YouTube

comScore is out with their latest online video report for March 2008 covering U.S. Internet users. YouTube continues to lead the pack and represents 98% of all videos in the Google Sites category. Tell me again why they keep Google Video around? It's seems Google abandoned it when they acquired YouTube.

Google moved up another 2.6 share points to 38% of all videos watched. The real telling statistic is that YouTube visitors watched an average of 50 videos each over the month. No one else comes close to this in the lead pack as Microsoft Sites comes in second with nearly 10 videos per user. More videos per user mean more ability and options to monetize over the session. In total videos watched, Fox Interactive came in second followed by Yahoo Sites, Viacom Digital and Microsoft Sites.

Another juicy bit in the report is that the average online video viewer watched 235 minutes of video. Wow. And with live video slowly taking off, this number will only continue to increase.

Custom Communications out of the U.K. have put together a series of posts regarding the top brands on YouTube. The story isn't about how brands are embracing YouTube to effectively communicate their message. Instead the list focuses on which videos related to a brand has the most video views and how the specific video could affect the brand, both positively or negatively. Their "impact on reputation" score for each video is worth a read.

Here are the top 10:

1. Nike - "Ronaldinho: Touch of Gold" - Viewed 22,581,372 times
2. Pepsi - "PEPSI (Britney Spears, Beyonce, Pink - We Will Rock You)" - Viewed 14,050,586 times
3. McDonalds - "Fast Food Freestyle" - Viewed 11,744,399 times
4. Coca-Cola - "Diet Coke+Mentos=Human experiment: EXTREME GRAPHIC CONTENT" - Viewed 8,583,526 times
5. Unilever - "Dove Evolution" - Viewed 6,727,556 times
6. Disney - "Internet is for Porn" - Viewed 3,278,230 times
7. Budweiser - "Banned Super Bowl 2007 Bud commercial" - Viewed 2,149,516 times
8. Microsoft - "Microsoft Surface Parody" - Viewed 2,068,861 times. 3,322 comments
9. IKEA - "Banned Commercial - Swedish Midsummer" - Viewed 1,483,858 times
10. Toyota - "Top Gear: Killing a Toyota Part 1" - Viewed 1,132,279 times

The Nike commercial has over 15,000 comments.

YouTube down? We have been receiving reports for the past 90 minutes that users are not able to access YouTube. Upon further testing, it looks like the YouTube CDN (static file server) is down. All images are not currently being served (see screenshot below) but videos and everything else (commenting, searching, etc.) appears to be working as normal. To the casual YouTube user, it looks like the site is down. Please leave a comment if you are noticing any other issues.

YouTube had two outages in February but since then it's been smooth sailing.

Update: 9:15am Eastern - some are now reporting via IPTools that the DNS for YouTube has been hacked. This may or may not be valid as IPTools lookup is quite crap - if you do a search for youtube.com you get back anything with youtube in it - just try microsoft.com to see the results.

Update: 9:17am Eastern - additional reports are coming in that embedded videos are also down, we can confirm that videos on CN from YouTube are not loading.

Update: YouTube is back. You may resume cat video watching.

Playboy is announcing today the launch of an online search for the best video submissions from hopeful Playboy models. YouTube is acting as the video host for this exciting competition. From what I can gather, this is the first time YouTube is being used to host a contest that will eventually lead to nudity. Is this too far for YouTube to go in terms of the family-friendly view the public holds for YouTube?

The prizes include a trip to Los Angeles, a spread on playboy.com, and a "chance" at being a playmate. I put quotes around chance as the site clearly states that this is not a guarantee even though the marketing suggests that it is.

The contest details are here and the YouTube channel is available for your entries. One interesting bit from the FAQ: MORE »

I heard a lot of sighs this morning. Many video hosts just collectively said, "Damn." YouTube has launched video analytics for videos hosted on YouTube. I can't seem to find the stats on the videos I've uploaded but in the example screenshot below, they look relatively robust. The ability to view more stats than just number of views is critical for marketing and potentially selling advertising. As an analytics nut, I can't wait to start to playing with the tool.

What I'd like to see is integration with Google Analytics for Web sites to complete the analytics chain.

This is a game changer for the ability to sell-in sponsorships. Marketers will now ask you for YouTube stats pages when they approach you for an ad buy. Prove what country is viewing your views, and confirm that our demo is your demo. The days of buying video ads on "number of views" or "number of subscribers" alone are over.

Josh Catone from Readwriteweb notes, "Currently, the stats package does lack a few important metrics such as search engine referral information, being able to tell where users bail on a video, and general link referral info." There's also some limited information on the YouTube product blog.

Side question, where are my Twitter analytics?

Live mobile video service Flixwagon is announcing the launch of a blog/site widget today and a new YouTube distribution feature. The widget is named FliXee and allows you to embed a live stream of your video using the Flixwagon service. I listed Flixwagon as one of three apps that will change 2008.

The other update allows you to automatically upload the live videos to YouTube directly. This is a huge timesaver and could help videobloggers gain more traction by leveraging not just the live video but the ability to get in front of the large YouTube audience. What would be a great next step is to allow each user to select the video service they use.

What I'd like to see next is group live video. Allow me to load a panel of everyone broadcasting live from NYC or Chicago or around a topic.

Other players in the live video space include Kyte and Qik.

I never thought buying YouTube was a good idea for Google. First of all there’s all that legal liability for all that pirated content that I believe has a good chance of coming home to roost. But that is not really the biggest issue.

The problem is it can't make money.

The economics of user generated video will not work for the foreseeable future. There are numerous reasons for this. I have outlined them below.

• Hosting is expensive because, unlike TV, every incremental viewer costs money, so you have to generate a lot in advertising to support it. Right now the actual user generated video revenue number is just a whisker above zero.
• Producing a video ad is expensive which leaves out search advertisers who would prefer to buy keywords and to spend the *zero* dollars it costs to produce a keyword ad.
• Mainstream advertisers that actually can afford to create good video ads won’t advertise on user generated video because they don’t want their ads stuck in front of some sad looking kid swinging a broom stick around and pretending to be Darth Vader – or worse.
• It’s not clear that pre or post roll advertising works anyway – either for the viewer or the advertiser.
• The real moneymaker for Internet advertising is keyword based search advertising. At no time in the near future will keyword advertising work for web video because there is no accessible text.

And so, for all you startups that have as a business model becoming the next YouTube, look out. Because YouTube, by any measure other than having found a gluttonous money-is-no-object benefactor, was a FAIL.

Unlike traditional business, getting profitable and then selling does not appear to be an option. Your only exit will be, after having lost a boatload of investor money, to sell your sinking ship to a big web player who is not Google, since they already have their own video fail. The key acquisition criteria will be that the acquirer is in desperate need of help flushing its money down the toilet.

FYI, it appears that YouTube is down. Please check our post from the last time YouTube was down with a variety of alternative suggestions. We will keep updating this post as we learn more and please report in if it's down where you are as well.

The first reports via e-mail and comments came in about eight hours ago on the outage. I was unable to confirm at that time, but can confirm now.

• Sunday 2:30 Eastern - still down.

Alternative video hosting/viewing sites:

• Viddler
• Vimeo
• Revver
• 5min
• DailyMotion

One of the things I've noticed is the majority of video players currently being used across the Internet put up a large stop sign after the selected video has been played. This morning I watched a video from Kara Swisher that did exactly that. I've embedded the video below so you get the idea.

Most of the large video sharing sites (e.g. YouTube, Viddler, DailyMotion, etc.) offer some videos to switch to after the first one has completed. How many people actually switch off to another video? Isn't there a better way?

As a marketer, I don't understand the reasoning behind stopping the video after the initial selection has completed. Kara has a huge library of great videos but unfortunately the viewer may never see any of them. There should be a never-ending stream of Kara's videos for me to hop from one to the next. This new stream would allow me to see more of Kara's work, interact with it, and potentially find something I'd be likely to share.

Here's an idea for the video sharing sites: When I upload a video, allow me to pick a "piggyback video". The piggyback video is the one I'd like to play after the initial video. The way it would work is also simple. Video A plays, short delay to select another video and if nothing is selected, Video B begins. For home made video players and corporate-players like Brightcove (which powers Kara's videos), make a stream. Even if we only move from one video to two back-to-back videos, the branding and reach just doubled. Technical how-to videos would also benefit from piggybacking. I could show one way to solve the Rubik's cube and then piggyback someone else and their way to solve it.

There are some analytics issues to work through with this idea but the positive content and marketing benefits are strong enough that the idea is worth a look.

Yesterday the discussion at the water cooler was around the YouTube Videocracy event in NYC on Wednesday afternoon. Ian Schafer has a recap of the event which brought out some of the biggest names in online video today including Tay "I will sell out for a whopper and a Dr. Pepper" Zonday and "Will It Blend" dude.

Josh Cohen from NY-based Tilzy.TV has posted a video (embedded below) of the massive size of the event including a catwalk (?!?). Josh notes that he was surprised not to see any cameras at the event -- Josh doesn't realize how controlling Google is with what they share. Let's not forget what happened when I attempted to record a one-minute piece at an event booth last year.

What this event shows is just how many dollars Google is willing to put behind YouTube to keep it on top. The massive marketing spend is hundreds (maybe even more) of times larger than even its nearest competitor. And if there's one thing I've learned in my career, the more spent on more marketing versus the competition, the more likely you are to win. It's not always the case, but it's certainly a contributing factor.

You might want to watch the video now as once Google realizes it's there, it will be removed.