While the launch of Brightcove has garnered no shortage of attention today, it wasn’t the only important video news of the day. Google’s first “Sponsored Video” had its debut as well. Titled The Domino Effect, it’s Diet Coke and Mentos part II from the guys in white lab coats - EepyBird. Sponsored of course by Coca Cola and Mentos. What portion of the ad money goes to the video creators hasn’t been disclosed.
The original Diet Coke and Mentos video that the pair made was much more entertaining and brought them a reported $35,000 when they posted that video on Revver. Reeling in viral video stars with promises of revenue sharing has been Revver’s strategy - apparently they got beat at their own game when EepyBird got this Coke, Mentos and Google deal.
The official Google Blog said today that this was just the first of what they hoped would be many Sponsored Videos. This is not a long tail approach that’s being taken so far to monetize Google Video content. People interested in participating in the Sponsored Video program are directed to a Google Video page that says it is for publishers with more than 1000 hours of video available. The advertising on the EepyBird video is a very produced post-roll. This isn’t massive upload of user generated video content with AdSense wrapped around it. Perhaps that will be the role of YouTube and Google Video will be for relatively high-brow, formally produced video footage.
It’s fascinating to see Google, the creator of possibly the best long tail monetization engine in history, launching a video program focused on elite producers only. On the same day Brightcove launched a free for all network aimed at a much larger number of video producers and Metacafe took the bulk approach with their new Producer Rewards program. Metacafe is paying publishers $5 for every thousand views of a video after the first 20,000.
I’m sure that things will change with time, but perhaps Google has come to terms with the fact that hipness isn’t what its in-house video service has to offer. Perhaps it’s class they are seeking. If, in this world today, high class means hundreds of exploding Diet Coke bottles followed by an advertisement then perhaps what they are doing makes sense. Whether Google can split large advertising revenues with elite amateur video producers and build and sustain a vibrant, creative and authentic video community out of that is doubtful. The second EepyBird video sure felt stale.
Comments
At some point the advertisers will smarten up and stop wasting their money on google ads that don’t bring any returns. For now, they are content on letting a portion of their ad money go to waste on google, as long as overall, they get enough return out of it, but eventually no company wastes money indefinitely and they will demand their ads actually produce results.
Here’s an article explaining that Google doing something like this makes everyone pay attention, if anything (plus, where does YouTube fit in here?):
http://www.computers.net/2006/.....or_yo.html
Very interesting news.
Sounds like Google more of a distribution role rather than aggregator with this new service. It will be interesting to see whether Google can leverage its strong brand with advertisers to gain traction in this space against more promising yet less visible startups like Brightcove.
Still, beyond the top quality videos, I believe the future of online distribution for the long tail of video content is in P2P, as I discussed in: http://www.digitalmediareview.com/archives/308
There has been ample “talk” about how the internet is “disrupting” the traditional business of the “big boy” content holders - Networks, Viacom, etc. However, it seems as if there might be some aditional “seeds of disruption” about to germinate that should cause some other “established folk” to take notice (not that anything drastic is going to occur over the next 6 months, but it seems that a whole industry could be forced to change as a result of market dynamics over the next 5 to 10 years.)
I’m speaking of the actors and the producers of the content itself!
I realize that the “gulf” between the quality of what the networks produce compared with the quality of what amateurs produce is quite wide, however, there also exists a wide “gap” in the cost of the two vehicles (millions of dollars per hour vs. ~thousands / or less per hour?) But the salient point worth noting is that both mediums are competing for the same eyeballs, and the “low budget” films are winning the battle of increasing market share.
Which leads to this question … as the trend towards better and better quality films being produced by individuals who have a financial motivation / incentive to do so, how much will this current “gaping gulf” be bridged before it starts shaking up the engrained ways that the “Hollywood establishment” has been doing business as usual?
Metacafe’s approach is straightforward and understandable: You are viewed = you get paid.
The others use revenue sharing which is a more complex way of calculating your income….
Web videos are not as safe as we think. Hackers are actively infecting Web videos.
To begin with the AdWords program was only available for sites with more than 10 million visitors per month.
This probably isn’t Google cutting off their “long tail”, it’s starting it off with a small number of customers to refine the tech before allowing the masses in.
I posted a video on Google back in February ago, with the intention of charging for the download, a capability Google allows you to check during the upload process.
Weeks later my video was not approved. I contacted Google Video, and they replied that the hold up was due to me choosing to charge for download, a feature they only allow their prmium partners to use.
I wish they would have told me that before I chose their service as the place to distribute my video.
I also hope they open that aspect of their service up soon to us long tail producers.
role not roll.
Our company has already been doing things like this for months. We provide sites with an easy to use code for a video player or video page that delivers quality video content, not user generated and advertisements. We share the commercial revenue with the site partners. While many of these companies talk about doing this JamboVideoNetwork.com is actually doing it.
This service provides the content partners extended reach for their footage and provides web publishers video content and advertising that they could never do by themselves.
Poor Google. Trying to be a Yahoo when the market is going in another direction. At least they have both ends of the spectrum covered. Google Video featuring fat media guys with cigars. YouTube staring radical teens with joints.
What about the rest of us? Revver, Metacafe, Brightcove. Remember those three words. And remember you heard ‘em from Nalts at willvideoforfood.com.
Hey Kevin, pitch us a viral. Go on!
Loved that one.
BTW this is definitely just Google testing waters. Nothing to see here, wait till version 3.0.
A free BLOGTv at :
http://www.mirpod.com/blog.php.....mp;lang=en
My stuff has created more than a million views on Google. While I’m happy about the exposure, I’m bummed that Google isn’t commercializing it for me much less itself. No ads around it. Common!
Drop the 1000 hours. What does that achieve? Google is cutting out the bulk of amateur videographers and repurposing OLD media. Why?
Leave Comment
Commenting Options
Enter your personal information to the left, or sign in with your Facebook account by clicking the button below.
Alternatively, you can create an avatar that will appear whenever you leave a comment on a Gravatar-enabled blog.