Eating Crow on Internet Video
Late last year I posted an artilce to Radio Free Enterprise about what I perceived as the hype surrounding video on the Internet.
I noted how I had been creating video for over 20 years and had been posting it online for so long that the MOST RECENT of my video postings was over 3 years old.
The premise of my post was “What’s the big deal? This is not news!”
I was wrong.
What makes the “new” world of online video different is the variety of free distribution channels available and the possibility that hundreds, thousands or even millions of people can and will view your creation on YouTube, Google Video or any of the scores of other online video aggregation sites.
These sites will convert your video to a common format (usually Flash), post it on their site, let you use their servers and their Internet bandwidth, make it available via search engines, and even offer code allowing complete strangers to post your video on their sites - still using the server power and bandwidth of the video aggregator.
The power of this model to transform both entertainment and marketing is profound. YouTube is only 18 months old but already claims to display over 100 million videos per month. That’s a lot of eyeballs.
But that’s not all: Google and other online advertising media are testing and rolling out video ads which can be placed by small business advertisers in place of text ads on search result pages. While it will take time to find what works best in this new medium, the potential exists for companies of any size to present “television commercials” directly to people who have the most interest in learning about their offering.
I hearby eat crow and promise to keep a close eye on developments in this area - reporting back as I see great ways that business owners are putting the new medium to use.
Stay tuned!
