Online videos with advertisements attached are fast becoming an incremental moneymaker for media companies. The research firm eMarketer forecasts a 45 percent gain in online video spending in 2009. Despite the economic downturn, advertisers’ demand for video remains robust.
Media companies are rushing to repackage their videos for the Internet, and some say they can hardly keep up with advertisers demand for more, according to the New York Times.
One of the most notorious case is Discovery Communications company. He is digging across the 23-year-old video vault for animal attacks, dinosaur animations and scientific oddities –in total 1.3 million tapes of old episodes. Old shows that ordinarily would not be repeated on Discovery and its other 13 cable channels (TLC, Animal Planet, the Science Channel…) can be repackaged online, turning every week into “Shark Week”, three minutes at a time. Another repackage of old shows goes into short clips for the how-to Web site HowStuffWorks, a recent acquisition by Discovery.
Sometimes producer-editors blend several videos to create original series with new graphics and narration. Recent examples include “Jaws and Claws”, about the relationship between predator and prey, and “Strange Science,” about all sorts of bizarre phenomena. The Science Channel recently shortened the latter segments into 30-second vignettes.
Fact of the matter is that many of their TV episodes are timeless, and the clips can still be relevant to Internet users years after their original broadcast.
Producer-editors made about 4,500 videos for Discovery’s Web sites last year, helping the company record eight million video views in November.
Almost every video is shorter than five minutes. “Killer Clips,” a series of 30- to 40- second clips of animal takedowns, have proved especially popular on the Animal Planet Web site. Either is an hour or a minute long, it’s always about a story.
Some of the most popular videos, like the series “MythBusters”, are placed on sites like YouTube, with ads attached.
Trying to standardize streaming video advertising
A group of video-serving web sites and advertisers brought together by Publicis Groupe’s Starcom MediaVest are trying to standardize video ad unit. This group include Hulu, CBS Interactive, Yahoo, Microsoft, but not YouTube.
The group has narrowed some 30 video ad formats to 5.
There have been some other efforts on the video ad standardization front, like the IAB approving a group of formats (pre-rolls, mid-rolls, companion ads, and one that surround a video player… To view the guidelines, go to: www.iab.net/dv_guidelines)
However, experts feel that there’s more work to be done.
Adobe Flash 10 is spreading fast
Adobe said Flash 10, which was released last October, is already on more than 55 percent of PCs in “mature markets”. Adobe, the market leader, expects that adoption rate to increase to 80 percent by the second quarter of 2009.
Meanwhile, competitors like Move Networks and Microsoft’s Silverlight are doing well, particularly in the streaming of live events. Move Networks reports that he went from 25 million unique users in 2007 to 55 million in 2008.
Microsoft says that Silverlight 2 has been downloaded and installed on more than 100 million PCs since its launch in October 2008. The company claims that 25 percent of all consumers have access to a computer with Silverlight technology installed.
Pope Launches YouTube channel
The Vatican has launched its own YouTube channel. Its mission is to offer “news coverage of the main activities of the Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI and of relevant Vatican events.” Updated daily, the site offers translations in Italian, English, Spanish and German.
Along with the Pope’s channel, the Vatican has also H2Onews channel. This is a Catholic news service focused on the life of the Church and on social and cultural events that pertain to Catholics living in the World.
