Looking at Video on the Web with Ken McCarthy

I’m going to keep saying this until it become "common sense":

Video is the new paper.

Some quick history…before the second half of the 19th century, paper was fairly expensive and it not rare, it was not ubiquitous.  There were no mass market books; newspapers existed, but sparingly; and there were no catalogs.

Industrial sophistication made paper cheap and launched the print explosion. Yes, Gutenburg invented the printing press way back in the late Renaissance, but in those days printing presses were like mainframes or television studios. They existed, but they were high capital items.

Moving pictures have been around for a little over 100 years. Video for about half that. Most of the population has been conditioned to think of moving pictures in terms of movie theaters and television screens. This conditioning has been so strong that most people over the age of say 25, don’t get that we are in a Brave New World as far as moving pictures are concerned.

Video is going to be EVERYWHERE.  (It already is for those who use the Internet with awareness.)

Here’s what this means:

Just as print communication became a necessity for businesses once paper became inexpensive, so will video.

Video won’t be a relatively rare experience that only shows up on certain screens according to a railroad- like timetable (how 19th century!) and produced only by specialists in NY and California. 24/7 on demand video will become part and parcel of every day commercial life: to sell products, to provide customer service, to train…you name it.

A little more history:

The web started with engineers and scientists, then migrated to digital artist/activist types, then spread to bleeding edge entrepreneurs and consumers with lots of random time on their hands, then colonized "the enterprise" (aka Big Business staffs), and then became ubiquitous.

That’s the very path that Internet video is on.

The bleeding edge entrepreneurs (and intrapreneurs) are all over it and Internet video is slowly being seen as a useful internal communications tool for The Enterprise. The next stop: true mass market ubiquity, or as I’ve been putting it for the last three years: Video is the new paper.

Here’s a sign of how seriously The Enterprise is talking the idea of Internet video as an everyday corporate communications tool: YouTube for the Enterprise

Amazon has long used its customers comments to help sell books. Customer reviews and recommended book lists have led the way. (I wonder if that makes them a pioneering web 2.0 company?)

Now Amazon has joined the video age.

Go to Amazon, pick any book and select the "review" option and you’ll be given two options: 1) the standard text option and 2) the new video option.

Just like with YouTube, you get an easy-to-use interface to upload your video to Amazon.

Interestingly, Amazon recommends the PureDigital line of video cameras we first reported on a year and a half ago.  I remain amazed that Google/YouTube hasn’t made a similar deal with PureDigital (or bought the company.)

PureDigital seems to be thriving in spite of their low profile. New cameras with new features. Where’s Apple? Micro video cameras is a cool niche that fits their mission to a ‘t.’

When I started this blog two years ago (after patiently waiting eleven years for Internet video to catch on), one of the first companies I featured was a modest little start-up called TurnHere.com

I really liked TurnHere.com’s model which was to take video into neighborhoods and small businesses and give those otherwise unheard voices a chance to "be on TV."  Video  is, for better or worse, the ultimate marketing medium, but until the cost of producing – and distributing – video messages was prohibitive, for all by the most deep pockets organizations.

No more and I’m happy to say that TurnHere has turned out to be one of the true movers and shakers in this movement. When I first profiled them, they had a network of less than 50 videographers. Now they have thousands.

This video features a somewhat rare interview with Brad Inman the mastermind behind TurnHere.com. Before taking a leadership role in the Internet video world, Brad was – and still is – deeply involved at the intersection of the Internet and real estate. He’s the preeminent publisher in the field and his traveling conferences on the subject are top notch.

Listen to what he has to say about the opportunities in Internet video. The door is wide open, especially for people who are smart about finding niche markets to serve.

VideoPiggy is an Application for Windows XP and Vista that will let you download videos straight from YouTube, Google Video, and Metacafe. This program even has built in Video Conversion to watch videos on your PC, iPod, PSP, or Cell Phone!

Internet video has created some interesting new business opportunities.

Viacom pays $100,000 per month to have its copyrighted videos scrubbed from YouTube. "Video analysts," the employees who spend their days searching YouTube and other online video services for copyright infringements, get paid $11 per hour. 

You’re going to hear a lot on this topic in the months and years to come.

In a way, it’s an old concern. The web’s inventor was reportedly furious with Marc Andreessen for creating the image tag because he was afraid that the increased bandwidth demand of transferring tiff and jpeg files would crash the Internet.

It  didn’t happen. Then again, video files are exponentially bigger than graphics files and video watching on the Internet is evolving into a very popular activity with a hockey stick like growth curve.

Here’s a video produced by an industry group that has a stake in the outcome. Great example of using video to make complex ideas more easily comprehensible.

In advertising, we call them "testimonials," but in truth customers couldn’t care less about them.

What they really want are real life case studies if they’re business buyers, or product reviews from other customers, if they’re consumers.

When we, the advertisers, say something, or even relate a customer comment second hand in the form of a "testimonial," our much-abused and rightfully skeptical prospects take it with a grain of salt.

On the other hand, when a real person says it, credibility skyrockets.

Since I started my latest round of writing about Internet video in 2005, I’ve often repeated my hunch that one of the slam dunk uses of video was going to be to capture customer reviews. In fact, as far back as 2000, I was making sure that every time I did a live event I grabbed video from customers. This video has been, far and away, my most effective selling tool.

Now the studies are coming in and guess what? About 80% of consumers put more faith in advertisers who present customer reviews than those that don’t.  Over thee out of four customers say it is extremely or very important to read customer reviews before making a purchase.

And not just any old reviews. They want customer reviews and prefer them 6 to 1 over "expert" reviews. 44% of online shoppers say that consumer ratings and reviews are the most useful e-commerce  feature.  No other eCommerce shopping feature came even close.

Another study came up with different but similar numbers.

First, 85% of consumers research big ticket purchases like travel, electronics and cars on the Internet before they make their purchase. And what do 63% of them most want to see on a web site? You guessed it: customer reviews.

In the consumer electronics category, Amazon and Circuit City  are the most trusted vendors, Amazon because it’s familiar and Circuit City because it’s the easiest to use. Less trusted, at least in terms of online buying, are Wal-Mart and BestBuy. Guess who doesn’t provide customer reviews…

But that’s just changed. Last week, Wal-Mart started offering customer reviews on its web site. Wal-Mart’s own self-reported numbers state that 85% of their customers are Internet users. Sounds a little high to me, but then again, Wal-Mart’s got a pretty good record of tracking customer behavior (an understatement actually.)

General Motors is also getting into the act with big media buys at Yahoo Answers. Yahoo Answers, in case you didn’t now, is one of the granddaddies of user generated content sites. Members ask questions and other members answer them. Yahoo claims 90 million users and 250 million answers posted worldwide. Notice the theme: people talking to people without the mediation of pesky "experts."

In the online video arena, one company is making business of video customer reviews: ExpoTV.com. These guys are harnessing the two biggest forces on the Internet today: consumer-generated content and video.  Currently, the site has over 50,000 product reviews, all provided by consumers who shoot, edit and upload their own videos.  ExpoTV then turns around and syndicates this content to sites like Smarter.com, Buy.com, AOL and Yahoo.

ExpoTV pays its visitors $5 for every video they submit that’s accepted. Interestingly, the company says that  only 5 to 10%   of videos submitted by its users have to be rejected on purely technical grounds like bad sound or lighting. Clearly, huge portions of the world are now not only comfortable watching video on the Internet, they’re also comfortable and capable of shooting and uploading their own videos. (Thank YouTube for kicking that revolution into high gear.)

So what’s the take away from all of this?

1. Are you making it possible for your customers to post reviews of your products and services so other prospects can see them?  If not, you may be missing out on a huge credibility builder.

2. Don’t think that text-only "testimonials" are enough. Consumers are getting used to the idea of seeing video customer reviews.  The first player in your niche to take advantage of this lesson will quickly leave the rest of the competition behind. 

Remember the numbers from the surveys:

1) Prospects value the opinions of customers over "experts" 6 to 1, 
2) Well over half of all Internet users believe that customer reviews and ratings are extremely or very important, and
3) The single most popular feature on eCommerce sites, by a very wide margin, is the availability of customer reviews.

Bottom line: Customers want to get their product information from each other. Not from advertisers. Makes sense, doesn’t it?

Ken McCarthy

P.S. For a free highlights version of this blog go to:

http://www.InternetVideoMarketingLetter.com

Internet video continues to demonstrated its effectiveness and superiority over text.

As proof of this, you can hardly find a single big numbers Internet marketer who has not made a serious investment in mastering the medium.

What about you?

I know from first hand experience how expensive and time consuming it can be to sort this stuff out.

That’s why I’m always on the lookout for good *educators* in this field.

Here’s one I recommend very highly:

Jay Douglas.

He may have put together the best, most comprehensive, lowest cost way to get up to speed and fluent in
Internet video fast:

http://www.thesystemseminar.com/jaydouglas/

Enjoy!

Ken McCarthy

P.S. I’m of the opinion that the tools for Internet video production have become so cheap and easy to use that everyone should at least look at the potential of  making their own sales videos.

You wouldn’t hire a typist to write your e-mails and sales letters for you, would you? That would get awfully burdensome.

It might makes sense to run up the learning curve on video, just the way you did on typing.

Here’s a great resource to do just that:

http://www.thesystemseminar.com/jaydouglas/

I recently asked Google this question not too long ago and found nothing but misleading information in the top ten results. There are very few resources out there that spill the beans concerning which video format you should use for the web. If you turn to the video sharing sites for information, you may find nothing but a half-assed manual that reads like stereo instructions. What’s even worse, is that even if you do know which video format is good for YouTube or Google Video, getting the video to that point and making it look good is another struggle.

What do I mean by video format? What I am really saying comes in two parts: the "video container" and the "video codec". Perhaps you’ve seen some of these containers online: Windows Media Video (WMV), Quicktime Video (MOV), or Flash Video (FLV) to name a few. Maybe you’ve heard of some of these codecs: MPEG, DV, Sorenson, H.264. These are just the names, but what do they mean?

Think of the "video codec" as if it were the brand of film you would put into a 35mm camera (the container). The camera needs the film to take pictures and the film needs the parts of the camera to expose properly. Professional photographers often use different types of film for different situations. Black and white for weddings, slow speeds film for astronomical imaging, fast speed film for sports events. Codecs like DV are suitable for videotaping, editing, and uncompressed Master Tapes. Codecs such as H.264, MPEG4, and FLV are made for streaming on the web. But all of these codecs can be found in a container like Quicktime or Windows Media.

So which codec and container is the best for my website? This really depends on a few key factors: your website’s content, audience, and server capabilities. It is best to consult a professional when attempting to provide video content on your own server. But if you use video sharing sites to host your content and then just embed the videos on your site, this question then becomes "Which video codec is best for the video sharing site I am uploading it to?". 

When providing video on your own server, the best answer I can give you is to provide multiple containers and formats at varying data rates. The worst number in video streaming is 1. If someone cannot view your video and they get a message saying "please download plug-in here", say goodbye to a potential viewer.

Make the same video available in 300kpbs FLV, 150kpbs WMV, and 300 kbps MOV. This setup will ensure that anyone using any Operating System will be able to view your video content.

I will be providing step by step tutorials over screen captures in the future about the specifics of outputting video in various applications in Windows and Mac OS X. If you want to know how to output video for the video using a specific program, just shoot an email to me at videopro@iuseapple.com. I cannot promise a return email, but I will try my best to reply in the form of a blog post.

YouTube’s founders, Steve Chen and Chad Hurley, were in Paris last week where they announced they’d be creating "localized" YouTube in seven languages: French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Polish and Dutch.

This comes a month after SytemSeminarTV started posting video content in French, German, Russian, Lithuanian, and Ukranian.

Why foreign language content?

Simple. That’s where the growth is.
More Int

Many people around the world speak English, but if want to hit them where their heart is, speak to them in their own language. Or at the very least introduce yourself in their language and then continue the conversation in English.

Here’s a sample in German

More International videos here