TV is dead, long live the commercial, part two

Most everyone has been talking about the death of the commercial for years now, but with the boost of online video (which was bound to happen as everyone got broadband) things are not only looking up, new video channels seem to appear daily. See the video blimp and the video posters in the tube.

Mark Tutssel, worldwide chief creative officer at Leo Burnett is even touting youtube as a media channel, which I'm sure will cheer up the guys at youtube whom I hear burn through $12 million a month with no business model or income in sight.

Apart from similar services, such as google video and hundreds of lookalikes, youtube might find that users choose to upload their content where they get a slice of the ad-income-pie. An article in TV week "Gold rush in viral video" announces that Revver plans to come out of beta already in July. Revver shares the ad revenue with the video content creators, much like google adwords let a chunk of the income spill on to the sites that use it. One of the most famous videos released on Revver is the Coke and Mentos fountain insanity.

Revver's software lets video creators track their videos across the Internet, whether on MySpace, blogs, social networking sites, via e-mail or on Revver, said Steven Starr, Revver's founder and CEO. "Revver's [software] allows for dynamic ad insertion, so where the video is being viewed we are serving up an ad after the video is seen," he said.

Perhaps next time you film your cat crashing into a wall, your baby sister miming to Barbie Girl or your dumb neighbour nearly castrating himself doing a stupid bike stunt, you'll opt to upload said video to a place where you could not only track its popularity, but also make a buck or two on it. Youtube needs to watch its back. Video creators might also decide to hold on a little tighter to the content they create now that they can make money on their own funny films....

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AnonymousCoward's picture

Youtube burns approx $1 million a month on bandwidth. $12 mil is about how much venture capital they have to keep going.

caffeinegoddess's picture

Giving creators a cut is a cool idea, but what about all the people who put up work on these sites that they do not own (ie. are not the creators of)? Seems to me this is an issue that should be ironed out before running ahead. *shrug*

Dabitch's picture

$1 million on bandwidth alone? Holy cow. Thats a big byte. (lame pun intended).

Dabitch's picture

This'll be tricky - just look at places like Flickr for example. While the majority of Flickr users upload their own digital photography and have fun, quite a few upload images they themselves did not take - and it is clear that they didn't. News images from the AP wire for example. And how do you report this? Well, you can't unless you are the photographer at AP (or an AP rep I s'pose) who can prove that you are the copyright holder of the image. Which I guess makes sense - but aren't the photographers busy taking pictures rather than running around flickr finding theis pictures...? (oh wait, I sense a whole army of recruits having searching for infringements on sharing sites like these as their future job...eep!)

It's the same over at youtube there are a few hoops to jump through if you found something that violates someones copyright - and you pretty much have to be the copyright holder or " a rep" for them to file a complaint. This means only the dudes with lawyers in their employ have time to do this, like NBC who had youtube take down a bunch of SNL skits. Youtube have now capped the length of films that you may upload to try and prevent more copyright infringement, and you might not find entire feature Bollywood films on Gooogle video anymore (but you did before), but that's really like fixing a leaking ship with some cotton if you ask me.

(ps - a good post on that over here at Giga om "Google and Youtube, the dark side of copyright infringement)

Now, in the case of the crazy Eepybird.com boys with their Coke and Mentos experiment, they state on their site:

Please do not post our videos on sites like YouTube and Google. If you'd like to link to or embed our video on your site, click here.

- presumably so that they could make a little dosh and spend it on creating more funny films (Diet Coke and Mentos cost cash yaknow). Well, both youtube and Google video are full of that film, and as a visitor there is no way that I can report those films.

Dabitch's picture

Here's on of the Youtube postings of Eepybirds film.
Here's are some google video postings of Eepybirds mentos experiments.

You and I both know that Eepybird doesn't want their films posted on Google and Youtube, as we can read - but how do we let Youtube and Google know that the copyright holder doesn't want their work posted there? We can't.

And that sucks. There should be some 'check this if this infringes copyright' button, or something like that. The proving that work belongs to someone shouldn't be placed on the actual copyright holder but on the poster who uploads it. To make matters even more confusing, some websites use youtube and/or google video as some sort of video host for their films, so you might stumble onto films with URL's embedded in them often. So, a URL in the film doesn't automatically mean it was uploaded by someone else, but often it is. Kinda funny, user adformatie (yeah, like the Dutch tradepress) uploaded the Cannes Creative Directors head film to youtube.

caffeinegoddess's picture

Looks like they're on their way for more revenue: NBC teams up with YouTube(NYTimes reg req)

NBC is teaming with YouTube, a popular video Web site, to promote its new shows after finishing the just-ended season in last place among the four major TV networks.

The network will create an official NBC Channel on YouTube to show clips from shows like "The Office" that are in its lineup for the season starting in September, NBC said in a statement yesterday. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Dabitch's picture

Its funny, there were rumors about a NBC/Youtube teamup already when the SNL skits were on there and their lawyers freaked. Whats that old saying, keep your 'enemies' closer? Great tactic NBC!