Alert Blog Reviews

While there is always some information to discuss about how the news will be consumed via the free model online or through a myriad of paywalls another area of the news industry is changing just as rapidly. News reporting is still the domain (for the most part) of the professional journalist but the amateur news reporter is becoming more and more desired. YouTube recognizes this and is offering a service to help get the amateurs and the pros connected. The New York Times reports YouTube has signed up NPR, Politico, The Huffington Post and The San Francisco Chronicle for YouTube Direct, a new method for managing video submissions from readers. The new feature, (formally introduced) on Tuesday, is a tool to make it easy for YouTube users to submit clips that news media companies can choose to highlight. The site plans to sign up other media partners. “We’re trying to connect media organizations with citizen reporters on YouTube,” said Steve Grove, the Web site’s head of news and politics . How it works is that when a visitor goes to a one of the subscribing sites they will have the ability to upload a video to YouTube that will be flagged for review by the sites editors and powers that be. Pretty straightforward and direct. We like that. It seems like a good way to manage or even create a process that didn’t exist before or, if it was in place, was hacked together thus inefficient. With news agencies needing to cut back on staff and not being able to be in all places at all times any way this can create a new model that will be a supplement or complement to the existing news environment. Always thinking about where the next dollar is Google explains that the service is not just for the news set. YouTube also envisions uses beyond the day’s news. The site suggested in a blog post that businesses could use the tool to solicit endorsements and that politicians could “ask for user-generated political commercials.” Nice move in my opinion. Any organization that can provide some form or shape to the ‘wild west’ of user generated content will be helping everyone in the long run. What usually happens is that when you create something that actually helps people then the revenue will follow. Right, Twitter?

Continue reading here:
YouTube Helps YouReport

Online ads might be working well for news sites , but YouTube is always looking for a bigger piece of the online video advertising pie. As of today, Google is testing skippable ads on YouTube, as part of its ongoing search for the “right” way to monetize the most popular video site on the web. The test will run with videos from content partners who have opted in to the program. The preroll ads will feature a link to skip through the ad and go straight to the video content. MediaPost says that this test will provide Google with a demographic break down of their audience for high quality ads: The test that determines if and when people watch the video clips will provide Google with insight into the type of person who may skip an ad, what type of ad they might skip, and what piece of content does better than another. Google also will look at whether some ads are skipped in a specific portion of the session. Does the person skip the ad in the first video versus the third during a 30-minute time slot while on YouTube? This information could be assembled into another ad method: “The model is cost per engagement, where advertisers would only pay for opt-in engaged views of the ads.” Phil Farhi, product manager at Google’s YouTube, mentions that the promoted videos model is another example in this area, and in the future, there could be a model where advertisers only pay for complete plays of their ads. They’re also comparing TV ads vs. video ads created specifically for online audiences. Generally, television ads take 30 seconds to make sure viewers get the message, image and contact/purchase information (call to action). Online, the call to action can run along side the video, in accompanying text that remains after the ad is over, they can use direct links or other methods. What do you think? Will you skip ads on YouTube? Could this finally be the way to monetize YouTube?

Read more:
Google Testing Skippable Ads in YouTube Videos

This year, we’ve seen a lot of pessimistic estimates of YouTube’s operating losses . While the site does bring in some advertising revenue, they haven’t quite covered that $1.65B price tag yet. And based on bandwidth costs, various analysts have estimated annual operating losses of anywhere from $470M to $175M . Note that the more conservative estimate here still includes a bandwidth bill of nearly $50M. But new reports are estimating that cost as even lower. After Arbor Networks’ recent analysis of 256 exabytes of Internet traffic, it seems YouTube may be paying nothing for their bandwidth . As we mentioned before, Arbor Networks found that 6% of all Internet traffic worldwide was going to Google . With that much traffic (we’re talking almost 17 quadrillion megabytes), it seems Google would have to have some serious pipage to support their popularity. According to Wired , The cost of bandwidth has fallen and so too have the profit margins for moving bits, even as traffic grows at an estimated 40 percent a year. With the growth of Google’s network and Content Delivery Networks, the economics of who pays whom to connect grows more complicated than the early days of the net when money flowed upwards — little ISPs paid regional ISPs who paid major ISPs who paid backbone operators. Now if you are Google, you might even begin asking Comcast to pay up to connect its Google Tubes straight to their local cable ISP networks. That way, YouTube videos and Google search results would show up faster, letting the ISP brag that YouTube doesn’t stutter on their network, a potential commercial advantage over its DSL competitors. Unfortunately, Wired says, the true nature of the Internet infrastructure is guarded by NDAs, so we may never know who owns the pipeline. What do you think? Is YouTube operating for pennies because Google owns so much pipe?

Originally posted here:
YouTube: Not So Stupid?