I could also add to that the word "diffident" which means "lacking in confidence" – something marketers who don't have a
clear target in mind eventually become.

The solution is another "diff" word: differentiate, one meaning of which is "to make specialized or distinct."

If you're aiming at a target, it helps a lot if there's one clear target and there's a big red bulls eye painted on it.

What does this have to do with monetizing web video?

A lot.

There
are many fascinating topics in the world, but unless you want to become
like "YouTube" what you're really looking for is not a topic, but a
clearly differentiated market.

One of the bells your advertising MUST ring in your prospect's mind if you want to be successful is the "This is for ME!" bell.

That's hard to do if you're trying to be all things to all people.

I see this mistake being made over and over again.

If
you're YouTube, maybe you can get away with it (though I'm not sure that YouTube with its tens of billions of views is doing that well. )

But if have e a one-person operation (or one that aspires to run "lean and mean" forever) you need tightly focused targets.

It's
true that one micro-market might not be enough to support you, but if
you target a micro-market you will get that business to its natural critical mass
much faster and you'll get a much better yield on the market you attract. Then,
once that enterprise is on solid ground, you can start another one.

What does all this have to so with marketing video on the web?

A lot.

Here's an example of someone who "gets" this.

If you're a jazz fan, you will LOVE it and will want to subscribe and tell all your fellow jazz fans about it.

If you're not, you should still study what this guy is doing. Simplicity can be deceiving.

http://www.jazzonthetube.com/page/16.html

Ken

It covers a lot of the fundamentals that are easy to overlook once you find yourself deep in the complexities of technical issues. I`m glad I wrote it, just to help remind myself of the critical issues.

You might find it to be a worthwhile read:

http://kenmccarthy.blogs.com/ken_mccarthy/2006/07/video_on_the_in.html

Ken McCarthy

P.S. Do you want to be notified when new articles like this one are posted to the blog?

It’s easy. Just go to this page and we’ll add your name to our bulletin list:

http://www.internetvideomarketingletter.com/

That was the only game in town…

When television was introduced commercially in
the late 1940s, it took an immediate and painful
bite out of the movie theater business – and then
things got worse.

Today, the average person spends only one-sixth –
that’s 16% – as much time in movie theaters as
his pre-televlsion ancestors did.

You can still see signs of the sudden wreckage of the movie
theater industry in small towns and inner cities all over
America.

Here’s what interests me about this story… 

I can virtually guarantee that as late as 1945 no one in
their wildest imagination would ever have predicted
what actually happened. 

— Cable TV: The Many-Headed Hydra – Part One

The Hydra is mythological creature famous for
growing new heads.  Just when the hero thinks
he’s dealt with one head, twenty new ones spring
up in its place.

This is exactly what’s happening to people who
are heavily invested in the old media model and
there are at least three hydras that merit attention.

Reading Steve Dworman’s excellent book about
the infomercial business, I came across a number
that shocked me into a realization of how radically
television itself has changed in recent years.   

He states that in 1989, the average household in the
US had only eight to nine television channel choices.

Can that be true? Can we have come so far, so fast?

And what impact has this had on the television industry? 

A significant one.

Last week, CBS Corp announced that it’s reducing the stated
value of its radio and television assets (a "write-down") by
$9.5 billion, for a total write-down of $27 billion in just
two years.

One analyst, Fred Moran, commented to the New York Times:

"This officially recognizes what the market has already
stated.  Traditional broadcasting assets are worth less
than they were a few years ago."

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/02/23/business/cbs.php

— Download mania: The Many-Headed Hydra – Part Two

The same week that CBS announced its write-down, Apple
announced that its iTunes Music Store had sold its one billionth
download.

http://www.apple.com/itunes/1billion/

How much is media-on-demand (MOD) carving into
media-when-we-say-you-can-have-it  (MWWSYCHI)?

There might be a study out there.

Has anyone seen one?

If not, the reason there isn’t may be that it’s not in the interests
of old world media companies to sponsor one.  They only
publish studies to convince advertisers to spend more and
more often.  The data on that front can’t be good.

Companies like Apple don’t really need to know
the impact they’re having on old media. In fact,
crowing about it too loudly could throw cold water
on alliances they’re trying to foster with the old
guard.

So it’s possible, theoretically at least, that media-on-demand
is causing old school TV and radio to hemorrhage customers
as badly as TV did to the movie theater operators.

We just haven’t heard the news – yet. 

— Social media: The Many-Headed Hydra – Part Three

Something big is definitely up at Yahoo.

One of the hottest hit makers from the broadcast world,
Lloyd Braun, now head of Yahoo Media, is staring to sound
like an Internet guy.

Braun is the former chairman of ABC entertainment and helped
bring mega-blockbusters like "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives"
onto the small screen.

Rare among people who’ve been wildly successful in one
field, Braun "gets" that video on the Internet is a radically different
game than the way he played it – and won – when he was at
ABC.

Understandably, when Braun first came to Yahoo Media, he was
prepared to apply the model he knew best – hit TV program
development – to the Internet.

Here’s what he’s saying now (as quoted in the New York Times
3/2/06):

"I didn’t fully appreciate what success in this medium is really
going to look like. This is not about creating one-off hits like
my old business. That is not the way to create a sustainable
competitive advantage."

"Embracing things like blogs and sharing of content
between individuals… is at least as important as…
coming up with the next mega-online event."

"I now get excited about user-generated content the way
I used to get excited about thinking about what television
shows would work."

"Original content is the salt and pepper on the meal. It’s
certainly not the engine driving this."

"The Internet is such a niche content environment
that the broadcast model does not really work."

—  "The broadcast model does not really work…"

Less than twenty years ago, broadcast was the
only game in town.

Sixty years ago, movie theaters were the only
game in town.

Television did not kill the movie industry. It just
diluted its power.

The Internet is not likely to eradicate television –
cable or broadcast – either, but just like TV did to the
movie theater business, it’s going to chomp away
at its influence, probably significantly. 

Here’s the path we’ve been on as screen watching
creatures:

From a limited number of moving picture options outside
the home available according to a set schedule
(movie theaters)…

To a limited number of moving pictures inside the home
according to a set schedule (television)…

To a virtually limitless selection of choices, when, where
and how we want it (Internet video)…

The genie is out of the bottle.

Every format has enthusiastic fans who claim their way is THE way to encode video for the Internet.

If only it were that simple.

Flash and Apple have made impressive strides, but according to Jan Ozer, the author of a recent detailed study comparing online video formats, "rumors of the demise of other codecs have been greatly exaggerated.

A press release on the report

What do you use and why?

Google’s cranking it up a notch.

They’re offering commercials for  sale.

As always, there’s a lot to learn from Google watching.

Hard to believe? Check it out.

1. Go to Google Video. 

2. Type in the word "commercials" in the search bar.

3. Select the "For Sale" option. (It’s in the gray bar at the top of the page.)

Two companies – SOFA entertainment and Historical Film Archive – have
packaged "classic" television advertisements for sale via Google.

If you haven’t checked out the "For Sale" listings at Google Video yet, make it a point to do so.  They’ve got a very simple formula… show the first 29 seconds and then display this formulaic statement:

"Buy this video to view the full x min y sec"

A "BUY" button with the price appears, along with some other interesting links, off to the right.

The world’s greatest ad copy?

Not at all. 

But Google has demonstrated they’re good at finding very effective ways to do things simply and automatically.

They understand the principle of traffic + tracking = profits, they’ve got all the traffic in the world, and they track like mad.  My recommendation is to watch how Google merchandises online video closely.  They don’t make decisions about how to present things casually.

Google video

Most of the discussion around TiVo and advertising is about how consumers are using the service to evade commercials. True enough.

But that’s only half the story…

TiVo also allows users to order commercials.

That’s right. Order commercials. Now, what kind of nut would ask for commercials?

Someone who is very into the product being advertised.

If you happen to be a BMW fanatic, you can order now order up videos made by BMW about… BMW.  Sure sounds like commercials to me, but this is not TV advertising as we know it.

To viewers who are not in love with BMW cars, these are some of the most boring, wooden videos ever made. But that doesn’t matter to the target audience who are reportedly consuming them like popcorn.

BMW is doing two things right: 1) they’ve made their video available, bad as it is and 2) they’ve gone to great pains to make it easy and comprehensible for their prospects and customers to consume it.

It is content? Is it advertising?

Now that advertisers can deliver video messages directly to consumers and fine tune their messages exactly to their indended audience, the game is changing – radically.

The winners? Advertisers and consumers.

What do you think?

http://vodcast.bmw.com

To answer this question, we need to go back about one hundred years.

One of the biggest challenges when it comes to taking advantage of a new medium is to shake off the dust from the old one…

For example, when the first movies were made, directors simply set up
their camera and filmed theater performances
with a single, unchanging wide-angle shot.

It took a while for film makers to discover that cameras could move,
that close-ups created emotional intensity, and that frequent changes
of perspective (editing) made movies a lot more interesting to look at.

I think one of the biggest challenges facing folks who have an inclination to work with Internet video is the legacy of television broadcasting…

In the Beginning, there were Three Networks… ABC, CBS, and NBC.

There were no cable channels, no VHS tapes, no DVDs, and certainly no Internet video.

The old days were all about broadcasting, the only game in town.

Every program had to have the potential to appeal to millions so we had
soap operas, news, sporting events, children’s shows, and weekly
serials (often featuring cops and cowboys) – and not much else.

Often marketers ask me: "What on earth would I put on an Internet video?"

My answer is that today with Internet video, if the subject merits
writing an article about it, then it may well merit its own video – or
even its own Internet TV channel.

I’m not saying that everyone needs to drop whatever they’re doing and
start developing video content to complement their text publishing, but
if you have the time, the budget, and the inclination, it’s practically
impossible to go "too narrow."

In fact, the mistake many people are making with Internet video is trying to go too wide.

Your audience doesn’t need an Internet version of what they can already see on their television sets.

They want to see the things they can’t see on TV and that means highly
specialized, niche content that addresses topics too specialized to get
mass market air time.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. In fact, it inspired me to write this post.

Imagine an entire Internet television ‘channel’ for people who roll their own
cigarettes (and I’m talking about tobacco, by the way, not the funny
green stuff.) It exists.

When I first stumbled across it, my reaction was: "Whoa! Way too specialized."  Then I thought a minute and realized I was wrong. Not too specialized at all – for the audience who cares about the subject.

These programs would bore the average person to tears, but if you
happen to roll your own, this program that analyzes the pros and cons of
various brands of filtered cigarette tubes will keep you mesmerized for
its duration.

Check out this clip from Roll Your Own Magazine

Click on the white box on the upper right side of the page called "Tube Analysis."

Unfortunately it can only be played on a Microsoft Media Player. If you can’t view it, you should know it’s very simply and very well produced piece and I’m sure it’s a "hit" for its intended audience. 

How narrow is too narrow?

When it comes to Internet video, you can hardly push the envelope too far.

Two answers:

1. If the content is compelling enough for a viewer and he or she is properly "prepped" for the experience and there is no other source for the same information, there’s practically no time limit.

2. On the other hand, without these conditions, after three minutes Internet video viewership falls off a cliff. 

I’ve gotten four rock solid confirmations of this number, two from folks who track Internet video viewership closely and two from ‘alternate’ sources, one of whom says the real number may be closer to two minutes.

First, the two ‘normal’ sources previously feautured
in the Letter:

1. Inmanstories.com, producers of turnhere.com

2. Rocketboom.com

It’s possible to track video and see exactly where viewers bail out and both these Internet video publishers do.

You’ll rarely see either of them exceeed the three minute limit and John McWeeny of "Stories" (Inman Stories) told me 3 minutes is the maximum for one of their programs.

My unexpected sources?

The British TV program "Coronation Street" which I believe is the world’s longest running TV serial. 

I recently watched an episode with a stopwatch in hand. Not one scene was longer than three minutes. Not one. Few were longer than 2.5 minutes.

My second source: Antonio White, a true blue multimedia pioneer whose work preceeds the web – and even CD-ROMs.

In the mid 1990s long before video on the Internet was possible, Antonio created a hybrid system that involved distributing video CDs (and even floppy disks, that’s how far his work goes back) that pointed people to his clients’ web sites.

What did he discover?

If the video intro was longer than two minutes, the number of  people who clicked through to the web site declined precipitously

Why three minutes – or two minutes according to Antonio?  I’m sure the answer will be nailed down some day by neuroscientists, but in the meantime…

Rule of thumb: If you want the maximum number of people
to watch your video all the way through to the end, three minutes is the absolute limit for how long your programshould be. 

Now for the monkey wrench…

If you’re selling something, you don’t necessarily care
about getting the maximum number of viewers to watch all the way through to the end.

What you want is the maximum number of viewers who DO something which is always less than 100% no matter how good your video (or sales letter) is.

By tailoring your sales video to three minutes or less, you may be maximizing the percentage of people who hang in to the end, but failing to convey all the info needed to trigger the actions you want.

One solution:

If you need more than two or three minutes to tell your story, create it in at least two parts.

Part One for the people in a hurry and Part Two for viewers who have the time and motivation to dig in.

More on this soon. It’s a big topic.

Enjoy!

Ken

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1. One of the big reasons Internet video is exploding right now is that it’s finally become DEAD SIMPLE to encode and upload video to the web.

2. This site demonstrates exactly HOW easy in exactly three minutes flat. You’ve got to love a training video that cuts to the chase that fast.

3. Thinking "viral" when you create Internet video can pay big dividends. (These folks are getting tons of free advertising from all kinds of people including me.)

Warning: It you dislike frivolity, you will dislike this site. On the other hand, I’m sure many people
will enjoy it – a lot.

http://www.frenchmaidtv.com

Lest you think I am in the business of promoting mindless sexist stereotypes, here’s an interview with a whip smart young lady (she happens to be a fashion model) who develops cutting edge wireless applications in her spare time:

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/nerdtv/guests

Episode #9 of Nerd TV: "Anina"

Enjoy!

Ken

P.S. Next issue: How long? The "magic" number for Internet video length

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Yes, vlogers.

First, there was the blog.  Blog = web log. 

Then came the podcast.  A podcast is audio or video content you can download from the Internet and play on your PC or a personal media device like, but not limited to, an iPod.

Now, the strangest word yet: vlog. Vlog = Video blog. Vlogs are blogs that feature video posts. Sometimes daily video posts.

And a vloger is one who produces vlogs.

Everyday media life is starting to sound like a Star Trek episode, isn’t it? 

So what about these vlogers?

Their most important feature right now is that they’re multiplying like jack rabbits.

A year or so ago, there were just a few dozen vlogs.  As of this writing, a web site called mefeedia.com has a database of 4,720. I’m sure the worldwide number has blown past 10,000. 

Just a fleck of dust on the knee of a gnat in the grand scheme of things – except for the growth curve.

Content?

From the truly bad to the genuinely compelling.

I’m hooked on one particular vlog right now along with 100,000+ other daily viewers. 

It’s called RocketBoom and it’s shot in the living room of an apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan for daily out-of-pocket cost of $25 (not including upaid salaries.) Andrew Baron, 35, is behind the camera.  Amanda Congdon, 24, is in front.

The subject of the three minute show is new media and technology with liberal doses of comedy and political commentary thrown in for good measure.

Speaking of politics, if you’re a fan of George Bush & Co, you might find the program occasionally disquieting. If you’re not, you’re going to be delighted.

By the way, there are many ‘famous’ cable programs that are happy to get 100,000 viewers.  None of them are staffed by two people with daily expenses of $25.

The opportunity is obvious. 

10,000 vlogs (mostly dreck) and a few hundred million Internet users with broadband.

Do the math.

There’s going to be a wondrous sweet spot in time when the hundreds of millions discover the vlogers and the folks with half-way decent vlogs will become ‘overnight’ stars.

You could be there. 

Prediction: Amanda Congdon will be on Saturday Night Live by 2008, if not a whole lot sooner.

http://www.RocketBoom.com

UPDATE: It appears Andrew Baron gave partner and co-founder Amanda
Congdon the boot. I’m still rooting for Amanda.  The new host is
fine, but my interest in watching the show has declined precipitously
given the circumstances of Amanda’s leaving.

Enjoy!

Ken

P.S. Next issue: Why there will be (at least) one hundred thousand vlogs by this time next year.

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