Trial and Error

By now, you’ve probably heard that the ball girl catch was fake. I’m talking about the video of a ball girl executing a major league catch at a minor league game.

Nope, she’s not channeling Willie Mays. She’s the creation of Gatorade.

The sports drink maker never “officially” distributed the ad, but someone obviously did since it’s the water-cooler viral video these days and has earned more than 3.5 million views across various sites, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Here’s the video…

Yesterday I posted a column urging Web video creators to focus on building their own brands for their Web shows, not YouTube’s. You can read the column here.

Yesterday evening, YouTube spokeswoman Julie Supan emailed me her thoughts on the piece. In the interests of transparency, I’d like to share her comments with you. I also told her I would be doing so and she was cool with that.

Here’s what YouTube says about building a brand for a Web show.

“In my opinion, you make some good points about brand building (being a marketer), but I’m not sure you presented a full, balanced case for your argument. Brands need to use all the resources on the Web to build value and audience. YouTube is one of many distribution channels for size and reach as well as advertising potential/impressions. As Jordan [Hoffner, YouTube director of content partnerships] mentioned when you met with him, capturing all audiences wherever they are is the way to go—a multiplatform strategy with your site only being one of many distribution channels. You cannot dismiss the people who ‘surf and look around,’ as they could be a new audience rather than those that already know what they are looking for. Again, each strategy has a unique approach.”

She does make a good point about people who surf on YouTube and find new shows that way.

So yes, I think creators should have their videos on YouTube as part of a super-distribution strategy. But I still contend the best bet is to build your show’s brand so viewers will watch on your site, or via RSS, or on iTunes.

What do you think?

So I’m having lunch solo yesterday at a cute little café called Slow Food in San Francisco. (And if you’re wondering why I was there, it was because I had just finished appearing as a guest on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” and yes, you can listen to me talk about viral marketing campaigns here. And as I’m waiting for my food it hits me—I don’t have to just sit there! I have an iPod. I can catch up on Web video.

And, folks, these are the moments when I love, love, love my iPod—the interstitial moments when you feel like you have a little secret, a little something up your sleeve, because you’ve pre-loaded your video iPod with really good stuff you can pretty much only get online.

In this case, I had several episodes of Mojo HD’s Web series “The Circuit.” The show is a sort of tech show, but done in a “Daily Show” style. Translation: It’s funny and irreverent and you need to subscribe to it in iTunes, because this is one of the best shows on the Web.

The bit that cracked me up was this interview conducted by the show’s host, Deepak, with tech god Om Malik of Gigaom.com fame. So here you go!

Is anything real on the Internet anymore?

It seems you now have to ask if nearly every viral video is a fake.

I raised this question in a column earlier this month. The topic resurfaced Sunday when the home page of Yahoo featured a story and a link to a video of Washington Redskins kicker Shaun Suisham's alleged 110-yard kick.

What do you think? Is it real? Is it fake? Can we trust any viral videos anymore?

YouTube founder Chad Hurley said the company will make money through display ads and affiliate revenue deals, such as links to iTunes and Amazon for DVDs, CDs and digital downloads. Check out this NewTeeVee story on the topic:
http://newteevee.com/2008/06/26/hurley-youtube-looking-for-affiliate-revenue-streams/
And here’s an interesting tidbit for you. I don’t report on non-Web video stuff that often, but I came across an interesting stat related to games on video-on-demand. (You know, that’s the service you get from the cable operator when you have digital cable.)

TAG Networks delivers casual games — think chess, checkers, word games — via a VOD stream to cable homes. In a trial with a Time Warner Cable system in Alabama, the operator found that in the first four months about 40% of digital homes had tried the games. That’s not too shabby. Time Warner even ran some promos for the service where it had extra inventory.

“If you put a compelling games experience on TV, consumers will watch,” said Sangita Verma, CEO of TAG Networks. “There is no loading time. It starts automatically.”

The games are free and ad-supported. Look for TAG to deploy to about seven markets in Texas by next month.

Other data from the trial:

— The average playing time across all digital households increased to one hour and 17 minutes in March compared with 34 minutes when the trial started in December.

— Monthly average playing time among TAG households increased to eight hours and 10 minutes in March from four hours and 46 minutes in December.

Cute cat videos have always been no-brainers, instant view-getters on the Web. Will dogs be able to turn the same trick?

They will if they’re as easy to find and watch as “The Dog Files.”

Back in the early days of this blog, I spent more time reviewing which video sites worked and which ones didn’t work. I don’t do that as much anymore, since most video usually works. But I still like to give props to Web shows that make it so amazingly and incredibly easy to find the video that it’s almost a sin not to watch.

Enter “The Dog Files.” For starters, the production values of the show are top-notch, especially for the Web, and the video plays smoothly. What’s more, your grandmother could figure out how to play, share or talk about this video. The tabs on the side of the player are big and easy to understand: embed, email, share, comment, etc.

The show is everything you want to know about dogs and is produced by GraphicPlanet Creative in New Jersey. The second episode should be released next week.

A Little Help From Our Friends

It never hurts to have a helping hand. Seems the folks at popular Web video site FunnyorDie.com took a liking to a video from creator Stephanie Scott. TV producer Chris Henchy picked the “Drunk Dial Party” episode from her Web show “The Retributioners” as one of his favorites of the month.

As a result, the video made it to home-page rotation on the site and had hit more than 4,100 views earlier this week, up from 1,800 before it was picked up for the home page.

Sure, small numbers in the big picture. But the video is quite funny and worth watching, and the uptick demonstrates the value of not just a celebrity endorsement, but also home-page placement on this site and, frankly, any popular video site. Plus, it’s a decent number of views for a non-celebrity video on FunnyorDie.com, since the site is run by celebs.

If you want to know more about the show, you can go to http://theretributioners.blogspot.com/. The show is a comic, loosely scripted series in the tradition of "Curb Your Enthusiasm," but presented from the perspective of a witty, vindictive woman. The main character, Stephanie Scott, is a happily married, accomplished woman who feels she has not yet proven herself to the world. She decides to contact past boyfriends, former friends, teachers, skinny people, etc., to seek retribution.

Quick! Check this out before JC Penney can pull it. The retailer has already instructed advertising agency Saatchi to remove this ad of two teens timing themselves getting dressed before they go hang out in the basement, with mom upstairs.

The ad was apparently made without the retailer’s approval.

So watch it while you can.

We’re all just trying to make a buck, right?

And doing that in online video—despite the insane growth numbers—isn’t always the easiest trick to turn. Sure, advertisers poured $471 million into streaming video ads last year, a number that will grow to $7.2 billion in 2012. But much of that money is going to broadcast networks.

Still, the indie creators are starting to get paid, too, and advertising isn’t always the way.

Take Web comedians the Fine Bros., who are best known for producing parodies of “Lost” using action figures. The brothers have been contracted by gaming magazine The Escapist to produce up to 26 episodes of original videos for The Escapist’s audience.

The Fine Bros. have produced two videos already, which are running under the brand “Kung Fu Grip,” usually on the magazine’s home page.

“The financial details of our agreement are confidential … but I can say without a doubt that The Escapist offers video creators per-video rates and bonuses that are extremely competitive,” Russ Pitts, director of video production for the magazine, said in an e-mail. “Our video content creators are very well cared for.”

The Web site just won two Webby Awards as best game-related Web site, and the magazine is devoting online attention to video. “Since we're a small company, our focus is on quality of content and building relationships with talented, creative people, not grabbing as much content as we can get our hands on and then waiting to see what turns out to be a hit,” said Pitts, formerly a writer and producer with TechTV’s “The Screen Savers.” “We want all of our series to be hits, and we work closely with our content creators to develop the best shows possible.”

After reporting on Disney’s deal to syndicate ABC shows and ESPN.com short-form content to Veoh.com, I hopped over to the Veoh site on Monday morning.

But guess what? At 9:15 a.m. Pacific time the ABC shows weren’t on the home page. Wouldn’t you think, if you just did a big deal with a major content provider, you’d want those shows to be front and center?

To find the ABC shows, I had to click on a tab for “TV Shows.” That took me to an alphabetical listing of TV shows. I jumped to “G” to look for “Grey’s Anatomy.”

And in the G section, I noticed something interesting. The shows aren’t alphabetized. Because, you know, “Gossip Girl” should come before “Grey’s Anatomy,” but it doesn’t on the Veoh listing.

Incidentally, ABC said more than 90% of its episode views still come from ABC.com. That means TV network destinations are still the first place viewers go to look for shows from networks.

And based on their placement on Veoh.com, I don’t see that figure changing any time soon.

UPDATE: By mid-morning Monday, Veoh had added a promo box to its home page touting the ABC shows on its site. When I clicked through on the box, I went straight to the ABC page where there are thumbnails and navigational links for the shows. But again, there are still problems. Of the four videos that pop up on that page for ABC shows, two of the videos for "Grey’s Anatomy" were for episodes from the end of 2006. I still think the page needs tweaking.