YouTube Mobile Tests Mobile Ads
YouTube (owned by Google) has announced that they have started running a test of display ads on certain pages of their mobile site, in an effort “to learn how video viewers engage with mobile advertising.”
In a post on the googlemobile blog, YouTube says that their mobile service has become very popular, with hundreds of millions of mobile videos being watched each month.
Display Ad on YouTube Mobile (from MocoNews)
The new advertising will not only enable YouTube to learn about consumer interaction with mobile ads, it will also give the brands that are participating in the test “an additional branding tool at their disposal and the opportunity to reach the millions of people who visit YouTube every day on their phones.”
Although there are some issues that YouTube must of course keep in mind (eg don’t make the ad files too large because consumers may be paying for the bandwidth or be bandwidth capped), I think it’s a good thing that they have started to experiment.
The blog post says they are working “to deliver the kinds of ads that contribute to the user experience while making the most sense for advertisers”, and frankly I think they are one of the companies with the experience and attitude to make that happen. [MobiAdNews]
Google Launches YouTube Mobile Advertising Trial
By Jason Ankeny
In its continuing effort to monetize user-generated video aggregator site YouTube, web services giant Google is now testing display ads on selected YouTube mobile clips in the U.S. and Japan. "This is our first step in testing mobile advertising for YouTube," reads a post from YouTube product marketing manager Christine Tsai on the Google Mobile Blog.
"It will give you a new way to interact with content on the go, while allowing us to learn how video viewers engage with mobile advertising. Our test advertisers will also have an additional branding tool at their disposal and the opportunity to reach the millions of people who visit YouTube every day on their phones," added Tsai.
Tsai notes that Google plans to explore additional new approaches to mobile advertising in the weeks ahead. [FierceMobileContent]
Google CEO: Mobile Advertising to Generate More Revenue Than Today's Web
By Lynnette Luna
In an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that the next major growth wave for Google in terms of search engine marketing is the mobile Internet. He cited the iPhone as the first mobile device with a good web browser and that more devices will come to market, enabling advertising to become personal. He predicted that within a few years, mobile advertising would generate more revenue than advertising on today's web.
Schmidt said he was less enthusiastic about the advertising possibilities of video portals like YouTube and DoubleClick, and said he generally wasn't happy with the advertising prospects of Web 2.0 in general. Google has invested some $900 million in a deal with MySpace that saw the search engine as the exclusive advertising and search engine. It reached many users but was proving difficult to establish the ad network. "Some things work, and others just don't--but the mobile Internet always works," he said. [FierceWireless]
More Than One Billion Users Will View Online Video in 2013
Sparked by increasing broadband penetration and rising connection speeds available to a growing percentage of the world’s population, over-the-top video has seen phenomenal growth in very recent years. A new study from ABI Research forecasts the number of viewers who access video via the Web to nearly quadruple in the next few years, reaching at least one billion in 2013.
“The rapid expansion of broadband video creates opportunities across a number of market sectors,” comments senior analyst Cesar Bachelet. “A wide variety of actors aim to gain a share of this fast-growing market: not only content owners such as the BBC and NBC Universal, and Internet portals such as AOL and Yahoo!, but also a range of new entrants including user-generated content sites such as YouTube and Dailymotion, broadband video sites such as CinemaNow and Lovefilm, and Internet TV providers such as Apple and Zattoo.”
Increasingly, the methods used to deliver this content are changing, in order to reduce the strain on broadband networks. These include content distribution networks that cache content closer to the user, peer-to-peer networks which leverage users’ PCs, and hybrid networks which combine these two approaches.
This proliferation poses a challenge for traditional pay-TV operators. They cannot afford to do nothing. According to Bachelet, however, “Pay-TV providers should refrain from knee-jerk responses, or adopting defensive measures aimed at discouraging consumers from using those services. That would only produce resentment from subscribers and likely defections from their services.”
Instead, he recommends something of an “if you can’t beat them, join them” approach, aimed at turning the threat into an opportunity. Particularly for those who own broadband infrastructure, PC-based services can be an ideal complement to their core business. “They can offer access to content via this increasingly popular alternative platform,” says Bachelet. “They can offer content beyond that available through traditional channels, and they can reach a new set of subscribers.”
They can also adapt Web content for distribution via their traditional model, and include advertising support. [ABI Research]
Online Video Viewing Still Rising
But how much?
Internet users in the US watched 11.5 billion online videos in March 2008, up 13% over February 2008 and 64% over March 2007, according to comScore Video Metrix. That is an average of 83 videos watched per viewer during March.
Online video viewing is a mainstream activity for Internet users in the US. Nearly three-quarters of the online population watched an online video in March.
Nearly 85 million viewers watched 4.3 billion videos on YouTube (50.4 videos per viewer), while over 47 million viewers watched 400 million videos on MySpace (8.4 videos per viewer). Including YouTube, Google sites served an average of 50.9 videos per viewer.
comScore said the average online video viewed was 2.8 minutes long. The average online video viewer watched 235 minutes of video.
Nielsen Online also measured online video viewing in March 2008, with different results. Nielsen reported an average of 137.3 minutes of online video viewed for the month—nearly 100 minutes less than the comScore study. Nielsen told eMarketer that they excluded advertising, which comScore included.
Read more - eMarketer
T-Mobile Jilts Google for Yahoo oneSearch
Hours after announcing it would reject Microsoft's unsolicited $44.6 billion buyout bid on grounds the offer "substantially undervalues" its worth, web services giant Yahoo significantly improved its position in the mobile web market, displacing rival Google as T-Mobile's exclusive mobile search services provider in the operator's northern and central European markets.
Announcing the deal Tuesday at Mobile World Congress here in Barcelona, T-Mobile said it will introduce Yahoo oneSearch at the end of March, with the two companies planning to develop a differentiated oneSearch experience optimized specifically for T-Mobile subscribers for future release. They also plan to collaborate on introducing T-Mobile incarnations of Yahoo services like Flickr, Yahoo Messenger, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Weather and Yahoo Finance.
According to T-Mobile group products and innovation officer Christopher Schläffer, the T-Mobile/Yahoo partnership will emphasize what he called "federated search," a model emphasizing contextual responses culled from multiple sources, not just the web. "We're moving away from the web to something new," Schläffer said during Tuesday's press conference. 
"Federated search is about direct answers--mobile screens are too small to deal with links, so we're going to push the answers to the screen, [drawing on a] federation of content sources including content from the device portal, local search, and people and community search."
Marco Boerries, executive vice president of Yahoo's Connected Life unit, added "We're focused on giving answers, not web links. We try to find the user context and deliver the result. We're integrated at the operator level, so we understand location, and depending on the keyword and context, we can prepare just the right result. It's search designed with the mobile web in mind."
T-Mobile also announced a series of related items Tuesday, including an expansion of its web'n'walk mobile web portal to include services like YouTube, MySpace, Flickr and Bebo, as well as a European mobile IM service slated to offer access to Windows Live Messenger, ICQ, AOL Instant Messenger and Yahoo Messenger, which T-Mobile CEO Hamid Akhavan said collectively represent roughly 90 percent of the overall IM market.
T-Mobile also said it plans to introduce Apple's iPhone to the Austrian market later this year, with a handset based on Google's fledgling Android OS scheduled to launch sometime in the fourth quarter. No doubt in response to EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding's recent vow to take action in response to concerns Europeans are paying too much for mobile data services outside their native country, T-Mobile also said it will introduce pan-European data roaming plans. Asked by a member of the audience whether the flat data pricing will generate a loss of revenue, Akhavan smiled and said "I hope not." [FierceMobileContent]
YouTube Expands Mobile Video Efforts
YouTube is making its entire catalog of more than 200 million video clips available to all mobile users with 3G phones operating on either a UMTS/HSDPA or EV-DO network. Not only can users view videos, but they can also upload content immediately from their cell phone and view it on a cell phone.
The company says that it has made a huge investment in infrastructure to make this service available. Besides the regular streaming service, YouTube Mobile will also enable users to personalize their service by letting them rate and comment on videos using their phone.
YouTube Mobile product manager Dwipal Desai said that the service will be available to all Sprint and AT&T customers with 3G phones and a data plan. He added that the service currently isn't available on Verizon Wireless EV-DO phones because they don't currently have streaming support.
However, Verizon subscribers can get access to some select YouTube content through the operator's V CAST service. "This service is not tied to a particular OEM or a carrier," Desai said in an interview with FierceMobileContent. "With this launch, we have brought YouTube mainstream."
YouTube also has a free downloadable Java application it is offering through a handful of mobile phones with streaming capabilities. Those phones include the Sony Ericsson k800, w880, Nokia e65, n95, n73, 6610 navigator and 6120 classic. - [Sue /FierceMobileContent]
Helio Debuts Feature-rich YouTube Service
Mobile virtual network operator Helio announced a new YouTube application it is calling "the most comprehensive YouTube experience currently offered on mobile," promising integrated video capture and upload for near real-time sharing, GPS tagging, personalization and community features like rating and commenting.
Available free for Helio Ocean users, the custom YouTube app also enables subscribers to view tens of millions of videos, save and share favorite clips, and access their own video feeds. "This is the closest thing to the YouTube web experience available on mobile today," said Helio VP of media and community services Rob Gelick in a prepared statement. "With the ability to do things like GPS tagging and posting video responses right from a device wherever you happen to be, it brings new possibilities to the YouTube world."
"Accessing YouTube while on the go has been limited to browsing and viewing, without the rating, sharing and personalization features that have made YouTube a runaway hit on the Web," said Sky Dayton, CEO of Helio. "Helio is taking mobile YouTube beyond anything else on the market, letting members view tens of millions of videos but also giving them true community interaction comparable to the Web and even beyond the Web.”
"Helio has taken the mobile YouTube experience to the next level," said Chad Hurley, CEO and co-founder, YouTube. "This innovative application offers people even more customization and provides them with instant access to interact with the YouTube community whenever and wherever they go." [FierceWireless]
YouTube Shares More Wealth, Expands Partner Program
YouTube is now expanding the amount of money it shares with amateur video uploaders. The company first dabbled in the concept in May, following the example of rival upstarts like Revver.
Now, the YouTube Partner Program is widening its number of partners, subject to various qualifications. "Even in this limited release, the program has been an amazing success – already, millions of video views each week are earning revenue for our partners," the company explained.
According to YouTube, chosen videos must comply with a number of specific terms. Although anyone within the United States and Canada can apply at youtube.com/partners, the company noted that it will only accept submissions from users that are already "viewed by thousands of YouTube users," among other qualifications. All content must also be copyright controlled (no exceptions), and suitable for online streaming.
In May, YouTube said it had revenue-sharing deals with more than 1,000 partners, including media companies CBS, the BBC, Sundance Channel, the NBA and Sony BMG, as well as independent content creators like lonelygirl15.
Newer partners will join a class that includes Universal Music Group, PerezHilton, and the NBA, as well as smaller creators like artist Tay Zonday.
First round of several hundred users had been selected by the company for building a sizable audience on YouTube and complying with the site's terms of use. YouTube said it hopes the program will encourage users to "create compelling, engaging and viral content" for the site. It also hopes the expansion of the number of vids will encourage more marketers to consider buying ad time on YouTube. [DigitalMusicNews]
Majority of Web Users Watching Video
Nearly three-quarters of US Internet users watched an online video in September 2007, according to comScore Video Metrix.
comScore said the average viewer watched three hours of online video during the month. US Internet users viewed more than nine billion online videos in September.
Google sites (including YouTube) had the largest online video audience with 71.6 million unique viewers. Fox Interactive Media (MySpace) had 41.2 million and Yahoo! sites had 39.6 million unique viewers.
Nearly 70 million people viewed more than 2.5 billion videos on YouTube.com. More than 38 million people viewed approximately 360 million videos on MySpace.com. The average online video duration was 2.7 minutes. The average online video viewer consumed 68 videos, or more than two per day. [eMarketer]
Social Networks Trusted More Than Ads
Internet users are far more likely to trust their social networking contacts than vendors, advertisers or blogs, according to a Faves.com study cited in a MarketingCharts article.
More than one-third of Internet users surveyed by Faves said they “highly trusted” information from friends and acquaintances in their online social networks. Nine in 10 said they at least "moderately trusted" their social network contacts.
Only 4% had a high amount of trust for content and opinions from vendors, advertisers, blogs or forums. Content and opinions in news communities such as Digg and Reddit drew high trust from 3% of respondents.
“Two years ago, only 13% of the people we surveyed visited a social-networking site weekly—today, that number is 34%," said Rob Dickerson, CEO of Faves, in a statement.
"Two years ago only 9% visited a media sharing site, such as YouTube or Flickr, weekly—today, that number is 26%," Mr. Dickerson said.
More than one-third of respondents said they visited a social networking site at least once a week. [eMarketer]
Skype, YouTube Starting to Impact Net Traffic Loads
New applications such as Skype and YouTube as well as file hosting services such as Rapidshare and Megaupload are starting to make an impact on network traffic, according to the latest study by German firm ipoque.
It reported that P2P traffic makes up anywhere between 50 and 90 percent of Internet traffic, with BitTorrent still the most popular P2P network, having passed eDonkey in last year's survey for the first time.
While the results need to be tempered by the fact that Ipoque is a vendor of traffic management products that it aims to sell to service providers wanting to control their P2P traffic, it has been invited to MIT Technology Review's Emerging Technologies Conference to present its findings later this month.
The 2006 survey largely focused on file sharing networks, but the 2007 edition will include statistics about applications such as Skype, Joost, media streaming and one-click hosting. According to its preliminary results, Internet TV service Joost does not yet cause the traffic volume many Internet providers fear, however the lower bandwidth Skype now generates up to 2% of the overall traffic in certain networks.
Media streaming services such as YouTube and one-click file hosting services like Rapidshare and Megaupload, which provide direct download links as a means to distribute content using ad-financed web server farms, have also seen a huge popularity surge, Ipoque reported.
However, BitTorrent is still the globally dominant P2P protocol, with a share of 50-75% of all P2P traffic. The traffic management vendor noted that eDonkey exhibits a regionally varying popularity, with shares between 5-50% of all P2P. And in certain regions other protocols have gained a significant importance. In the Baltic States, for instance, DirectConnect has a proportion of about 30% of P2P.
In last year's survey, ipoque undertook detailed data acquisition and analysis for the eDonkey and BitTorrent networks. The results showed a 20% and 30% share of pornographic content for BitTorrent and eDonkey, while the survey also confirmed that many current audio, ebook and movie titles are exchanged, the firm said. [Broadband Communities]
A Billion Internet Video Consumers
Nearly a billion consumers worldwide will watch Internet video by 2012, up from roughly 300 million today, according to ABI Research's "Broadband Video and Internet TV" report.
Michael Wolf of ABI said, "Who pays for video online will largely be determined by who foots the bill through existing models. For broadcast television, including primetime TV content, we anticipate that ad support will be the primary engine of monetization as this content moves online. Movie content new to the home video window will be largely consumer pay-supported.
"User-generated content will be ad-supported, as sites such as YouTube and social networking sites make increasing use of content produced by their own online users as a way to drastically increase their inventory of premium advertising opportunities," Mr. Wolf continued. "We believe that pay-video adoption will grow through sites such as iTunes where consumer hardware platforms create end-to-end user experiences that enable easy access to premium video." [eMarketer]
Mobile TV Awareness, Then Adoption
YouTube's model threatens small-screen TV.
Mobile broadcast TV subscribers will total 155.6 million worldwide by the end of 2012, up from 4.4 million in June 2007, according to Datamonitor's "Opportunities in the Mobile Broadcast TV Market, 2006-2012" report.
Infonetics had estimated previously that paying mobile TV subscribers would total 46 million in 2010. Datamonitor's 2010 estimate is a more aggressive 65.6 million.
eMarketer projects that by 2011 there will be significantly more paying mobile video subscribers than mobile TV subscribers worldwide, largely because of the level of 3G penetration. Specifically, there will be approximately 120 million 3G subscribers who pay a premium on top of their data subscriptions for mobile video clips or streams. There will be nearly 80 million mobile TV subscribers worldwide by 2011.
Chris Khouri of Datamonitor noted, "Consumer education, technological fragmentation and content adaptation will have to be addressed first before [mobile TV] mass adoption can take place.
"In most cases, consumers need to see it to believe it in order to see value in subscribing to a mobile broadcast TV service," Mr. Khouri continued. "Strong and innovative marketing campaigns, such as viral marketing or traveling exhibitions, will considerably aid in the mass adoption of mobile broadcast TV services."
Read more
Watching TV, But Not on TV
Would you pay to watch YouTube clips on your TV?
Over a quarter of males ages 13 to 34 watch video on devices other than TVs, according to E-Poll's "Multi-Platform Viewing of Video Content" report. The study of viewing habits in 2007 found three-quarters of consumers ages 13 and older viewed video content on PCs.
Over half of those who watched video content online said they were interested in transferring it to their television sets. Only 13% of television viewers said they had already made such a transfer. Half didn't know it was possible.
The idea lost its charm when prices were mentioned. About half of TV viewers said they would like to be able to transfer online video to their TVs, but only 17% would pay $100 or more for a device.
On the other hand, nearly a third said they would still be interested, even if it required a complicated installation. One reason more people are moving their TV viewing to other devices is availability. More people have video-capable devices, making it convenient to watch video even if the viewer is not at home.
Young teens are especially gadget-rich. Over half of boys and girls ages 12 to 14 owned and used a computer, TV, VCR, DVD player and mobile phone on a regular basis, according to a Los Angeles Times and Bloomberg survey conducted in June-July 2006.
Read more
China YouTV Tries Wireless Value-Added Services
China YouTV Corp. reported that its Joint Venture Partner HuaJu NetMedia ("HuaJu") has entered into a strategic partnership with the leading value-added mobile service and software technology provider in China, HURRAY where both parties will carry out cooperation on over 2000 3G experience terminals. These terminals will be launched into Gome Electrical Appliances Holding Ltd.'s malls across the country, providing consumers with excellent wireless value-added services and state-of-the-art 3G service experiences.
HuaJu has completed the R&D of experience terminals. With advanced touch screen which is embedded with services favored by consumers such as video, music, ring tones, pictures and mobile games, users can operate the terminals as easily as operating computers, and trial use, view or experience these services at any time. Having found and purchased desired items, users can acquire them in many forms such as by writing or through infrared, Bluetooth or data cable.
Both parties agree that they will use their advantages to furnish the experience terminals with excellent contents. HuaJu has been taking the lead in video sharing and possesses abundant entertainment video resources, while HURRAY also owns several music companies. The combination of both parties in this field will bring forward a win-win situation.
Mr. Wei, CEO of HuaJu said that, the launch of 3G experience terminals, which is designed to provide consumers with more direct and considerate experience services, is an upgrade of the cooperation between HuaJu and Gome on 3G service experience cards.
HURRAY also maintains that, use of the terminals to provide wireless value-added services and ahead-of-time 3G contents not only provides value-added mobile services to explore 3G era in advance with a best opportunity, but also enhances consumer's user experience, creating a new revenue source for value-added mobile service providers. HURRAY and HuaJu will share the profit, HURRAY will have 40%, HuaJu will have 60%.
www.CnBoo.com ("CnBoo"), the online video site belonging to the Joint Venture established by China YouTV Corp. and HuaJu, is a video viewing site and social networking site that allows users to create their own profiles, post videos, and comment on each other's posts. CnBoo web site is similar to YouTube (www.YouTube.com), the No. 1 online video site. Within less than 2 years, CnBoo already has over 1.2 million members and over 1 million pieces of original digital video (DV) shorts. [WirelessIQ]
YouTube Pictures Mobile Website
User-generated video aggregator YouTube announced plans to launch a mobile website but otherwise remains mum on its larger goals for the mobile platform.
In an e-mail to Computerworld, a YouTube spokesperson calls the mobile site "another step forward in achieving our mobile strategy of delivering entertaining videos to users whenever they want and wherever they go. People want to be entertained in a way that fits their individual lifestyles, so offering videos to mobile users is a natural evolution for YouTube."
While the smart money suggests YouTube will introduce its mobile site in June, around the time its exclusive content partnership with Verizon Wireless reportedly expires, the spokesperson offered few additional details.
"Our partnerships with Verizon Wireless in the U.S., and Vodafone and Nokia overseas, are the first of many and demonstrate our continued success in developing strong relationships with leading companies," the spokesperson writes, also declining to comment on speculation it's developing its own mobile client, reputedly called "Switch."
How Women Look at Video Online... Is Different
Online video is a business that has been years in the making. Thanks to the proliferation of broadband and the popularity of the YouTubes of the world, it is now what analysts at Piper Jaffray call "the new killer app of the Web."
But the app is not as killer for females as it is for males.
This year there will be an estimated 97 million females online in the US, compared with 91 million males. A clear majority. When it comes to viewing video online, however, their positions are reversed.
"While 78% of males watch video online, only 66% of females do," says Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer senior analyst and the author of the new Women Online: Taking a New Look report. "They are less likely than males to visit most video destination sites — even the biggie, YouTube."
The disproportion is all the more surprising because females watch more TV than males. So what do females watch online?
A study conducted by InsightExpress for Advertising.com indicated that news clips are the most popular type of online video for all US adult viewers.
Read more
Streamers View Seven Billion Videos Monthly
Nearly 123 million people in the US viewed 7.2 billion videos in January 2007 alone, according to comScore.
The average streamer watches about two videos every day, for a total of 151 minutes per month.
Viewing is actually more common on weekdays than weekends. Video streaming is 60% greater than average between 5 and 8 pm on weekdays.
"Marketers have a great opportunity to leverage Internet video in conjunction with their traditional TV buy and essentially double their 'primetime' commercial airing hours," reported Erin Hunter of comScore. "'Primetime' TV viewing occurs between 8:00 and 11:00 P.M., while 'primetime' viewing of online video occurs during the preceding block of time — between 5:00 and 8:00 P.M. on weekdays. Shrewd marketers will utilize a multi-channel strategy to capitalize on these adjacent 'primetime' blocks in order to maximize their marketing impact."
Thanks to its acquisition of YouTube, Google sites are now the top Web properties for video streaming. YouTube served up nearly a billion video streams in January alone. [eMarketer]
YouTube Increases Its Online Video Lead
YouTube added 3.8 million US users in January 2007, according to new data from Nielsen//NetRatings.
Visitors stayed over 41 minutes on average, up from less than 39 minutes in December 2006.
There were nearly twice as many YouTube viewers as Google Video viewers. Three times as many people watched YouTube than watched video on MySpace.
MSN Video gained 100,000 visitors, for a total of 12.2 million, while Yahoo! Video lost 300,000 visitors, for a total of 5.8 million.
YouTube alternatives are still mostly bit players. Break.com, for instance, attracted 3.3 million visitors in January, and Metacafe had 2.9 million visitors. [eMarketer]
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