Google Videos

[StephenR]

Well, I've been seeing more and more Google Videos turning up on my sites. It would appear advertisers are catching on/up and are populating Googles inventory. It will be interesting to see whether or not these videos will generate higher CTR's as opposed to contextual/image ads.

My guess is they will perform far better. Why? End user curiosity.

With contextual advertising you already see what you're getting into. With Google Videos you have to click to view. It's funny because I have to stop myself from clicking on the videos that show up on my sites. It's human nature. =)

[Clickbank Hotshot]

one thing that will cut down on the level of curiosity is the amount of bandwidth you have. i have no idea what percentage of online users have high speed connections, but those that don't will be wary of following video links. anyone know what the percentage is?

[watchdogam_tech]

These are a few stats about broadband adoption as of earlier this year grabbed from: http://www.qlinks.net/quicklinks/stats.htm

US - Home Broadband Adoption 2006
Home broadband adoption is going mainstream and that means user-generated content is coming from all kinds of internet users. At the end of March 2006, 42% of Americans had high-speed at home, up from 30% in March 2005, or a 40% increase.

There is another thread that has also been started about video at: 4X Affiliate Sales Using Video Advertising .

I know as a web solutions provider, we are experiencing seeing anywhere from 5-10% of the sites that we launch utilizing streaming video, and I expect that to double next year.

And my personal litmus test? When my folks go high-speed I'll know that high-speed is truly "adopted". I'll make sure I follow-up and let everyone know when this important industry milestone occurs.

[StephenR]

Thanks for the info Cory, good stuff. Those are some great numbers to crunch for a multitude of reasons. Broadband allows you much greater flexibility in terms of utilizing ALL the available marketing weapons which require higher speeds.

[watchdogam_tech]

Yes, Stephen, the numbers are improving at a face pace. Ironically, I have a training tomorrow for a winery client that is still on dial-up in the California's heartland. Satellite is their only option for high-speed. (unsure of icon for empathy)

We've got quite an infrastructure challenge to get to a certain percentage of the remaining population. It will be interesting to see how the alternative high speed services like Broadband over Powerline (BPL) and WiMax pan out.

Perhaps a simpler analogy. We've finally been able to ditch targeting 800x600 resolution users in designing websites and moved to 1024x768. I know something similar will eventually happen with bandwidth.

[Clickbank Hotshot]

well, now that i know a little more about this than i did last week, i see that it is really the extent to which streaming web sites encode their multimedia files at sampling rates that are friendly to low bandwidth consumers. i'm on a slow connection and most multimedia files are encoded for high bandwidth visitors, so i get choppy delivery.

nonetheless i am now coding streaming audio/video options into my product so that i can adapt to the market. not true streaming with a high-powered streaming server behind it, but streaming with flash. we cannot all be YouTube

[watchdogam_tech]

Stephen, thanks for the follow-up. Flash is a GREAT format for video and audio. We've standardized on Flash for all our video distribution. Their "progressive" video streaming is a nice hybrid which as you probably know, is a nice intro to streaming with the overhead of a high-end streaming server. Great for smaller numbers of streams.

Another nice option when considering unknown bandwidth for your target audience is to have a streaming version of the video (.FLV) and then offer downloadable version like .WMV for Windows and .M4V for Mac/iPod. Download allows the user to playback locally without having to worry about bandwidth. If you offer these as downloadable, make sure that you set the custom HTTP headers as "Content-disposition: attachment". This way, it will prompt the browser to download rather than launch your browser's registered version of a player utility.

[Clickbank Hotshot]

good point about the Content-disposition: attachment. i have not got to that point yet as i have been involved with the streaming possibilities. i don't have any flash experience, so i am using the MP3/AV/WASP utilities that come with the flash-based Wimpy Player at http://www.wimpyplayer.com/

Wimpy is fairly flexible, cheap, offers .flv and .swf video, in addition to .mp3 for the audio, and doesn't require me to learn any flash

[sellingonline]

just for short: I'm no fan of those videos - I tell you why: they are disattracting me from what I'm looking for (bottomline: they work)

[mindarren]

I agree. The videos load and are distracting when it's the first thing you see. I wonder if they hang up the entire page altogether if someone's on a slow connection?