How do you measure your podcast?

There are many online videos that have more views than cable TV shows have viewers but online video producers don’t get paid the advertising dollars that cable TV networks do for ad sales. The above video Lucky Night has had over 4 Million views on Revver and in the Cable TV world that would generate some advertising dollars but online it has made only $62 in advertising revenue.

Top Brands are reluctant to spend their advertising budgets in online video because they aren’t sure what their brand will appear next to (like a fart joke, a kick to the nuts video or two girls kissing a lesbian kiss) and there are no standards in place for measuring online video views, downloads or ratings.

This is a topic we are trying to address with the newly formed.
Association of Downloadable Media .

The “ADM” Mission Statement is:

To 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.

We will be having an organizational meeting at the

Podcast and New Media Expo Sept 28th.

So if you would like to get involved and run for a position on the board or a committee now is your chance to help jump start this conversation and get some standards in place so that advertisers, aggregators and content creators can all speak the same language and really get the online video and podcast advertising business rolling.

Revver Pizza Party

Last night Revver through a Beer Bash and Pizza party for a bunch of us online video producer/ content creator types. It’s always fun to meet and mingle with birds of a feather. Many different show creators were there including Hayden from Goodnight Burbank, Julie and Sarah from Nontourage, (Sarah produced the “How to Share Photos” episode of French Maid TV), Bennett, Andrew from Getting Away with Murder, The AV Club, Studio 8, Bob from The Venice Walk, and a bunch of content producers and Revver people.

A big thank you to Steven, Angela, Jonathan, Alex, Korry, Marc, Brian and of course Richard for having us all over for Pizza and Beer.

ZapRoot Launched Today

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Sarah Szalavitz and Damien Somerset have posted the first episode of ZapRoot “an unconventional bite-sized news show that covers the fast
changing world of the modern Green Revolution. With sarcasm, silliness, &
sanity, ZapRoot encourages you to have a better time while making a better
world.”

They are doing this through their production company Viropop and with NextNewNetworks. The show is very well produced, wonderfully edited, with beautiful motion graphics, great music/sound design and the host, Jessica Williamson is smart, funny and very sexy.


In a posting to the Yahoo Video Bloggers Group Sarah said, “For the past few months, I have been working on Zaproot with my partner
Damien Somerset, Zaproot's star Jessica Williamson, and Next New Networks.
We were priviliged to work with Jacques Brautbar (www.jacquesmusic.com) &
Julianna Raye, who created our theme song, and Michael Dahan
(www.studiodahan.com) who took beautiful photos for us. For now, you can
check 'em out here http://www.box.net/shared/xxforrv1gk

The old green world told you that the world sucks and its your fault; while
our new green show, Zaproot, will show you that the world is ridiculous and
we can make it a little better."

In the first episode they focuses on FoldSchool, cardboard furniture for kids, what to do with your old sex toys, and the "Mac Guy" Justin Long talks about how many Toyota Prius Hybrid Cars he owns. It will be interesting to see if they can afford to keep these high production values up with the small amount of money NextNewNetworks pays.


In other news of note to online video producers, online ad network BlueLithium got scooped up by Yahoo for $300 million in cash. BlueLithium does targeting based on users' interests. It will be interesting to see how this affects Video Podcasters and Vloggers.

And, according to TechCrunch, VideoEgg raised an additional $15 million in funding and they also did a deal to sell advertising on Facebook.

Second Life Doc Sells to HBO for Six Figures

Have any of you been making a documentary of your online travels?

Wait, that’s called Videoblogging.

Well, according to Valleywag HBO laid down some big bucks for some online content that they feel will play well on cable. It a true “Digital facsimile of my carbon based self” with "My Second Life: The Video Diaries of Molotov Alva. Coming to a TV near you soon.

Maybe one of you can hurry up and put a doc about video podcasting together for Showtime.

Facebook Song

I attended a Facebook Developers Garage a week a go or so and met some really cool people from all kinds of Web 2.0 companies who were all looking for Facebook developers. Even Facebook had a guy working the room looking to hire Facebook developers. Everyone wants to make money on Facebook’s API

People are making new applications for Facebook every day and it’s already hard to cut through the clutter of bad Facebook apps. But the one take away I got from the Facebook Meetup was that if you build an application for Facebook it needs to be something that your friends can use to find out things about you and that you can use to find out things you want to know about your friends.

Stay focused on that and you can build a Facebook app that will make you money.

AdBrite’s InVideo Ads

Way back around the beginning of the year Online Advertising Network Adbrite quietly launched an online video player with advertising but I’ve not yet run across any of my friends using AdBrite’s InVideo video player for serving video and ads. Is anyone using this? Anyone have links to videos using this? Anyone Making money with AdBrite’s online video ads?

Random Air Show crash in Poland

US Television News has developed into a, “if it bleeds it leads” operation and Internet News is following suit. The resent mid-air collision of two small vintage airplanes hit the front page of CNN.
Once again it is spectacle vs. story as people search the internet for new video footage of the airplane crash at the air show in Poland.



This new distribution of video has opened up another revenue stream for online video producers and that's being a video news stringer that covers news and sells or licenses content to News services. The other option is creating a news video portal and selling ads in addition to licensing the footage.

Get Free Flu Shots - FluFlix Video Contest

The FluFlix Video Contest is on and while I think it’s a great campaign that is fun to watch and is getting the word out about getting a flu shot I think it has a few flaws.




First the people who really need flu shots don’t watch internet videos in large numbers. Maybe I’m wrong but when I visit nursing homes around the country I don’t see grandma and grampa giving Evolution of Dance a few extra downloads to ad to its 56 Million plus views. Maybe Wheel of Fortune, The Price is Right and reruns of Murder She Wrote but not Barbie Girl on YouTube.

Second, I have a problem with video contests. Right now some of us are getting paid to make videos on the Internet and a contest is a potential way to get paid but it’s not a sure way to get paid. If professional video producers enter contests to win money most of those who enter will not get paid but the company running the contest will say, “Hey look at all these “professional looking” videos people did for free.” Other companies will then look at those “professional looking" videos that were done for free and say, “Hey, look what this other company got for free. I’m not going to pay for online videos if I can get them for free.” And so it goes.

If you are an amateur trying to show off your talents, enter as many contests as you can enter. Have fun doing it. If you consider yourself a professional don’t work for free by entering contests. (Unless you are helping out a friend or have some other really good reason.) You will only be hurting yourself and other digital artists.

TMZ uses Brightcove

According to TMZ Brittany Spears showed up in Vegas to open a new club called LAX at the Luxor. I know, who cares about Brittany Spears? Well it's not her but the fact that TMZ is using Brightcove to serve their Brittany Spears videos and Brightcove does a fantastic job.

Now I’ve talked with Brightcove about using their service for French Maid TV and I would love to use their service to host videos of hot girls but the don’t have any advertisers that would be interested in reaching young men with sexy French Maids and I’m not interested in placing the French Maids on a site that doesn’t offer a way to monetize my videos.