Nielson's Latest Online Video Numbers

Source: Nielson

During May 2012, there were 163.5 million unique U.S. video viewers who streamed over 26 billion videos and spent about 5.8 hours on average watching online video.  YouTube was the top online video destination, with more than 4 out of 5 viewers streaming videos from their site.

Overall Online Video Usage (U.S.)

	May 2012
Unique Viewers	163,478,000
Total Streams	26,167,111,000
Streams per Viewer	160.1
Source: Nielsen

Top Online Video Destinations by Unique Viewers

Video Brand	Unique Viewers
YouTube	136,075,000
Yahoo!	45,336,000
VEVO	42,025,000
AOL Media Network	25,568,000
MSN/WindowsLive/Bing	24,345,000
Facebook	23,159,000
The CollegeHumor Network	22,892,000
Hulu	15,480,000
Perform Group	11,987,000
ESPN Digital Network	11,394,000
Read as: During May 2012, 136 million unique U.S. viewers watched YouTube video content.Source: Nielsen

Top Online Video Destinations by Total Streams

Video Brand	Total Streams
YouTube	16,535,027,000
Hulu	968,007,000
VEVO	727,354,000
Yahoo!	434,329.000
AOL Media Network	330,693,000
Netflix	300,824,000
Dailymotion	229,428,000
ESPN Digital Network	219,172,000
MSN/WindowsLive/Bing	205,403,000
Facebook	120,535,000
Read as: During May 2012, over 16 billion videos were streamed on YouTube Source: Nielsen

Quotes Of Note...And Other Realizations!

"Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do,"  "It's true for companies, and it's true for products.

                                                                                 Steve Jobs 


"If you want to make a sale next week, you can't start marketing today. You should have started three years ago."
                                                              Seth Godin/Marketing Consultant

This is so true! We often see clients exhibiting impatience with regards to their marketing goals (or lack of them).
Time and time again they decide to cut back, do or change nothing and expect new results.
Results just don't fall out of the sky. Their is no Hail Mary pass in the last minute of the business game. These things take careful planning and follow through implementation. Yes this takes some money to accomplish, but the alternative is no profitability while your competitors run with a piece of what could have been your pie.

As an example, we met recently with a small town business improvement group. Their plan is to hire a new web person publish a few mediocre photographs and therefore expect a huge increase in traffic. 

Well, as we told them, build it and they will come is a line from a movie, not a marketing strategy.
We briefly outlined a strategic and cost conscious beginning Advertising/Marketing approach to which they shockingly replied, "Won't that cost money".
Not surprisingly they have seen no results and simply continue to complain.
 
Amazing! Do they actually expect that these things happen for free, that they should make countless thousands of dollars and the marketing people should go hungry in the process? 

It is this type of ridiculous thinking that eventually drives them out of business. Even more ludicrous is what they do then....Advertise the business For Sale!



Funny how they suddenly believe that advertising will work at that point but not at the point of actually running their own business!

Don't let this happen to you! Do nothing (or the wrong thing) and you can expect the same in return. Common sense...right?

Food For Thought.
J.W.

State Of Online Video Ad Market

From the recent VideoNuze Summit event held in Manhattan last Tuesday.
Reported on Streaming Media.com

 

Recapping where the evolving online video advertising market is going. Summit organizer and VideoNuze editor and publisher Will Richmond stated that much of the growth is in mobile and set-top advertising:

"Online video advertising has continued to explode in the last year. One big change is the embrace of new devices, particularly the iPad, which has been a real game-changer. This trend will only accelerate, particularly as connected devices like Xbox, Roku, Smart TVs and others proliferate," said Richmond.

As advertisers are seeing higher completion rates on set-top box ads, noted Ed Haslam, senior vice president of marketing for Yume thanks to their full-screen takeover. He also noted that viewers are becoming more comfortable with living room devices.

"What consumers are starting to do on these devices is explore," said Haslam. He noted the value in placing ads next to set-top search results and detailed a Toyota campaign that created a branded app for connected TVs.

Consumers are largely using their iPads in their living rooms, which Haslam calls the most fragmented place in the house, due to multiple demands on the viewer.

As more premium video moves online, advertising is following. The current usual system of one ad per break will soon be a thing of the past.

"Ad loads are going to move to full broadcast ad loads because it makes sense," noted Marc DeBevoise, senior vice president and general manager for CBS interactive.

The summit alternated between group discussions and one-person case histories that offered more depth. Joe Feczko, senior vice president of marketing innovation and integration at Macy's department store told how the retailer is keeping its image fresh by using online video as a creative canvas for branding. Shoppers can now scan in-store QR codes to see videos offering tips, training, and how-to information. The results have been "wildly popular with our customers," said Feczko.

From the shameless commerce department:

If you enjoy Webster Productions, Inc. Blog for video marketing tips and advice, please consider making a donation.

Thanks in advance and greatly appreciated! 

PS: If using Pay Pal you will see a link to our sportfishing gear site: fishnstix.com. 
If you fish check it out for discounted deals on Lamiglas and Seeker Rods and much more!
Cheers,
JW

YouTube Stats Tracking Tools You Should Know About

From Film/TV Reviewer Chris Atkinson who writes for ReelSEO.

Chris shares some useful information for optimizing your video SEO

 

 

 

 

Google Analytics is a great tool to figure out the activity surrounding your channel, where you might need improvement, getting the most out of advertising, mobile views, etc.  But maybe you'd like a different opinion.  Maybe you don't like the way the stats are displayed.  Maybe you'd like some other kinds of information, not only about yourself but other channels, and how you might compare to them.  Well, Google Analytics, as powerful as it is, isn't the only game in town.  There are several other tools and websites you can use that use the statistics in a different way and interpret them differently.

A Sampling of YouTube User/Channel Statistics Tracking Tools

Here are a few that you should know about.  Many of these sites rank channels differently, sometimes markedly different.  It all depends on what they weigh as most important.  They all have different methods, and it will be some combination of views, subscribers, comments, engagement, and so forth.  What's important is what works for you.

VidStatsX

VidStastX might have the most exhaustive amount of information on the site.  While many tracking sites are all about what the top 100 YouTube channels are and maybe separate them into categories and sub-categories, VidStatsX also goes into ranks for individual videos.  Want to know what is really trending today, rather than rely on that suspect YouTube "trending" page you can click on?  VidStatsX has a page dedicated to top viewed videos for the day, week, month, and all-time.  Each video has a rank that points to engagement or likeability.

VidStatsX has a trademarked tool called FutureRank that projects how a channel will perform over the next 7 days all the way up to 90 days.  I think this site breaks down every single way you can break down a video: by genre, by favorites, by comments, ratings, and views.

If there was one knock for me personally on VidStatsX it's that the data is so dense, it's all that seems to populate the page.  It's a bunch of numbers and straightforward charts, with a presentation that isn't all that attractive.  There are occasional thumbnails representative of videos and channels that spruce the site up, but for the most part it can be overwhelming to look at.  But for pure stats, VidStatsX has got them all.  Here's an example of a stats page they have, this one for YouTube's Top 10 Viewed:

SocialBlade

SocialBlade (who we interviewed last week) is mostly about tracking channel figures, and it also breaks them down into categories and "top" lists.  They have their own ranking system, so while the normal things like views and subscribers count, they have their own formula.  So above all this site is about comparing top channels, and it breaks it down by country and category.  Here's an example list, using top viewed and top subscribers:

Again, it's a bunch of charts and numbers, so not much in the way of looks here, but a simple, basic tool to show who's who in YouTube.

ChannelMeter

ChannelMeter has the nicest design of these three.  It doesn't give you an automatic set of lists like VidStatsX or SocialBlade do, it just has a simple search field that you can type a channel name into and then it gives you a nice group of graphs to work with on that channel.  Statistics are separated into subscribers, channel views, and video views, and you can change the graph to show an incremental or cumulative presentation.  The range is anywhere from today to 3 months.  You can change the stats to "table" just like the above sites do, but it's nice to have graphic representation here.
ChannelMeter is a good tool to see what YouTubers were upset about in May, as you can see subscriber data fall dramatically in that month for just about everyone.  Here's a look at Philip DeFranco's sxephil channel and his subscriber data for May:

That came from YouTube's spring cleaning that occurred, taking out dormant accounts and you know, being YouTube.  That kind of graph makes the raw data clearer, it gives it meaning.  You can go to VidStatsX and find this kind of data but this kind of presentation makes one question why such a change occurred.  When you compare the graph above with other big channels, the picture becomes clear: "Something (not entirely the channel's fault) happened."

One thing about ChannelMeter: if the channel is somewhat new, you might not be able to find it right away.  And some rather well-established, though not well-viewed, channels don't have complete data.  So that's a bit of a flaw in this site.

Really, in all, if you're very much serious about your channel and want to get some awesome data, you can probably learn something from mainly Google Analytics and then all three of these sites, and comparing each one of them could give you your own raw data to work with so that your channel is optimized.