VideoNuze Posts

A clear implication of this finding is that current video providers that target 18-34 males better be aggressively pursuing broadband video offerings if they want to stay competitive in this new media landscape.

But less clear is whether video providers that don't primarily target 18-34 males, or maybe have them as secondary audiences, should also be investing in this new medium in order to stay in synch with broadband users. Though other age groups and demos are also adopting broadband video, they are clearly less fervent, at least for now. In a world with finite resources, should these other video producers not worry so much about broadband video and instead stay mainly focused on their traditional approaches? Or should they invest in the broadband medium as well, even if their true target audiences may be smaller for now? I think they should do the latter, for the following 3 reasons:

1. Eventually broadband video usage will deeply penetrate all age groups. This is a macro trend that all programmers need to be in synch with. Previous technology adoption patterns show that what starts with young, and often male, early adopters, eventually spreads out to other groups as well. There's no putting the broadband video genie back in the bottle. Three-to-five years from now, virtually all Internet users will view video as just another routine application, alongside email, search, commerce, etc. Today's video providers need to position themselves properly.

2. Cultivating younger audiences is critically important. Marketing types always emphasize how important it is to cultivate younger audiences. Brand choices and loyalties are developed early, and it is more difficult down the road to influence these. Look around and see brands that once targeted somewhat older, and wealthier, segments but which now also try to target the young - Heineken, BMW and Tiffany to name a few.

The fact is that young people have energy, enthusiasm, spending power and a strong desire to promote their favorite brands to cohorts. So even video providers need that may not normally skew young need to figure out how to have some appeal to this group, because they will be key drivers of the brand's strength down the road. In fact this is what a number of cable networks, like Lifetime, AMC and Food Network been doing in recent years. Though they didn't originally target younger audiences, they began cultivating them through programming choices and marketing campaigns. They are all succeeding.

3. Now is the time to learn about broadband video. Given the above two reasons, it is urgent that video producers targeting all age groups and demos start their learning process now. Finding pockets of current heavy users to appeal to is the key challenge. As a new medium, broadband has its own set of capabilities well beyond being just another pipe to funnel current programming. Understanding these opportunities will not happen overnight. No video producer should wake up one day 3 years from now, when a healthy percentage of its viewers are spending substantial time on broadband, and realize they didn't cultivate the knowledge and skill sets to succeed in this new medium.

One of my continuing goals for VideoNuze is to bring relevant research about broadband video to your attention. Today I'm pleased to share a short interview with Bruce Leichtman, president of Leichtman Research Group, Inc. regarding a new survey his firm just released to its clients, "Emerging Video Services II." Bruce is a veteran media market researcher who I've known for many years since we were colleagues at Continental Cablevision.

Following is an edited transcript of my interview:

VN: Please provide some background on your firm's new study.

BL: This is the second annual Emerging Video Services study that my company has done. The study is focused on non-TV-based services such as broadband video, mobile video and portable video (example iPod). This is one of five annual syndicated studies.

The survey was conducted in December '07 and January '08 with 1,250 people who were surveyed by phone. The reason that's important is that we're trying to reflect the entire population of the U.S. Remember about a quarter of U.S. homes are still not online, so when I'm doing these studies, I'm trying to project to the entire U.S., and so the studies are also pre-weighted to reflect the age and gender makeup of the U.S. population over 18 years of age.

VN: Talk about some of the study's high level conclusions.

BL: Not surprisingly, when compared to last year's study, online video usage is growing. But what's more important is the detail: who's using it, how are they using it, why are they using it? Today there is not across-the-board usage. It's still very weighted to young, 18-34 year-old males. So this has huge implications for players in this market. You need to know who's really using online video so you can better tailor your product to fit that demographic and the ones that may follow.

Another interesting finding is that the growth in the past year was in fact among the young. So online video's use is continuing to penetrate this demographic more and more deeply.

Yet another is that online video is really a medium unto itself, and consumers don't see it as a replacement for traditional TV, but rather for what it can do uniquely as a new medium. So it's important that companies not see online video as just a replication of TV.

VN: What are the implications of the growing intensity of broadband video adoption by the young?

BL: For companies targeting this demo the key is how to tailor product appropriately. There's a ton of multi-tasking going on, so younger people don't even necessarily see online video or TV as one OR the other, sometimes it can be both at the same time. They obviously live lives that are different than preceding generations. But given they're just one segment, we shouldn't conclude that everything is going to change in the next 3-5 years.

VN: Can you discuss actual usage time?

BL: Across the whole population, people still spend twice as much time watching TV as being online. However, among young males the gap is being squeezed. I don't want to read too much into this data, but TV watching is beginning to decline a bit in the group. Their use of media is changing, but we don't see that across all age and gender groups. The same is true on an income basis. The traditional gap remains for lower income groups.

As with so many things in consumer adoption, it's more about evolution than revolution. Basically what we're seeing is a market evolving. Increase in the number of broadband subscribers, increase in the content that's out there, and an increase in usage. But it's still just a small percentage compared to TV.

VN: What does the study find regarding session lengths?

BL: Over half of those who consume online video say they do it less than 10 minutes at a time. comScore talks about the average session as 2.8 minutes. Today it's really bite-sized morsels, its news clips, UGC, YouTube, comScore says one-third of all legal video is YouTube.

VN: How about in longer-form?

BL: Certainly there's interest in TV and movies, but the challenge is that in reality consumers have choices. And I always like to say "TV is a good place to watch TV." Given a choice of watching a TV show on TV, that is their choice vs. watching online. So there has to be a compelling reason for them to watch online that's differentiated.

VN: Did the survey offer any insight about consumers' interest in dropping cable subscriptions in favor of broadband-only options?

BL: From a consumer's standpoint it's not either/or. Just 4% say they'd switch to online only. The overwhelming majority of people, 87%, would not consider switching.

VN: Did you ask about what kind of broadband video consumers would like to watch on TV?

VN: Thanks for sharing information about this new study.

Click here to download the LRG study slides.

(Quick correction - there was a technical problem with the link in yesterday's email to register for the Feb. 28th webinar. The correct link to register is here).

Lately I've been thinking a lot about where there may be potential points of intersection between user-generated video and brand marketing.

On the one hand, YouTube and others have demonstrated there's huge interest among amateur producers in creating and posting video content. Since the overwhelming majority of these producers do not make any meaningful money from these videos, their motivation is emotional. On the other hand, brands are grappling with things like how to break through the clutter, deepen consumer engagement, create more authenticity and build loyalty.

So it seems like there should be a natural point of intersection if brands could incent their passionate customers to create videos which not only sang the praises of their favorite products but actually provided valuable information sought by other prospective customers. Offering these videos would enable customers to show off their favorite products in action and also provide a valuable service to prospects. The concept is sort of like a video-based TripAdvisor, but not limited to travel.

Here's an example from a personal experience. Recently I've been in the market for a 50+ inch HDTV. If you've been in this mode recently you know the drill - lots of online research, reading users' comments, going to stores to see different models, etc. Even after doing all this, I still felt like I was missing something. I really wanted to see the intangibles - what distance seemed right, what's the right height for the stand, what were the ambient issues, how were accessories connected and so on.

In short, I was looking for actual owners to provide short, but informative videos showcasing how the TV actually worked out when brought into their homes. To be sure, there's no shortage of text comments to this effect. But the best I could find beyond text was a link at Amazon to "Share your own customer images." It seems like such a natural to me that online retailers, review sites and TV manufacturers should all provide a user-generated video platform for consumers to upload videos providing further information on their TVs.

What I'm describing is not another brand-sponsored UGC contest, but rather solid consumer-contributed product information. T-Mobile has something like this running with Current TV right now, but seems to really be the exception. I looked at the web sites of Sony, Samsung, Panasonic, Sharp, Philips and Mitsubishi and, although in some cases there are buying guides and FAQs, none of them seek to harness the enthusiasm of their actual customers by enabling video contributions.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I think this is a big untapped opportunity. I know companies like ViTrue and StashCast are pursuing opportunities like this, and then there are countless private label social network platforms like KickApps, Ning and others (TechCrunch has a good list here) that also enable some flavor of this. But I just haven't seen this concept clearly or pervasively implemented yet. If you have, please post a comment. I just have to believe that some smart brands - particularly those selling complex, expensive products that benefit from video-based information - are going to realize their passionate customers are incredible assets just waiting to be empowered to speak out through user-generated video.

There was a little technical problem with the registration link for the Feb 28th webinar.

To register, click here.

Today's a holiday for many in the U.S. and I'm preparing to head out to FAST Forward '08, so for now I'd like to just offer an invitation to an upcoming webinar I'll be participating in on February 28th. The title of the webinar is "Setting the Bar for Online Video 2.0: Best Practices You Can Use Today." PermissionTV, a VideoNuze sponsor, will also be providing insights based on its customers' experiences. The webinar will be hosted by Streaming Media.

Having done many webinars over the past several years, I've become a big fan of the format. I think it's a convenient way to share information create a conducive environment for Q&A.

Since the last webinar I did several months ago, there has been a ton of activity in the broadband video market and also a lot of recently-released research. I've heard from many of you that it's hard to stay on top of this activity and understand what's most important. Meeting these two challenges are in fact key goals of mine for VideoNuze: aggregating relevant news into one easy-to-access location and sharing insights about the market.

For this upcoming webinar, I'll be synthesizing some of the divergent activities we've all been observing and translate it into actionable takeaways. Though the broadband video market is extremely dynamic, there are a number of common beliefs guiding many companies' strategies today. After the presentations, we'll have ample time for Q&A and discussion.

Last November, Jeff Richards, VP of VeriSign's Digital Content Services, suggested to me that "net neutrality" would be the hottest broadband video topic in 2008. I was skeptical, believing that this was a classic "solution in search of a problem" and that yet again this topic would fail to gain traction among regulators and policy-makers. Based on events of the past week, it looks like Jeff may be right and I may be wrong.

Before getting to what happened this week, let's quickly understand what net neutrality means, and why it's important to all of us. To date the Internet has functioned as a level playing field of sorts. Anyone putting up a web site could be confident in the knowledge that broadband ISPs would neither favor nor disadvantage one player's access to users over another's.

Big online content and technology companies now want to codify this tradition in legislation commonly referred to as net neutrality. Big broadband ISPs (i.e. cable operators and telcos) regard this as needless regulatory meddling that would insert the government in network and technical matters it can barely understand, let alone figure out how to regulate.

This week brought news that Congressmen Ed Markey and Chip Pickering have introduced the "Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008" which would make net neutrality the guiding U.S. broadband policy, give the FCC additional oversight powers to ensure broadband ISPs weren't discriminating against certain traffic, require the FCC to hold 8 public "broadband summits" to bring together parties to "assess competition, consumer protection and consumer choice issues related to broadband Internet access services" and finally to report all this to Congress along with any recommendations for how to "promote competition, safeguard free speech, and ensure robust consumer protections and consumer choice relating to broadband Internet access services."

Broadband ISPs have precipitated some of this renewed interest in net neutrality with the recent news that they're de-prioritizing or blocking illegal video file-sharing traffic from services like BitTorrent (all of which was already widely understood in the Internet community). Net neutrality proponents have publicly seized on these incidents as evidence that broadband ISPs have discriminatory tendencies in their DNA, and that we're on a slippery slope to a world where broadband ISPs willy-nilly block certain traffic (i.e. their competitors) while favoring other traffic (i.e. their own services).

Last November in "Net Neutrality in 2008? Let's Hope Not." I wrote that there is no substantive current evidence to support this concern and that preemptive net neutrality legislation is unwise and unwarranted. In fact, I believe it's a net positive that broadband ISPs are proactively trying to manage their networks to ensure that legal traffic, generated by paying subscribers, is not adversely affected by the few heavy video file-sharers who diminish the network's performance for everyone. Broadband ISPs' actions help them run more efficient networks and better manage their investments, to the benefit of paying users.

Unfortunately, like many things in Washington, net neutrality is boiling down to a PR battle about how to shape policy-makers' perceptions, regardless of the underlying facts. For its part, Google is unabashedly framing this debate in populist terms, saying "net neutrality is...about what's ultimately best for the people, in terms of economic growth as well as the social benefit of empowering individuals to speak, create, and engage one another online." Huh? How does all that patriotic-sounding babble address the reality that network operators are grappling with 15 year-old kids downloading pirated HD movies, causing real and serious network congestion for everyone?

To defeat net neutrality, broadband ISPs better sharpen up their PR efforts. Congress is notoriously IQ-challenged and politically-motivated. My cynical belief is that its knee-jerk reaction will always be to do what looks best, rather than what actually is best. Then there's the current FCC chairman Kevin Martin, who has a serious anti-cable bias and will likely welcome an opportunity to smack operators. Regrettably, when taken together, Jeff Richards may indeed be right. This might be the hottest broadband video topic of 2008 and the year when net neutrality legislation finally does succeed.

Innovation in video search continues apace. A new entrant is Veveo, which, upon my first review, looks poised to raise the bar of innovation in this still-evolving space. I spent a couple of hours with CEO/co-founder Murali Aravamudan to learn more about their approach.

I continue to be fascinated with video search and have previously written about current players such as Truveo, blinkx, ClipBlast, Nexidia and TV Guide. I believe video search is the most intellectually challenging part of the broadband video value chain as well as the one with the greatest potential upside for those who ultimately crack this highly complex nut. Video search presents many of the same issues as web search, but layers on additional challenges around relevancy, metadata, user navigation and monetization. Because of the explosion of video choices, users will increasingly rely on video search providers who can expedite retrieval of desired results.

Veveo approaches the key problem of relevancy by trying to emulate some of what's behind Google's vaunted PageRank. As many of you know, PageRank prioritizes relevancy by relying heavily on the number of referring links to a given page. To try to proxy this referral process in the nascent video world, Veveo has developed its algorithms to account for # of people subscribing to a video channel (at say YouTube), user ratings, viewcount, session length and other factors.

Returning relevant results requires a complete index of available video, which has led Veveo to index approximately 125M videos currently. Murali believes is on a par with the established players. The index spans professional video to UGC and short clips to full-length programs.

Though Murali obviously wasn't going to provide too much detail on Veveo's algorithms (not that I'd understand them anyway), their capabilities are on display when running queries at Veveo's beta site located here. Veveo does something I haven't seen elsewhere - notice as you slowly type your query, the search box not only begins autofilling, but new results are also dynamically served up. Even at Google, while the search box will autofill based on Google's anticipation of your intended query, no results are shown until you're done and click enter. For Veveo to be able to do this means its algorithms are both anticipating your query AND simultaneously matching them against its index. Because there are so many videos, Veveo has had to organize them semantically to accelerate the matching process. And don't forget: because there's no client download, the retrieval process is all happening virtually in real time. Admittedly, this process is not being done at scale yet, but Murali is confident that it will perform similarly even when there are millions of concurrent users.

To see what I mean, slowly type "Barack Obama South Carolina Victory Speech" into the search box. By the time you've typed the "t" in South, the most accurate clip (from YouTube) is the 2nd result. When you type "v" in victory it becomes the first. Try the same query elsewhere. You'll get the same results when done, but notice how different the experience is. It's critical to understand that in the search business, the provider's algorithms - which drive accuracy and speed of results - are the two defining competitive advantages. That's how Google blew past all the incumbents, though it was very late to the web search game. Users noticed its supremacy and dramatically drove its awareness and traffic.

Chances are you've never heard of Jake Sasseville. He's looking to change that, and in a hurry.

I caught up with Jake, who is the host of "The Edge with Jake Sasseville," a late-night show that premieres tomorrow night on 40 ABC affiliates around the country. His model offers an interesting case study in how the worlds of TV and broadband are merging. This is opening up lots of new opportunities for talent with the creativity, moxie and financial backing to take advantage.

By way of quick background, Jake is a 22 year-old from Maine who moved to New York and has basically made it his mission to become a big-time multi-platform entertainment personality. He laid the groundwork for The Edge by focusing on YouTube, Facebook, MySpace and the like to begin getting his name out and generate a following. The Edge is part-Letterman, part reality, combining plenty of goofy man-on-the-street interviews with outrageous stunts like taking on a female boxer and stripping down with a nude model. The target audience is clearly 20-somethings looking for a peer to reflect their lifestyles and sensibilities.

Jake would be just another broadband personality except that now he's self-syndicating The Edge to 40 local ABC stations, paying them somewhere between $150-5,000 per half hour to get his show on the air. He's also been able to convince these stations to give him some on-air promotion and not to list him as paid programming.

Trying to respect his audience's distaste for advertising, he's cut the number of minutes of ads time from 8 to 4 and tried to find sponsors who really want to reach this audience and are willing to be a part of The Edge journey. On board so far are Ford and Overstock, with others in the pipeline. Jake insists that he's not going to get caught in selling on CPMs, but instead is trying to offer sponsors new and creative ways of getting their brands noticed, through additional product placement and multi-platform insertions.

Though he concedes to being short on the specifics of how programming will now flow between on-air and broadband, he's committed to experimenting to figure out what works. For now he understands that TV is better suited to full-length while broadband is better for clips. He has commitments from the 40 stations to do two 13 week series, so the show should be on through the fall. For the first year he doesn't see any big financial gains, rather, it's all about building his brand's awareness with every tool at his disposal.

There has been much speculation about how broadband and TV will merge, yet precious few examples of tight programming integration. Jake is pioneering some interesting terrain with The Edge, which will no doubt yield some key lessons for the rest of the market about how to build an entertainment brand in the broadband era.