This is new.

I was surprised to see this ad, a display unit for YouTube HD running in my Google RSS Reader on a feed from Silicon Alley Insider. Google serving house ads for its own video service, YouTube?

The ad is running in the Google Ad Sense network, the search giant’s broad, yet targeted hyper-advertising distribution network. It’s what amounts to a house ad, meaning either YouTube is spending to advertise its service, which I doubt, or Google is undersold on their inventory and they’re running free ads for their video service. (more…)

There’s a theory that good advertising doesn’t make you buy something, it makes you buy something sooner.

If that’s the case, then most online advertising isn’t good advertising.

But we knew that already.

The inability for the online advertising market to develop standardized metrics that prove real ROI to brands has been a major hurdle in the evolution of a sustainable digital content economy.

But the financial crisis that has so many companies pulling back on spending and laying off warm bodies has a silver lining - it has set the stage for brands to help define the future of online advertising products that most effectively transmit their message. (more…)

One of the big questions in the discussion of online entertainment video economics has been how to effectively and efficiently protect premium content. The prevailing theory held that by definition, digital content couldn’t be protected. You can’t stop the proliferation of pirated versions of your copyrighted material. You can only hope to contain it by playing nonstop whack-a-mole armed with take down notices. (more…)

Take an hour out of your life and watch this important video. It’s an excellent overview of the evolution of new media’s impact on human interaction. It highlights the role that YouTube is playing in the development of Fan Fiction (a somewhat inaccurate yet my current preferred euphemism for User Generated Content). If you’re short on time, skip to the conclusion at 45:15 and listen to Lawrence Lessig’s take on the cultural inflection point that we have communally reached due to the connectivity and access provided to us through digital distribution.

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The first real instance of the ubiquitous, mobile web on a consumer-friendly handset is the Apple iPhone 3G. It’s a game-changer and a technology market-mover. We all know that. But as we also know, what drives technology development and adoption more than anything else is porn. Just as users will always find ways to get their porn, smart technology companies will find ways to provide and monetize it.

But how does one find free porn video content on the new iPhone? You can’t find it on Youtube, which comes native as a featured applicaiton, and some of the better-known adult streaming sites like Youporn, Redtube, Eskimotube all serve their content for free, but in Flash video, which isn’t supported on the iPhone.

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If today’s announcement that Google will launch Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane’s original web series across its network of AdSense sites sounds familiar that’s because the same parties made the exact same announcement last year. Someone, however, forgot to tell the New York Times, who managed to dust off the story, give it a fresh veneer and up the ante by quoting AdSense representative Kim Malone Scott as saying “We feel that we have recreated the mass media.”

Kim, you will never live that down.

No matter. I love what this deal represents, although I’m somewhat skeptical that users will adopt the model of clicking what has been defined as an advertisement in order to watch an advertisement in order to then watch a short blast of something MacFarlanely funny. (more…)

The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article about proposed regulation of TV product placement disclosure that would have significant relevance for the growing web video business of advertiser sponsored, viral video campaigns.

The gist of the article is that the FCC is looking into requiring TV shows to include notices similar to what political candidates must say before or after campaign ads.

“You shouldn’t need a magnifying glass to know who’s pitching you,” said FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein. “A crawl at the end of the show shrunk down so small the human eye can’t read it isn’t really in the spirit of the law.” Current rules require disclosure but allow it at the end of the show. (more…)

Let’s make a bet.

I’ll bet that by the time you’re halfway through watching the below video your commercial instinct will suggest that what you’re watching is a piece of marketing material. I’ll also bet that you’re going to keeping watching until the video is over. It’s that good. (more…)

I sincerely apologize if I offended anyone by using the word retarded in the title of this post, but get ready because I’m going to use it again. There’s no other way to express how ridiculous it is that the video site community is so far off in standardizing their metric for view counts. It’s straight up retarded and needs to be fixed.

Disparate video view count metrics is part of an overall problem of non-standard web analytics which ultimately stunts the economics of web content.

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