We Don't Need No Stinking Standards

Who does the ADM think they are coming out with standards?

We don't need standards for downloadable media. Right? We just need to make our content and post it. Right? Advertisers will just find us and they will have some ads that will just magically fit into our content seamlessly. Right? Cause we have great content that people love. Right? Advertisers already know how smart we are and how great our content is so we don't need any media kits either do we? Right?

Come on people we don't need to band together to adopt standards. Big advertising agencies and media buyers should just figure it out for us. They should make it as easy as they can for them to give us their money because we have millions of downloads and those advertising people with their viral video and stealth video campaigns should just make special advertisements for our webisodes because our online videos are so ground breaking, cutting edge and original that we can't deal with standards. Madison Avenue should be bending over backwards for the privilege of giving us $200 CPMs for our online videos cause TV is dead and old media sucks! RIGHT?

Sorry kids. The Television advertising industry doesn't work that way and the online video industry isn't going to work that way either.

Here's the latest standards for online video advertising and downloadable media from the ADM press release. Put your thinking caps on, figure out what works for you and start building out your online video adverting inventory.

We do need to adopt some stinking standards so that advertisers can make a few ads that go everywhere. Don't worry new standards will come along but we have to start somewhere.

And don't forget you can come to a meeting of the ADM August 14 at The New Media Expo 3-5pm (las vegas time exact place TBD). We are still really getting started so we can use your help.


HERE's the Press Release:


Ready, Set, Download: The Association for Downloadable Media Releases
Essential Industry Standards for Consumer Downloaded Content

Trusted Standards to Buy Advertising Across Myriad of Programming

Washington, DC - July 28, 2008 — The Association for Downloadable Media (ADM),
established to focus on best practices for monetizing consumer-downloaded content,
has announced the release of its first ad unit standards and audience measurement
guidelines for industry compliance. The Download Measurement Guidelines and
Advertising Unit Standards are available now at http://www.downloadablemedia.org.

The first of its kind, the ADM audience measurement guidelines reflect a defined
approach to assist advertisers and sponsors of audio and video podcasts, distributed
digital content including web and mobile downloads, with criteria to measure
listener/viewer numbers. The ad unit standards are the first in a series of formats
that content producers can offer to monetize their shows so that buyers can run the
same creative across many individual shows and various networks. Having ad standards
in downloadable media allows media campaigns to scale across hundreds of thousands
of offerings.

“In The Podcast Consumer Revealed 2008 study derived from the Arbitron/Edison
Media Research Internet and Multimedia study - podcast consumers are extremely
attractive advertising targets and the industry is seeing a significant surge in listeners
who knowingly select a program (rather than passively consuming whatever is
available via traditional media), downloading it and potentially moving it to a portable
device. This enhanced level of engagement with the programs and hosts of the shows
they select may translate to an increased credibility and level of trust for the show's
sponsors and advertisers.

The ratified guidelines have been accepted by the ADM Ad Council, a special fourteen-
member interactive advertising agency liaison group, which acts as a sounding board
for the ADM committees. The Ad Council group insures the ADM standards and
guidelines dovetail with prevailing digital advertising best practices.

The Advertising Unit Standards include three kinds of formats - Insertions, Content
Participation and Collateral. The units outlined in the document are the most common
set of existing formats in use today by sponsors and content producers. The ADM has
plans to innovate new formats in the future, but this initial version of the Standards
serves to organize the common set to make it most available to buyers industry wide.

INSERTIONS

Definition: A separate ad file that is attached, inserted, or edited into an audio or
video podcast.

Time: Up to :10, :15, 30 or :60 seconds
Location: Pre-roll; mid-roll; post-roll

CONTENT PARTICIPATION

Definition: When an advertiser's message is included as part of the audio or video
podcast content.

Examples:
1. Underwritten Sponsorship
2. Scripted Live Read
3. Talking Points
4. Host Endorsements
5. Product Placement / Product Discussion
6. Sponsored Interstitials
7. Special Episodes
8. Advertorials / Interviews
9. Infomercials

COLLATERALS

Definition: All the other real estate that a podcaster has that may be included as part
of an advertising or sponsorship package, or as separate items a lá carte.

Examples:
1. Show notes on podcast website
2. ID3 tags in podcast episode file
3. Album Art Cards
4. Link and banner in enhanced audio podcasts
5. Overlays, underlays in video podcasts
6. Web banners, buttons, text links, hyperlinks (using IAB standards)
7. Email sponsorships
8. Press Releases
9. Product sales (CDs, DVDs, merchandise)
10. Signage/Outdoor (for retail)
11. Brochures, flyers

Chair for the Advertising Standards Committee and National Podcasting System
founder and CEO Brian McMahon stated: “The ratified standards encapsulate a long
history of advertisement units that are applicable in the downloadable arena. This
provides publishers, advertisers and agencies with a solid footing and shared
vocabulary for value and monetization opportunity.”

Because there are two ways a content creator can get access to audience data, the
ADM now recognizes two types of effective measurement techniques, Native Server
Measurement or Third Party Measurement. Both are approved by the ADM in providing
accurate data when complying with the standards parameters:

Native Server Measurement (NSM)
The Native Server is the actual end point where the media is hosted. Native
Server Measurement refers to the log files derived from the Native Server. It
may include the amount of data that was transferred in each log entry, and
therefore may provide information to derive more than simple download
statistics.

Third Party Measurement (TPM)
A Third Party server is the intermediary between the Native Server and another
Third Party Server. Third Party Measurement refers to the files measuring the
initial download requests as received by a third party server to be delivered to
the requester. Because the Third Party server is a constant, it may uniformly
measure download statistics across multiple hosting services.

Download Measurement Committee head, Angelo Mandato, CIO of Raw Voice, Inc.
added: “The ADM has worked closely with the very organizations that will embrace
these measurements ensuring they can be easily applied and replicated across the
industry by any creator or aggregator of downloadable media. It is our goal to be the
cornerstone of measurement practices and the just released standards represent only
the beginning of the available opportunity for both the buyer and seller.”

The Association for Downloadable Media is committed to advancing its charter:
creating a landscape favorable to the commercialization of portable media. The ADM’s
focus includes revenue generation from advertising and sponsorships of audio and
video podcasts, (aka vidcasts, or vlogs), and other digital content distributed via RSS,
ATOM, peer-to-peer, mobile devices, downloads from Web sites and other platforms to
come.

About the ADM
The Association for Downloadable Media is focused on providing standards for
advertising and audience measurement for episodic and downloadable media. The
organization’s constituents include individual podcasters, media companies,
publishers, syndication companies and distributors offering downloadable media,
advertising agencies, marketers, technology suppliers, hardware and software
manufacturers of portable media products and services, market research firms and
audience and advertising effectiveness measurement companies. Through our
volunteer membership, we provide leadership in and organization of advertising and
audience measurement standards, research, education and advocacy to all those
involved in portable media (Podcasts/ATOM/RSS media enclosures) across the
Internet, iPods, MP3 players, mobile devices, P2P and other upcoming platforms.
###

Considering the Context

This morning I went to visit TV Week and had a look at their Viral Video page. Today's 3 top viral videos (as calculated on a weekly basis by Nielsen//NetRatings)were:

1. Body Rock - Blogger Perez Hilton boogies to some Ashlee Simpson.

2. Cat Snatch Fever - This cat wants that cake, end of story.

3. Fired Man imitates the Human Torch Johnny Storm.

Then I thought to myself, If I was a media buyer and I came to this high end site called TV Week - a site that I would think would really know what's going on in online video - and I saw the top three videos were all a bunch of foolishness I would move on thinking online video is not ready for the brands I represent because the top content is pretty poor.

Unfortunately we are not yet out of the time of "spectacle." We as online viral video producers need to raise the bar on the viral video content we are creating. The problem that we run into is that normally to raise the bar producers throw more money at the problem and we can't do that yet because we won't see a return on our investment. Instead of doing that we need to throw more creativity at the problem.

How do we create more emotionally compelling content that can compete with Cats, Farts and Crazy Gossip/Celebrity Vloggers like Perez Hilton and still be inviting to advertisers? We need to focus on simple stories that have spectacle and move more that one human emotion. And if we want to make money in online video advertising we need to consider the context in which advertisers and media buyers are going to be sampling our videos and how those videos are going to be viewed within the context of the media outlets that are going to write about them.

Media buyers don't have time to search the net and watch videos the way we all enjoy watching and sharing videos. Media buyers want to get their work done by doing a great job for their clients and then they want to get home and enjoy some down time. They don't want to help video producers. They want to help their careers by doing well for their customers.

If you see advertising on or around an online video think about why the media buyer spent their clients money on that video, who they are reaching with that video and what is the context. Then think how you can do something better for less money.

Time To Build a Market Place

Right now if you are an advertiser or a media buying looking to spend a million dollars in online video and see a return on your investment you might have a hard time spending your money but tomorrow that will change - or at least it will begin to change. Tomorrow the Association of Downloadable Media will be announcing their newly elected leadership.

The next steps for the ADM will be to work with advertisers, and advertising agencies to establish standards to downloadable audio and video.

Once these standards are established advertisers and advertising agency media buyers will know what they can buy and content creators will know what to start calling their advertising inventory. Unfortunately it's going to take some time for all this to happen but I'm sure that one way or another it will all come together just the way that banners, buttons, skyscrapers and cpc text links did for web page advertising over that last ten years.

Groovy Doog

From Ask A Ninja to Weird Al Doogtoons has animated the gamut. His views per episode on Revver are in the tens of thousands on YouTube they are in the hundreds of thousands even millions and he has been one of the most popular podcasts on the iTunes Store for a couple of years.

His videos are evergreen and they will continue to be discovered by new viewers as time goes on. Doogtoons is a great example of long tail content that has built a following and continues to do so.

If Doug Bresler was getting paid the CPM that Cable Networks are getting paid he could be making a living from his work.

Let's all hope that advertising media buyers see Doug's work, the audience demographic he reaches with his online videos and that they offer him a little cash in his hand for the value he provides...if he wants that sort of thing.

PARIS IN JAIL Viral Video beats VH1's Best Rated Show by 2 Millon Views

According to CNN.com "Last October, 7.5 million people tuned in to the second-season finale of "Flavor of Love" to give VH1 its biggest audience ever and adding to the channel's ratings recovery after its overdose of the "Behind the Music" bio series." and according to Youtube.com the PARIS IN JAIL: The Music Video has over 10,019,709 views. Now it did take four months to get those views but Chris Crocker's LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE! had 10 million views in just one week and that beats any VH1 Show. Leave Britney Alone now has over 11 million views.

What do media buyers pay to advertise on a VH1 show that only gets 7.5 million viewers? I don't know (please tell us if you know)but I bet it's a lot more than the creative team behind Paris in Jail got...but not for long.

As soon as online content producers are able to deliver millions of views on a consistent regular schedule and have a market place built where media buyers can find them, adverting dollars will pour in to the online video space.

If you can build your audience now and built out your advertising inventory that you control along with advertising that is a revenue share with a hosting company like Revver.com you will be ready to play ball when the Advertising Media buyers come a buying.