Normally, announcements made on a Friday afternoon are bad news. But yesterday at 4:21 p.m., comScore Video Metrix announced that more than 168 million U.S. Internet users watched nearly 26 billion videos online during September 2009 — an average of 154 videos per viewer. That’s good news, isn’t it?
To put this in perspective, Super Bowl XLIII achieved the largest television audience in U.S. history with a total audience of 151.6 million viewers, according to official national ratings data released by Nielsen Media Research.
In other words, more Americans are watching online video each and every month than watch the Super Bowl once a year. Get it? Got it? Good.
YouTube accounted for close to 40 percent of the 26 billiion videos viewed during September, to remain the market leader by a wide margin.
According to comScore,
– 84.8 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video in September.
– The average online video viewer watched 9.8 hours of video that month.
– The duration of the average online video was 3.8 minutes.
– 125.5 million viewers watched nearly 10.3 billion videos on YouTube.com — which is 82.4 videos per viewer.
– 45.6 million viewers watched 424 million videos on MySpace.com — which is 9.3 videos per viewer.
Now, let’s compare these numbers to ones that search marketers should know by heart.
According to comScore qSearch, Americans conducted 13.8 billion core searches in September 2009. They watched nearly 26 billion videos online that month. This means Americans are watching almost twice as many videos as they conducting searches at the five major search engines.
So, is your video marketing budget twice as large as your search marketing budget? Hmmm. Maybe that’s why the news was buried on a Friday afternoon.
Let’s drill down a little deeper.
There were almost 9 billion core searches conducted on Google in September. There were 10.3 billion videos viewed on YouTube that month. That’s right, Americans are watching more videos on YouTube than then are conducting searches on Google.
But wait! There’s more!
According to comScore qSearch, there were 21.3 billion expanded search queries conducted in September. This counts searches for mapping, local directory, and user-generated video sites as well as searches at the major search engines.
Who were the leaders in expanded search?
Google was #1 with 9.4 billion expanded search queries.
YouTube was #2 with 3.5 billion.
Yahoo! as #3 with 2.7 billion.
Bing was #4 with 1.2 billion.
So, even if you put blinders on and say you are only interested in “search” and not interested in “marketing,” then YouTube belongs on your A-list. It is the #2 search engine.
If you want to see what other marketers are doing on YouTube, check out Coldwell Banker’s channel. And for the backstory, check out my interview with Michael Fisher, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Coldwell Banker, at SES San Jose 2009.
And there are advertising opportunities on YouTube, as well. For example, check out my interview with Matthew Liu, YouTube Product Manager, at SES New York 2009. He talks about Sponsored Videos, which has since been renamed Promoted Videos.
Now, many search marketers measure the success of their campaigns in terms of conversions. In these cases, it’s not just about views or clicks; it’s about what the user did next: Buy something, fill out a form on your website, or take some other action.
These marketers want to be able to incorporate these kinds of conversions into their campaigns so they can “close the loop” and drive traffic to off-YouTube web pages. Back in June, YouTube launched this feature as an option for all Promoted Videos, allowing anyone who runs a campaign to specify a “Call-to-Action” for users, helping them generate engaged, well-targeted traffic for their websites.
Adding a Call-to-Action overlay to your video is easy. First, run a campaign to promote your video on YouTube. Then, go to the Video Details page under My Videos and fill out the fields in the section marked “Call-to-Action overlay.” All you have to do is include a short headline, ad text, a destination url, and upload an optional image, and the overlay will appear whenever someone watches your video. Clicks on the overlay will be tracked in YouTube Insight.
Get it? Got it? Good.
ICANN announced it will start allowing domains to be registered using non-Latin characters (English etc.) starting Nov. 16. The news was released during a meeting in Seoul on Friday, Reuters reported.
The news is important as it will see the registration of thousands if not millions of language specific domains. Previously, all domains were basically in English - not quite appropriate for a world wide web.
As the Independent noted:
“Considering it is known as the “World Wide web”, the internet’s reliance on the English language has long been maligned as a hangover from the web’s beginnings as a communications tool for the US military.”
“100,000 new characters are expected to be added, in a multitude of languages including Mandarin, Russian and Hebrew,” according to the Independent.
No doubt there will be a stampede to register domains like the Oklahoma Land Rush of the the appropriatedly named “Unassigned Lands.”
This move also shows a loosening of US control over ICANN and “most striking about the development is the symbolic shifting of power underpinning the web, which comes at a time that America’s economic power around the world is diminishing. With Chinese web users now outnumbering their American counterparts, commentators will see this change as another step in the gradual de-Americanisation of the internet.”
Last month, after watching HostingYourParty, which told people how to host a Microsoft Windows 7 House, I asked: If you create something so bad that it goes viral, is it a public relations disaster?
Today, after watching “Warren Buffett is Bullish on America’s Future, but Says That a Full Economic Recovery Will Take a While,” I’ll ask a different question: If you create something so good, is it a video marketing triumph even if it doesn’t go viral?
In the video, Cathy Baron Tamraz, President and Chief Executive Officer of Business Wire, a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, interviews Warren Buffett, Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
Okay, so not every company has the “Oracle of Omaha” as its chairman. But every company has a chairman, CEO or president who their customers, stockholders and the media want to hear from.
Yes, yes, you can always insert a quote from Le Grand Fromage in your next press release. But, imagine inserting a video interview as well.
You’ll find the Business Wire press release was posted yesterday. It is entitled, “Warren Buffett is Bullish on America’s Future, but Says That a Full Economic Recovery Will Take a While.”
And attached to the press release is the video below.
So, even if 590,000 people don’t view it in the next three days, I still found it compelling.
Oh, speaking of 590,000 views, that is what a demonstration of Google Maps Navigation (Beta) has received in the past three days. You can see it below.
Google Maps Navigation (Beta)
Okay, okay, so most companies don’t have brand names that are verbs as well as nouns. But every company has products that its customers, shareholders and other stakeholders want to hear about.
So, do these videos have anything else in common? They aren’t funny, which also makes me think: Why isn’t your company using video marketing?
Okay, so Google Flu Trends has been around since November of 2008. But Google has found that certain search terms are good indicators of flu activity.
Check out the world map below to see how Google Flu Trends uses aggregated Google search data to estimate flu activity. It is intense in Canada and Norway. It is high in Belgium, Bulgaria, Hungary, Sweden, Russia, Ukraine, and the United States.
Each week, millions of users around the world search for health information online. As you might expect, there are more flu-related searches during flu season, more allergy-related searches during allergy season, and more sunburn-related searches during the summer.
You can explore all of these phenomena using Google Insights for Search. But can search query trends provide the basis for an accurate, reliable model of real-world phenomena?
Google has found a close relationship between how many people search for flu-related topics and how many people actually have flu symptoms. Of course, not every person who searches for “flu” is actually sick, but a pattern emerges when all the flu-related search queries are added together.
Google compared its query counts with traditional flu surveillance systems and found that many search queries tend to be popular exactly when flu season is happening. By counting how often Google sees these search queries, it can estimate how much flu is circulating in different countries and regions around the world. Their results have been published in the journal Nature.
So, according to the world map, now would be a great time to visit Australia, where flu activity is minimal. Throw another shrimp on the barbie.
Anchor Intelligence has released its click fraud report for the third quarter of 2009. It paints a different picture than the Click Forensics report that was recently released. Where Click Forensics saw an increase, Anchor Intelligence saw a decline.
Overall, click fraud was 23.2% in Q3, down 14.3% from 27.1% in the second quarter. Anchor Intelligence breaks its click fraud rates into two categories: attempted click fraud, the kind with evil intentions, and innocuous click fraud, like an accidental click. Attempted click fraud was 18.6% in Q3 down from 22.9% in Q2. Innocuous rates increased from 4.2% in Q2 to 4.6% in Q3.
Anchor Intelligence’s data reports attempted click fraud, not billed click fraud. Their ClearMark for Traffic system integrates with ad networks and search engines and identifies fraudulent clicks before the advertiser is affected.
Egypt and Indonesia have emerged as leaders in click fraud rates - percentage-wise. Volume is still highest in the United States:
Anchor Intelligence says it did observe more sophisticated click fraud schemes in the third quarter, such as browser hijacking. They also saw an increase in the threats of malicious advertisements in paid search and ads on publisher websites.