I hope the 17+ million viewers have been able to make a serious donation to the institute.

On the commercial side of things the video is set to R&B star Chris Brown’s hypnotic dance jam “Forever.” And that’s been a real business bonanza for the rights holders as reported by Youtube.

As a result, the rights holders were able to capitalize on the
massive wave of popularity generated by “JK Wedding Entrance Dance” —
in the last week, searches for “Chris Brown Forever” on YouTube have
skyrocketed, making it one of the most popular queries on the site:

This traffic is also very engaged — the click-through rate (CTR) on
the “JK Wedding Entrance” video is 2x the average of other
Click-to-Buy overlays on the site. And this new found interest in
downloading “Forever” goes beyond the viral video itself: “JK Wedding
Entrance” also appears to have influenced the official “Forever” music
video, which saw its Click-to-Buy CTR increase by 2.5x in the last
week.

So, what does all of this mean? Despite compelling data and studies
around consumer purchasing habits, many still question the promotional
and bottom-line business value sites like YouTube provide artists. But
in the last week, over a year after its release, Chris Brown’s
“Forever” has again rocketed up the charts, reaching as high as #4 on
the iTunes singles chart and #3 on Amazon’s best selling MP3 list.

Quite a story. As my Aussie friends would say Good on Ya Jill and Kevin! I hope you have a joyous and marvelous life together.

This money making group splits into 3 groups. Group one (47.4% of the money makers) relies entirely on third parties like YouTube to monetize their content. At the other extreme, group two (23.4% of the money makers) rely on their own exclusive direct sales. The rest use a blended approach. I asked TubeMogul if they could determine CPM by group, but have not yet heard back from them.

These money makers seem to use everything they can to make money. Here’s the breakdown by ad format:

So for those of you making videos online, what works best for you?

Imagine if you and your friends could star in a music video, famous movie clip, or commercial as realistically as if you were around for the shoot. Jonathan describes the company and the potential that its technology has to transform advertising and the audience relationship with movies, television and videogames.

In the interview, Jonathan describes his early start as a wunderkind discovered by SoCal VCs (0:00), his insight into the coming importance of personalization as he discovered the technology behind Big Stage (2:45), and how he helped move the technology to become consumer internet capable and fundable (7:05).

He talks about the current business, his monetization model through brands and content partners based on the technology’s dramatic impact on advertising effectiveness (11:35), and what the big media networks are seeing in terms of monetization and CPM rates (16:12). He also describes privacy considerations (17:40) and the other cool non-advertising stuff, like videogaming and short internet adventures, that Big Stage will be making possible (19:05).

Jonathan Strietzel is co-founder and chief creative officer of Big Stage. He brings 10 years of experience as an entrepreneur in the entertainment and technology industries, including founding Stritz Studios, a boutique special effects studio. He has also invented multiple systems for delivering digital advertising and currently holds a U.S. patent for his work in particle-based advertising. In addition, Jonathan has worked with numerous TV studios and Fortune 500 companies, including developing the highly publicized online clue delivery system for NBC’s “Treasure Hunters.” Jonathan graduated from Chapman University with a Bachelor of Science degree.

[tags]Digital Hollywood, Big Stage, Jonathan Strietzel, Virtual Reality, Avatar, 3D[/tags]

You can find more videos of the keynote presentations at Web2Expo channel on Blip.TV

[tags]Fake Steve Jobs, Dan Lyons, Web20Expo[/tags]

Which one do you like best?

And the winners are:

Adorable: Laughing Baby

Comedy: Potter Puppet Pals in “The Mysterious Ticking Noise”

Commentary: LonelyGirl15 is Dead!

Creative: The Original Human TETRIS Performance by Guillaume Reymond

Eyewitness: Battle at Kruger

Inspirational: Blind Painter

Instructional: How to solve a Rubik’s Cube (Part One)

Music: “Chocolate Rain” Original Song by Tay Zonday

Politics: Stop the Clash of Civilizations

Series: The Guild – Episode 1: Wake-Up Call

Short Film: my name is lisa

Sports: balloon bowl

[tags]YouTube, Video Awards, Online Video[/tags]

This move means that anyone can build a YouTube like capability into their website or application and take advantage of YouTube’s full capabilities and you can do it for free. This is an amazing tool kit that will allow people to build all kinds of interesting applications. All of this will be great to see.

There are also a number of other big implications:

• It increases rate at which GooTube will become the central repository for video content on the web.
• Google will become the largest content delivery network we’ve ever seen. This is bad news for the other players in video distribution business, such as Britecove or Maven Networks.
• And it could be bad news for players such as Akamai, if Google gets way ahead and opens up its content delivery network further.
• GooTube will collect enormous amounts of data about what’s happening with video everywhere on the net and that will be really valuable to advertisers.
• Everything everywhere will speed up a lot, and that means publishers and developers better figure out how they compete in that world.
• Flash/Adobe just increased in value as this will increase the dominance of Flash even further.

Here’s the video version of the release:

Leave a comment with other implications or applications you would like to see people build with this.

You can find more discussion at Techmeme.

Click here follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/alexnesbitt

[tags]YouTube, Google, online video[/tags]

Pop17, promises just that.

Pop17 is a two-to-three minute online daily video show covering the furthest reaches of online mico-celebrity and internet fame. Who are these new influentials? What are their stories? How have they leveraged their online successes? These are the kinds of questions we will explore everyday at Pop17.

Sarah Meyers, the shows host, surveyed a random group of people in Washington Square Park about these online micro-celebrities.

Her main finding:

It’s surprising how many people I surveyed knew little to nothing about anyone famous online.

I hope the core tech super fans provide high enough CPMs to support what might be a small, but very focused and perhaps important audience.

The show is sponsored by Tech Crunch, Perkett PR and Virgin America. New shows will air Monday through Thursday, with a live edition on Mogulus every Friday at 3pm ET.

[tags]sarah meyers, pop17, online celebrities[/tags]

In the past, I have used the descriptions in the Digital Podcast Forums, but I thought I would create a short video tutorial that explains how to get podcasts into your iTunes player, download multiple episodes and delete podcasts from iTunes.

If you just got your new iPod and want to get some podcasts into iTunes so you can listen to them on your computer or iPod this video is for you.

[tags]how to get podcasts into itunes, how to get podcasts on iPod[/tags]

[tags]tivo, zune, ipod, video, dvd, ipod movie downloads, zune movie downloads[/tags]

About NowLive in their own words

NowLive is a social broadcasting network that lets anyone create a live, interactive talk shows, take callers, share media, syndicate podcasts, and more. NowLive empowers you to connect any time with peers, fans, friends, and new and interesting people. Communicate and promote the things that matter to you most! Who uses NowLive? Celebrities! Join Adrianne Curry, Christopher Knight, Bobbi Billard, Christine Dolce (ForBiddeN), Somaya Reece, and more! Bloggers (sport, political, travel, fashion, music…) – take your blog to the next level and host a weekly call in show at your blog site. MySpacers: create an interactive party line with all your friends. As one of our members said, “It’s like MySpace on Crack”. Bands: Start an international live concert from your garage. YahooGroups: add live teleconferencing to the group. Fantasy Sport: Have the commissioner of your league host a weekly get together so teams can negotiate real time trades and brag about last weeks standings. Businesses: invite your customers to an online Q&A session; Friends & Family! – this is a great way for your friends or family to share great conversation and experiences from different locations, all within a rich-media environment.

[tags]Digital Hollywood, NowLive, social broadcasting, social media, online video, Kevin Bromber, Chey Bell[/tags]

Kina Grannis, one of the 10 artists still in the running, is working hard to win. She has her blog, Two Weeks for Kina, going full steam and she has made a play to get out the tech vote using social media marketing. With the help of Digg, TechCrunch and Robert Scoble she seems to be breaking out with the tech fans. The Cute Girls Sing Awesome Song About Digg post at Digg has over 4000 votes as I write this and is the top post of the day. TechCrunch has picked up the story, Scoble has added the post to his shared feeds and Kina should get a lot more support from the tech fans. In the time it took to write these few lines the post at Digg has climbed to 4,185. The views at YouTube have climbed to over 36,000.

Here’s the video Gotta Digg

And the lyrics:

When I’m feeling lazy, at school or when I work
I sneak to my computer, and then I like to shirk
I don’t go online shopping, I don’t email with my mom
I open up my browser, and go to digg-dot-com

Chorus: Gotta digg, gotta digg, gotta digg
Gotta make this story big!
Did you hear that awful sound?
Another server’s down!

I always dig up Apple, and I bury Microsoft
But when I said I was a girl, all the diggers scoffed
And when I see those stories about Senator Ron Paul
I don’t even RTFA; I just digg them all!

Chorus: Gotta digg, gotta digg, gotta digg
Gotta make this story big!
Did you hear that awful sound?
Another server’s down!

The fanboys can be tiresome, they always are outspoken
And if you’re listening Kevin Rose, the comment system’s broken!
I know digg isn’t perfect, but be thankful for what we’ve got
It’s just like daddy always says: “At least it’s not Slashdot!!!”

Chorus: Gotta digg, gotta digg, gotta digg
Gotta make this story big!
Did you hear that awful sound?
Another server’s down!

So why not, vote for Kina.

[tags]Kina Grannis, social media, digg, social media marketing, crash the super bowl, discovery, music[/tags]

From broadcast to print to music, New York’s old media companies stumbled in the face of the chaos brought about by new media in 2007. The future of some of the city’s most venerable companies and brands looks suddenly shaky.

We have entered into a new era for television and the industry just does not seem to understand the shift. Like the print and music industries before them they are struggling with a business model that is not prepared to do battle in these new times.

These networks have enjoyed 50 years of consumer attention surpluses and now must face the consumer attention shortage. It is a market share battle for attention that requires the industry to reconfigure itself, lower costs and expand production across medias all at the same time.

The current writers strike and other upcoming labor issues is like the auto industry’s struggle with lower cost competitors and the UAW’s attempt to protect high paying jobs in the face of non-union based lower cost competitors. Both sides had lots of economic rational to protect their entrenched positions, but it came at the expense of their long term health.

Lower cost competitors are swamping the media market with content and taking share from traditional players. The Guild and management are locked in a battle over how they will share what may be very diminished returns if they don’t get back to work soon. They need to get focused on growing the pie or there won’t be much left to fight over.

[tags]network tv, tv viewership, writers’ strike, attention[/tags]

[tags]YouTube, Queen Elizabeth, Royal Channel, online video[/tags]

In a post I made a while back, I think it is all about people communicating with people.

It should be obvious that since the invention of runners to carry messages it’s been about people communicating with people. Mail, telephone, email, IM, texting are all killer apps that have been about people communicating with people.

That’s why social networking is important. It’s not about the documents or what the documents are about, it’s about the people and what the people are all about. And yes, we do need a way to figure out how we are all connected other than telling everybody every time.

Thanks to Gigaom for bringing the video to my attention.

[tags]Nokia, web 2.0, social networking, video[/tags]

Yesterday, UStream.TV, which provides a free, web-based platform for live video broadcasting, announced an angel round funding from Band of Angels and Western Technology Investors for an undisclosed amount, as well as funding from a “leading Japanese investor” and an “very prominent Dallas-area billionaire.” and provided an interview over at Mashable. Red Herring is also reporting that Ustream completed a $2 million angel round and that U.S. General Wesley Clark joined its board.

PaidContent.org reports that P2P video platform Vuze, formerly known as Azureus, has raised a big $20 million third round led by New Enterprise Associates, with participation from previous backers Redpoint Ventures, Greycroft Partners, BV Capital, and Jarl Mohn. You can hear an interview with Gilles BianRosa, CEO of Vuze, that I did at Digital Hollywood.

PaidContent.org is also reporting that Ooyala, a Mountain View, CA-based provider of video distribution infrastructure, has received a big first found of funding from Sierra Ventures. Ooyala Backlot is a video management platform that gives you control over the delivery, organization, analytics, and monetization of your online videos.

[tags]Kyte.TV, Vuze, Ooyala, UStream, Sierra Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, Redpoint Ventures, Greycroft Partners, BV Capital, Jarl Mohn, Wesley Clark, Telefonica, Nokia, DoCoMo, Swisscom, Holtzbrinck, DFJ[/tags]

Some of the writers see the opportunity that the strike is creating for online video ventures. They are drafting business plans and meeting with venture capitalist’s like Accel Partners.

Some of the writers who are drafting business plans said that if the strike had lasted only a week, they would have just gone back to work. But now they’ve had time to plot strategy — and to realize that a prolonged strike with reruns and reality shows filling the airwaves might allow them to grab a wandering audience.

“The companies are pushing us into the embrace of people that are going to cut them out of the loop,” marveled one show runner who is tracking the start-up trend but not participating.

“We are one Connecticut hedge-fund checkbook, one Silicon Valley server farm and two creators away from having channels on YouTube, where the studios don’t own anything.

This strike will definitely have a negative impact on TV and accelerate the migration of viewers to the web. It seems like a great time for the writers to be starting online ventures. The talent is available and the tech investors see the opportunity.

Facebook director Jim Breyer, a partner at Silicon Valley venture firm Accel Partners, said he was weighing deals that would rely on Facebook’s platform. “It is likely we will make investments in Los Angeles screenwriter/content-oriented companies in 2008,” he said.

Some are going to take the risk and if they are successful it could turn into a stampede from the TV to the web.

[tags]writers strike, Hollywood, online video[/tags]

The system provides the tools to deploy a custom social broadcast network, including

• Self publishing
• Video upload, download, rating, comments
• Blog, video blog, moblog
• DAVE points system
• A modular player can be customized with your brand and embedded in user’s MySpace, blog or web page
• User contests

Rex also told me about an exciting new project that DAVE Networks has launched called Next.TV. NEXT.TV, a competitor to the much hyped Joost, is a new Internet TV service that delivers over 50 channels of high quality TV content. NEXT.TV’s content is sponsored by advertisers so that you can get premium TV content for free.

NEXT.TV will be available initially in October 2007 on HP consumer notebooks. A version will also be available to the general public shortly thereafter for download of which you can sign up to be part of the Private Beta Program by signing up at www.next.tv.

[tags]DAVE Networks, Rex Wong, Next.TV, IPTV, online video, video, Digital Hollywood[/tags]

The Wall Street Journal provided five case studies today of advertising as content, and all done by small companies.

1. Blendtec’s Will It Blend

Blendtec is in the blender business. One day the marketing guy sees the enginneering guy test blenders with chunks of wood. The net result is one of the most successful Ads as Content campaigns, Will It Blend.

The video series is so popular they are now selling it as a DVD for $9.93.

Straight from the success of YouTube.com, Will It Blend has been known as an internet marketing sensation, viewed by more than 30 million people. Now for the first time ever, you can take home the glory, passion and power of Blendtec CEO Tom Dickson with his blending antics on the first 50 Will It Blend videos, including Will It Blend facts and behind the scenes footage.

Not only has it been successful as content they say sales of blenders have shot up 500%.

Here’s the video of one of my favorites Will It Blend: the iPhone edition.

2. MJ Safety Solutions Bullet Resistant Backpack

MJ Safety Solutions MyChildsPack is a bullet resistant back pack. The video is serious with lots of explosions and guns firing. YouTube reports that the video has been viewed just under 25,000 times at the time I write this. The company reports that it has sold over 1,000 of these backpacks at $175 each.

3. All Natural Maine Root’s Free Range Root Beer

In this video campaign, All Natural Main Root is marketing the fight against corporate root beer and of course their alternative: Free Range Root Beer. Sales have gone up from $500,000 to $3,000,000 year over year. Maine Root paid $20,000 for the campaign. Not a bad return from some viral videos.

FreeRangeRootBeer.com is dedicated to stopping corporate root beer “by any means necessary.” Non-violence is our modus operandi. We spread our message mostly through non-violent protests, but also use root beer “breakouts” to free root beer from their bondage in their inhumane storage facilities. We’re on a path of peace, love and organic root-based beverages.

Here’s the SugerCane Shuffle from the SugerCane Gang – fans of Maine Root.

4. Make Magazine’s Weekend Projects

Make Magazine takes a different approach. They not into comedy or even trying to sell you something. They provide How To videos that focus on things you can do over the weekend. Think of what Popular Mechanics or Popular Electronics could have been if they got the web. The other benefit for Make is that the videos have sponsors so they get to advertise their website and re-advertise someone else’s product at the same time. Is that like re-gifting?

5. Moe’s Southwest Grill

Moe’s Southwest Grill decided to get the customers to do the work. They held a contest for a “Burrito in Every Hand” campaign. The winner gets 2,860 vouchers good at Moe’s. They got 40 videos and over 200,000 visitors to the website set up for the campaign. They say sales have gone up, but no details and they expanded their email mailing list by over 200,000.

And here’s a link to the Notorious M.O.E. and Nacho Daddy video, the winner of MOE’s contest.( sorry,I could not get the player to publish -)

So there you have it. Some great, well maybe not great, content that deliver the goods as advertisements. There’s some good lessons for content producers in here and for advertisers as well. It’s time to think differently.

It’s too bad the Wall Street Journal doesn’t understand what it writes about as I would have provided a link to the WSJ story, but it’s behind a walled garden. And I would have provided a link to to the Wall Street Journal video on makes a video go viral, but it had too many ads to make it bearable.

The journal should also get the news that viral is not only about getting a great funny, useful or how to video, its about working the system to get to the top of the most viewed video list. Here’s a link to TechCrunch’s Secrets to Viral Videos. Too bad there’s so much gaming and shady practices involved.

If you know of more case studies, let me know.

[tags]viral video, online video, advertising, ads as content[/tags]

According to ZML, they have lots of hot movies that are playable on iPods and just about every device.

Over 1500 movies of premium DVD quality

Thousands of hot movies that you dare to watch. Movies are playable on various devices including iPod, PDA (HandHelds), PC, DVD & DivX players. Lowest prices on the web ever. Start downloading movies from $1.99 only! Absolutely no limits. You can download as much as you want with incredibly high speeds. No additional software required. Click on a link, download a movie and watch it on your favourite player.

Sounds good, but there’s a catch. The catch as reported by NewTeeVee

ZML.com isn’t licensed by any of the Hollywood studios. The site is selling hundreds of blockbusters anyway, referring to a collective licensing agreement with an obscure Russian rights holders agency.

And here are the details from ZML’s terms of service:

6 Copyrights
6.1 All materials presented on this site are available for the distribution over the Internet in accordance with the license of the Russian Organization for multimedia and Digital Systems (ROMS) and intended for personal use only. Further distribution, resale or broadcasting is strictly prohibited.
6.2 The Site remunerates the fees for every downloaded File in accordance with the license agreement.
6.3 All trade marks, trade names, company names, slogans, logos, and any other copyright items, which can be seen on the Site pages in various contexts, are the property of their respective owners. You have no right to copy, distribute or use them without written permission from the owners.
6.4 The Client has no right to download any Files from the Site if this violates the law of his country.
6.5 The Site Administration can not control actions of each Client therefore the Client is responsible for any illegitimate use of the Site’s materials or/and Services

Wow. This is a nightmare for Hollywood and another blow to the copyright. I’m sure there will be lawsuits filed, if they haven’t been filed already.

The problem is that this seems to be legal in Russia according to AllofMp3 who is reporting court room victories in their copyright infringement suit.

On 24 October a district court in Moscow has confirmed the “no copyright infringement” verdict.

Earlier this year, on 15 August 2007 AllofMP3.com was acquitted of all charges brought up by IFPI. Consequently the Federation filed a protest on behalf of the labels. This protest was declined last week. This time IFPI promised to go as far as the Supreme Court.

I wish the music industry and Hollywood good luck in protecting their copyrights. However, this is the sad, but unfortunately accurate reality of digital media. Movies, music, news all need new business models that allow content to flow openly AND money to be made by the creators of the content when it flows openly. There’s only way to fight blatant ripoffs like ZML in the long run, turn them into profit opportunities for the originators of the content.

[tags]movies, online video, drm, piracy, downloadable movies, ZML, AllofMP3[/tags]

Vividas provides technology and services that enable video streaming live or on demand, full-screen and up to high-definition quality. Vividas’ technology allows the user to view content over a variety of bandwidths without needing to install software.

Vividas’ technology offers an array of online video streaming options. The technology can be used for pay-per view movies, live events, Internet television, corporate advertisements, movie trailers and more.

The Vividas PPV technology provides filmmakers an easy to implement, high-quality presentation that, unlike other competing technologies, requires no player download and plays instantly in full-screen on virtually every computer. Vividas technology has powered a number of previous online film successes such as “The Secret,” for which Vividas received a Webby Award nomination.

The Vividas technology completely changes the economics of movie distribution providing both the streaming and also the payment infrastructure. A great example of how Vividas can provide a pay per view infrastructure for movie producers can be found at Home:The Movie.

“As an independent filmmaker, we had to get through many gate keepers with ‘Home,’ the final one being distribution. Formerly, if a filmmaker couldn’t get through that gate, the film went on the shelf,” said filmmaker Dawn Scibilia. “Because of the Internet and Vividas, that final gate is nonexistent and we can deliver ‘Home’ directly to our audience. The quality of the video is good and will only get better, it’s an affordable solution and the fact that it plays automatically and in full-screen are all big pluses as well.”

And here are some links to some great high definition movie trailers that show off Vividas in action.

It’s exciting to see what Vividas is doing as it is the kind of technology that will ultimately completely change the video value chain. Watch out Hollywood.

[tags]video, streaming, video value chain, video distribution, pay per view, ppv, digital hollywood[/tags]

The plan is that you will be able to subscribe to a channel and each channel should run about $2 per month. You can download all the shows available on the channels you subscribe to.

At this point the content is still limited in beta. The biggest content name that has signed on is Showtime.

A very interesting part of SyncTV’s plan is the ability to play the DVD-quality content on up to five devices in the home, and up to 10 different portable devices.

There is an audio interview with SyncTV president, John Gildred that tells you more about SyncTV

You can apply to be a beta tester at the SyncTV Web site.

[tags]TV, video downloads, SyncTV, Pioneer[/tags]

As you can see from the workflow illustration, the service ingests digital media, transforms it into different media types, enables advertising insertions and helps you manage the scheduling and distribution of the content out onto the web. This type of service should be very useful to anyone who needs to manage significant distribution of media out onto various platforms around the web.

[tags]Origin Digital, Media Distribution, Digital Hollywood[/tags]

I met Gilles BianRosa, CEO of Azureus, at Digital Hollywood today. Azureus has long been one of the most popular bittorrent applications for sharing and downloading content off the web. The application has been downloaded over 140 million and Azureus users connect with one another from more than 100 countries and 40 languages.

Azureus operates a video aggregation and distribution platform to support the exchange of long-form, High Definition or DVD quality videos, as well as niche, licensed digital content from leading media companies. The company has recently announced content partnerships with Showtime Networks, BBC Worldwide, Bennett Media Worldwide, G4, A&E Networks (including A&E, History, and Biography channels), National Geographic, and Starz Media.

The new platform called Vuze is supported by peer-sharing technology, providing users the ability to browse, share, search and discover multimedia entertainment in a high-resolution format.

Gilles was kind enough to sit down and tell about Azureus and their new direction called Vuze (Vuze.com). I hope you enjoy this interview with Gilles.

[tags]Azureus, Bittorrent, Vuze, Gilles BianRosa, Digital Hollywood, DigitalHollywood[/tags]

I met with Matthew Feldman of Versaly.com, a company that produces and publishes a network of different mobile media channels. The service is available from Sprint and some of the other major carriers and is focused on delivering mobile content. You can sample the content at VMBC.TV where there are videos from the mobile channels. The most popular channel is Fast Lane, which focuses on the young male demographic.

Matt told me that the content is free for users and that Versaly offers content providers the opportunity to monetize their content on the mobile platform.

Here’s the interview with Matt.

[tags]mobile media, versaly, fast lane, vmbc.tv, digital hollywood, digitalhollywood[/tags]