How did we get to be the leader in this field?

We were first to see the internet video trend, even before Google purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion. We were first to understand its significance, so much so that we began a rigorous exploration of the technical details that determined relevance of video media to internet search engines. When we started our research back in 2006, the video advertising market expenditure totaled $161 million. This number is estimated to grow to an astounding $5 billion by 2012— 1/3 of all online advertizing spending. Such statistics put Video Optimize in an exciting position indeed.

Because so much of premium video optimization depends on progressing web 2.0 trends, it is our continuing priority to stay abreast of all emerging social networks, including video sharing sites, bookmarking sites, blog hubs, podcast groups, and others that incorporate video media in some way, so that we may utilize their power and reach towards the single goal of making our selected video media profoundly visible across the world wide web.

What does this mean to you?

It means that if we are not yet working with a qualified company in your marketplace and locality, then we can exclusively dominate your online customer base for your company, guaranteed.

Now before I start flinging statistics, let’s just speak logically:

1. Video utilizes full visual and audio power. It uses not a phone, print, or website;
but dynamic, high tech visuals and audio that irresistibly seduces the prospect into
taking action. The persuasion power difference is utterly obvious. Are you more
inclined to buy a candy bar by reading words about it, or by seeing tantalizing close
ups of it while listening to a sultry voice describe how delicious it is?

2. Video consumption naturally caters to the viewer. The fact is that humans are
instinctive and lazy. We don’t want to exert attention to read something we haven’t
asked for. This has been the primary hurdle for all advertising. Video is the godsend
for this problem, as streaming video requires no reading effort, and immediately
attracts the viewer’s instincts (Who doesn’t start watching at least the beginning of
video media?).

3. Video establishes rapport. Especially at the local business level, the prospect
gains a feel for the good-nature of the seller, thus establishing the all-important
initial bond with the prospect. As a result he feels an odd commitment to follow up
with the seller.

4. Video is free of pay-per-click risk. Every PPC user knows how pay per click
arbitrage cripples their advertising budget. The paid for clicks cost more than they’re
worth, and they are often not legit. There’s very little that can stop it…except video.
If your video media is not bound to a PPC structure, then you are immune to fraud!

5. Video is now affordable. Until now, television commercial costs reserved their use
for large companies. The internet has made this playing field flat! It is no longer who
has the most money, but who can best leverage current technology.

6. Video versus everything else. Of surveyed moviegoers…
48% watched little or no TV at all.
49% don’t subscribe to newspapers.
46% don’t subscribe to magazines.
52% listen to little or no radio.

This gives interactive media a distinct advantage over other platforms.” –Comscore
OK, now for a few statistics. Buckle your seatbelts, be stunned, then pause and really think
about what these numbers mean:

1. Prospects are 3-4 times more likely to respond to a video rather than written
words. -Comscore

2. Of the 80% of viewers that have watched a video, 52% have then taken some
action on its content. -Kelsey Group

3. People remember 10% of what they read, but 50% of what they hear and
see. -Burst Media

Scorching case studies:

1. “According to Alexis Martin, owner of MyCubanStore.com, a niche business that sells
Cuban clothing and items, the recent video they ran on their home page provided a
287 percent return on investment. ‘Our video outperformed Yahoo, MSN and
Google PPC, plus my newsletter,’ Martin says.” -Jim Kukral of Revenue

2. “DiscoveryStore.com recently tested out a video for a Mother’s Day promotion. The
results were a 78 percent increase in revenue. -Jim Kukral of Revenue

So there you have it. If you’re not advertising with video, you’re not advertising.

Technically speaking, an RSS feed is a tool that can be implemented in a website to allow a guest to stay up to date on the site’s new information without ever returning to the site. In other words, if you need the latest financial news from The Wall Street Journal website, all you need to do is find its RSS
icon, and click “subscribe”, and you will receive any new WSJ article on your browser as soon as it’s posted! By continually adding sites to your RSS reader, you are effectively creating your own personal newspaper!

Oh yeah, before you can enjoy this uber-convenient technology, you must first take about 50 seconds to download one of countless free RSS readers across the web.

Now let’s talk RSS and marketing.

Firstly, if submitted correctly, RSS feeds are readily indexed by search engines, and major sites such as Feed Burner, Feedster, and Technorati. This indexing now gives you multiple coveted backlinks! If you further insert links inside your feeds, that’s even more backlinks to your site. With a steady flow of fresh
RSS publications, your website will continue to gain backlinks, thus resulting in an inevitable rise in the search engine pages! Furthermore, RSS is the modern alternative to email lists.

Instead of burning hours fulfilling email newsletters, now your clients can simply click your RSS button, and stay informed on all your new information! In addition, you can syndicate the information of other websites on your website, thus allowing your subscribers to receive your original information along with
your handpicked information from other sites. This offers your subscribers a delectable opportunity—an abundant stream of high quality information relevant to your niche. Once erected, a quality RSS feed gains a loyal following… that is primed to buy your products!

What exactly is Twitter? And what does its exploding popularity say about the state of the tech industry? Inside the hottest Web startup since … gosh, February at least.

Facebook and YouTube have yet to gush profits - a fact that is the talk of Silicon Valley. Yet here I am again, in July 2008, listening to yet another boyish entrepreneur discuss a quirky, compelling - and nearly revenue-less - startup.

I ask Dorsey, a 31-year-old NYU dropout whose slender build and mop of hair evoke the pre-psychedelic Beatles, when Twitter will start making money, known around these parts as “monetization.” “We’ll monetize when the time is right,” he says, as the backfire of a motorcycle on the street below roars through the room’s open windows. “We raised enough money [$22 million] to get to that point through experimentation.”

Only in the tech business are companies born with neither a clear reason for being nor a clue as to how they’ll produce profits. Then again, rejoice: The U.S. financial system may be imploding as you read this, but the Bay Area startup culture is alive and well. Oodles of Web startups are gaining traction which makes this a good time to examine the star of the class.

Twitter, in case you’re over 25 and don’t live in a trendy coastal metropolis, is a “micro-blogging” site. It’s a free service that lets you send the briefest of messages to everyone in your network. It marries the mass appeal of blogging with the rat-a-tat-tat of text messaging.

To use Twitter, first go to the site and sign up for a handle - mine, for example, is adamlashinsky - and then start typing in the entry field. Maximum message size: 140 characters. Twitter refers to these missives as “updates”; its users prefer the term “tweets.” Users “follow” one another and, if they choose, receive a notification when new messages arrive. Twitterers do their thing at Twitter.com as well as by cell phone and on sites like Facebook.

And what do Twitterers twitter about? Anything at all really, from the quotidian (”I’m hungry”; “going to bed”; etc.) to the substantial (”wildfires are spreading”; “Hillary just conceded”). Like a lot of Web 2.0 applications, the best way to understand it is to just try it out.

Thousands of people are doing that every day. According to comScore, Twitter had almost three million monthly users as of June, which is triple what it had last November. Those figures are probably low because they don’t measure mobile activity, which is a large part of the Twittersphere.

Whatever the exact usage numbers, the service is right in the zeitgeist. The community was, ahem, atwitter when Jon Stewart mentioned the site on “The Daily Show” in June. In July, a congressman from Texas, John Culberson (R-Texas), had to be told by House leadership to stop Twittering his constituents from the floor of the chamber.

Other establishment types are getting down with Twitter. Barack Obama’s campaign (handle: BarackObama) has 51,620 followers and counting, who’ve requested updates on events. CNN distributes news alerts via Twitter, and JetBlue sends out customer-service updates. The CTO of Cisco, Padmasree Warrior, Twitters all day long. She recently took a moment to inform her 180 followers she was having “an aargh moment right now: forgot to pack my laptop power chord [sic].” Utility is in the eye of the betwittered.

In the midst of all that, Twitter raised a slug of new cash, landed its first acquisition, and repeatedly suffered embarrassing system outages. (Twitter embraces the outages with humor by posting an image of the “Fail Whale,” a smiling cetacean held aloft by eight cheerful birds. It’s better to laugh than to cry.) “Twitter is at the forefront of the real-time Web,” says Fred Wilson, a Twitter investor and partner at Union Square Ventures. “Blogs were the beginning of that, a progression from the static Web. Now with Twitter and other services there is this notion of smaller and ever more rapid bursts of information.”

Dorsey created Twitter in 2006 as a project within a now-defunct podcasting company called Odeo, which was run by entrepreneur Evan Williams (who had sold a previous startup, Blogger, to Google. Dorsey, Williams, and another Odeo colleague, Biz Stone, spun out Twitter in August 2007, with Dorsey at the helm. Despite its tender age, Twitter is already spawning an ecosystem of new companies that feed off its service. Twitteriffic facilitates tweeting from Macs. Blippr users post microreviews of books, movies, and restaurants. Qik (pronounced “quick”) lets you Twitter cellphone videos.

But none of the above explains how Twitter - or its investors - will make money. A hint at how the company wants to solve that problem is its recent purchase of an even smaller startup called Summize for undisclosed terms.

Summize existed solely as a search engine for Twitter. Because users go to Summize to see who is commenting on specific topics - “Dark Knight” and “iPhone” have been big of late - Twitter can display relevant ads in much the same way Google does. As well, marketers might pay to distribute their targeted messages to people who have voluntarily agreed to be tweeted. Publishers may even use Twitter as a distribution platform. (As a Twitter newbie, I have 115 followers, whom I update on my articles and blog posts; TechCrunch blogger Michael Arrington has 22,000-plus.)

Twitter’s CEO won’t go into any detail on how it will evolve from hip technology to moneymaker. “A lot of people have ideas about how to monetize this,” says Dorsey. “And so do we.” He does, however, divulge other steps he’s taken on the path to sustainable companyhood: He’s trying to look and act the part of the chief executive. For example, he retains a CEO coach, with whom he meets once a week. He also got rid of his nose ring. (Still on his person: A forearm-length tattoo that he says represents an F-sharp, an integral symbol from mathematics, and a human clavicle - “the only bone with free range of motion.”)

My final visit to Twitter falls late on a Friday, just before one of the company’s movie nights. On tap is the Hitchcock classic “The Birds.” The avian imagery is intentional: Birds twitter. Their tweets may be meaningless to you, but they presumably mean something to other birds. And therein lies the latest flight of fancy dreamt up by ambitious entrepreneurs hoping to strike it rich.

Virb-generally known as the designer’s MySpace, Virb lives up to the hype by offering sleek and easy-to-customize profile design. The details on various features, for example music and video player, are quite polished - even the ads look nice. If blinking images, huge sigs that mess up the formatting and colorful backgrounds make you insane, Virb is the right place for you.

Trig - Trig is a sweet sight for the sore eyes of a web designer/hipster who spent too many days wailing about horrid MySpace profiles. It’s quite similar to Virb but in our opinion looks even nicer, with black and 20 shades of gray being the dominant colors. Trig is mostly music-oriented, so if you have a band that’s simply too artsy to have a MySpace profile, you know what to do.

Purevolume- neat and tidy are the words that first come to mind when you first look at Purevolume. The site is purely music-oriented and the profiles are divided between artists and listeners. The actual profiles, while beautiful, have the problem of looking all pretty much the same; we like the black/white/gray look, but more customization options wouldn’t hurt.

my.9rules - 9rules is a blogging community which always put a lot of emphasis on quality design, so it’s no wonder that their social network, my.9rules, looks very neat, too. Just like on Purevolume, though, the profiles on 9rules are visually very similar, which keeps the look of the site consistent but it also makes the whole experience slightly dull.

Pownce- Pownce has been categorized as everything: from web-based IM to a forum, so we guess that simply calling it a social network isn’t that far off. Taking the Twitter recipe and perfecting it, Pownce added some of its own flavor to the mix, and one of the features we really like about it are skins. Don’t get us wrong, Pownce looks nice to begin with, but having the option to change the skins is a big plus. Currently, the only beef we have with this feature is the fact that the available amount of skins is so small: only four. Give us more!

Flickr- yes, we like the FlickrFlickr look. It probably has to do with the fact that the site is full of beautiful photos, but Flickr’s easy-on-the-eyes aesthetics are carefully thought out and make the site really enjoyable to use.

Threadless - one of the first really successful sites that harness the power of community for commercial purposes, Threadless enables users to submit their own T-Shirt designs; the community votes for the very best, which then become a part of Threadless’ official catalog. The designs are really great, and Threadless has been the favorite place to buy t-shirts for many a design student for quite some time. The site itself has a laid-back design that might not appeal to everyone, but you have to give it credit for originality.

Shelfari- Shelfari is a community of book lovers which you can browse by user, by interest groups or by books themselves. It’s all packed in a neat visual package which might not stand out with extraordinary design, but it will make it really easy to find your way around the site. The inclusion of actual front pages of individual books is a nice touch, too.

Beautiful Society- ok, this one was a no-brainer. With a name like that, one would expect beautiful design and Beautiful Society delivers. The site revolves around the concept of “favorite things” - users get to pick things they like, which become separate entities that get more votes and rise the rank of popularity as more and more users add them to the list. All this is wrapped in a nice orange/blue design with a lot of rounded corners and nothing to upset our sensitive eyes.

Humble Voice - we’ve saved the best for last. HumbleVoice is yet another community for designers, artists and musicians, and it looks gorgeous. Page real estate is used generously, with most images on the site being really large, and all of the content is wrapped up in neat little boxes. As sometimes happens with art-related sites, some of the fonts are too tiny to read if you don’t have 20/20 vision, but we’re ready to forgive Humble Space this small blunder. After all, it’s artists we’re talking about here.

-You can find this original article at http://mashable.com/2007/07/09/beautiful-social-networks/

Published: August 06, 2008

It’s the subject of analyst reports and breathless news articles. It is the surest sign yet that online video is growing up—a real market for online video ads is emerging.
IDC forecasts that the market will grow sevenfold by 2012, hitting $3.8 billion domestically. And the growth isn’t completely tied to major media companies; the Kelsey Group projects the local video ad market—supported in large part by small and medium-sized businesses—will reach $1.5 billion by the end of 2012. With those numbers as our backdrop, let’s take a look at some of the things your company should be considering when it comes to monetizing your online video.

Make Money Everywhere
Existing Web sites that incorporate video see lower bounce rates, higher levels of engagement, and more repeat traffic. This increases the value of the non-video portion of the site, driving up eCPMs for more traditional display advertising. Kidzbop.com, a community site for children, added a video offering and saw their bounce rate fall from 35% to under 20% and engagement tick up from four minutes to 10. As a result, revenue numbers have increased across the non-video components of the site and advertiser interest has continued to grow.

Find a Sponsor
Offering sponsorships of the player, a series of videos, or perhaps even of the entire video experience can be a compelling option for a brand advertiser. Seagate, the storage company, was a long-time sponsor of noted blogger Robert Scoble. When Scoble joined FastCompany.tv and launched ScobelizerTV, Seagate agreed to sponsor the first year. While the sponsorship is strongly tied to the video offering, it includes cross-promotion in print, at events, and elsewhere on the site. The model has worked well thus far as FastCompany.tv is in talks with other companies about sponsoring other shows.

Focus, Focus, Focus
If content is tied to a specific vertical, then advertisers feel confident that their ads are well-targeted to the audience that they want to reach. Into Productions is a start-up company that is targeting demographically desirable niche communities. The first few sites that they launched focus on aviation enthusiasts, equestrian fans, and classical music aficionados. Those who elect to advertise on any one of these sites will do so knowing that they can really pinpoint their audience.

Balance Monetization and User Experience
As a general rule, the more intrusive the advertisement, the higher the eCPM will be. Although the temptation might be to put pre-roll ads before every video, you might will probably find that mixing pre-roll with post-roll and overlay ads makes for a more engaging experience for your users. For companies that are already using an ad server, Panache’s Universal Media acceptor allows them to leverage their pre-existing ad infrastructure and create compelling ad campaigns that blend various ad and asset types. Sites that don’t have an ad solution in place can turn to a solution like Liverail, which allows for campaigns that leverage a mix of pre/mid/post-roll and overlay advertising.

Ad Networks to the Rescue
You might want to hold off on the retirement property, but you can monetize user-generated video via ad networks. Working with an ad partner like adap.tv—a network of networks—is a turnkey way to acquire advertising for user-generated content and can also serve as backfill for premium content.

Partner Up
If you don’t have ad sales resources in-house, consider partnering with a company that can sell some percentage of your inventory on a revenue-sharinge basis. For example, Tremor Media offers both an advertising technology and sales solution called – intuitively enough – the Acudeo Video Monetization Platform. Once a site has integrated the Tremor ad components, it’s quite simple for Tremor to start placing ads into the videos that co-mingle with your own.

Bring It In, Send It Out
There is no rule that dictates that your site should only contain your content. If follows then that you might also want to allow other sites to avail themselves of your content. Video syndication offers two great benefits: it allows for promotion of your content outside the confines of your site and it gives you the ability to add compelling content to your own site. Companies like Mochila and ClipSyndicate allow companies to supplement their offerings with high-quality content…and get paid for doing so.

Create Great Content
The one rule that doesn’t change is this: Content is king. The better your content and the more engaged your audience, the higher eCPMs will be for your videos.

Finally, it’s critical to twiddle, tweak, and most importantly, be patient. The strides that have been made in monetizing online video have been substantial, but it’s still very early in the game. You can take heart in reminding yourself of this one fact: like you, the “experts” are still just figuring it out.

I decided to first read a book on the computer language HTML. I’m always havin trouble altering websites because I don’t know whats goin on in that code. I also wanna know what, HTTP, FTP, JPEG and all that stuff means, and I expect a lot of you do too. Here is some of what I found out:

HTML: Hyper Text Markup Language. The language humans have created to communicate with computers regarding web pages. It’s the strange code that is sometimes revealed when you’re poking around web pages either on or off the net. It looks like this:

HTTP: Hyper Text Transfer Protocol. This is the language that computers use to share web pages and most other information over the internet. It’s at the beginning of a line of code because the computer first needs to know what language you’re talking in.

FTP: File Transfer Protocol: This is the language computers use to transfer files between eachother.

JPEG: Joint Photographic Experts Group: This a high quality computer picture with the capacity for millions of colors, but it is also a relatively large file.

URL: Uniform Resource Locator: (Man, I’ve always wondered about this one!) This is the address of a website. For example: HTTP://www.videooptimize.com is a Uniform Resource Locator. Now when you win Final Jeopardy, I want my cut!

OK, I’m feeling smart now. I’m gonna go read some more and get back to you!

L. Most Shared Videos - These are the most shared videos through email. Recently Video Optimize noticed that Google and Youtube link their accounts and mail boxes together, so its clients only need log into one account. As Gmail has replaced most peoples’ Yahoo mail, Google have given the people one more reason to use their media.

M. Most Viewed Videos - It’s tough for a video to break into this section, but if you do your propagation skyrockets, since everyone wants to view what the fuss is about. Personally I like watching the grassroots guys and gals- the folks with 3 and 5 views. You never know what diamonds lie in the rough!

N. Movers and Shakers section – “Movers & Shakers” is a section that breaks down, country by country, a video’s views. It’s nice to see the tastes of foreign folks, and how the internet has allowed the world to interact like never before. Be a Mover, Be a Shaker, and don’t be a Google Video Faker. OK, well that was lame but it rhymed.

O. About Google Video -Here’s a great tip: Go to google.com, and click on “more” toward the upper left center. Video will be the first option. Click it to enter Google Video. Navigate to one of the pages, and then scroll down. You will see a link that says “about Google Video” Enjoy!

P. Google Video Blog - Scroll down on the main page of Google and you will see at the bottom Google has their own Video Google Blog. You can subscribe to this using Google reader, or one of the many other applications, to stay current with the video trends

Q. Upload Video - Here is my favorite part of Google Video. Once you have an account, simply click on upload video button (It’s toward the upper right of your screen.) There is an option called “desktop uploader. You can simply upload your video file in either AVI, MPEG, Quciktime, Real, or Windows Media, and then title it (Video Optimize has found the titling step critical in video optimization) Now add a description in this part. It is helpful to start with http://www.________.com because it will give you an incoming link to your site. You may want to begin and end with this. It is important for your title and description to be as specific and accurate as possible so your audience isn’t frustrated; in addition, add as many rich keywords as possible to drive traffic the video’s way. Next, select the Genre such as “business”, “comedy”, or “news”. Select the language you are speaking so it reaches the right audience. Finally, select your video to be "Public" to allow the search engines to propagate it.

R. Editing Your Video - Once your video is uploaded you can go back and edit the title or description if you wish. Here is an example of why this can be important: Let’s say your video relates to lions, and there premiers a popular lion show on The Discovery Channel. You may want to write the title of that show into your title or description in order to attract the show’s followers to your video. Video Optimize has found that by staying current on the news and competitors of your niche, these traction opportunities arise time and again. Get into the searchers mind and think what they would search for if they were to seek out your video. As we do at Video Optimize, ask friends and keep trying different keyphrases.

S. Google Video’s Advanced Options - In this section you can set up a viewing charge, enable or prevent downloads, even set up a day pass to watch the video. Another nice neat feature is the ability to offer a preview of the video.

T. Google Video Preferences - Here is a really neat section of Google Video – By clicking the “preferences” tab you can choose to have Google tips, and the search, in the language of your choice. Secondly, there is a “SafeSearch” filtering option that might be used by parents to filter out explicit images on the family computer. I don’t like my results filtered at all so I simply select "Do Not Filter My Search Results". The default is moderate filtering “Filter explicit images only - default behavior”. Finally, this preferences section allows you to control the number of results listed per page. Most users stick with the default of 10 listings, but most don’t know they can view up to 100 at a time!

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