[brightcove vid=36478068001&exp=1344656541&w=510&h=550]

Twistage CEO David Wadler stopped by the Bandwidth Bastard studio last week for a deep dive into the world of video platforms, funding versus financing in the current market and the life of a hands-on CEO. Lots of laughs and heartfelt exposition take us on an emotional journey.

I have had a theory that if Hulu plays the game better than Netflix or Blockbuster, Hulu could potentially reinvent the business model for “movie” and “broadcast” distribution and licensing via streaming media.  Check out the latest numbers on HuLu from Neilson Online – as reported by Mark R Robertson |  from ReelSEO –> According to new research released from Neilsen Online, almost 10 billion (9.6B) video streams were viewed in March of this year by an estimated 130M US web users.  This represents almost a 40% (38.8) increase year over year from March 2008 and is an increase of 9% month over month from February 2009.   Mark thinks it may have something to do with the fancy Hulu ad’s, and you know what?  I agree!

NetFlix is not on the list perhaps they opt to keep the numbers “private” and not participate to in the Neilsen on-line rating system.  Of course, the question is… Do you trust the Neilsen’s numbers, hmmmm…..

Here is the Raw Data from Neilsen for March

What do you think?

Technorati charts allow you to visualize the impact an individual tag has on the Blogosphere by graphing the number of times the tag occurs in blog posts across the web.

Tag popularity across the Blogosphere

This chart illustrates how many times blog posts across the Blogosphere were given the following tags.

new media vs. web video vs. streaming media

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I want to start by stating very plainly, there is no such thing as a simple web page.  Not anymore.

Consider this, interactive new media products are living organisms that will either thrive once launched – like living creatures, if they have a healthy gestation, these things can grow strong over time leading long, healthy lives – or, if malnourished or traumatized during their incubation,  will die a slow, painful death in the petri dish.  The cost of birthing one of these “organisms” can not succeed if the stake holders don’t respect the process.

It's ALIVE!

YES, I can come up with a project proposal that delivers the same basic Interactive New Media “product” for as little as $80k or up to $2.5M plus – why is there such variance in the cost?  It is very, very simple – cost depends on what I call “Class of Service” vs. “Level of Effort”.  You must have some idea of what you want before you even ask me for an estimate, start by asking yourself, who will I show this to when it is “done” or has reached “Phase I” and how will they rate the success of my project?

I can generate an estimate, an eerily close estimate, based on rationalizing two variables that I have come to know over the last 16 years of bidding projects and managing them, successfully:

Class of Service: A reasonable classification for the amount of effort that needs to be exerted in order to meet the client’s level of  expectation; variables that effect class of service delivery can include but are not limited to time to launch, target ROI and the number of resources available at a given time.  Classifications can include Enterprise, consumer ready, back-end, informational only applications to be use strictly by niche experts, etc.

~ As defined by Nico (I tend to make a lot of Networking metaphors and this is no exception – CoS )

Level of Effort: The equal amount of combined resources, planning and preparation against available budget required to deliver the “class of service” expected by the client.  i.e. If you are collecting email addresses, how many do you expect to collect, how qualified do they have to be and in what time frame?  If you don’t know the answers, you are in no position to start estimating the project.

Level of Effort is a matter of success or failure

These are very difficult times for many of us, and like many out there I only get paid when I am billing hours – a lot of time goes into the bidding process and many compromises are made to win bids – but fair is fair.  When you are ready to start getting your  ducks in a row to launch a project, it is very simple:  Know how much you can spend, how much time you have to get it off the ground, how good it needs to look and what you expect back for it.

I hate using the phrase “managing client expectation” – but a project can easily result in an angry lawsuit, dissolution of friendships or partnerships, even bankruptcy if everyone expects different returns out of a project.  Early and constant communication is key, clearly defining roles and a written scope of what will and what will not be included in the delivery of a product – all of it is essential.  Often times I have found communication problems usually come from a Business Leader or ‘stake holder’ who may have seen a flashy demo from a Supplier and heard that product referred to with a certain “catch phrase” -  said Business Leader makes an assumption that this catch phrase is an industry standard term – they believe something to be a standard because they were told by someone who was trying to sell them something that it was or is “best in class”.

A recent example I have run into is Telepresence – depending on if you are Cisco or Tandberg, the definition of what is meant by a Telepresence-type experience is similar, but the tangible products work differently and do not play well together….

Business Leaders live outside the inventor and developer space where we create and use new technologies daily and understand  the nuances that result in a lack of standards – we know that there is no such thing as a standard application on web or anywhere for that matter;  there are many variables to account for (amount of bandwidth, Operating system, web browser and security settings, firewall, location restrictions, on and on… ) No one has been able to offer a completely “ubiquitous” solution for anything…

So – for starters, it is this “class of service” we first devise when creating a project strategy – doing this correctly is so critical, and is a an art form in and of itself – one has to do this incredibly well in order not to get a reputation in this industry for being a hack or a thief – and what I mean by that is, if the end product has to meet a higher level of expectation, more time and money must go into the planning of the project – take for example Enterprise class, which by default would include 99.999% up-time SLA on any web based product, the product will need to be well branded and it will need to  stand up to a higher level of expectation on stability then perhaps something that is more of a functional product that just needs to work well enough to serve a less visible purpose… if you will?

In the next installment, we will look at the various tasks and streams of effort that are usually victimized by budget hacking, but will always lead to long term issues when neglected…

Netflix

I discovered a NetFlix job posting for the role of Director of Encoding Operations on the StreamingMedia.com job board – I decided to red-line the job post with the dialogue as I heard it play out in my head -  There is a true irony about the timing and wording of their post, especially in light of the recent announcement Chief Executive Officer Reed Hastings made, “Netflix Inc. may allow customers to pay solely for online-video streaming by late this year or 2010 as more viewers watch content directly from the Internet“.  I suppose they have to get it working first though…

The special “skill set” as described is foreboding, to say the least – but jobs are tight and it seems like they are hiring,  so go for it if you qualify.

But, be forewarned – considering that NetFlix is already streaming video content, doesn’t it seem like someone has to have already made a lot of big decisions…   In fact, it reads to me like someone got “stuck” with a lot of tasks they hate doing doing and/or taking responsibility for and they want out of that role -  but do not want to be made to look bad by the new director (i.e. If you go in to your new role and find that everything is a hot mess and that a ton of money was already spent on shiny, well-packaged technology that doesn’t actually work…. you have to go in and make it all better, don’t say anything was mismanaged… be nice!! In the words of Fashion Icon Tim Gunn, “Make it work!” )

As posted on StreamingMedia.com – with comments by Nico in RED below:

As the Director of Encoding Operations, you will be responsible for the management and overall work flow of digital assets streamed to customers via PCs, Macs, and other consumer devices.[You wouldn't be streaming to customers "via" PCs, Macs, and other consumer devices. - you would simply stream to.... devices - people aren't streaming to Netflix,  Netflix is streaming out... ] Reporting to the VP of IT Operations, you will expand upon a proven track record in which your processes, insight, and leadership enabled your business to support and remain ahead of evolving consumer trends and technologies.[What????]

Key will be the ability to act dynamically and accurately to nimble business decisions when the needs arise to deliver new digital assets in one to many encoded formats. [Ok, why is that so key now when there are products out on the market that  are proven to work that you should already own at this juncture?   Right?  They've been doing this for a while, what are they using that down't scale... Uh oh!]
You will establish and leverage key internal relationships, notably with engineers who manage title work flow and staff in our L.A. office who acquire the assets and set priority/timing for title availability. [Someone has been arguing with their Engineers me fears...]
You will also manage vendor relationships, specifically with post houses with whom we partner for various aspects of the work flow and our CDN partners whose networks are used to stream content to our customers. [Has someone been having trouble FTP'ing those big files over without corrupting them?? Hmm??   Oh, and I was taught in Corporate Speak 101 not to call them "vendors" - it's kind of derogatory, we call them "suppliers" these days.]
You will guide/facilitate peer teams through a supply chain evolution, where long-standing processes used to support the DVD business are augmented or replaced in favor of an new digital asset work flow. [We knew that was going to happen, out with the old and in with the new ]
Tools will require augmenting and replacing, where you will be key to decisions which will affect multiple teams and their respective processes.  [You mean convince SMPTE's and Tech heads to accept changes in workflow?  Sure no problem!  They love change and learning how to use new products is their favorite.... Doesn't this job sound great???]

Key success factors include all of the following:

* Establishment and evolution of key metrics, ranging from operational to broad business insight [Don't they already know how to measure success - aren't their key metrics established...  maybe they should call SkyTide?]
* Track record, with examples of setting multi-quarter, multi-year objectives and meeting them [Ok, that's one normal bullet point ]
* Excellent communication skills, providing operational insight to core stakeholders while effectively educating/updating a broader team of interested parties on a recurring basis [Sounds like someone's got a lot of expalining to do and they want YOU to do it for them ))) ]
* Experience with build vs buy vs service decisions (making and influencing) [No one wants to take the blame for those decisions anymore ... I mean, take the credit....]
* Proven track record of process re-engineering, demonstrating how to creatively meet key deadlines when unexpected obstacles arise [Expect the unexpected.... you have to rebuild it but you can't take it down...got it?  Good!]

The individual will also:
* Be able to precisely speak to prior budget investments and articulate how investment decisions were made and why [This is my favorite bullet point...  You need to make them feel better about their past choices... It's like getting into a new relationship and finding out that your new love likes to dress up like a teddy bear and do it in the woods... just put on the bunny suit and do it )  --  it's LIKE that because it's going to be very, very awkward in the room when you do the retrospective on the spend and have to explain it to them... without making anyone look bad... ]
* Speak to SLA’s, what drove them, and how he/she developed architectures to support them [Again, what???  I think you may need a lawyer for this one...dude.....do you need someone to tell you what you just signed and why?  Eeek!]
* Be well connected in the digital asset/streaming industry, having spent ample time with colleagues and vendors to understand common and uncommon processes and diverse technologies [Why?  Don't they have enough "vendors" knocking on their virtual gates?  Gonna take my connects...I don't think so!!  Get yourself on LinkedIn and make friends... Creating new job positions in your company to make friends is not Kosher...]
* Be expected to establish credibility with engineers via a deeply technical skill set [In other words:  Make the mean Engineers stop hurting our feelings...  - Oh, so you are going to be Super Nanny, come in and make everyone get along and stop the yelling and hitting... NO FIGHTING OR NO TV AFTER SUPPER!]
* Be expected to establish credibility with non-technical leaders via excellent business acumen [make the suits understand that just because something didn't work doesn't mean anyone is to blame... quick, put up another job posting!  We need to hire someone to take the fall... Call it a... Director of ... Director of Encoding Operations!!!  That sounds legit!  Yeah, that's the ticket....]
* Be highly creative – not focused at all on the way it’s been done before [uh, ok.  But you just said to speak to prior....and SLA's and why ...how he/she...  oh, never mind...Don't focus on the past...Got it. ]
* Obsess on delivering needed results following deep, actionable analysis [yeah, sure... that sounds great.  Obsession in the work place is always good... that's how bunnies get boiled... I'm not judging, I am just saying.]
* Wow his/her peers via smart, efficient communication backed deeply by clearly presented data [WOW!!!   You speak good!!  Pretty pictures, deep pictures....Just so you know, and I am DEEPLY CLEAR, people say WOW when things suck too... like, WOW that sucked.]
* Remain impressively calm during support difficulties and/or competing priorities – quickly organizing needed teams and facilitating the outcome [Prepare to enter the hellfire... but they will call you Director! ]
* Plan for failure, thoughtfully providing documented plans for mitigation or rapid recovery in all situations affecting the business [Plan in your Pee breaks, ahead of time...if we ask you to hold it in, you better hold it!  Sucker!]

If only every job posting came with a warning label, what a wonderful world this would be.

Today was an especially productive day – I sent the final draft of an article I wrote for Streaming Media Magazine on The “search” for real VSEO…  to the editor.

It was an exhaustive journey into the realm of SEO.   I spent a lot of time in WebEx sessions and engaged on my own traveling the paths of the end user to discover video on-line.  I asked myself a lot of questions, went a step further and really tried to listen to some experts for guidance.  I’d like to thank Mark Robertson publisher and founder of ReelSEO for his patience and enthusiasm, Accordent Technolgy’s for being my Enterprise go-to guys/gals and EveryZing that let me get inside their product and their minds!

Here is just one of the fascinating revelations passed down to me from Tom Wilde, CEO of Everyzing :

There are many tools that can be used to help users select keywords that result in good positioning for Google results; such as Google Insight for Search.

Google Search Insight provides... Insight

Google Insight reports that over the last 90 days, searches with the keyword video outnumbered keywords searches for sex, god, and Obama. So what do the numbers on the graph mean? According to Google Insight for Search, “The numbers on the graph reflect how many searches have been done for a particular term, relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time. They don’t represent absolute search volume numbers, because the data is normalized and presented on a scale from 0-100; each point on the graph is divided by the highest point, or 100. The numbers next to the search terms above the graph are summaries, or totals.”

In practice, simply adding the word video to a site makes it more likely to come up in a search, but there are also 3.38 billion other results for the keyword video on Google, so the competition is tight. The trick is to find the magic combination of keywords that eliminate the competition and push results for your content to the top of the list. You must take the same route one would take to Carnegie Hall, “Practice, practice, practice.”

When asked, “What makes for good VSEO,” Wilde points back toward the fundamentals of “old school” SEO: “Optimize the video’s presentation page using standard SEO techniques; this is also true for videos uploaded to sharing sites. Logical file naming schemes, site structure, use sitemaps and relevant keyword usage throughout the landing page will result in good VSEO.”

If you upload a video to YouTube, you will see how often it is viewed in different geographic regions as well as how popular it is relative to all videos in its market over a given period of time. You can also delve deeper into the lifecycle of a video, determining how long it takes for it to become popular and what happens to video views as popularity peaks. (figure 2) YouTube is also rolling out paid search, a new feature that enables video distributors to buy keywords in YouTube on a pay-per-click basis. Currently, this is only available to agencies.

It’s faster to get a video indexed when uploaded to YouTube or an existing site that is already in Google and the other major search engines. When a site is submitted manually, it takes at least 90 days to begin showing up in search results, but YouTube, MySpace, and other established sites can list the same site in less than 24 hours. Just make sure you don’t rely soley on an up-load of your video, but create a full “channel page” for your videos, those weigh more in Google and others. Make sure you clearly indicate the link back to the site you want end users to go to, include links in the channel pages, and include a lower-third graphic in the video itself with a text advertising your site.

*************  End of Excerpt ***  To read more, you will have to subscribe to Streaming Media Magazine or check out StreamingMedia.com for possible a digital version

Ok, maybe it comes off as kind of hostile, but I am having a hard time actually finding an ROI on SEO for on-line video content — e.g. If I am a website with Video that is expertly tagged and optimized, where exactly will I see the results? Google? Yahoo? Or does the end-user have to be looking specifically for video on the “video” portal for the major SE’s? Wouldn’t a person searching on-line benefit as much from seeing a video about milking cows as they would from reading about milking cows?

The subject of VIDEO SEO frustrates me because everyone is telling us we need it, but for who and to what end?

Join me on my journey as I seek out what VSEO is and why we should give a crap-dang-it about it ;-p
I welcome your feedback.

** All the early feedback focuses on Metrics starting with the end user already at the video view stage, and I am focusing on what VSEO promises, more or less, how the end user arrives at the video not what they do once there… but I know my Peeps will keep me in check

A recent post read: Discovery CEO David Zaslav, speaking at the conference, said that despite the large content library that Discovery owns, viewers are unlikely to find any of it on line in the near future. I had to investigate and was quite surprised by what I “discovered”.    When I visited Discovery.com and the homepage loaded, it was covered in advertisements for Maxi pads.  Although I am a female, and they do track demographic information (see Privacy Policy bullet 4 (four) under (2) Non-Personally Identifiable Information ), any demographic information that could be tracked via my PC or Browser would Identify me as a 72 year old male, by design. 

Do the Advertisers know who their demographic is?

That is strike one.  Having paid close attention to how and what is advertised at me over the years, and being a marketer and a technologist who is known for intensive QA (Quality Assurance) processes – it is clear that no one is actually checking to make sure that the campaigns that are going out make sense and/or that the targeting is working correctly.

OK, homepage is one thing – I made my way through the site to track down a long form video “full episode” on the Discovery.com site – I found something that was even more bizarre.

There are only two Programs left in long form, so I navigated over to Prototype This!: Robotic Firefighter Assistant and as the page loaded, I found all the ads were also pointing at a different demographic than what I had expected – so what is with the baby products and feminine hygiene obsession?  The real truth is that monetizing content requires more than selling the ads, the advertisers need to be represented in a respectable and sensible manner – otherwise the advertisers will not see any ROI on their investment.

what-is-with-the-baby-products

Beyond the obviously humorous advertisement to program profile – on a much deeper level, if programming on your TV came up like this – and if every time you tried to skip ahead on your DVR an ad popped up, it wouldn’t be an acceptable experience.

Not only that, but on a functional level the player kept freezing and I had issues skipping ahead in general.  It isn’t really “streaming media” anyway – we call this PDL (Progressive DownLoad), there is a major difference.

There are many creative options when working advertising into programming – this was not a good example of implementation.  The more graceful options available are so rarely used.  How about this, don’t interrupt my viewing experience – just invite me to interact with creatives that are relevant to what I am watching. Or, offer me something, why in the world would I want to click on this “swipes” ad / banner?  It isn’t offering me a discount or anything free?  If I were a 72 year old male, what would I get out of visiting the Pampers site – I would actually take offense at the constant diaper & maxi pad references, like a jibe at my age.

Ok, maybe this is an anomaly, but I did try more than once, and sometimes I did get ad’s that catered to the male demographic – but more often than not, I got “feminine” advertising.

On another attempt, Potty Training advertising popped in for a visit.  So,  Broadcasters, maybe before you start complaining about how you can’t monetize long form content, or allude that streaming media has no business model, you take a look at the systems you have in place and make sure they are working before pointing fingers.

On a final note, it was not an obvious navigational experience to arrive at the long form video and once there – the video quality was “shoddy” – with pixelation and artifacting.  And when I went to replay the video, the overlay got stuck –>need I say more?

This is pretty typical of the kind of ridiculous attempt at advertising to me that I discover on-line, Discovery.com is not the only site where I found these types of issues, they just became my target when I read further into that post:  “You won’t find our long form content on the Web,” Zaslav said. “There is no long form business model yet, we will be really careful [in that area].”

It could work very easily, They are just doing it wrong and patronizing their viewers – on many levels.  I hate to see everyone stepping back instead of forging ahead.  KEEP THE FAITH!

At least they advertised different baby products when I replayed the video...

There is a lot of noise lately regarding how video content and SEO work together – there are many companies evangelizing their ‘wares to the hungry marketers of such video property; however, I don’t believe any of it for a second – it’s not working as advertised.

Recently I sat through a demo of a product that promised enhanced search-ability for video content that was essentially “tagged” by their product.  At the end of the demo, I asked if we could examine how the tagging impacted the SEO of the client sites we looked at, using organic keywords that pertained to the video content we had just reviewed.

They proceeded to “plant” ordered keywords into Google to show how their tagged video appeared magically – with a rigid set of keywords that no human would “organically” input for a search.  Having said that, the tagged video did not come up first nor did it come up as a prioritized web asset with more or less relevance than any other web page that pertained to the keyword set they used.

The tagged video appeared third and had no special indicator that this was a link to video enhanced web content.

On Google the special video category is relegated to video content originating from YouTube, so many of the products and “specialists” out there on VIDEO SEO are just going to post clips on YouTube and point back to the client website – so save your money and do it yourself.

Google search for interviews with Madonna

Here is an example, if I do a search for keywords “interviews with madonna” on Google, I get the quick drop down from the homepage that tell me there are over 4 million results that have relevance.

The results themselves reveal a great deal about the subjectivity of Google search and how video relevance relates to the results – YouTube video posts are the only featured video posts on the results page.  The irony is that the official Madonna website did not rank in this search, even though it has plenty of video and News from Madonna.

Google results for Interviews with madonna

Of course this is an exaggerated example, but I think it speaks to the topic and gets the point across quite elegantly.

Where is the proof of the secret sauce I hear so much about?  I for one know there are no short cuts or freebies in good SEO.  It takes a substantial investment in financing or time; daily nurture and care to get up in the rankings and stay up there… Especially since companies like Google are capable of pushing out updates to their platform and without telling you – the only way you would know there are changes to analytics or adword services is often to actually log in and check for updates.

Regardless, I am taking a journey and inviting the VIDEO SEO guru’s of the world to SHOW ME THE SAUCE and help me, and the readers of Streaming Media Magazine (Article on Video SEO – due for April 2009 Issue), to uncover the truth.

Resources:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&pwst=1&q=interviews+with+madonna&start=0&sa=N

http://www.reelseo.com/video/seo/