Life is Short for Online Videos

Given the vast supply of content and the power of search and social filters, you might expect that videos on YouTube, FunnyOrDie, MySpaceTV and the like would maintain a certain degree of evergreen viewership.  In reality, according to a study by TubeMogul which analyzed nearly 11,000 videos over a 90-day period, most videos live a fleeting existence on the web:

On average, videos are time-sensitive. Trends pointed out elsewhere, such as “evergreen” (non-time sensitive) content always fetching views or videos randomly “going viral,” seem more of a rarity than an underlying trend in the data. Significantly, 50% of all views occur in the first two weeks, peaking at day three.

The study’s findings power a new viewership calculator for would-be internet video auteurs, which claims to project cumulative viewership in a one year period… though the algorithm seems to skew the results too strongly, and contrary to their thesis.

Update: At the request of Mashable, TubeMogul authored a guest post analyzing the data by video category.  Viewed this way, “Entertainment” and “Science & Technology” reinforce (if not exaggerate) the original findings, while “How-To” viewership is distributed more evenly over time.  The author reiterated that the study’s one-year timeframe could misrepresent “a long tail that over time might add up to a significant percentage of overall views”.

Hulu: The Home of Comedy?

Never screen a comedy in a large, stadium-seating megaplex.  Why?  A crowded theater is a petri dish for infectious laughter, and stadium-seating intentionally breaks up the crowd.  Whether you’re in distribution or simply looking for a fix of laughter, comedies are enhanced by a crowded theater with playhouse seating to further the contagious effect.

Now, I wonder, is there a web equivalent of this psuedo-fact?  Compete notes an interesting disparity in the viewership of Hulu vis-à-vis the official sites of its parent networks (NBC/Fox): people are sticking to the networks for drama, but Hulu is quickly becoming the preferred destination for comedy.

The question is “why”.  Obviously network promotion has a lot to do with it, as is evident in the numbers for The Office, which regularly directs viewers back to NBC.com specifically.  Beyond that, however, could it be that Hulu’s user experience (like the sloping theater) is simply a better medium for comedy?  The site’s focus on clips, as well as the ability to easily share and deeplink, may be more than a welcomed feature — it could be the reason that Hulu is primed to succeed in comedy.

If you want to isolate one funny scene, take in the show bit-by-bit throughout the day, or find something that made you laugh more than two years ago — all endemic facets of comedy, which don’t often come into play for a serialized drama — Hulu is apt to deliver.  Of course, the signature of the comedy viewing experience is that it is ALWAYS better in a crowd… short of avatar theater, how will video on the web evolve to create social viewing experiences which actually enhance the experience?

YouTube Gets Interactive With Video (On the Surface)

With the launch of YouTube Video Annotations this morning, the term “video games” may soon take on a new meaning and, more importantly, Google may have provided a tacit indication of how it plans to achieve the arduous task of properly indexing and monetizing video in the future. Currently the feature isn’t viewable within their distributed player, which is a significant letdown, but even still — this is a great move for both the platform and content producers, but Google itself stands to benefit even more:

With this feature, you can add background information, create branching stories or add links to any YouTube video, channel, or search results page — at any point in your video.

The immediate implication is that videos now have a response mechanism by which viewers can engage and make choices along the way. Yes, it’s the return of Choose Your Own Adventure nostalgia, but with a LonelyGirl15 twist; though that’s really only one possibility.

• a variety show could point directly to the sources they are mocking (ex: Best Week Ever, The Daily Show or, more likely, Wallstrip);
• a non-profit could use this newfound interactivity to provide navigation allowing viewers to drill-down for more information on a particular aspect of their mission;
• or consider this early experiment in the form of an interactive shell game

There’s any number of cool ways to use this interactivity, but the real power and brilliance of this feature is the context… both for users, and for Google. Looking at the user side for a moment, there’s the benefit of:

• adding lyrics to music videos;
• highlighting key tips (or warnings) in an instructional video;
  
• creating multilingual versions of the same video (not currently possible, but easily achieved by allowing for more dynamic annotations);
• or just interesting ancillary information and notes [example]
  

Those are a few possibilities, but not particularly brilliant. The real brilliance of this feature is that Google has once again developed a tool that ostensibly looks like just another enhancement to the user experience, while quietly serving its own agenda: interpreting, indexing and eventually monetizing video. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not criticizing them in any way… in fact, I applaud them for taking inspiration from Seinfeld’s Kramer and asking for more direct assistance. With the help of content creators — and I’d imagine all viewers at some point down the road, as overwhelming as that will become — Google will soon be privy to a wealth of new data which can help to make sense of the content within these videos [as opposed to just titles, descriptions and tags]. Eventually, this information can be leveraged to sell contextually relevant advertising in true Googlopoly style, though the most effective form for that advertisement remains undetermined.

In this world, Purina can associate their ads specifically with videos featuring dogs, “Buckle Up” PSAs run alongside clips of car crashes, and SPF-30 suntan lotion next to scenes on the beach. Who knows what this means for Chocolate Rain or the dramatic lemur… maybe nothing (God forbid we don’t monetize every scrap of daily life!). It’s still a far better means toward understanding the content and context of a video than the current tag-based system.

It’s not the whole solution to indexing or monetizing video by any means, but it’s a meaningful step. As Google endeavors to make sense of this incoming data, I look forward to watching creators leverage this power in new and interesting ways.

Viral Irony is Spelled MTV

I just love the irony surrounding the “behind the scenes” viral video mockumentary in last week’s MTV Movie Awards, which featured Jack Black, Ben Stiller and Robert Downey Jr. trying to catch lightning in a bottle with a viral video for their upcoming movie (ya know, “because it’s all about the internet now”). It’s a solid bit of comedy, valuable promotion for the movie and in many ways true to life. Okay, there’s the setup… and, “Action!”:

• The video works, and with the initial awareness from the show (not to mention star power) begins to take on new life as, you guessed it, a legitimate viral video (so meta!). People laugh, tell their friends, and pass it along until [cue the music]…

• Viacom steps in and issues takedown notices for all instances of the video on YouTube, their courtroom counterpart (the record of which remains forever in the shallow graves of MIT’s YouTomb)… but the video lives on elsewhere (those sites that don’t claim 50.4% of the online video market).

• Meanwhile, the YouTube account behind the infringing upload is “suspended”.
  Roll the credits!

Now, I’m not undermining Viacom’s right to defend their copyrighted material, and it’s entirely possible that their enforcement team has no choice but to keep racking up the “infringements” in advance of their case against Google; but if we can separate ourselves from the legal and business issues for just a brief moment: isn’t it ironic?

[Note: Please remember that there is a permanent ban against using Alanis Morissette lyrics in the comments!] [via Beyond Madison Avenue]