Comscore released data saying that 139k people visited Oscar.com on Oscar Sunday. Seperately, Mashable reported that the Oscars asked Youtube to remove videos from the show that had been uploaded. In the same report, Mashable had a screen capture that showed that an Oscar Comedy Musical video had been viewed more than 200k times. Lets say that those 200k views translate into about 100k actual people viewing the video.
The question is: Do the Oscars benefit or are they harmed by their video being seen on Youtube.com rather than Oscars.com ?
Its a simple question with a very important answer. Youtube proponents want everyone to believe that every impression is a new found impression that can only benefit the brand. Others, myself included believe the opposite. That the last thing you ever want is for another entity, that is completely out of your control, becoming the defacto manager of your brand.
So the question is this. If a content owner, like the Oscars, wants to control their content and their brand, what can they do ? If the Oscars wanted to capture 100pct of Youtube viewers of Oscar Videos on their site, what would it cost them ?
Its actually a cheap and easy operation to do so. Just overwhelm them
To capture Youtube viewers, the first step would be to OVERWHELM Youtube with partial clips of full length that tease Youtube users and point them to Oscars.com. For this Will Ferrell clip, I would have created a video that showed the first 10 secs of the clip, then had 4 minutes of a billboard that said " Great videos from the Oscars telecast and exclusive behind the scenes videos are all available at Oscars.com"
IN addition to the billboard in the video you would have an active link to Oscars.com on the Youtube video page. I wouldnt post this video 1 time. I would post this video 100 times.
And i would do the same thing for EVERY moment and segment in the Oscars.
The reality is that Youtube viewers will grow tired of scanning through every video and just click over to Oscars.com where they will see all the unique video that isn't anywhere on Youtube along with the Oscars.com paying advertisers.
The cost of hiring 10 people to slice and dice videos and post them on Youtube while the Oscars is going on, ? Lets say $20 dollars per hour and 10 hours of work during and after the show is over. Thats $ 2k dollars.
Thats the value of the Oscars videos being on Youtube.
Old Media of course hasn't figured this out. The old media way is to try to pre empt new and better ways of enabling entertainment. They just don't get it. Rather than sending take down notices, they should be leveraging the technology and medium and making it their own.
Youtube and Google Video, by adopting the DMCA Safe Harbors has defined themself as a hosting provider. They have made the choice to provide these services, along with links back to a destination of the uploaders choice for free. Content owners shouldn't fight this. They should celebrate this and fully take advantage of Google's generosity.
As a hosting provider, Google and Youtube don't know or care what videos are being hosted. They don't see them (other than reviewing them for porn of course), they just host them. So let them do their job. Let them spend their money on bandwidth hosting your promotions and videos. Let them provide free links back to your sites next to every video.
What about the Youtube Community ? Won't they be upset ? No. They don't care. Sure a couple people will bitch and post videos, just like they have when Viacom and others took down videos. Just like they do when they get takedown notices around their uploads. Who cares ? Youtube and Google Video are a hosting service. Nothing more or less. Let them do their job.
So my message to every and any content owner is this: DO NOT send take down notices. Look at how much money you spend on lawyers on the notices. How much you spend searching the site looking for your content. Instead, hire a bunch of interns to continuously upload videos that suit your purposes.
Make the math work in your favor. For example, if you have a movie called Ghost Rider, do a 90 minute video with 1 minute from your movie, 2 minutes of promo for the movie and where to see or buy it and 80 minutes of a cat chasing its tail. Call it - Ghost Rider the Full Movie and post it 100 times. Every day.
The net result is that you are using the tools that Gootube makes available to you while minimizing the chances of anyone finding infringing content. Its not a new idea, but it sure is effective.
Of course, none of this changes whether or not the final product, whether a movie, tv show or website delivers on user expectations. If they dont, none of this is matters.
If they do. Then promote it. Use the resources our friends at Google make available. Its what new media is all about !
Oscars.com vs Youtube.com and the value of hosting on Gootube
Reader Comments
(Page 1)2. > the last thing you ever want is for another
> entity, that is completely out of your control,
> becoming the defacto manager of your brand.
If that were true - and I believe it is, then why do you set by and allow them to do it to this very site?
http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:www.blogmaverick.com/2006/10/30/some-intimate-details-on-the-google-youtube-deal/
Posted at 2:06PM on Feb 28th 2007 by Brett Tabke
3. Finally, someone at a high corporate level sees the "street level" way of maximizing current technology.
Mark, you just put one lawyer out of a job and employed 20 interns! Net loss = $0
Posted at 2:08PM on Feb 28th 2007 by Mike
4. I think it straight translates to 100,000 people that saw it on YouTube that wouldn't have seen it at all on oscars.com.
The generation looks to YouTube for video, not the web or a closely related source such as oscars.com.
The only way oscars.com could get that kind of traffic is to spend millions of dollars on marketing, to show that video clips can be watched on their website. This isn't feasible at all because they probably don't benefit enough from marketing that way, considering the YouTube video's were free advertising.
Posted at 2:43PM on Feb 28th 2007 by Jolly Roger
5. The problem with your spam suggestion is that it's just as easy to get around as it is to do the spamming.
I think it would be better to pay that army of interns to build a community around your products/media. Give people a reason to be passionate about your stuff, give them some measure of control, perceived or real, over the brand. Otherwise you're missing the point of all of this activity.
Or you can take the immature route and add even more noise to an already overwhelmingly noisy environment.
Posted at 2:46PM on Feb 28th 2007 by grant
6. I disagree.
>>That the last thing you ever want is for another entity, that is completely out of your control, becoming the defacto manager of your brand.
Posted at 2:47PM on Feb 28th 2007 by Lee Marks
7. For example, if you have a movie called Ghost Rider, do a 90 minute video with 1 minute from your movie, 2 minutes of promo for the movie and where to see or buy it and 80 minutes of a cat chasing its tail.
Mark, eighty minutes of a cat chasing its tail actually sounds more interesting than the real Ghost Rider movie.
P.S. buy the Cubs.
Posted at 3:04PM on Feb 28th 2007 by Rob I.
8. This is unrelated, but I can't post it elsewhere. PLEASE! PLEASE! PLEASE! For the LOVE OF GOD, buy the Chicago Cubs franchise and make us winners.
Posted at 3:42PM on Feb 28th 2007 by Woodridge Ryan
9. The larger issue here really is that the world is changing more rapidly than ever before and some people and institutions want to fight the change rather than adapting. The technique you propose here is simply that: adapting rather than fighting the current.
As we increase the pace of change to the point where those who resist are simply flattened by the massive force of forward progress the ones who will survive, and thrive, in such an environment are those who will analyze each new development and see how to use it to their advantage.
Fighting YouTube is difficult and costly. But using an approach like this is easy, cheap AND can actually provide virtually free advertising/traffic to your site. Brilliant.
Posted at 3:52PM on Feb 28th 2007 by Josh McDonald
10. Don't agree with the tactic, but agree with the strategy. I'd break it up into two parts:
1. If company A is "selling" a brand, then "A" better be smart enough to make YouTube work for them. It should be "free" eyeballs, "free" publicity. If I'm selling a brand, I love YouTube.
2. If company B is selling digital content, and YouTube is cutting into their top line, then they better look at their business model. YouTube is just a symptom of today's age. Want to dedicate resources to a symptom, or to understanding the real cause and figuring out how to deal with it?
Mark - I hope you buy the Cubs. Incredibly valuable franchise and loyal fan base, despite the way that the Tribune has mismanaged. I'd love to see what you do with it. But I don't want to see the first pitch of every Soriano, Lee, and Ramirez at bat on YouTube followed by 10 minute tours of the outfield ivy.
11. Great post Mark. I agree with you that allowing others to manage your content is not smart, but I also think that the Oscars DOES need to adapt to the changes and post free video of different segments of the show. As it is, there is only a highlights video (last I heard). This is very foolish of them, as their is a vacuum of Oscar content on the net and they are only making people frustrated with them.
Love your blog. I don't read it enough, but I am pulling for Mavs for the West again in the playoffs and will not be sad the Heat are probably going to be missing.
And if it's true that you are trying to buy my beloved Cubs, I wish you all the best as you wrest (is that even a word??) this glorious franchise from the clutches of the Tribune.
Godspeed.
Posted at 3:59PM on Feb 28th 2007 by Cooper Gillan
13. I like this. I'm glad there are people out there who "get" that the rules are changing. I disagree with Mr. Zimmerman that this should just be accepted by content providers, though... Now is the time when the precedents are being set.
PS to Mark - remember MRC? we were both there back then.
Posted at 4:12PM on Feb 28th 2007 by tompayne
14. This "overwhelm them" strategy you describe seems like a cat-and-mouse game that the old media companies would inevitably lose.
The power of crowd-sourced media is in the power of crowd-sourced filtering. For example, there is a crushingly large number of people that post crap teasers or fake listings to Craigslist, but after 3 or 8 (or some other magic number) of flags as "spam" the listing is pulled. YouTube doesn't have a "flag as 'spam'" system, but it does have a rating system that works quite well. To use the example from your post, I'm sure these crap teaser videos would be rated very poorly, and the high quality full-length videos ripped from TV would bubble up in the ratings. Whenever I search for any video on YouTube, if I don't find what I want right away, I just change the sort method to "sort by rating" and the video I want almost always bubbles up to the top (unless it was hit by a takedown request recently).
Posted at 4:38PM on Feb 28th 2007 by Andrew Parker
15. One small problem with that. The NBCs, ABCs, and Oscar.coms of the world have horrible video programs on their sites. The younger generation wants to and will sift through the crap/spin just to get to video. That's what makes YouTube what it is....a low budget way to get your site noticed (for example...what I'm doing now by posting this).
Posted at 4:45PM on Feb 28th 2007 by AwfulAnnouncing
16. Excellent post. I agree with nearly all of your points. I would love to be in charge of placing clips on Youtube for companies. And as long as someone else hasn't illegally uploaded the clip, your concept is perfectly sound. Looking for illegally uploaded clips should also be another part of that person's job.
17. Here's what I would do if you used that tactic...
I'd go to Oscars.com, then when they presented me with a login/registration screen I would immediately back arrow back into youtube and wait for more illegal posts.
You and I both know that there's no way that they would be satisfied with providing that content without registration. That's a huge thing that people love about youtube that most execs outside of youtube don't get.
Posted at 5:26PM on Feb 28th 2007 by Sam
18. There is a term for this. I believe it is called "flooding". Doing this in a chatroom will get you banned from the chatroom.
If flooding becomes a problem on video web sites, this may prompt efforts by the sites to control the flooding. (Banning the people who do flooding, "flag as inappropriate" option for flooding.)
Posted at 6:01PM on Feb 28th 2007 by Matt Dittloff
19. Mark, this makes no sense. On one hand you are worrying about another company taking a bite out of your brand, and at the same time, you are offering that the solution is to further damage the value of that brand. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot...
As a consumer, if I'm going to YouTube to find the last quarter of the last Mavericks/Heat game, I click on the video, and I see the first two baskets, and then a 15 minute billboard for NBA.COM, or Mavericks.com or HDTV.Net, I'm turned off of that brand IMMEDIATELY, because you've just *wasted my time*. I'm mad at YOU.
I'm not arguing the point that you should RARELY, if ever, give up your rights to the image that you present to the customer. Branding should certainly be protected. Plus, I appreciate that sometimes you have to use guerilla tactics to fight an asymmetrical battle, but your suggestion is to carpet bomb, instead of finding a way to be *smarter* than your adversary. You, OF ALL PEOPLE, should know that the last thing we need is more SPAM. Shame on you.
The smarter way to approach this is similar to the advertising you run across on streaming audio - append an oscars.com ad onto THE BEGINNING of all of the posted clips, and just happen to mention that the HD quality version of this clip, and all other Oscars highlights is available at oscars.com., blah, blah, blah. *THEN* you're driving traffic to the site, where you can pitch them to your heart's content, and steal viewers from the tiny, grainy YouTube junk-o-rama.
No matter how many games and video clips it contains, the Academy and ABC do not budget TWO CENTS for oscars.com to exist for for my entertainment and/or education - they do it to serve up Cingular ads, and make a buck, and that's all that they are worried about here.
Posted at 6:02PM on Feb 28th 2007 by KilljoyTXinMI
20. Really happy to see Mark write a post on this topic, and I agree with the ideas he presents. As business development manager for a new action sports video-on-demand site, this is exactly the strategy we emply with our content providers. Most of these independent filmmakers (think Warren Miller at the top end, the local high school kid who expertly shoots and edits his own skateboard film at the low end) need to sell DVDs. Whether it's in the local ski shop, or out of the trunk of their car, that's where they currently make their money. So with our site, we ask for "scenes" from their latest film. We show "teasers" of these videos scenes in flash (a la YouTube), and then show the full video scenes via download into our secure media player. At the end of every video is a link back to their site. Of courese they could also send people to where the full DVD is for sale. Bottom line, they control the release of their content in the "new media" arena, and drive DVD sales under the "old media" concept. Eventually DVDs will go away, and pay per view or ad-supported video downloads will be their primary source of income.
1. I agree that this is a better strategy for content providers, as compared to what they are currently doing, but disagree with the idea that the YouTube community won't care. This is they type of thing that would drive me and many others I believe away from the site. You are talking about having them spend 2k to take control of their videos, which I am sure is nothing to them or you, but goes against the whole spirit of having a community site where all providers start on equal footing.
Here's another suggestion: How about content providers just learn to live with the situation as it is? I'm sure it is affecting their bottom line very little or probably not at all.
Posted at 1:54PM on Feb 28th 2007 by Charles Zimmerman