppenheim Associates. 


m/Oppenheim Associates is a search company that finds executives for non-profits. They have begun incorporating video into their site by publishing to Blip.TV and then embedding the Blip.TV player back into their site. The videos they now have available are clips from a recent symposium and a couple of interviews that were shot Charlie Rose-style against black limbo. How you get to the video player is a little kludgey unless you've been given a direct link in an email, which is how I got there.

If you're on the site and you click on the insight link you can download .pdfs or watch individual videos by clicking on links in the right side bar. This is how those individual clips look.

The page behind goes dark and the single clip presents itself. You can get to the multi-clip player by following the More Videos link in red text at the bottom of the "Videos and Podcasting" sidebar if you've scrolled down all the way. Do the individual clips allow for better analytics? I don't think so; it's probably just a workaround used to add video to an existing page layout.


The video is there, it's also there in a convenient, multi-clip player, but you have to drill down for it. I looked to see if the Blip.TV connection meant that the videos on the m/Oppenheim site were being uploaded to other sites, but I don't really see evidence of that. There are three videos on YouTube and two on Facebook, but I didn't find any on Flickr or Vimeo.


Be that as it may, m/Oppenheim is going for it and will no doubt add more and more video as they go along. If the analytics are studied, different site placement and UI changes tested, the use of video will do more for the m/Oppenheim brand. The main thing is to get started and that's exactly what they're doing!

Anybody know if Qualcomm rolled this out at CES? ...just kidding

CES Delivers What Santa May Have Missed

Looks like the FlipHD will have competition from the new Sony Bloggie, as well as from Sanyo and Kodak. The Sanyo version has an 8 MP still camera as opposed to the Bloggie's 5 MP. And then there's an interesting device from Ion Audio that has a lens on either side of it's body... but it does look like it might have some better audio.

In terms of Web Video, I'm interested to see what Apple rolls out in terms of a tablet because the HP and Lenovo versions look interesting. This from a Computerworld blog:

Alex Wilhelm thinks about HP's new Slate tablet:

Well, we did get to see a tablet tonight at CES, three in fact. Ballmer in his keynote today highlighted an upcoming “slate” PC from HP. ... What does it do? Well, Ballmer showed it running Kindle and Windows Media Player. Looks like a pretty standard Windows 7 [installation with] multiouch support.
  
Good news: it is coming, and is garnering positive initial reviews. Bad news: no you cannot have one now, and you need to wait for Apple to talk before you would even want to think about buying one. ... HP states that: “It will also make an appearance, along with HP’s Todd Bradley, in a keynote with Qualcomm’s CEO Friday.” Get ready.

Here's NVIDIA's chipset being shown off in a number of tablets. It still remains to be seen what Apple decides to do to power it's tablet. I guess we'll find out at Macworld, if not sooner!

Compression has changed our viewing choices considerably

I was going over some tweets from @dboyll and came across this review of recent compression history. When you think about it, it really is amazing what has taken place in such a short amount of time. I remember being so frustrated that video on the web wasn't taking off fast enough... well now it's everywhere!

When the iphone first came out and wouldn't run Flash I thought it would really hamper the user experience while searching the web... but it didn't seem to affect sales significantly. Now with Flash available on the new Google phone, Nexus, I'm interested to see if this small addition has a big impact.

Inbound Marketer Hubspot encourages us to use video!

If you're not familiar with Hubspot, you should be! They are top-notch Inbound Marketing evangelists who practice what they preach. Here is a recent blog post (Tues. Jan. 5, 2010 / 7:30 AM) about ways to get video into your marketing mix. The Webinar at the end of this post is also good.  It's been out there for a while, but it's a great overview of how to use online video for Inbound Marketing.

However, the approach Hubspot takes towards video, and more and more internet companies are following suit, may come off as rather blasphemous to those of you who are hired to produce videos for businesses like Hubspot... so let's take a closer look.

Will there no longer be a place for professionally produced videos? Are we forever doomed to be bombarded by poorly lit, cleverly written videos performed by the marketing staff? Does the "video production as sprint rather than marathon" metaphor work in all cases? Are sumptuous corporate image videos, flatteringly lit customer testimonials, and professionally acted training scenarios a thing of the past? Are all corporate communication videos shot on broadcast cameras too stiff, unreal, patronizing, and longwinded to be effective? Is this shift the corporate equivalent of Network TV dumping scripted programming for reality TV?

The situation is that marketing as we know it is encountering seismic changes and we all need to reorient ourselves to the shifting sands beneath our feet. While inexpensive tools and free internet sharing sites will turn many more people into instant filmmakers, there will always be a need for video that makes people and companies not only sound smart, but look good. If you're only ever showing your raw, shoot-from-the-hip side, it's going to get old; eventually other businesses will want to see a little maturity in your visuals to go along with your cutting edge thinking... I know I would.

As we develop the next, latest and greatest way to communicate perhaps a little historical perspective would be instructive. The late 70's music scene, in terms of popular music, seemed to be a steady stream of power groups like Pink Floyd, Led Zepplin, Styx, Queen, and Supertramp among others. But while the majority of youth were being lulled to sleep by guitar solos and epic light shows, Punk bands were banging their way into small, urban night clubs. They used bare bones equipment and played basic beats and chords, sped everything up, and shouted out their pent up lyrics. As the bands with punk energy matured and grew their audiences (some would say, "sold out") they too played larger and and larger venues with more and more sophisticated sound systems. It's an old story of constant renewal, from raw to more refined; but communications, like rock, won't be going back... instead it will continually learn how to stay relevant to the ever changing needs of the people who want to hear more and make things happen.

TubeMogul Research worth checking out

I'm a little slow on the uptake, but I thought this information from TubeMogul regarding how videos are found was worth sharing. This survey comes from almost a year ago, but it's still instructive in terms of where to put your energy if you want your videos to be seen. Apparently video search engines are not nearly as productive as blogs, regular Google or Yahoo searches, and Facebook links/referrals.

And this from the TubeMogul blog showing that viewership for video on the web peaks midweek. The fact that it is so uniform seems to mean that video is as likely to be searched/viewed as anything else... it's a part of our web experience and not a weekend indulgence, like say a movie.

Steinar Knutsen on using business web video

Here's a slide show talk by Steinar Knutsen with helpful tips for web site promotion geared to the individual but applicable to company/group promotion as well.

Some of the topics discussed in the above slide show video:

• Consistency and the importance of creating videos on a regular basis
• Using keyword research for video search engine optimization
• Subscribing to and commenting on other videos to build your community
• Uploading and sharing your videos on popular video sharing networks
• Mixing up your content with a variety of media platforms
• Using the right tools to create great videos easily

Mr. Knutsen recommends the use of TubeMogul, a service that lets you post once while simultaneously distributing to many sites... getting the word out quickly, easily, and ubiquitously. You also receive useful analytics to track the usage of your video content around the web. Subscription is free.