Journalism.co.uk Editors' Blog » YouTube

YouTube Biz Blog: YouTube extends advertising partnerships to individuals

Laura Oliver — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 09:13:51 +0000

The video-sharing website has extended its YouTube Partnership (YPP), which is intended to help channels on the site make money from their clips, to individual users.

The importance of this is perhaps best summed up by the announcement post’s title: ‘In the future, everyone will monetise their 15 minutes’.

If individual, ‘prolific’ users of the site can make revenue from what they share this once more cuts out the middleman – they no longer need mainstream media for distribution and the MSM may be less able to cash in from viral successes. If savvy users realise they can monetise it, will they be less likely to share their postings with commercial outlets?

Full post at this blog…

Similar Posts:

Jon Bernstein: Five lessons from a week in online video

Jon Bernstein — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 10:41:40 +0000

It’s now four years – give or take a few weeks – since broadband Britain reached its tipping point.

Halfway through 2005 there were finally more homes connected to the internet via high speed broadband than via achingly slow dial-up. Video on the web suddenly made a lot more sense.

And given that we’re still in the early stages of this particular media evolution, it’s not surprising that we are are still learning.

Here are five such moments from the last seven days:

1. If you build it they will come…
…provided you build something elegant and easy to use. And then market it like crazy.

This was the week that we learned how the hugely successful BBC iPlayer has overtaken MySpace to become the 20th most visited website in the UK . The iPlayer is now comfortably the second most popular video site even if its 13 per cent share is still dwarfed by YouTube’s 65 per cent.

If you want more evidence of success just look at the BBC’s terrestrial rivals. ITV, Five and even Channel 4 – which had a year’s head start over the BBC – are now aping the look, feel and functionality of the corporation’s efforts. No hefty applets to download – just click and play.

Of course, this model – a different player for each network – will look anachronistic within a few years. Maybe less. Hulu arrives on these shores soon.

2. Don’t do video unless you’re adding value
If you are going to put moving pictures on your newspaper website it’s a good idea to ask why? And the answer should be that it adds something to your storytelling.

Last week the Independent completed a deal that sees the Press Association providing more than 100 90-second clips a week, each focusing on a single news item.

Nothing wrong with the quality or content of the video that the Indy is getting, but where’s the added value? Unless the video has some killer footage or a must-see interview, why would a reader of a 500-word news article click play? I’m not sure they would.

As someone eloquently put it on my blog:

If it’s visual, it needs pictures and maybe video. If it’s verbal, sound will do. For everything else, words are cheaper for the producer and quicker for the consumer.

3. You can’t control the message
Singer Chris Brown chose YouTube as the medium to deliver his first public pronouncements following February’s assault on his now ex-girlfriend Rihanna.

He plumped for the video-sharing site rather than a TV or newspaper interview presumably so he could control the message – no out-of-context editing of his words and no awkward follow-up questions.

To some extent he got his wish. Within 24 hours of posting his 120-second, unmediated mea culpa, it had been viewed nearly half-a-million times.

More significantly, however, the video had received over 12,000 comments and most were hostile.

4. Brands love YouTube
In an oddly defensive post on its YouTube Biz Blog, the people behind Google’s file-sharing site set about busting what it claims are five popular myths.

Putting ‘Myth 4′ to rest – namely that ‘Advertisers are afraid of YouTube’ – the post asserted:

Over 70 per cent of Ad Age Top 100 marketers ran campaigns on YouTube in 2008. They’re buying our homepage, Promoted Videos, overlays, and in-stream ads. Many are organizing contests that encourage the uploading of user videos to their brand channels, or running advertising exclusively on popular user partner content.

We wait, breathlessly, for a follow-up post so we can discover how many of these elite brands made a return on their YouTube investment.

5. Death becomes you
Nearly a month after his passing, Michael Jackson’s life is still being celebrated online. Eight out of this week’s viral video top 20 are either Jackson originals or owe their inspiration to the singer.

A case of the long tail occupying the head. For a few weeks at least.

Jon Bernstein is former multimedia editor of Channel 4 News. This is part of a series of regular columns for Journalism.co.uk. You can read his personal blog at this link.

Similar Posts:

YouTube and Google News come together for publishers

Laura Oliver — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:04:47 +0000

YouTube is offering news outlets featured in Google News the opportunity to become an official partner of the site – with an aim to increase video views on both YouTube and Google News.

According to a post on the Google News Blog, a partnership will offer the chance of prominent placement of a news organisation’s videos on YouTube’s news page; and, if the videos are embeddable, the opportunity to appear as a featured video on Google News.

News outlets can apply to be part of the YouTube Partner Program, which will also include an advertising revenue share program – as explained by the program’s ‘partner benefits’ page:

“Share revenue from relevant InVideo ads overlaid on your videos and banner ads running next to your videos to earn money

Participate in co-marketing & branded entertainment opportunities with top brand advertisers.
Utilize your own sales to sell your own ads.

Meanwhile, as reported by MediaWeek, Bauer and IPC Media have become two of the first magazine publishers to sell ads around their YouTube content on the site. They follow Channel 4, which struck a deal with the video-sharing site last month.

Google News Blog: A Call to News Publishers: How to Share Your Video.

Similar Posts:

Google Blog: Citizentube tracking ‘way people using video to change the world’

Judith Townend — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 09:15:23 +0000

Google plugs Citizentube, a Youtube blog ‘devoted to chronicling the way that people are using video to change the world.’ Google’s post uses these as examples of the type of material the blog will showcase:

“[D]id you know that a nine-year-old recently used YouTube to successfully campaign to save his local kickball lot? Have you seen the video of a Guatemalan lawyer who predicted his own assassination on YouTube moments before it happened? Or did you know that YouTube and Google have launched a new technology platform for political debates, which allows you to submit and vote on the most important issues you want to discuss with political candidates?”

Full post at this link…

Similar Posts:

Too old to become a journalist: The NCTJ exams

Amy Oliver — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 12:04:03 +0000

I finished my NCTJ course at Lambeth College a couple of weeks a go (hurray! And thank God – I don’t think I could have done another day of such intensive brain cramming).

My last week was spent doing back-to-back exams. For those about to embark on the law (court reporting and general reporting), PA (central and local government) and news writing exams you have my condolences. For those thinking about doing the course here’s what I wish I had known before I sat them:

Law
My absolute top tip? Start revising in the first week if you’re doing the fast-track course and probably if you’re on a longer course as well. That might sound obvious, but you will be so overwhelmed with learning shorthand that law can often seem like a subject to put on the back burner.

Get home from the lecture and look at your notes. Look at the handouts. Look at relevant case law in McNae’s Essential Law for Journalists and make a note of which case studies you’re going to learn for that particular topic. Do everything you can to get the law into your head.

Don’t be swayed by what the press are doing either: there was always fierce debate about this in class especially if a victim had been identified and, according to the law, shouldn’t have been. Go with what the book says just for the exam and leave your own opinions at the door.

Learn the strict liability rule and the elements of what makes a defamatory statement. You will need to write these out verbatim and it’s best to get them in your head early. Why not write them out in shorthand?

Attempting to learn the law syllabus is a bit like standing at the foot of Everest. The exam differs from public affairs (PA) in that you have to know it all and can’t really second guess what might come up and hope for the best.

Having said that, there are obvious headline topics: contempt, defamation etc. On my exam a lot of the questions were defamation-based so those areas would seem like the ones to concentrate on.

Go through old exam papers. The answers are quite logical, but it’s easy to miss a section of the law because you don’t realise it applies. If you’re doing a distance course you can buy past papers from the NCTJ.

Finally have a look at this YouTube video – it features Cleland Thom, who taught law and marked exam papers at various colleges and is now legal adviser to around 50 different newspapers, websites and radio stations. Here he gives his two pence on how and what to revise and how to pass. I came across this video at around 2am on the eve of my law exam when the desperation started to kick in. Hopefully it will be of more use to others.

Public Affairs
Again start looking at this early. It is so easy to put it off because of the shorthand and also because some topics are like having a conversation with the most boring person alive. The good news is that you don’t have to answer all the questions on the exam paper.

This should mean that you don’t need to bother learning some topics, but a word of warning here: make sure you do more than the bare minimum. If you’re relying on luck and probability you may get your fingers burnt. It’s good to have definite subjects that you know inside out and then have back up topics, just in case.

Getting yourself familiar with how central government is structured is also really useful. The teacher may assume that everyone in the class has a good general knowledge of things like the differences between the House of Commons and Lords so if you have no clue, swatting up can make other things easier to understand.

The exam, like law, must be handwritten. I don’t know about you, but I hadn’t written an essay with a pen for years. Get used to writing at length for long periods and do practice exam questions. Again those on the distance course can add to the NCTJ’s coffers further by buying past papers.

Good old Cleland Thom dishes out yet more advice in his handy ‘how to pass PA’ video.

Newswriting
To the uninitiated, you may think this will be an easy couple of hours to spend your life. Wrong. Spell someone’s name wrong and you’re likely to fail immediately.

The NCTJ try and trick you as well: my favourite one in the practice exams has to be the use of ‘Pinky and Percy’ rather than Perky for two, on-the-run parakeets (don’t ask). The younger contingent of the group didn’t have a problem with this obviously having no reference point to the cartoon. Watch out oldies.
Be careful with county and country as well. I got that in my exam and, luckily, realised at the last minute.

Apart from accuracy the most important thing to learn is what the actual news values are in the question. You will be given a press release with additional quotes from various sources. The news is often buried and not obvious and, with my exam, pretty much non existent.

Practicing writing papers and going through the marking guide and with others is the only way to get to grips with it. There might be more than one newsy element in the release so best to bung both as far at the top as possible. Also be aware that a news element can sometimes appear in one of the quotes.

And, you guessed it, Cleland Thom has even done a video on the news exam. He really, really wants you to pass.

Also watch out for the syllabus guidelines that come with the portfolio. These proved invaluable to me.

Good luck and have a holiday standing by for when it’s all over.

To read previous posts in this series, visit the ‘Too old to become a journalist’ feed.

Similar Posts:

Guest bloggers for FT’s Davos coverage

Laura Oliver — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 16:17:56 +0000

The Financial Times has signed up a host of guest bloggers for it’s coverage of this week’s World Economics Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, which starts tomorrow.

Sir Martin Sorrell, Kofi Annan and British foreign secretary David Miliband will all be posting alongside FT editors and correspondents – you can read Sorrell’s first post at this link.

The site has set-up an ‘in depth’ microsite to host its coverage, which will also feature video reports and can be followed on Twitter @FTDavos.

Elsewhere YouTube got its users to pose video questions to the forum via its Davos channel – the most voted submission was from Pablo Camacho, a student and independent writer from Bogotá, Colombia, who will now attend the event on behalf of the site as a citizen reporter.

Similar Posts:

Google closes Print Ads scheme

Laura Oliver — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 14:20:48 +0000

Despite partnering with more than 800 US newspapers, Google has decided to end its Print Ads scheme, which saw the search engine help partners run traditional print-based advertising campaigns.

According to a post on the search engine’s Let’s Take It Offline blog, the service wasn’t having the desired impact and resources behind the project will be reinvested in finding other revenue sources for publishers through Google’s products.

“We believe fair and accurate journalism and timely news are critical ingredients to a healthy democracy. We remain dedicated to working with publishers to develop new ways for them to earn money, distribute and aggregate content and attract new readers online. We have teams of people working with hundreds of publishers to find new and creative ways to earn money from engaging online content. AdSense, DoubleClick, Google Maps, YouTube, Google Earth, Google News and many other products are a part of our significant investments to innovate in this space,” said Spencer Spinnell in the post.

“These important efforts won’t stop. We will continue to devote a team of people to look at how we can help newspaper companies.”

Google began trialling print advertising in 2005. The ads will no longer be available from February 28, though campaigns already planned will be run until March 31.

Similar Posts:

NPR’s Inauguration Report site goes live

Laura Oliver — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 12:20:19 +0000

After we reblogged NPR’s proposals for inauguration coverage with a social media twist, it’s great to see the plans coming into action.

The broadcaster has created Inauguration Report, which features location-based reports from readers and listeners watching the inauguration events in Washington and elsewhere, submitted by text, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube.

By tagging their entries by location, e.g. L:lincoln for the Lincoln Memorial, NPR will map the accounts. Real-time updates from contributors will feed into this stream.

Similar Posts:

MediaPost: Film critic’s YouTube channel shut down over copyright allegations

Laura Oliver — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 10:41:17 +0000

Kevin Lee’s use of short film clips as part of his video reviews would normally be regarded as fair use, but several complaints about his channel forced YouTube to protect itself under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

“[I]t seems as if perfectly lawful clips are being silenced at the whim of copyright owners who don’t like the thought of anyone other than themselves posting content,” writes MediaPost’s Wendy Davis.

Full story at this link…

Similar Posts:

A week of innovation from Al Jazeera ends with launch of mobile sites

Judith Townend — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 16:57:29 +0000

Media coverage on Al Jazeera English hasn’t always been positive, but since its launch it’s done some interesting things multimedia-wise: launching all its content on YouTube, in April 2007, for example (its English content page can be found here).

More broadly the Al Jazeera network, which includes the Arabic channels, has also not been afraid to try out new technology, with the launch of a ‘citizen-journalism upload portal’ for example.

This week we’ve reported on its video content partnership with the Independent newspaper site. While they’ve tightened up the PR act (no longer in-house, it’s managed by Brown Lloyd James, the same agency that handles press for the Telegraph group) these are newsworthy developments.

Events in Gaza have been a chance for Al Jazeera to experiment and show off its multimedia – through projects showcased at Al Jazeera Labs. Follow Al Jazeera’s head of new media, Mohamed Nanabhay, @Mohamed, on Twitter to find out more.

Particularly exciting is its release of material under a Creative Commons licence, in its 3.0 form – allowing other sites reproduce the broadcaster’s video content as long as they attribute the source.

Today comes further news from the broadcaster: the beta launch of its Arabic and English mobile websites, which will work on any mobile handset with web browsing ability.

“Users only need to bookmark the following web addresses on their mobile, for English news http://m.aljazeera.net/, and for Arabic news http://ma.aljazeera.net/,” a release from the company said.

“The mobile web initiative is one of the key services that is being launched as part of our New Media strategy”, Saeed Othman Bawazir, Al Jazeera’s director of technology, said in the release.

“The aim is to make our content more accessible to new audiences across various new platforms. With the launch of this mobile service, we hope to provide our audience with a customized news browsing experience on the mobile device of their choice,” he said.

This initiative includes ‘delivering video and other content over interactive platforms,’ such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and iTunes, the release said.

Similar Posts: