I was cited in Johnathan Dingman’s blog on a debate on which was the better buy? YouTube or Flickr?

All I did was supply Jonathan with the Comscore data - you can read about it at http://tinyurl.com/YouTube-flickr

Kaltura.com as a platform to do interactive blogging for interactive blogging.

When talk about interactive blogging, we don’t bother about type. We also allow you to pull content from Kaltura’s network of publishers.

It really sounds like Kaltura opens up to us A LOT OF CONTENT, including, soon Wikipedia, all of it legal for use, under Creative Commons. Really cool.

And, for example, Shay David pulled in a Saturday Night Live Sarah Palin Clip and alter it real time using Kaltura’s online editors.

Depending on how you want to set it up, you could allow your readers to remix your posted video/audio content!

Comment: That’s pretty interesting, and I’m not certain many have thought through the possibilites and implications of allowing your users to remix your posted content.

I think Kaltura would be very interesting for large corporate sites running contests, say… Even a online recruitment service … Just a thought.

Looking at the online videos that advertising agencies are creating for their brands, it is clear the main metric and causes for these online video is the viewers “attention”.

That would explain some of the entertaining, sorts stupid, commercials I saw yesterday at a late afternoon session on Video 2.0 at Web 2.0 Expo (like Obama Girl fighting girl McCain Hulk).

Here’s the marketing notes for this session:

PANEL: Marketers’ Dilemma: Finding and Managing Digital Resources Westside Ballroom - North

What does the disintermediation of Big Advertising mean, specifically, for Brand Marketers? Creatives these days seem to be everywhere and anywhere— some might say Madison Avenue is dissolving amid the rise of branded content providers, specialty marketing shops, even user-generated brand messaging. Others would include everyone—even a technology powerhouse like Google—as part of the New Madison Avenue. How does a brand manager look for quality, cost-efficient new media gurus in a splintering creative and media environment? What are the challenges of managing such a varied roster of talent, and how does the glut of options affect brand positioning?

MODERATOR:
Shane Steele, Digital Media & Marketing Consultant

SPEAKERS:
Lars Bastholm, Executive Creative Director, AKQA
Chris Curtin, Vice President, Digital Strategy, Hewlett-Packard Company
Pam Kaufman, Chief Marketing Officer, Nickelodeon
Bob Stohrer, Chief Marketing Officer, Virgin Mobile USA

Even though the purposes of a high end Brand video commercial is created for a much different purpose than a political satire and tension release, they share the goal of gaining attention, getting you undivided attention.

Connection Strategy? Consistent Touch point Multi dimensional strategy?

Well, doesn’t seem like digital agencies do that, today.

Here’s the paradoxical issue, but it was not voiced, that all brands want “undivided” attention, while people are now “multi-tasking” and doing a few things at once.

Even our desire to create a metric for “engagement”, or should I now call it “attention”, assumes that our attention, as measured via page click depth, time spent on site, visit volicity (all this stuff that Eric Peterson’s new paper on “Measuring The Measurable” tried to put forth as a formula to measure “engagement”) is the sole thing we’re doing, when it’s often, not.

On my way to OMMA this morning, several people on the subway had their IPod or IPhone and earphones on; they were also being exposed to display ads on the walls and ceiling of the subway car and some were also reading a book or newspaper.

In the past, we might have simply described this multi-tasking capability as “clutter” that brands seek to get your attention from.

But, from another perspective, it’s precisely the “brands” messaging which we’re are often multi-tasking!

A question came up about Social Media and no one could figure out where it sits in a modern digital agencies.

Perhaps, there needs to be a certain amount put aside for “innovation”, but that is often the first thing that is cut.

Btw, I am writing all of this, as I was also doing yesterday, on my IPhone, and posting online directly, so please forgive my spelling and grammer errors.

Actually, I have a really hard time getting up early enough, or forking over 50 bucks to get in, but I will for Bill Sobel, this time, because I want to see the newest 3D Television experience -

"…. Quantel was displaying Pablo, the world’s first 3D HD post-production system. According to Horton, every major sports broadcaster in the world stopped by the Quantel presentation, and many were so impressed that plans are already in motion to have pilot transmissions ready by month’s end.

“This time last year, the whole stereoscopic thing was really kicking off with Hollywood and that’s picked up momentum,” Horton explains. “Subsequently, the broadcasters have come on board with it as well. This is really a generational change. This is as big a change as black and white to color.”
 

"Enhancing the consumer video experience"

featuring a demonstration of 3d stereoscopic hd televison 

and discussion  presented by our friends at quantel corporation

 I'm always curious about how good it'll be - there's only one way to find out - I just better make sure I can get up at 5:30AM - so I get down to W43rd Street by 7:30AM on May 1st - not an easy feat as I'll be out the evening before partying at Web Analytics Wednesday (and passing up a SEMPO meeting) with Eric Peterson:

Events in New York

If you live in New York please join your fellow web analysts at an upcoming local event.

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Avenue A | Razorfish Office 19th floor in New York

The next Web Analytics Wednesday will have Eric Peterson speaking and presenting at the Avenue A | Razorfish offices in Midtown Manhattan.

MANDATORY - Please register at least 24 hours before the event. April 29th, 2008 at 6:00PM EST so that I can get your name on the list with building security.

Please join the Web Analytics Wednesday NYC linked in group http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/72613/16F0D258FBDE

Host:

Joel Collymore and Derek Montiverdi (Email)

Date:

Wednesday, April 30, 2008 at 6:00 PM

Venue:

Avenue A | Razorfish Office 19th floor

Address:

1440 Broadway, New York NY (Venue | Map | Group)

Sponsor:

Event sponsored by Avenue A | Razorfish

Share:

Invite friends to join you at this event
Link to this event

 

Eric Peterson and Michael Berger wrote a new white paper on measuring online video - you can get details about the paper in Measuring Multimedia White Paper by Eric Peterson & Michael Berger over at The Analytics Guru.

Now, I picked out some good stuff (it's all good stuff in the paper) from the paper that I keyed in on such as the definitions of Online Video mentioned in the paper:

 

Playlist
A selection of files (called clips) that contain audio or video content and can be played in a web-based media player.

Program
One or more “branded” audio or video streams that may contain series of episodes.
Episode
Additional information about the programme, such as the name, number, and date, consisting of one or more clips in a playlist.

Clip
The portion of the audio and video file streaming in a media player. One or more clips create an episode.

Unique Multimedia Event
A specific, measurable event associated with a distinct playlist counted a single time based on interaction with the playlist.

Views and Viewers
While “views” and “viewers” sound very much like page views and visitors, in the context of online video there is an important distinction given that video is often designed to be viewed outside of the creator’s web site. Given this, site operators cannot necessarily rely on traditional measures of page view and visitors (although when the views happen on the web site, viewers and visitors are directly analogous.)

It also reminds me a lot of the discussion I had with Gary Angel last summer that started me on the path to Engagement Metrics and Online Video Metrics:

I'm glad to see Visual Revenue's Online Video Analytics - KPIs published as they're part of the Social Media Metrics the Web Analytics Association is beginning to work on - it's a joint effort by the Social Media Committee and the Standards Committee of the WAA.   It's our hope that by next year at this time, we'll have published at least the first sets of Web 2.0/Social Media Standards.

Anyway, here's 9 essential online video metrics that Dennis Mortensen (who's also a member of the Social Media committee) lists on his blog:

9 Essential Online Video Metrics

• Online video started
• Online video Pre-roll advertisement started*
• Online video core content started
• Online video Post-roll advertisement started*
• Online video positive consumption action
• Online video negative consumption action
• Online video ended
• Online video played, percentage of total
• Online video played, seconds

Dennis mentions that IndexTools is the only analytics platform today that provides Online Video Analytics:

"….And before you fall for any bullshit, patent pending, we are the only online video analytics provider - marketing spiel, I would like to conclude that you can collect and analyze most of the above mentioned Essential Online Video Metrics in all of the enterprise analytics packages out there. :-)"

Some of these metrics aren't all that easy to measure, honestly (ie: Online video positive consumption action would be a "soft" metric - it would probably be a subjective judgement by an panel of viewers - I can't see how else you'd measure it).

I think the idea of comparing conversion rate of an online video to the site average is a good thing to do:

• Conversion rate segmented by Online video started COMPARED to the site average
• Conversion rate segmented by Online video ended COMPARED to the site average

Where the above two suggestions immediately shows the success of using video for conversion purpose. Imaging a positive scenario where you have 1% site average conversion, 2% on those who started a video and 3% on those who finished it (expecting that the more a visitor consume the more engaged and interested he is).

I think this is exactly the kind of definitions and measurements we need and it reminds me of a conversation over dinner I had last summer with Gary Angel which I will play you a clip here:

I apologize in advance for the slurred sound of my voice and maybe a couple of laughs too many - though it was a fun evening and it was the beginning, I feel, of the Social Media Standards effort my committee began to undertake last year - when I was elected to the Board of Directors.

Manoj Jasra wrote a post  about Video Analytics by Visible Measure solution to help video publishers and advertisers understand and grow their online viewing audiences.

The Video Analytics is called VisibleSuite and measures the in-stream viewing behavior of Internet video audiences.  I wasn't able to look at more than the demo VisibleSuite in this movie, below - but it looks interesting.

Now that Cloverfield came out one wonders that the next big JJ Abrams movie that's coming out is going to be like.   Well, one thing, it's not viral - and there's an actual date - Christmas 2008 ( I guess, by Christmas 2008 a lot of people are going to need to be cheered up - well, will see if the movie is any good once it comes out).

Anyway, here's the JJ Abrams Star Trek 11 Trailer care of  CrunchGear -Star Trek XI teaser

Heard about Time Magazine's Top 10 Viral Videos of 2007 from B.L. Ochman's blog, but, given what I read and wrote about Viral Videos last month (via TechCrunch - Viral Videos - Secrets Revealed care of TechCrunch - reaction is mixed) I'm somewhat suspicious on how the Viral Videos were chosen by Time Magazine in the first place.

How does Time Magazine make up their mind on this - is it consensus of editors?  To me, this is no different than cable show that has top songs … and how many of those have we seen?

I came accross Seesmic, a new video social network, when I subscribed to Loic LeMeur's Twitter feed today.  I'll be metting Loic LeMeur at LeWeb3 next week but I wanted to check out what Seesmic.com is:

It looks to me like Seesmic is an application that allows people to do a video version of Twitter - and to mash up different people, interacting, as if, in real time (see above). 

There's also a Wikipedia page on Seesmic - something that just happened today and Michael Arrington wrote about Seesmic at TechCrunch about 2 weeks ago in a post titled -100 Seesmic Accounts, And A Disclosure

"..One of the hardest to get beta accounts right now is Seesmic, Loic Le Meur’s new startup that went into private beta in early October.

The service, which can most easily be described as a video Twitter, is popular with the 300 people who are beta testing it so far. Le Meur says that more than half of them are extremely active, and 200 videos are being posted daily."

One thing we can be sure of, that Seesmic's user base, when it really is expanded and takes off, will evolve other uses for it, beyond what we're seeing in the clips we can look at today - just as Twitter has ended up being used for all kinds of things beyond what it was originally created for.

Arrington also became an investor in Seesmic - which must be saying something about what he thinks will happen with this young, dynamic service:

"…At some point, Le Meur says, existing beta holders will be able to invite others to join as well. As soon as that functionality goes live we’ll add Seesmic to InviteShare.

Disclosure: I have also become an investor in Seesmic and have updated my disclosures on our about page."

Naturally, I signed up to be a beta tester and my HP Laptop (as opposed to my ThinkPad) does have a built in Video Cam.  

Here's an interview with Loic Le Meur on Seesmic given on November 1st.  

In fact, it might have been fun to have been a beta tester at LeWeb3 and have used Seesmic there - and I'm sure that Loic Le Meur will probably announce something there related to Seesmic as Michael Arrington will also be attending.

And of course, I read TechCrunch every day.

As far as the Seesmic Video service goes - my guess is that Video is a very data and bandwidth intensive application and I'm wondering how scalable it's going to be.  On the other hand, if Google could buy Urchin and make it into Google Analytics and then scale it out to over a million accounts - there's no reason why Seesmic could not succeed on a much wider scale - if the infrastructure needed to support this kind of application is in place first.

And yes, I'll try to find out more about Seesmic and other stuff when I go to Paris later on this week.