According to this report, the list is similar to the one they had released last year. However, there has been a significant increase in the number of unique visitors to most of the top sites.

It is no surprise that search, social networking and video remain at the top of the reasons for mobile browsing with Google, Facebook and YouTube scoring the top three rankings respectively.

The world’s 10 most popular mobile websites are:

1. google.com
2. facebook.com
3. youtube.com
4. vkontakte.ru
5. odnoklassniki.ru
6. yandex.ru
7. wikipedia.org
8. my.opera.com
9. yahoo.com
10. twitter.com

The report has compared the findings between November 2011 and November 2010. Apart from seeing rapid growth in Asia, Opera Mini has also found a substantial increase in mobile Web usage in Latin America, Africa and South East Asia.

Obviously, Google must think they can get more out of Hulu than the other companies – they wouldn’t want to buy yet another video hosting site and then struggle to monetise it, would they?

It has been reported by the Financial Times that Amazon, Yahoo! and Dish Network have offered between $1.5 billion and $2 billion to Hulu in exchange for ownership of the free video site, its subscription service and the rights to exclusive content for at least two years.

The details of what Google is willing to offer Hulu are not yet available. It is also not known whether or not Google has already made an offer to Hulu.

It is quite possible that Google is looking for access to more content and video scene search technology from Hulu, and the deal would then have to be for a longer period of time. It’s equally possible that Google just doesn’t want anyone else to compete with YouTube’s newly formed movie and TV show streaming business.

An executive of Hulu, involved with the deal-making process has said, “Normally we would have thrown people out if they’d said that.” In spite of such strong statements, Hulu is still talking to Google, so it is quite obvious that the offer being made by Google is probably too good to let go.

While the money involved seems to be big, there is still the possibility that Google and YouTube could eventually swallow Hulu, and that may deter Hulu from agreeing to a deal with Google.

It is also quite possible that Hulu’s parent companies, News Corp and Disney, may decide not to sell the company to anybody at all.

By 2016, the number of users accessing these facilities is set to cross 130 million. An increased use of this sector over the past wear and a half has already been noted following the launch of services such as front facing cameras on smartphones and other improvements on the technological side by major industry players.

The use of mVoIP has increased significantly in the market, especially in the developed countries because of the increased use of smartphones and easy to download apps.

As voice based services become more easily available in the market, it will be used more and more in services such as gaming and social networking according to the report.

Existing alliances between Facebook and mVoIP providers as well as the acquisition of Skype by Microsoft will further enhance this sector.

The report also forecasts that the increased access to 3G and 4G services will give a further boost to the development of voice based services.

Revenues for the voice based services are however likely to diminish over the next five years as many service providers will offer these services for free in order to get a hold of a larger market share.

Microsoft Advertising recently recently posted the results of research analysing how Indians spend their time online. The study, titled “Living with the Internet” was carried out by Microsoft Advertising, MEC and Mindshare, and it provides interesting results.

Indians were found to spend:

• 49% of their time communicating
• 35% of the time seeking information
• 22% of their time on entertainment activities
• 14% of the time creating content on digital spaces (status updates etc)
• 12% of their time making online transactions.

In addition, it was also found that 81% of time spent reading the news or looking for information, is planned. Similarly, 81% of activities such as communicating, online chatting and networking are also planned. Even downloading or streaming videos, playing games or listening to music are planned 60% of the time.

In contrast, activities such as updating blogs, uploading photos and online transactions are unplanned nearly 50% of the time.

Another issue being studied is the popularity of laptops versus smart phones. While it was found that both gadgets are equally popular for searches on the go, laptops are more popular for other activities.

Laptops were used for communication 51% of the time compared to smart phones 46% of the time. Laptops were used for entertainment 23% of the time versus 17% for smart phones and laptops were used for transactions 13% of the time compared to 8% for smart phones.

This information is especially important to marketers and brands planning to target the Indian subcontinent as the data shows a definite maturing of the online market, thereby enabling advertisers to connect better with their target audience online rather than having no option other than to advertise on television, billboards and newspapers.

Researchers at Nielsen have found that consumers between the ages of 12 and 17 watch mobile videos more than any other age group. During the last quarter of 2010 they watched 7 hours and 13 minutes of mobile video per month on an average. This is almost twice as much as the average 4 hours and 20 minutes of mobile video watched by the general population.

Teenagers use mobile text messaging more than twice as much as people of other ages do. In the first quarter of 2011 they sent an average of 3,364 texts, compared to 1,640 texts by those between 18-24 years of age. They are also more receptive to mobile advertising than others. 58% of them said that they “always” or “sometimes” watch mobile ads.

These youngsters are also quite addicted to social media. While they account for just 7.4% of the total number of social media users, they account for 78.7% of visits to social networks and blogs.

On the other hand, teens talk much less on the phone today than teens did in the 80s and 90s. They spoke an average of 515 minutes on the phone compared to 750 minutes by those between the ages of 18 and 24. The only demographic to talk less on the phone are users over 65 years of age.

Television viewing among teens is  much less than other age groups. While this might seem to be a good thing for their health and development, it actually isn’t. Their time is spent much more in front of a mobile or computer screen. The average American watched 34 hours and 39 minutes of TV per week. 12-17 year olds watch only 23 hours and 41 minutes per week. Teenagers also use home computers much less than older people. 18 year olds spent 39 hours 50 minutes online, of which 5 hours 26 minutes were spent streaming videos.

Children under 10 typically spend a lot of time watching TV, but now they are being exposed more and more to digital activities such as playing online games, watching videos and using social networks.

According to the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, 30% of 3 year olds spend time on computers and 80% of 4-5 year olds do so. 90% of those in the 6-8 year bracket use computers regularly.

As the name suggests, the service gets activated when any user decides to watch a video on YouTube for the first time on any given day. In other words, this is a new kind of pre-roll ad.

In the past, ads in the header would start playing as soon as the YouTube homepage was opened. According to Baljeet Singh, Senior Product Manger at YouTube, the ads on the homepage were highly successful and were “Starting to sell out.” Hence they felt the need to try a new form of pre-roll advertising.

First Watch ads are an extensionof the ads that are visible on the top of the YouTube homepage. These ad units will be visible to users who avoided watching the ad on the homepage and instead directly reached an inner page on YouTube by clicking on a link or when they visit a channel directly.

YouTube has been trialling this new facility. They have already rolled out such First Watch ads to about 15 million users and have received click-through rates around 1%, which is pretty good.

An advertiser interested in this service would need to buy a spot on the first video view by users on a given day.

First Watch ads will be applicable only to professional content partners such as The Onion, Tommy Hilfiger, Macy’s Inc and other similar brands. It will not be applicable to regular user-generated videos.

It is not yet known what YouTube will charge advertisers for this new service. However, Baljeet Singh said that it was “comparable” to what they charged for videos on YouTube.com “but less expensive”.

In the past, advertisers were charged their average cost per click amount every time a user clicked on a promoted video ad, irrespective of whether or not the user then actually viewed the video. This system obviously was not ideal for advertisers and is therefore due to be changed.

From the 25th of May, promoted video ads on YouTube will be charged on a CPV basis, which means that the advertiser will only be charged when a user actually begins to view the promoted video. This change will benefit advertisers as the number of times they will be charged for clicks could be reduced, giving them a better return on investment.

Promoted video ads on a YouTube search results page

Now, when a new promoted video campaign is created, advertisers will be required to set a maximum CPV, which represents the maximum amount they are willing to pay per view of the promoted video.

AdWords will continue to use the old format of charging only one cent more than the next advertiser who is competing for the same slot on the page, with similar keywords. Advertisers can continue to set up the campaigns in AdWords or at ads.youtube.com as before. From the 25th of this month, the billing terms for all the video campaigns will officially be converted from the CPC model to the CPV model.

Advertisers may continue to see the CPC terms in their campaign for some time as additional CPV reporting formats are introduced gradually.

For quite some time now, YouTube has been one of the most popular sites on the Internet and provides its users with a variety of content ranging from personally made videos to sporting events, live concerts, breaking news and a lot more.

They have now expanded this service by tying up with some major Hollywood studios to roll out about 3,000 titles for rental in due course of time. These movies will be accompanied by reviews from popular movie rating site Rotten Tomatoes and behind-the-scenes information.

New releases for rent on YouTube Movies

Some of the major studios that have agreed to tie-up with YouTube for this service include Sony Pictures Entertainment, Warner Bros, Universal pictures and Lionsgate.

Older movies such as ‘Good Fellas’ and ‘The Dark Knight’ will be available for a lower fee of $2.99. New releases such as ‘Inception’ and ‘The King’s Speech’ will be charged at $3.99. Movies that were previously offered for free will remain free to view on the new service as well.

This service is expected directly compete with sites such as Netflix and Redbox. However, these sites are currently priced a lot cheaper than YouTube, and so YouTube might eventually have to rethink their pricing strategy, which currently seems closer to old-fashioned rental services such as Blockbuster.

Expanded movie rental services from YouTube will help to further consolidate the video-sharing site’s position in the market, while at the same time narrowing the gap between online video and television.

This service has only been started in the U.S. as of now, and it will serve their 105 million customers. Once Google expands this service and realigns prices in other regions such as Europe and Asia, they could make it a real success as online rental services are not very popular there and theirs would be the only popular service to offer immediate legitimate streaming movies.

Happy Feet movie rental page with reviews, previews and related videos

They had tries this feature last year during the Indian Premier League cricket matches, and they will now go ahead with this service on a regular basis.

An announcement on the site says, “Today, we’ll also start gradually rolling out our live streaming beta platform, which will allow certain YouTube partners with accounts in good standing to stream live content on YouTube. The goal is to provide thousands of partners with the capability to live stream from their channels in the months ahead. In order to ensure a great live stream viewing experience, we’ll roll this offering out incrementally over time.”

For these live broadcasts, users can turn to http://www.youtube.com/live.

They will start with a live relay of ‘The DigiTour’ which will be running for 6 weeks across various cities in America.

YouTube partners, in the cities where the concerts will be held, will be able to make the most of this opportunity by reaching out to a large audience during this event as also during all future live events.

• YouTube Trends Dashboard

Topics of interest can range from news and events to pop culture, people, new ideas and much more. For instance, during the last week, some of the videos in trending topics ranged from footage of the protests in Syria and a tornado in Pennsylvania to a videos about the supposed worst singer in the world and cartoons about the Middle East leaders.

The Trends blog lets people get to know what is happening around the world in real time. The feature highlights the daily trending topics twice a day – at 4.00 a.m. ET and at 4.00 p.m. ET. The four most viewed videos during this time frame are highlighted.

YouTube Trends Dashboard allows users to find out what are the hottest topics of the day across different demographic groups worldwide. The most popular videos of the day are shown according to location, age group and gender of the user along with information about the most shared, trending videos and trending topics.

In the screenshot above, the YouTube Trends Dashboard is being used to compare the most viewed videos in the United Kingdom for Males versus Females aged 25 – 34 years versus all users aged 55 – 64 years. Videos that are unique to the older demographic are highlighted with the red number.

This feature can be of great help to advertisers and agencies as it can tell them what sort of topics a particular group of people would be interested in. They can then select appropriate ad content designed specifically for their target audience.

As expected, Google continues to be the number one site, with a very wide margin. However, they have undergone a slight setback, as the number of unique viewers has gone down from 144.1 million in January to 141.1 million in February. The number of minutes spent online per session has also gone down.

On the other hand, Microsoft has had a very good month as they have risen from ranking seventh in January to ranking second in February. They have also had 48.8 million unique viewers in February which represents an absolute increase of 10.7 million visitors more than they had January.

Yahoo! has retained the third place as before and Facebook is now fourth in the list, in place of Viacom. VEVO, which was second in January, now occupies the fifth place, and Viacom is sixth, in place of Facebook. AOL has now taken Microsoft’s previous position at number seven. Turner Digital has retained the eighth spot in both months. Hulu, which was tenth in January, is now at number nine, and NBC has entered the list at number ten.

The study also shows that 170 million users watched online videos in February in the U.S. at an average of 13.6 hours per viewer and more than 5 billion viewing sessions.

It remains to be seen if the list will remain more or less steady in March or will change drastically again.

The online advertising behemoth had announced a partnership with SpotMixer, back in January 2009, in order to help AdWords and TV advertisers, to create video ad for free. They have now extended this partnership and integrated the SpotMixer service further into Google TV Ads and Google AdWords.

SpotMixer is a tool that allows advertisers to create their own ad directly, through their AdWords campaign. These ads can be displayed on Google TV and on Google’s display network including the very popular video-sharing site, YouTube. Ads can then be shown as often as the advertiser chooses.

Creating video ads on Google AdWords via SpotMixer

This is a very useful move, considering the fact that video viewing is on the rise, as people look for information and entertainment through various devices such as TV, desktops and mobile phones.

In the U.S. the average user is now watching videos for 4 hours a month, which represents a year-on-year increase of 45%.

Existing text ads are converted into a video or TV ad with the help of templates for pacing, transition, design etc. A collection of music, videos and images is also available to choose from, if customers do not have their own content.

For those who already have a video ad, they can upload it onto SpotMixer and have it edited to improve it. Advertisers can also customise their ads to suit different demographics, if they wish to do so. They can also make ads of different lengths and display them as appropriate.

Tracking the performance of each ad is possible by simply providing different contact telephone numbers and destination URLs.

Warner Bros. is the first studio to go in for this kind of service on a social network. The partnership makes a lot of sense. Users are likely to watch movies on Facebook and ‘Like’ them, thereby immediately letting their friends know about the movie and allowing those friends to watch the movie right there.

The Batman movie, The Dark Knight, will be the first feature film to be rented out on Facebook.

The official Facebook page for the movie shows a tab called, ‘Watch’. When users click on the tab / link, they will be able to view the movie. Users will be able to pay for the rental through their Facebook credits. The cost of the movie has been fixed at 30 Facebook credits or $3.

Viewers will have the facility to watch the movie at their convenience over the next 48 hours. Movies will be viewable in full-screen mode. The viewer will also be able pause and resume the movie at will. If the viewer exits Facebook, returning to the official Batman: The Dark Knight fan page and selecting the Watch tab will resume the movie. Alternatively, users can select The Dark Knight application that appears on the left side of their Facebook profile page to re-open the video player window.

It will also be possible for users to update their status, post comments and interact with Facebook friends while watching the movie.

President of Warner Bros. Digital Distribution, Thomas Gewecke says, “Facebook has become a daily destination for hundreds of millions of people. Making our films available through Facebook is a natural extension of our digital distribution efforts. It gives consumers a simple, convenient way to access and enjoy our films through the world’s largest social network.”

Considering the fact that box office collections have gradually been falling, this could be a new source of revenue generation for the studios.

It is also good for the viewers as it gives them the facility to watch a movie at their convenience, within the website that they spend most time on. It could also be very economical for them as more than one person can see the movie at a time.

This service is only being introduced in the U.S. for now, and other titles will be added later.

Watch The Dark Knight on Facebook

The largest spending was seen in November ($14.5 billion) and December ($18.1 billion). Cyber Monday – the first Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday – broke all records with $1.028 billion being spent in a single day.

Among electronic items, flat panel TVs and mobile devices were the fastest selling, followed by computer hardware.

Online Consumers

Group buying through sites such as Groupon and Living Social gained tremendous popularity during the year. Social networks also continued to grow. Facebook became the number 1 site in August 2010, for time spent online, beating sites like Google and Yahoo! It now accounts for 12.3% of the total time spent online in The U.S.

The amount of time spent on leisure activities online also grew in 2010. Portals represented 20.2% of the share of time spent online, while social networks accounted for 14.4% and entertainment sites for 12.6%.

Social Networks

The growth of social media caused web-based email usage to reduce from 12.5% to 11.0%, especially among the younger generation. Social networking accounts for 14.4% of all time spent online, but its share much higher for youngsters. Women also tend to spend more time on social networks than men.

Facebook also now accounts for 10% of the U.S. page views and has gained millions of new users. MySpace, on the other hand, has seen a sharp decline, losing 27% of its users. LinkedIn, Twitter and several new social sites continue to grow gradually. While it has lost some users in the 35-54 years demographic, the number of users below 18 years and above 55 years have grown significantly. On the other hand, Twitter saw maximum gain in the 18-34 years demographic.

Search Marketing

The search market has also seen innovation with the introduction of instant search by Google. Google continues to be the market leader in the States, with over 60% of the market share, while Yahoo! had 16% and Microsoft had 12% in December 2010. ‘Facebook’ was the most searched term, with 1.9 billion queries in 2010, followed by ‘YouTube’ with 790.7 million searches.

Online advertising has grown by 23% between December 2009 and 2010. Leading brands have now started reallocating a larger share of their ad spend to online advertising. Over 1 trillion display ads were shown on Facebook and 529.4 billion ads on Yahoo! The strategies being used for display as have also improved resulting in better user response especially through retargeting. The online video and TV market are also growing, which is a fact that advertisers should take note of.

WebVisible, a provider of local online marketing software and services, also found that the average keyword count used in small and medium business’ search advertising campaigns reached a new high of 87 words, which means that small businesses advertisers used 30% more keywords in their campaigns in the 4th quarter of 2010 than they did in the same period in 2009.

The percentage of clicks that resulted in a phone call also rose from 3.9% in the 4th quarter of 2009 to 6.1% in the 4th quarter of 2010, which is an increase of 56%. This clearly shows that small businesses are now turning more and more towards online advertising, are becoming more savvy with their ad campaigns and users are also responding better to this new technology.

Ron Burr, CEO of WebVisible says, “successful campaigns will be those that combine the best creative, most dynamic media buying strategies, and smartest use of keyword targeting all working together”.

Along with the general upward trend in online advertising, videos are also growing as an important means of connecting with users. 26% of small businesses are now using video as a means of advertising, as compared to only 19% a year ago. The number of video views has also gone up by 85%, from 3.7% last year to 6.7% this year.

While the increased usage of online marketing is good for the U.S. economy, it has its downsides too. For one, the average cost per click for ads has also gone up steadily. Also, the shift of budgets to online has meant that an increasing number of offline channels are now struggling to uphold revenues and carry on their business.

Enterprising young job seekers have tried various means to attract the attention of potential employers. Some advertised their portfolio pages and personal websites for relevant keywords and even for particular brand and key executive names, so that their job application would show up alongside organic results on Google.

Recently, an innovative PR executive took things one step further, potentially changing the age-old system forever.

Graeme Anthony was on the lookout for a new jobwhen he changed his residence from Manchester to London. He created a video, using his skills and talents and then uploaded the video on YouTube. The video not only contained an introduction to himself, but also contained sections such as ‘Skills’, ‘Portfolio’ and ‘Contact’. Viewers could decide which section to view first.

Apart from being live and interactive, rather than a dull representation on paper, the video is also interspersed with a healthy doze of humour, which could rarely have come across well on a CV document.

The video, which was uploaded last September, has certainly got a lot of attention. It received 2,000 views within the first hour of being uploaded. Anthony’s Twitter account was also mentioned a number of times with comments regarding the video.

More importantly, the video also drew the attention of potential employers, some of whom even commented on their corporate blogs, calling it “the best job application ever.”

On his part, Graeme says, “It brings me to life in a completely new way. It shows off my personality in a way a paper CV can’t. It’s got the wow factor.”

Recently, Frank PR, an agency based in London, saw the video and after interviewing him, gave him the job.

The study was carried out on the instance of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce by observing the amount of illegal traffic on 43 file-sharing sites. Their findings do not reveal a happy picture.

It was found that these sites which sell pirated data generate over 146 million visits every day. That totals up to approximately 53 billion visits per year, which is a colossal amount.

In fact, 146 million visits per day is more than the total number of visits for counterfeit physical goods or counterfeit prescriptions in the whole year – 87 million and 51 million respectively.

Of the 43 sites studied, the top 3 are RapidShare.com, Megavideo.com and Megaupload.com. The traffic on these three sites alone is about 21 billion visits per year.

Of course, the number of visits to these sites does not give any indication of the number of unique individuals these sites, or the amount of illegal downloads.The numbers could be inflated by repeated daily visits by individuals. Even so, the number of unique users is likely to be astoundingly high.

What is clear however, is the fact that these commercial file-sharing sites are becoming as popular as other peer-to-peer technologies.

RapidShare.com has come under the scrutiny of the RIAA, the recording industry’s lobby, which wants such sites to install filters to prevent illegal downloads. However, the Higher Regional Court of Dusseldorf in Germany, has recently ruled that RapidShare need not install such filters, as they feel that “reasonable measures” are already being taken to control piracy.

In contrast, Steve Tepp, Senior Director of Internet counterfeiting and piracy for the Global Intellectual Property Center at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says, “Whether it is the sale of counterfeit bags and fake pharmaceuticals or illegal distribution of movies, music, and software, online IP theft is theft – plain and simple. Rogue websites have no place in a legitimate online market. If left unchecked, these sites will continue to flourish at our expense and further hinder our economic growth. The MarkMonitor report underscores the urgency of enacting proactive policies to enhance enforcement tools to shut down these rogue websites.”

This rule will automatically make the companies responsible for all content on their site and they will thus have to comply with certain rules and regulations including:

• They will have to pay a tax of €500
• Content considered inappropriate for children will have to be restricted to certain times of the day
• Corrections will have to be made within 48 hours, when requested by any person or group who feels they have been slandered or victimised on a video
• The company will be held responsible for all content on the site.

YouTube Would Need To Change Functionality

As far as the restriction of content according to time is considered, YouTube’s current configuration would make this impossible to control. Since YouTube supplies video on demand, unlike conventional TV broadcasters that can schedule their programmes as required, YouTube cannot normally control when users request a video.

In order to comply with the new regulation, YouTube would have to build new functionality that would make requested content unavailable before the watershed hour if it is considered to be inappropriate for minors.

Impossible Task

Also, as far as editorial content and control are concerned, videos are uploaded on YouTube independently by individuals, and YouTube does not have any control over this content. An estimated 24 hours of video footage are uploaded on the site every minute, making it practically impossible for YouTube to censor or control all of the content even if they wanted to.

Rumour has it that these rules have been imposed for the convenience of the Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, who owns several large TV networks in Italy, and currently has a €500 million law suit going on against YouTube with respect to copyrighted content.

Google’s Options

YouTube’s parent company, Google, has a couple of options available to them under the circumstances. They can block all IP addresses from Italy and redirect users to use some other proxy address. Alternatively, they could do what they did a while ago in China, and withdraw their operations completely from Italy.

If the latter were to happen, the Italian public would raise a hue and cry and demand that these rules be withdrawn.

TrueView ads will allow viewers to not only choose whether or not they want to watch an ad, but also when they want to watch it.

The best part of this format, for advertisers is that they will be charged only when the viewer chooses to actually see the ad, and not when the ad impression is served. This cost-per-video-view ad model is good for advertisers as they will reach their target audience and only pay when their ad is watched.

Users will also benefit from the new format as it allows them to skip through ads that don’t interest them.

Just Like TV, But Better

Traditional television advertising works in the same way – users view ads before and during the content they’re interested in. However, unlike traditional TV ads, which must be endured by all viewers or can be walked (or channel surfed) away from,  TrueView ads will be skippable and will be priced per actual view only.

With the TrueView Video Ads – In Stream, which play as a pre roll or post roll ad along with a video, the viewer can select or skip a video ad after watching it for 5 seconds, and the advertiser is charged only if the ad has been watched fully or for 30 seconds whichever is shorter.

YouTube has already been experimenting with this ad format in their Promoted Videos advertising service too. They have found that users choose to see those ads that are relevant and interesting to them.

TrueView ad playing on YouTube

Advertisers will be able to collect data about the type of audience that shows interest in their ads. This will help them not only target future ad campaigns better, but also to align products to their target audience.

Google has also tested this system over a large audience and the results indicate a view-through rate between 20-70%. This means that between 20-70% of users have chosen to view the ad during the trial stages, which is an adequate response. This ad format was also tried during the recent U.S. mid term elections and the campaigns were fairly successful.

Hulu also offers viewers a similar choice – to watch or skip an ad. Hulu.com offers it in an InSlate format where users can watch one ad out of several or take a regular commercial break.

At present this ad format is available only in the U.S. and Canada and for limited testing in the U.K.

The study, which received responses from over 16,000 participants, found that 75% of users access m.youtube.com primarily through mobile and 70% of them report that they access YouTube Mobile at least once a day. 58% of users spend at least 20 minutes per session on YouTube Mobile and 38% of users feel that YouTube Mobile is fast replacing desktop YouTube usage.

Another report, which was published by Nielsen, shows that YouTube Mobile has now turned into the number one mobile video viewing site in the U.S. with over 7.1 MM monthly unique users.

The growing usage of the mobile to access YouTube is, of course, a good thing for YouTube Mobile, but it is also beneficial to advertisers as they can now reach a much larger audience if they advertise on m.youtbe.com.

As an additional incentive to attract advertisers, YouTube Mobile has now made it possible for advertisers to purchase a daily roadblock running across all available ad impressions for a 24-hour period. The ads run on the search, browse and home page of the mobile website. Campaigns for a variety of products, ranging from entertainment and retail to auto and consumer packaged goods have been successful on YouTube Mobile. Advertisers often run the roadblock to coincide with a product launch or a sales event.

Among the reasons for the growing use of the mobile to access YouTube, could be the fact that the newer range of handsets and Wi-Fi services now available provide a better user experience for video viewing, with better network speeds. Also, the cost of viewing or downloading videos on the mobile has come down considerably compared to earlier, thanks to the availability of better data plans.

A similar service was made available by AdMob for the Apple iPhone platform almost a year ago.

Google’s mobile advertising blog explains that the addition of these rich media interstitial units to Android will be an exciting opportunity for mobile advertisers to reach a larger audience.

If this feature can just succeed in getting users to click on the ad more often, it could help in the development of more free apps. For instance, when the game Angry Birds was first introduced on the iPhone and iPad, it was a paid app. But later, when it was introduced on Android, it was free along with some ads, as its developers found that they could make more money through advertising rather than by just selling the game. Now, users get a free game that is paid for by ads.

Android video ad on Angry Birds game. Image courtesy of Google

So far, mobile ads have mostly been in the form of text and banners, which do not generate a lot of curiosity from users. However, the new interactive ads could be more interesting.

Google stated that 200,000 new Android connections are now activated on a daily basis, as compared to only 60,000 last February. The number of apps available has also doubled since last May and is now at 100,000.

It will now be possible for advertisers to reach users of the iPhone as well as Android devices through one single platform.

The race to 1 billion viewers has finally come to an end, and Lady Gaga has emerged the winner. She hit the 1 billion mark on Sunday 24th October, while Justin Bieber had reached 962,726,797 views, according to reports from Famecount.

To announce this victory, Lady Gaga sent out a tweet saying, “We reached 1 billion views on YouTube little monsters! If we stick together we can do anything. I dub u kings and queens of YouTube! Unite!”

Though the race was quite closely run, sources had predicted that Lady Gaga was likely to reach the landmark first around the 20th of October, while Justin would get there around the 1st of November.

In spite of this so called victory by Lady Gaga, fans of Justin Bieber still consider him to be the “King” of YouTube as his song, ‘Baby’ is the most viewed video of all time on YouTube, with over 366 million views.

Lady Gaga had set up her YouTube account in May 2009, which means that to reach the 1 billion mark on the 24th of October 2010, over 21 people watched one of her videos on YouTube every second.

She is also the most followed person on Twitter, with about 7 million followers, while Justin Bieber and Britney Spears both have just over 6 million followers. Lady Gaga was also the first living person to have 10 million fans on Facebook.

A new site, called Demo Slam, was officially announced yesterday. The site hosts a competition of sorts, where two tech demos are pitted against each other, and Google will decide which one is better, based on a combination of user votes and video views.

www.demoslam.com

It is hoped that after seeing the initial tech demos seeded by Google, users will be inspired to develop their own tech demos on any subject and these demos may be more interesting to the average user when placed in such a setting.

In order to encourage users to see these demos, Google will conduct a competition each week, on a given subject.

Google’s first Demo Slam – Rushmore by Slam Force One v Chubby bunny by The Paul Brothers

Users can create a tech demo, upload the video on YouTube and submit their entries to the Demo Slam website, where selected demos will have the chance to compete against others and potentially earn more acclaim than they would have without Google’s help. Google wants these uploaded tech demos to be seen by as many people as possible so that they become aware of all the latest technology being made available to them by Google.

Submitting tech demos to Google Demo Slam

Users will be allowed to vote for their favourite videos during the weekly demo slam competition and a Demo Slam Champ will be selected every week.

While the format is cool and could potentially help push a few tech ideas further than they would have gone on their own steam, this doesn’t seem to be one for the masses. Have the Googlers at Mountain View run out of ideas or is this just the way for a few geeks to kill boredom?

Google TV allows users to access the Web as well as their regular television programmes on a regular television set. The new product not only allows users to watch TV programmes, but also other content that has been developed by creators, programmers, developers and advertisers for bigger screens.

Users can navigate to thousands of websites to watch their favourite videos, view photos, chat with friends, watch movies and play games on their TV screens. They can also choose from a wide variety of applications that are currently being developed specifically for Google TV.

Apps for Google TV

One of the main reasons why Google has concentrated their efforts towards TV is the fact that the medium is used by an estimated 5 billion people worldwide, which is far more than the number of people using mobile phones or computers.

Many of Google’s existing partners are developing new ways to monetise their service offerings through this new medium. Some of these partners include:

• Turner Broadcasting – are optimising their popular channels including TBS, TNT and CNN
• NBC Universal – working on CNBC Real-Time to allow users to follow financial news and keep tabs on the stock market
• HBO – developing HBOGO, which will allow users to access HBO content, at their convenience, through an enhanced website for Google TV
• NBA – developed an application, NBA Game Time, to allow users to follow game scores in real-time and also view highlights at their convenience in HD.

Sites such as Amazon Video On Demand and Netflix also offer thousands of movies for streaming rental or purchase to download through Google TV. Technology and media companies such as The New York Times, USA Today, Napster and VEVO are also optimising their content for TV.

A newly launched website provides information about the new features and applications available on Google TV:
www.google.com/tv

Google TV can be accessed on any ordinary television set via a set-top box, similar to the device cable TV companies provide or via special new television sets that already have the functionality in-built and are due for launch later this year. Users will be able to purchase the Google TV set-top box from Logitech, along with a number of accessories such as remote controls and video / Web cameras.

Introducing Sony Internet TV with Google TV

Talking To Your TV

Instead of a remote control, users will also be able to control their Google TV sets through any Android mobile phone or iPhone. They will also be able to use voice search functionality, which means we might soon find scores of people talking to their television sets!

Users will be able to move between TV and the Web easily and will also be able to watch both simultaneously.

Live programming on YouTube will be available only to the four selected media partners, and not to individual users. These partners are:

• Rocketboom – a news and entertainment channel
• Young Hollywood – a celebrity and lifestyle programming channel
• Howcast – an instructional video service
• BarelyPolitical – Next New Networks’ political satire channel

Live streaming on BarelyPolitical’s YouTube channel

While YouTube has experimented with streaming live video in the past, such as on the occasion of U.S. President Obama’s first State of the Union address and the Indian Premier League cricket matches these were exceptional instances. This time, YouTube will be testing a new technology that will allow their partners to stream live videos continuously over an extended period of time.

The new service will eventually allow users to chat and interact with broadcasters and other users directly, even as they watch the video. They will only require a webcam or external USB / Firewire camera to do so.

Live streaming and live comments tested on YouTube

While this development from Google may be seen as a move to check Facebook, which has been eating into YouTube’s video market share, it will also lead to competition with other live streaming sites like Justin.tv, Ustream and Livestream.

YouTube has not yet set a date by which live streaming will be available to the general public. However, it is believed that the live streaming facility will be limited to professionally content producers only. The service is not likely to be extended to all individual users.

According to YouTube officials, advertisers have requested the addition of such a feature often. This feature is almost the reverse of the above feature, as it will allow advertisers to decide which videos or channels their ads should not be shown on.

This new feature will help advertisers to better target their ad campaigns to a select audience, thus giving them better value for money through a higher Click-through rate.

YouTube senior product manager Baljeet Singh says this feature will give more control to advertisers by allowing them to decide which videos and channels their ad should not appear on.

In the past advertisers had to depend on YouTube’s own marketing services to decide which ad should be shown at which juncture.

For instance if someone is advertising a vegan product, they would obviously not like to show their ad on a TV show or channel which concentrates mostly on meat products.

Even is the advertiser feels that a certain type of audience is inappropriate for his product, thus giving him a low conversion rate, he can optimize the campaign to suit his requirements.

It is believed that users will be charged at the rate of about $5 per movie which they stream.

Google used to offer a video on demand service through Google Video, but that has been discontinued since 2007, and users have been expecting a similar service to be restarted. Google has been considering this move since April 2009, when they announced that they would start a payment mechanism for their video sharing site YouTube. The talks with the studios have however warmed up in recent weeks. YouTube has already run a test of this service in January this year with the Sundance Film Festival

Once the service actually starts, Google will be in direct competition with both Apple and Netflix, as it has been reported that Apple is already working on a new digital video service which may be available on the next generation of the Apple TV.

In the meanwhile Netflix has already made a five year deal with companies like Paramount, MGM and Lionsgate for about $1 billion.

Walt Disney, News Corp and NBC Universal also have an online video service called Hulu which is considering an Initial Public Offering of $2 billion.

While the sources for this information have not been revealed by the Financial Times, it is believed to have come from people who would know about such developments. A YouTube representative says, “We have nothing to announce at this time.”

Franklin is a graduate from the Duke and Columbia Universities in the fields of biology and psychology. She now works as a consultant.

When she was notified about the videos and derogatory comments posted by three persons or a person using three different aliases, she decided to face matters head on.

Her attorney, David Fish says, “People hide behind these shields and think they can just post anything. Hopefully, we can put a stop to this.”

The videos were posted last year by users Joebloom08, JimmyJean008 and Greyspector09. They have used clips of a small movie she acted in without authorisation and also used words like “whore” to describe her.

By suing Google, Franklin wants to pressurise the company to disclose details such as the name and address of the person who has posted these videos, so that this sort of thing does not happen again.

In fact, her lawyer says that she has a “pretty good idea” about who the person is, but she obviously needs some proof in order to implicate him in court.

The same tactic has been used in the past by model Liskula Cohen. There has been no comment from Google on the matter. However, one of the offending accounts has been closed and all videos have been deleted from the other two.

Cyber-bully JimmyJean008′s YouTube profile

One of the reasons for the irritation is the fact that more often than not, the ad is of absolutely no relevance or interest to the user, and the user then feels that being forced to watch it is a waste of time.

A few companies have now decided to try and rectify the situation by offering users a choice. Users on certain websites will now be able to select the ad they would prefer to watch from a choice of 3 or more ads, thus letting them see the ad that they have decided would be most interesting to them at that point in time.

While helping users, this option also has the added advantage of being beneficial to advertisers. Agencies and brands will improve their consumer targeting, thus increasing the possibility of making a sale, which is the ultimate bottom-line for a marketer.

The new tool that facilitates such ad delivery is called ASq. It will be functional by next month.

Microsoft, Yahoo!, Hulu, CBS and AOL have already decided to use ASq, while others such as YouTube are still weighing the pros and cons.

ASq’s new concept in video advertising is appreciated by most. However, there are those who disagree with the concept. Richard Wheaton of Ogilvy & Mather believes that unless users get to know about certain products and services, they would never be able to make use of them. ASq will restrict the exposure of such products from users, thus defeating the very purpose of advertising.

On the other hand, Uyenco Shatto, global research director at Microsoft Advertising says, “We’re getting smarter about what makes more impactful advertising. The big ‘aha’ here is understanding what makes a viewer choose a particular ad.”

ASq is expected to further improve the market value of the global video ad market, which is already $3.1 billion. The global video ad spend which was $2.2 billion in 2009 is expected to go up to $11.3 billion by 2014.

In order to simplify their users lives, YouTube recently introduced a new feature known as YouTube Leanback. As the name obviously suggests, this feature allows users to lean back and enjoy videos with a minimal amount of maneuvering.

YouTube Leanback

To use this facility, users will initially have to feed in certain details, like settings and preferences. They also have to feed 8in the required content, from the subscriptions. They can also access videos which their friends are sharing on Facebook if their YouTube and Facebook accounts are connected.

Once this is done, videos of the user’s interest will start playing as soon as the user opens the site. It is also possible to watch things like news and other entertainment programmes.

To select the required video, the user has to use the scroll keys on the keyboard, thus obliterating the need for the mouse. Each time the user navigates to the button he requires, he has also to click the ‘Enter’ key. The space bar of the keyboard functions as the ‘Pause’ and ‘Play’ key.

Unfortunately, the YouTube Leanback feature does not provide any keys with which to control the volume of the video. For that, one needs to use the controls on the system or the speakers.

Other than that one missing feature, watching videos with the YouTube Leanback feature has become similar to watching TV as one can easily use a wireless keyboard to navigate with. YouTube refers to this as the ’10 foot experience’.

Watching a stream of videos on YouTube Leanback

The most surprising thing about YouTube Leanback is that it eliminates the need for users to search, which goes against all of Google’s business principles!

In fact, as of now, YouTube Mobile receives over 100 million video playbacks daily, which is about the same number of playbacks, which YouTube.com used to get in 2006 when they joined Google.

When YouTube Mobile was launched in 2007, it had only about 1,000 videos available on the mobile site. There were also several limitations in the site, mobile browsers and the hardware then available, thus preventing the YouTube Mobile from being as good as the YouTube.com experience.

YouTube has, however, been working hard to constantly update and improve their mobile site to provide better features tot heir users.

They have recently updated the site yet again, making it much faster than before. The new interface also has more touch friendly features. It also now has most of the features and functionality available on YouTube.com such as search query suggestions, the ability to create playlists etc. It also allows users to put in marks such as ‘favourites’ ‘like’ ‘unlike’ etc. directly from the mobile handset.

YouTube also intends to henceforth update YouTube Mobile every time they update YouTube.com.

These features have only been launched in English for now, but other languages should follow shortly.

“I Gotta Feeling” was released by the band in the beginning of June last year, was at the top of the charts for 2 weeks and then continued to remain in the top 40 for a total of 33 weeks.

The Black Eyed Peas also hold the record for the maximum number of downloads by a single group – a total of 3.3 million, in the U.K.

Martin Talbot, Managing Director of The Official UK Charts Company, says that this is a very significant milestone. While the industry started recognising the importance of downloads as far back as 2005, by counting them as part of the singles charts, this is the first time that a song has actually been legally downloaded so many times.

Initially, downloads were counted only after a CD was made physically available in shops. One year later, the rules were changed, and downloads started getting counted even without a CD release.

Now, 98% of all singles’ sales are through downloads. However, according to record company executives, the easy availability of downloads is only adding to the problem of online piracy, which results in the loss of millions of pounds of revenue to the record companies every year.

While this might be mixed news to the record company, it definitely marks a continued change in the way the U.K. public consumes media. Digital definitely seems to be the way forward. The record companies need to catch up with the rest of the business world and start building a more digital media friendly business model.

YouTube Video Editor

When logged in users start the online video editor, they see a collection of their recent videos in a panel on the left. The user can then select a video and add it to the timeline to edit it.

Editing videos on YouTube does not allow users to do anything fancy. The service simply enables combining different videos that have already been uploaded to create a new, longer mashup video, trimming the beginning, middle or end of any video to make it shorter or changing the video’s soundtrack.

Original video soundtrack can be replaced with any audio sample in Google’s Audio Swap library. An advantage of this feature could be that it might prevent users from inadvertantly violating copyright law.

Other minor advantages include giving users the ability to create new videos without bothering about file formats and eliminating the need to install any special software for basic video editing functions.

Windows Movie Maker, a programme that ships for free with most Windows systems, already includes all of these features and a lot more. The problem with Windows Movie Maker is simply that most users don’t know about its existence or its capabilities.

The best thing about YouTube’s video editor is just the fact that it allows editing within the cloud, on the same site, rather than requiring users to modify content offline.

Creating a mash-up on YouTube Video Editor

Google TV

The biggest single announcement at Google I/O was probably the launch of Google TV, which is an open platform built on Android and meant to run on the Google Chrome browser.

Google TV will enable users to access the shows they want to, when they want to, on their television screens. Google TV features integrated search to allow users to find relevant content across channel listings, DVR, and the Internet, as well as a picture-in-picture layout to access multiple windows simultaneously. With this service, Google undoubtedly has its eyes set on the $70 billion U.S. TV advertising market. Google TV enabled devices will go on sale in autumn 2010.

www.google.com/tv

Clicker TV

Google also introduced Clicker TV, which is basically a TV guide that allows users to find programmes by scrolling through the options with a remote control or arrow keys on a keyboard. The Clicker TV website can work on any browser and will be a free service in the U.S.

Android 2.2 (Froyo)

Android 2.2, which has been nicknamed Froyo (from Frozen Yoghurt), was also announced at the event. The new version of the platform will be much faster, will have new enterprise features such as Exchange calendar synchronisation and will include portable hotspot functionality, the ability for apps to participate in device messaging and data backup and will support Adobe Flash.

Google Wave

Google Wave has been brought out of beta and is now available to everyone. It is supposed to now be much faster and easier to use than before.

Chrome Web Store

The Chrome Web Store is scheduled for launch later this year and will be an open marketplace for Web apps. Google Chrome and the Chrome Web Store will support installable web apps. Applications from the Chrome Web Store will allow users to install their favorite web apps. An installed web app could be separated visually from other tabs, could integrate better with the operating system and could be granted increased permissions.

chrome.google.com/webstore

Storage for Developers

Google Storage for Developers, a new service also announced at the I/O event, is a RESTful cloud service built on Google’s storage and networking infrastructure. With the API, developers can connect their applications to reliable cloud-based storage that is replicated across several U.S. data centres. This service is being previewed with only a few developers initially.

According to Jessica Vascellaro of The Wall Street Journal, the new search service will run on set-top boxes and will allow users to search for TV shows and Web content, including YouTube videos.

Dish Network, which is currently the second largest satellite TV provider in the U.S., will allow Google to offer TV searches of a very high quality to its viewers. In return, Google will be able to drive more advertising revenues as subscribers are bound to see its display ads while conducting searches.

The service will make use of some features from Google’s Android Operating System. New set-top boxes will have to be loaded with Google software and Dish Network subscribers will be able to search content and even create their own show line up or playlist using a keyboard.

The service is already being tested by families of Google employees.

Studies have shown that more and more users are interested in viewing online content on their large-screen TV sets. Some companies like Apple, Yahoo! and Microsoft already offer similar services.

One hurdle that Google will have to overcome is that users will need new set-top boxes, and they may not want to spend money on them. Google will have to devise some enticing offers to encourage users to get a new set-top boxes.

According to Mahaney’s estimates, YouTube will generate about $945 million this year, of which $614 million will be net revenue or profit. He further expects that the largest online video site will continue to grow and will generate over $1.1 billion next year, of which over $700 million will be net profit.

Mahaney explains that he has arrived at these figures by applying the same revenue-to-page view ratio on the stats available for YouTube that fellow video sharing site, MySpace, uses.

Patrick Walker, who is a director of video partnerships for Google and YouTube, also believes that YouTube is doing pretty well for itself. According to him, the fact that YouTube has the ability to make lots of users see its ads makes the site inherently very profitable. Also, the fact that they help to sell a lot of CDs and DVDs is very helpful to build a marketing case for YouTube.

Google, as usual, has not yet made any official comment on the matter.

With the help of this new feature, users can search for keywords in the Closed Captions that are available with videos. In essence, this means that Hulu viewers can now search for particular scenes in a movie or television show that comes with closed captions.

Captions Search results include a preview of the section of the video containing the keyword, which can be seen by hovering over the segment featuring the search term. One can also see that clip in full size by clicking on the search result’s text.

Hulu Captions Search is currently avalaible in Hulu Labs or through the “Captions” tab on any video that has been provided with closed captions.

Another interesting feature of Captions Search is the heat map. This feature provides a graphical representation of the viewer interest generated during various stages of the show. A large range of viewer behaviours have been assessed to generate this graph, and it appears at the top of the video. This heat map can also be used to navigate directly to a particular captioned section of the show.

The features are still in the beta phase, but are likely to go live pretty soon.

Preview of Captions Search on Hulu

Captions will be automatically generated through the voice recognition algorithm that is used on Google Voice. The technology is known as Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) technology and can be pretty accurate for some cases.

In many cases, though, the automatic captions result in some rather funny output, even for videos by Google’s own employees. This could lead to some very confused users if they relied solely on automated captions!

Funny Automated Captions On YouTube

In order to use automated captions, a user has must click on the upward arrow button on the bottom-right corner of the video control bar and click on ‘Transcribe Audio’ from the captions (CC) menu.

It is also be possible to translate the captions into several languages.

While this will greatly improve YouTube’s accessibility and benefit people who have difficulties hearing, the translation facility will also help people who do not understand the original language used in the video.

Another feature that is being simultaneously introduced is auto-timing for subtitles. If all the words used in the video are provided in a text file, Google will automatically associate the timing of each caption alongside the video timeline.

In other words, the text of the video will be transcribed. This transcript can obviously be indexed and crawled, thus helping users with search engine optimisation of video content.

The new captioning features will therefore eventually allow users to search for a video based on keywords used in the video script.

The automatic caption feature is already available on most educational and Google-owned channels. Automatic timing is now available on all newly uploaded videos on YouTube.

Believe it or not, this is already happening!

Video ad loading in a magazine

The first video ads in the print media were published last month in an American magazine, Entertainment Weekly.

A full-page cardboard insert was placed within the magazine containing a small screen, which advertised the diet drink Pepsi Max, and also had trailers of shows on the U.S. television network, CBS. As if that is not sufficient, the insert also contained built-in speakers for the user to listen to the ads.

This amazing feat has been achieved by inserting a small chip in the cardboard page within the magazine. The chip gets activated automatically when the concerned page is opened. It works in a manner similar to a singing greeting card.

The screen is about the size of a mobile phone’s display screen, contains rechargeable batteries and can carry up to 40 minutes of content.

While the invention is quite interesting to say the least, some users do not like it as it makes the magazine quite bulky and the cardboard insert makes it impossible to fold the magazine. It also makes it quite difficult to flick through the pages of the magazine.

Another drawback is that once the page is opened, it takes several seconds for the video to load and start, which could result in users losing interest.

Copies of the magazine have been sent out to several subscribers in New York and Los Angeles.

Americhip, the company that manufactures these screens, has estimated that each screen would cost about $20. The novelty of this medium, though, could easily justify the additional advertiser expense.

Oonce this form of advertising gains greater acceptance, it could drive the manufacturing costs down, but could also result in user apathy or even frustration at technology turning a quiet few minutes spent reading a magazine into a noisy, flashy flurry of images.

Talks are still reported to be in extremely early stages, so there is no date set as yet for starting the service. In fact, it may never even materialize.

Apple’s iTunes Store, which has such a service in place, charges users $3.95 per movie. It is expected that YouTube would be looking at a similar figure.

If the deal does come through, it will be a first for YouTube, in that it will be the first time that they will charge their viewers to access content.

In spite of being one of the most popular websites, YouTube has never been financially successful. Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, has admitted that the site has not lived up to its revenue expectations. Last April, he had said that YouTube would try out various ways of monetisation, including micropayments and subscription models.

YouTube even started allowing ad sales on videos from big media companies, on a revenue sharing basis with the producers, in an attempt to capitalise on the TV ad budgets that already are allocated for these companies.

If talks with some of Hollywood’s studios do succeed, YouTube will start earning some revenue through this new channel.

Discussions were started with Warner Bros. The two companies had reached an agreement in the past to allow clips from Warner Bros. TV shows to feature on YouTube, but so far they have not allowed airing of full episodes on the site.

YouTube is also in talks with Sony, Lion’s Gate and MGM. Though Walt Disney and Fox, who are very particular about their copyrights, have not yet come to the discussion table.

Paramount Movies has raised objections to YouTube’s proposals. This was to be expected as Paramount’s parent company, Viacom, is involved in a law suit against Google. The suit which is on its way to trial, for $1 billion in damages, is based on Viacom’s allegation that Google allowed the viewing of pirated TV shows and other material on YouTube. If YouTube hopes to deal with them in the near future, Google will have to come to an amicable settlement with Viacom first.

While the studios have not been too concerned about pirated TV shows, movies are a different matter altogether.

However, the studios could also be interested in forging a deal with YouTube as DVD sales have dropped quite significantly in recent months and such a deal could be one way of making up for the losses thus incurred.

It so happened that Jill Peterson and Kevin Heinz from Minnesota, who were due to be united in holy matrimony, wanted to have an unusual wedding party.

They decided that the bride, the groom and all of their bridesmaids and best men should dance to the song ‘Forever’ by Chris Brown in the church. This unusual entrance was video taped and put up on YouTube, where it has become wildly popular.

So far, the “Forver wedding video” has been viewed by more than 12 million viewers, in just over a week, making it the most viewed and most discussed video on YouTube, globally.

Rather than pull the video, or sue Google for copyright infringement, Chris Brown’s record company allowed the music to be used and InVideo Ads were placed to make it possible for users to buy the song from Amazon or iTunes.

A lot of users have responded positively to this offer, earning YouTube, Amazon and Apple a good amount of money.

The record company, Sony, and Chris Brown have also made a pretty penny, not to mention the badly needed positive publicity for Chris Brown that they have earned by not suing the couple for copyright infringement (a first for the music industry?).

Searches for ‘chris brown forever’ over the past 90 days

While all of these beneficiaries have the young couple to thank for the unexpected bounty, the couple has not made a penny out of their own video. They were invited to appear on the Today Show in New York, along with all their guests. They are also using all this publicity to drive donations to the Sheila Wellstone Institute for violence prevention.

Hopefully this incident will be an eye-opener for video sites and music owners and show them that they can make money by other means than prosecuting consumers for sharing and downloading music.

The Forever Wedding Video

After a very encouraging opening on Friday, with collections of $14.4 million, the rest of the weekend turned out to be something of a damp squib by comparison. While Friday’s collections made observers predict a first weekend collection of around $50 million, the actual takings at the box office amounted to only about $30 million, which is a very big let down, and rather unusual.

Trade analysts and others from the field, are suggesting that the popular micro-blogging site Twitter caused the downfall of the movie. It is believed that reviews sent out on the social platform could have discouraged prospective viewers from going to see the movie.

While this may certainly be true to an extent, one needs to evaluate objectively why the tweets sent out were so largely negative in the first place.

Could it be possible that the movie was really not what the audiences may have expected, and therefore it did not do well?

The article on Time.com indicated that the second Transformers movie and Ice Age both performed very well during the same time frame, in spite of both being in their second week.

The trend for Bruno on Twitter, seen above, shows a definite spike on Saturday, with Bruno-related tweets accounting for 0.71% of all tweets, followed by a steady descent. The same pattern was seen a week earlier, for Transformers, albeit with a much higher peak – 2.13% of all tweets – followed by a sharper decline in discussions, as seen below.

Comparing Twitter streams for Bruno and Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen, both have equal numbers of positive and negative reviews today.

However, the real reason becomes more obvious when we compare the US and UK markets. Tweets from the UK are largely positive, which probably reflects its success at the UK box office – 2nd biggest opening ever for an 18+ movie – whereas tweets from the USA focus on the gay content and the sexual obscenities.

Cultural differences, especially rampant homophobia in the USA, are probably a big factor that could explain why the movie is faring poorly in the USA. Another factor could be that the movie is just plain bad. To be fair, though, it is certainly possible that the existance of Twitter allowed viewers who could not stomach the flamboyant homosexual fashion designer to spread their views faster than normally would have been possible.

Bing will now be used to power the new Quick Add feature on Hotmail. This essentially means that users can now search Bing from within Hotmail and add information from the search results directly into their email body.

Details about movie listings, images, videos, maps, restaurant reviews and many more info bytes can be searched and added directly into outgoing email messages, as can be seen in the example below:

The procedure to do this is actually quite simple.

The user first has to open up a new message page, by clicking on ‘New’. Then selects a category from the ‘Quick Add’ column, which can be found on the right hand side of the page. After that, users can select what sort of results they are looking for (image, video) and then search in the Bing search box. Bing returns the top 10 results within the same page. More results can be viewed in a new window. Lastly, clicking ‘Insert’ on the relevant result will add it in the message body where the cursor was placed.

One shortcoming of this facility is that it lists only a few search results. Those looking for more detailed search results, have to go over to Bing, and then it is not so easy to add the required result into the Hotmail message.

At present the Quick Add feature is available only in select locations like Australia, Canada, China, India and of course in the U.S. and U.K.

These pre-roll ads are run around TV shows and clips on their site.

To begin with they have tied up with their existing partners Channel 4, BBC Worldwide, National Geographic, ITN and Discovery Networks as reported in ‘The Guardian’.

The broadcasters who accept this scheme will be eligible for a revenue sharing partnership with YouTube. In the past these partners were earning revenue only from the display ads and in-video format.

Some advertisers such as Nissan, Renault, Warner Brothers, Match.com and Activision have already tied up with YouTube for this service, and Channel 4 was the first among them to run the pre-roll ads to promote the comedy ‘The Hangover’. The pre-roll ads will be run for 15 to 30 seconds, and will be run on a CPM basis.

According to Suveer Kothari, Head of YouTube U.K. YouTube has been trying to maintain a balance between the demands of their users who want free but entertaining and professional content on the web, against the demands of premium content owners, who obviously want to monetize their content on the one hand, and the demands of their advertisers who want more premium content to showcase their TV creative against on the other hand.

He believes this service will help them to attain that balance.

YouTube RealTime shows up as a bar on the bottom of all pages on the site for users who are logged in and participating in the beta test. Not only can participating users see which of their friends are online, but they can also see which videos those friends are watching, and what they think about the videos, based on the comments posted by those friends.

Screenshot of RalTime toolbar showing friends’ video views

The first button on the toolbar indicates that RealTime sharing is activated. The service can be turned off so that users share only videos they wish to. Adjacent to this is a button that is enabled when the user watches a video. Clicking on the button shows a list of other users viewing the same video.

An ‘Online Friends’ button shows a list of friends currently logged into YouTube. The last button, a little bell with a number beside it

During the closed testing period each user can invite up to 25 online friends to try RealTime and share their viewing experiences. While this limits the number of users who can trial the service, it is gradually expanding, as each invitee is given 25 invites to distribute further. Google had used a similar trial invitation system when Gmail was first launched.

A lot of YouTube users go to the site without any specific video in mind. They could be particularly interested in finding out what their friends are viewing and then sharing these videos with other friends. The added video views could generate more ad revenue for YouTube and its advertisers.

This is not the only change coming to YouTube. The video sharing site recently unveiled two new sections featuring full-length movies and TV shows and a limited number of users are also trialling a new channel layout.

Sample new channel layout on YouTube

According to the Google AdSense blog, the AdSense video unit, which enables publishers to show YouTube content and ads on their pages, on a revenue sharing basis, has not performed as well as it was expected to do, and Google will discontinue the service at the end of this month.

Publishers who wish to continue publishing video content from YouTube can do so directly through YouTube.com, but they will not earn any revenue for this.

Video ads will remain functional and will continue to appear on AdSense-enabled pages of publishers who enable the the image ads option.

Google will continue to accept ads from registered publishers until the end of this month (April). New publishers will no longer be able to incorporate video units on their sites.

While Google says they are taking this step to better focus on other opportunities, to help their publishers earn better, it seems suspiciously like yet another move to beat the recession.

Only last month Search Engine Round Table had pointed out that AdSense publishers were upset and complained on two separate AdSense forum threads that their sites were generating very little revenue from AdSense video units. Some of the comments posted on the AdSense forum were:

“My revenue is down more than 50%. There were people who were expecting to earn $200 in January and instead earned $80. I was expecting $1000-$2000 and earned a little over $80.”

“I had $67 in Content Host earnings (63,600 views/1000 clicks) and only $17 in YouTube earnings… sheesh”

One reason for this poor performance could be the current economy. Another could be the fact that it is difficult to target ads consistently based on videos.

It is relevant to note that Google is struggling to monetise YouTube, and this could be the first sign that Google is accepting the fact that it might never be as successful with video advertising as it is with search.

Director of video partnerships at YouTube, Patrick Walker, told the BBC that the two sides were still in talks but the terms of the agreement were priced at a rate that was not sustainable.

At present, UK users who try to view music videos on YouTube just see an error message saying “This video is not available in your country.”

Google claims the PRS asked YouTube to pay a far higher amount than before, and executives at YouTube think this rate is not feasible. Walker says “YouTube cannot be expected to engage in a business in which it loses money every time a music video is played”.

The online video giant also blames the PRS for lack of transparency as they refuse to specify which songs would be included in the said license.

Steve Porter, head of PRS, on the other hand, says he is shocked and outraged by YouTube’s decision in the middle of discussions. He says that YouTube’s decision punishes British consumers and song writers. PRS says YouTube wants to pay significantly less than at present to music writers in spite of growth in their viewership.

While both sides are hurling allegations at each other, the Music Publishers Association has urged YouTube to reconsider their decision.

Other sites like Pandora.com and MySpace U.K. have also run into trouble getting licenses in the U.K. recently. YouTube, however, calims to have very strong relationships with 3 out of 4 major record labels and several independent ones. They say they will continue to seek partnerships that will benefit music publishers, music labels and artists.

The music industry remains one of the few major vertical that has managed to continue to operate as it did before the dot.com era, and continues to show much resistance to change. The advent of mp3.com and the ongoing drop in CD sales don’t seem to deter them or push them to change their business model.

Users may start uploading videos illegally if they are not allowed access to them legally. If that happens all parties would be the losers.

The current generation of youth are growing up on digital music, and seem to be accustomed to paying nothing for digital services and products such as digital music. Most of them don’t even think twice about the implication that music piracy is akin to theft.

If record companies continue to dig their heels in the sand and not give up their current business model, they are likely to fall spectacularly in the future, as artists find other ways to reach audiences and listeners find cost-effective means to hear their favourite singers without making record labels richer in the process.

The offensive video is a 3-minute mobile phone video, which had been posted on YouTube in 2006. In this video, a boy with Down’s syndrome was being teased by his classmates in Turin.

People found this video objectionable and complained about it, following which Google responded by deleting it quickly. The prosecutors, however, felt that that was not enough, as the video should never have been allowed to be displayed.

The executives involved are David Drummond, Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Officer, George Reyes, former Chief Financial Officer, Peter Fleischer, Global Privacy Counsel for Google and Arvind Desikan, previous head of Google Video Europe.

The trial is being held in Milan and the executives may face up to 3 years in jail if found guilty. If that happens, it will not only mean that henceforth privacy laws will have to be taken very seriously, but it could also force a change in the way YouTube functions in Italy and the rest of Europe.

A thorny issue that will have to be reconsidered, as a result of a ruling against the Google executives in this case, will be whether or not Internet companies should screen content submitted by individuals before it is published.

In the United States, copyright laws so far do not punish online services if they respond quickly to complaints. Europe too has similar laws, but they are unclear about applicability to young people and certain private information.

If Google and its executives are held responsible for this video it will have very wide-ranging implications.

Google has said that their sympathies lie with the victim and his family, and they are happy the culprits have been identified due to their video and punished . However prosecuting Google would be like prosecuting mail services for hate mail. Also, holding Google responsible for content posted on their site is an attack on a free and open Internet and hence they will vigorously defend their employees.

The New york Times reports that the first hearing lasted only about five minutes and none of the defendants were present. The next hearing is scheduled for February 18.

For a long time now, YouTube has been engaged in a tussle of sorts with big media companies. These companies feel that YouTube’s policy of allowing users to upload content produced by the media houses is a violation of copyright laws.

Given the fact that YouTube is the most popular online video site, media owners are better off being on YouTube’s side rather than getting into a legal battle with them. However, some companies like Viacom have sued YouTube in the past.

TechCrunch reports that a new proposal from YouTube will allow these content providers to sell ads on YouTube, alongside their own videos. Content owners will obviously be given a share of the revenue thus earned, which should please them and may even induce them to change loyalties from other sites such as Hulu and TV.com, which they currently patronise.

According to Ars Technica, a few companies such as CBS already have such a deal with the Google subsidiary, but it could now be expanded to include others.

YouTube will gain from this arrangement as they will be able to better monetise their content and earn higher revenues than they have been able to do so far. It will also increase their share of media content received from big media partners, which is only 4% at present.

Last but not the least, users who upload various videos including content from larger media companies on YouTube will no longer have to worry about the videos being removed for fear of copyright violations.

It is expected that this service will be launched by the end of the first quarter of 2009.