Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
On this week’s look at the Reel Web, we’re going to talk about a lot of different things
including how YouTube might be charging us for some premium content. Also we’re going
to look at how maybe some video sharing apps and things for mobile devices might be challenging
YouTube’s dominance in the online video world and the length of time that people are
spending watching online videos is increasingly growing. We’re going to talk about that
and much more this week on the Reel Web.
Hey guys my name is Tim Schmoyer and welcome to another week of the Reel Web where every
week we just highlight some of the online video news for you guys from the week before.
First of all, it looks like YouTube might be bringing in some premium content that might
be available for a subscription fee that you and I can pay to subscribe to pay to certain
channels of content. As you might expect some of that will include very popular and high
demand video content from TV, but we’re also hoping that maybe it will bring live
streaming events such as sporting events which is really kind of what’s keeping a lot of
people from cutting the cable from cable TV or satellite or just going online is a lot
of our sports stuff is not available live streaming online yet, but if YouTube can pull
this off, that might be the final clincher for a lot of different people.
There’s speculation that the new iPanel from the TV that’s coming supposedly from
Apple that’s kind of rumored, there’s rumors that maybe they might be also be able
to pull this off in offering live sporting events to stream over the internet to their
iPanel TV things. But so far all this is a speculation. No one really knows for sure,
except YouTube has proven that they can live stream sporting events in other countries
such as cricket and some other channels that most of us here in America probably aren’t
too familiar with, but it’s definitely happening overseas so if YouTube can pull that off here,
some of that might be available for a fee.
And why are they charging for it you might ask? Well it’s because, well one, YouTube’s
probably going to have to pay out the butt to get this stuff on YouTube in the first
place, but two, and I think this is more important, advertisers are probably a little shy in sponsoring
content that we kind of just have right now on YouTube. A lot of amateur stuff, a lot
of people making just videos like this, but they are more likely to want to brand their
products and their services against professional content that they see is a high quality Hollywood
stuff and TV shows and things, they feel more comfortable with that. So I think if YouTube
can pull this off it would probably be good for all of us in the long run, definitely
good for YouTube, they’ll be making a lot more money but it will also be helping a lot
more advertisers make that switch to online video and then hopefully that spills over
to the rest of us eventually and we’ll just see where it all goes. But I think that’s
interesting. Links more about that are below.
Something very interesting is happening with mobile apps that revolve around photography
and video. Over the past year, they have been getting tremendous momentum. Over time these
apps are getting millions of users, and according to researcher done by flurry, they are easily
the number one fastest growing category of apps across all mobile devices. Just back
in July 2011 the average person was spending only 87 minutes a month on these mobile video
applications but now in May of 2012 so far it is up to 231 minutes the average user is
spending on these applications every month. And we can say, hey that’s cool! People
are getting more used to doing online video, especially on their phones and that will probably
translate to more views for us, but does it? This graph shows that the average number of
minutes a user is spending on YouTube has actually declined while the mobile video sharing
applications, their minutes are beginning to go up. Does that mean that we’re losing
our views? I don’t think so, but I don’t really know. I look at this and my first reaction
is, man it really appears that YouTube is going down, video apps are going up and so
there might be some competition there, but you also gotta remember that throughout the
summer views on YouTube are just kind of down across the board. We always kind of go into
the summer and kids are home from college and they’re working. And people aren’t
sitting in front of the computers doing homework as much anymore so views on YouTube generally
just go down over the summer and then when kids go back into school you can expect them
to start going up again. So maybe what this graph is showing is just part of the normal
course that YouTube takes. It would be interesting to see where we were this time last year where
the graph doesn’t show, what did last May look like and I’m willing to guess based
on what I see on this graph just so far is that we are probably doing way better now
this May then we were doing back in May 2011 as far as views are concerned, so take it
with a grain of salt, but I would love to hear from you guys. What do you think of these
mobile video sharing apps, especially Vidi and Social Cam, the two big major players
but all of them in general. Do you think that they might challenge our views on YouTube
and might compete for the people we’re trying to get to subscribe for us or do you think
they actually could be a helpful extension of what we do here on YouTube in some way.
I’d love to hear from you guys.
Also last week a study came out from ComScore that tells us the average length of an online
video is increasing by about 12 seconds per month. Right now the average length of an
online video is 6 minutes and 24 seconds, which means that just within the past 6 months
the average online video length has increased by almost a minute, 54 seconds. That means
by March of 2013 the average online video will be 7 minutes and 26 second long. It doesn’t
mean that people are becoming more and more used to watching online content in long form,
although I think that might be an implication of it. It just means that we are putting longer
and longer form content stuff on the internet and I guess people are watching it otherwise
we wouldn’t be doing it.
I know the average length of one of our Reel Web videos is about 8, 9 minutes or so. If
you’re willing to watch an 8 or 9 minute video from us maybe some other people are
willing to watch an 8 or 9 minute video from you.
Couple things I want to cover for you guys really quick and if any of these spark any
interest in you, you want to find out more, there’s always links below this video here
on YouTube or on ReeSEO.com so go check them out. For the first thing is, somebody said
something I thought was really, really interesting. It’s the CEO of an app called Majesto. I
watched a video interview with him and he said this.
“Social video is, we think is not just about being able to just share videos with their
friends. People have been able to do that for years for their YouTube videos for instance.
We think that social video is more about social content, which means content which is extremely
relevant to your social network. And this has to be personal.”
I love the emphasis that he puts there on it has to be personal. Cause it really does.
A lot of focus on really high production value and we focus a lot on just consistent content
and we focus a lot on just lots of different things, engagement, and all of those things
are super important. We should and need to focus on those things, but let’s not forget
the personal aspect that people watch YouTube, hopefully, most of us anyway, because we want
to have like – we want to perceive any – feel like we have a connection with the person
that we’re watching. We want to feel like if we type a comment the person will actually
see it.
The personal engagement part is really important, but just being personal in your videos is
really important as well. Or if you’re not in your videos maybe as a live Hangout On
Air now on Google Hangouts. One of these times I’m going to do my shoot here live on Google+
and here on YouTube so if you’re not already circling us here on ReelSEO you might want
to do that below. The main point, remember to be personable in your videos and help make
that personal connection.
Also there’s a link down there if you are creating any type of video content that you
want to monetize, differently then advertising. Let’s say that you’re making some premium
content that you kind of want to put behind a wall that instead of having advertising
on it, people can just pay to watch your video. Maybe pay $.99 and stream it online once.
Some of us have the ability to rent videos through YouTube, but they seem to be strict
about how to use that and what that looks like. There’s a service called Sevar that
is actually is geared to do this very thing specifically for you in your video content
so if that’s a monetization structure that you’re looking to get into or can use, the
link about that is below. We write a little bit about that on ReelSEO and give a little
overview about that so go check that out.
Also, we tell you guys here at ReelSEO a lot to analyze the analytics surrounding your
video and learn from them so that you can make better content going forward in the future
but a lot of us look at that and we say I see the stats but I don’t know what to do
with this information. Well we have a post linked up for you guys below from us here
at ReelSEO.com that will help you to know how to analyze that data and what to do with
it, decisions to make and actually takes you through three phases that every video goes
through so that when you look at your stats you kind of know what’s happening and how
to make adjustments and what to learn from that so that is below, that’s definitely
something you’ll want to read.
And finally we also have a link down there for those of you guys who are trying to do
online video marketing for business to business stuff and that seems to be like a different
ballgame then what sometimes we talk about here on ReelSEO – not always a lot of the
same stuff applies but if you want to read an article that will give you five really
good tips for how to do really good solid business to business video marketing and how
to do that, that is linked up below so if that is your niche go check that one out too.
For our Creator’s Tip video on Thursday, we’re actually going to have a very special
guest with us. His name is Nathan and he runs a very big popular website and we’re going
to talk with him about how he uses online video to engage the millions of people on
his website and how he uses that to really promote his website and cross pollinate and
all that kind of stuff, so that’s coming up on Thursday.
If you’re not already subscribed to our channel and would love to see that video and
all the other awesome stuff we’re trying to do for you guys here at ReelSEO, just click
that subscribe button above this video here on YouTube. We’d love to have you join us
every week and that would be awesome guys. We’d love to have you hang out with us.
So I will see you guys on Thursday for that interview and then again next week for our
look at the Reel Web. Bye!