Oops Patrol - Career One

Last night I was watching a documentary on the gang MS13. Today I wanted to do some further reading and came across a site called Know Gangs.

Career One are all over the site - through Google content network ads.

Here's an interesting screengrab of a 'Lift Your Lifestyle' placement I came across.

Takeout ... this Google Content Network needs a lot of work on both ends.

Some observations on what is happening in the US digital media world right now ...

It's impossible not to feel the overriding tone of impending doom that is all over the US tech media blogs/journals right now.

From SAI to TechCrunch, Valleywag to Paid Content, the tone has changed from unrestrained optimism to a grim reality. TC and Paid Content used to be dominated with stories on startups receiving huge valuations and big funding, Valleywag reported the new wave of dot com excess ... not anymore.

What are the main areas we are seeing being covered and how could these relate to the local industry

- Layoffs

Remember fuckedcompany.com? Well ... I do. If you worked at a dot com around 2000/2001 and things were looking shaky you could rely on fuckedcompany to show you there was another start up somewhere else in the world that was more fucked than yours. All of the media are reporting layoffs - with ebay, Glam, Heavy, Seesmic, Gawker, Wikia, SearchMe, AdBrite, Hi 5 all laying off staff, and Yahoo being reported to be announcing laying off anywhere between 1-3,000 employees within the new few weeks.

TC covers it here - http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/17/keeping-count-the-techcrunch-layoff-tracker/

Yes, some of these companies were bloated to begin with ... and some probably had no real way to generate revenue ... but many are successful and do monetise well. Regardless, you can be sure that we've only seen the beginning of the layoffs.

No real public announcements of layoffs in AU - will they happen? Hopefully not but you'd have to assume if US companies like ebay and Yahoo! are cutting costs there would have to be some flow on effect here.

- Ad Slowdown

Blodget came out this morning with this bomb - http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/10/let-s-be-serious-online-display-ads-will-fall-sharply-in-2009

For a year, we've listened to analysts passionately explain how online ad spending will power through any broader economic and advertising weakness. Eyeballs are moving online, this story went (goes), ad dollars will follow. Online advertising is accountable. Online advertising is the future. Blah, blah, blah.

It's time we woke up and faced reality. Online display-ad spending will fall in 2009, probably sharply. It will probably fall again in 2010.

Is he right? Maybe ... display ad spending in AU could flatline over the next 18-24 months. Why? Q4 will be soft, as will Q1 and Q2 of 2009 ... Q3 2008 was very strong with the Olympics and a pretty robust economic outlook, as a result Q3 2009 will struggle to show much growth.

The US was already seeing a general slowdown in YOY growth (surely a by-product of the market maturing) and now the general consensus is this will get worse.

The three biggest display categories in AU are finance, motor vehicles and technology products - three categories that will feel some pressure from tougher times. These 3 categories combined accounted for 51% of display spend in Australia for Q2 2008 ($59m)

The bigger issue is online - across the board - needs to do a better job at showing its value than reverting to the tired accountability argument. The reality is most marketers struggle with online metrics and need measurement that is tied closer to actual marketing objectives and not impressions and clicks. Agencies and publishers need to work closer together to resolve this. This is a global problem however it is probably worse in AU than in Europe and the US - and has been a problem even during prosperous economic times.

However, the current situation presents huge opportunities to both publishers and agencies if they can go beyond what they see as their core purpose (publishers = selling display ads, agencies = buying display ads) and expand their offering to the market and offer more value and insight. And this is the exciting thing.

It's not all doom and gloom, it's more about avoiding complacency.

- Consolidation

Google CFO Patrick Pichette made an interesting quote in this article - http://valleywag.com/5064903/google-cfo-hints-at-future-starve-the-losers

"One of his priorities, Pichette said, "is pushing to make sure all the resources are used efficiently, that you feed the winners, starve the losers."

Gawker also published this - http://gawker.com/5065922/the-scary-future-of-internet-ads

Here's what you can expect in the coming year, internet lovers: lots of young internet companies going broke. The ones you love! Including, but not limited to, user-generated video sites, ad networks, fringe social media sites, and companies that make all those sweet apps. Why? Because in our brave new economy, companies are slower to buy bullshit ads of questionable efficacy on every random "Web 2.0" site.

Not sure I really agree with their defintion of "bullshit ads" but the general point is valid. The "me too" online industry will struggle. From publishers to networks to agencies. Web businesses that set up because it seemed like a good idea and there was plenty of capital to go round might find things will get tough.

Lets look at locally? Do we need 10+ ad networks selling the same remnant inventory? Probably not ... Do we need as many third party repping houses? Doubtful. Do we need as many media/creative/strategy agencies who effectively are doing the same thing. No.

Consolidation in this regard isn't a bad thing, as it won't do anything to harm the market. This huge array of choice/supply doesn't do anyone any real favours. A cull should improve the overall level of the industry and rid the market of the more questionable operators.

Another thing to watch is increased attention paid to digital media businesses. Last month AdNews ran a story on 3rd party networks placing premium brands on porn sites without their knowledge. Classy look for the industry hey ... And then yesterday The Oz's Lara Sinclair ran a great article on dubious 20% rebates paid by publishers to certain agencies who believe that is a fair 'pay to play' policy.

Google UK to allow gambling advertising from today

Brand Republic is reporting that Google in the UK is allowing gambling related search advertising effective today.

"Google is changing its advertising policy to allow gambling-related advertising to appear against search queries in the UK from 17 October.

Previously, businesses could not advertise any form of online gambling or related websites on Google. The ads will still not be allowed on Google sites outside the UK.

UK companies registered with the Gambling Commission will be able to target text-based ads to users in England, Scotland and Wales. Non-UK advertisers based within the European Economic Area wishing to target Great Britain can do so if they are licensed to advertise gambling in their respective countries."

http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/854689/Google-reverses-UK-policy-allow-online-gambling-ads/

In AU it does not allow gambling based SEM - but how will long will it uphold this position?

You can be sure if it did it would open up a nice revenue stream ...

Clickable food for thought

So I have a client who wants to do a campaign online.

Trouble is - they don't really seem to feel that having an online 'destination' is that important. All they really want to do is let people know the product is available and give people an image of it in action.

I tend to agree with them. The nature of the product doesn't lend itself to finding out more - it's extremely straight forward.

So when I was asked whether they could run a campaign without the ad being clickable my first response was, 'erm ... I really don't know.'

For this advertiser, they want to look to use the web purely as a medium to build targeted reach for their brand in relevant environments. For them, response doesn't actually have any value for the campaign in question.

The more I thought about it, the more it actually made me smile. Here's a brand that is looking at online more than either response or 'creating a dialogue.'

I know some people will say 'this campaign is all about interruption, the hallmarks of old media blah blah blah' ... and maybe they're right ... but it also offers many benefits - right place, right time, right consumer.

So I asked around the major publishers and networks on whether they'd accept an ad creative that didn't click anywhere.

All of the groups I asked said they would, except one.

Google - in the context of their display media content network (purchased on CPM mind you) flatly refused. I asked for a reason, none was given.

It made me wonder - is Google indirectly making a statement that if you can't click on an ad online it doesn't hold any value for the advertiser or user?

Tech getting the jitters from the economic hammering

Last week I touched on the impact of the US financial issues on tech stocks.

http://mimelbourne.blogspot.com/2008/09/no-vote-on-700b-bailout-impacts-tech.html

Now there is finally talk on how this will impact the advertising market ... with some sentiment that digital will probably benefit from any economic turmoil as it offers a perception of more accountability than other media.

Some have stated Google will benefit - which is interesting. I'm not so sure it should - Google is about demand fulfillment, not demand creation. In times like this brands need to create more demand - not look at making fulfillment more efficient. I sometimes feel most misunderstand the role of SEM in a marketing mix and the variables that impact what search can do for a company. For almost all categories, search relies on 'ATL' media (for want of a better term) to drive demand for brand and category terms ... by taking money out of brand building activity, it will impact the amount of traffic you can funnel using search. If advertising is a mix of art and science (magic and logic or whatever other analogy ppl use), then I am not sure it makes much sense to lean more towards straight science in leaner times.

Locally it will be interesting to see what happens. The first half of 08 was very flat ... however the environment has rallied in the second half and we should see approx. 20% YOY growth in the online advertising sector.

However, it's not clear yet what will happen in Q1 and Q2 of 2009 - which I think would be making the local players nervous given how soft the same period was in 08 without such powerful economic factors at play. In the US the past few months have seen layoffs at a lot of key players, the same situation is entirely possible here - I wouldn't be surprised to see layoffs in product/editorial areas over the next 2-3 months in AU. Either that or we will see publishers trim the fat off their offerings - ie, get rid of the elements of their portfolio which on their own are not viable. It's not the time to be carrying excess baggage.

So lets check in with 6 key stocks I looked at last week and see how they faired over the past 7 days.

Yahoo! - market cap down 2.18b in past 7 days
Google - market cap down 5.87b in past 7 days
Microsoft - market cap down 1.56b in past 7 days
Research In Motion - market cap down 1.84b in past 7 days
Apple - market cap down 6.86b in past 7 days
Time Warner - market cap down 6.07b in past 7 days

Fantastic Wii execution on YouTube

Very clever!

http://au.youtube.com/experiencewii

'No' vote on $700b bailout impacts tech stocks bigtime

The US House of Representitives 'no' vote on the proposed $700b bailout of Wall Street has as expected impacted the stock market - with tech stocks also vulnerable.

Lets have a look at what the last day has done to the value of some of the biggies.

Yahoo! - down 10.6% (market cap $23.4b)
Google - down 9.5% (market cap $122.6b)
Microsoft - down 8.39% (market cap $229b)
Research In Motion - down 11.07% (market cap $35.58)
Apple - down 17.4% (market cap $93.8b)
Time Warner - down 8.8% (market cap $46.3b)

That's in excess of $55b USD wiped off the value of the above 6 companies in 1 day. The fun starts locally in a few minutes

Yahoo! challenges Google with Bigpond mobile deal? Really?

The Oz is reporting Yahoo! and Bigpond striking a deal for Yahoo! to power the Bigpond Mobile on deck search - http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24326440-26077,00.html

"The multi-year deal between Yahoo7 and Telstra's Sensis division means Yahoo's oneSearch technology will replace Sensis's search technology on 4.4 million Telstra BigPond 3G-enabled phones.

"Revenue from display and search advertising that appears on the mobile search service -- which will be accessible through a co-branded button on the content menus of all Telstra 3G phones -- will be shared between Yahoo7 and Sensis.

"The partnership will eventually be expanded to include Sensis's Yellow and Trading Post classified searches and Telstra BigPond content.

"Yahoo7 chief executive Rohan Lund said the deal was the most significant for the company in the mobile space and would give Yahoo's advertisers access to a much bigger audience."

Is this really much of a big deal. It definitely doesn't amount to a challenge to Google. Let's not forget Google is flogging Yahoo! in search globally and even more in AU.

People trust Google - they use it on their PC and will also use it on their mobile. It's questionable how much incremental traffic this will bring Yahoo! search and also about the real value/visbility it will give to its advertisers. It makes for nice PR but will it deliver much to their consumers - user/advertiser.

It's interesting to see the deals Lund is looking to strike - he is looking to build Yahoo! audience through distribution deals. It's not a bad play - it's generally cheaper than ATL marketing - and the new eyeballs generated can be added to the topline figure the large guys still like to throw around (we have 5m users etc) despite most marketers not caring anymore about topline network numbers.

Also, does this mean Telstra is putting Sensis search to bed? It's been a rough 4-5 years for Sensis search - it might make more sense to utilise Yahoo!'s better technology and enter into a revshare deal with them on advertising. Would cut a sh*tload of salary cost and they could no doubt negotiate a pretty good deal with Yahoo! as Sensis/Bigpond Internet distro could increase Yahoo!'s total search audience in AU by 50-100%.

You depend on Google more than you probably know

Valleywag writes "really, isn't Google's move to archive centuries of newspapers a bit like the architects of a genocide dedicating a museum to the holocaust they committed" in an article discussing Google's plans to archive printed newspaper articles (as explained by Marisa Meyer at TC50/52). I laughed.

However the article, titled 'The Cuddly Embrace of the Google Monster' is definitely worth reading - http://valleywag.com/5047597/the-cuddly-embrace-of-the-google-monster

It oulines category traffic across key categories, and what percentage of that traffic is driven by search engines.

It's interesting data - especially for those working in media who need to be across the how/where/why/what of people accessing content online and where they are turning to for trusted opinion and information.

Over 44% of traffic to Health/Medical sites is driven by Google. 35% of the travel category is driven by them. 25% of shopping and classifieds. 23% of entertainment.

With those stats, and Google's slow but steady moves into the 'media biz' ... could it be appealing for the GOOG to enter a little deeper into the Health and Travel spaces?

The only 2 categories with minimal reliance on search are Sports and Social Networking.

The power Google holds with the media world is so large - and it's getting larger each day. And it will continue to grow as Google is used by more and more as their sole navigation tool on the web.

Interesting quote from the article: "The biggest threat to Google comes not from Redmond or Sunnyvale, but from its own headquarters in Mountain View. Hubris plagues Google's executives, who are so convinced they are doing good that they are blind to the damage they leave in their wake, and indifferent to outside viewpoints."

Remember too, these are global figures. In AU Google has between 90-93% of the search market (whereas in the US it has just over 70%) - so here their power is greater.

Google Ad Planner - barely worth a look

I was pretty excited about Google Ad Planner when it was announced.

Why? Well ... the current measurement tools we have at our disposal in AU are pretty dire. They are either too light on in terms of depth of data, or packed full of data that really has no use.

So when Google stated "If you're a media planner at an ad agency, you know that planning an online display buy can be challenging, particularly in scaling your campaign's reach while keeping it relevant for your target audience", I thought things were on the up.

Not true. Well ... not true, yet.

Google AdPlanner is an epic anti climax in AU.

Why?

Well, you can't actually plan anything. Reason for this is when you start (and I mean START) drilling into an audience on even the most basic level (ie gender, age) it hits you with the error ...

"You have likely either specified an audience too small to display or a site without any data. Please change your audience definition."

I got the same error when I was looking up EVERY age bracket, and the only site that appeared when I looked for Males was BrisbaneTimes.com.au. Don't even bother with household income ... same result.

It turns out demographic information isn't available for sites outside of the US.

Still, AdPlanner is pretty basic. Where does it fall down?

1. Where are they getting their data from? It's not stated - this concerns me.

2. It gives preferential treatment to Google Content Network sites.

3. It gives really broad estimates of available inventory per day (ie 10K - 100K) which makes it very difficult to get accurate projections

4. It only focuses on unique users and page impressions - not time spent, pages per user, geolocation, media type (ie streaming video, audio, html etc). Very backward.

5. It is missing a LOT of AU sites - LOADS. I'd estimate 80-90%

6. It has a stack of sites that do not accept advertising - like CommBank and Public Transport sites - which is useless for an "Ad" Planner. No option to switch these off either (which Netview has)

7. No information on AU eyeballs across overseas sites. How many AU eyeballs on Digg? Don't ask Google Ad Planner - they can't tell you - which doesn't help given so much Internet use in AU is on o/s sites. Massive fail here.

8. Google claim "discover many relevant sites--small and large--that would otherwise be hard to find." Not true in AU - it's barely scratching the surface

The only groups/agencies this tool will benefit are those who can't afford to subscribe to market data sources. As much as it pains me to say it, Nielsen offers more robust user data and Morgan gives better insight into the consumer. Yes, both are very limited ... but right now they are still the best two.

Unless Ad Planner can dramatically - and I mean DRAMATICALLY - improve, I wouldn't waste anymore time on it.

"Google Ad Planner is designed with media planners in mind"

Maybe ask some media planners for input next time as I don't know any media planner who would find it useful in its current state.

Battelle asks whether Google are spreading their efforts too thinly

John Battelle is someone I follow on Twitter. I love reading his stuff. I like what he is doing with Federated Media (giving advertisers access to 'conversational media', entering the world of branded content etc) and I like how he thinks about things related to digital.

He posted a few interesting 'tweets' (ugh I hate that word) today re Google. I thought I'd repost them here.

Follow John Battelle on Twitter - http://twitter.com/johnbattelle

Let's make a list of oceans that Google plans to boil, shall we?

1. Computer Operating Systems. Oh, well, no really, Web Operating Systems (Chrome et al).

2. Search. Check that one as boiled, but it's not easy to keep that ocean at true temperature.

3. Cloud computing, including applications (also known as Office).

4. Healthcare data. Really.

5. The entire mobile ecosystem, from OS to hardware (android).

6. Energy. Yep, energy (figuring out how to come up with sustainable energy below the cost of coal). Through Google.org.

7. The entire advertising/marketing ecosystem, offline and online.

8. Traditional methodologies and understandings of how a public company comports itself.

PS - # 7 includes analytics, ad serving, ad selling, integrated programs, TV, radio, print, etc.

9. Social networking. Yes, dead serious, they are playing against MySpace, Facebook, etc.

10. The entire UGC media world with YouTube and Blogger and Knol et al.

You tell me, is the company stretched too thin?

Battelle on Google Ad Planner

John Battelle has an interesting piece about Google Ad Planner on his blog - http://battellemedia.com/archives/004574.php#comments

"The strong bias toward Google network sites is suspicious."

The article is about inconsistencies between the Ad Planner data and Comscore data for the same sites, claiming that Google is potentially favouring sites on their own Ad Network.

"In short: If you were a media planner using Google Ad Planner, and you were looking for larger sites, you would be led to sites that are running Google AdSense, on average, over sites that do not. Net net: This data indicates that Google Ad Planner pushes ad dollars to Google sites over non-Google sites."

I have signed up to the Ad Planner beta in AU and plan to give it a solid test to see how it performs and whether it has potential for agencies. Right now I am suspicious ... a publisher (which Google is more of than not) running audience measurement doesn't sit too well ... but at the same time the Nielsen and Morgan tools are so bad I'm open to alternatives.

Street View launches in AU

Check http://maps.google.com.au

Great technology and the launch is sure to be fuelling office conversations (or diminishing office productivity) today as everyone looks for their house ... but my question is ... what's the actual use of street view for Joe Public?

Personally I can't see how it fits into the Google manifesto.

Cuil - what's the big deal?

Some media are getting excited about Cuil - even mX (a respected tech journal if ever there was one) ran it on the front page today.

It's been started by some ex GOOGers ... I gave it a spin today trying to see how our clients appeared and the interface sort of irked me.

When I went to the cuil page I instantly thought of searchme - but I am not sure why. Personally I think searchme has a better spin than what has been shown so far on Cuil. Visual search looks great (it's definitely better than IceRocket circa 2004) but I'm not sure how it really improves on Google.

To Cuil's defence ... they don't really seem to be indexing AU pages and that would be having some impact on its relevance to me. The press frenzy at least shows there's topical interest around the search business in the mainstream media.

Cuil - http://www.cuil.com/
Searchme - http://www.searchme.com/

John Packowski on Cuil - http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20080728/totall-uncuil/

Does Google have content ambitions?

I think they do, and I found this article from Weblogs founder and Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis that seems to think the same.

http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/7/is-google-a-content-company-of-course-it-is-so-what-should-publishers-do-

Is the potential Google evolution ... Organiser ---> Distributor ---> Creator.

Personally, I think they're moving along the phases as they realise outside of search there's limited dollars to be had purely being a facilitator of information. YouTube is great but what does it mean to users. Does it have a personality? I'd say no ... and advertisers want personalities in the brands they align their own assets to advertising wise.

Google to buy DiggDigg not to be purchased by Google (updated 27/7)

Edit: Reports as of 27/7 suggest this deal is not happening and Google is not purchasing Digg.

---------------------------------

Techcrunch has reported in the last hour that Google is in the final stages of finalising an acquisition of Digg.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/22/google-in-final-negotiations-to-acquire-digg-for-around-200-million/

Digg locally has around 200k users and hasn't really experienced much local growth in the past 12 months (<10%)

Google plans to roll Digg into its Google News property. Makes sense. I wouldn't be surprised if they start to use Digg like functionality in normal search results (which according to searchblog they were bucket testing to selected US people)

In the US Digg has 10.3m users.

Olympics 2008 - the online battle

The Olympics will be with us in just over 2 weeks, and many are thinking that this will be the first Olympics that online perhaps becomes the most important media channel.

Main reason is most events are taking place during work hours (to coincide with US prime time). During these times of the day Internet is the dominant media - and it will provide people with real time updates, images, stories and reports from Beijing.

My feeling is people will be turning to Internet and Radio primarily during the big events, with TV functioning as the catch up mechanism in the evening. Raises the question - what role will Newspapers play given the event times? I'm not quite sure ... but I think free transit papers like MX will be more popular than normal during this time.

It will be an interesting battle online for the Olympic eyeballs. All the major publishers have been out in market this year selling their 'Olympic packages' ... some have been good, others not so much. Yahoo!7 has the "official" rights and is confident they will experience success with these Olympics and the content they have.

My thoughts are that the biggest benefits from the Olympics will go to Google.

Why? Well - Google search is where the majority of people will turn to find out information and results. And YouTube will undeniably be a first stop for people looking for video coverage of events.

Yes, I am aware that YouTube/Google have no streaming rights for Olympics ... but it doesn't matter ... clips will be uploaded to YouTube and will generate millions of views before they are taken down. It is difficult to compete against YouTube users and their ability to share/upload information - effectively they have a million strong editorial team. YouTube will enjoy a strong spike in usage during the Olympic period.

The main publishers could benefit from Google being the first stop for those wanting information - if they buy SEM terms around all key athletes and events. This will result in a strong payday for Google. Imagine the demand for search terms such as Grant Hackett, Eamon Sullivan, Hockeyroos etc as the news outlets frantically try and buy traffic.

The biggest site traffic wise will be olympics.com. This happened with the World Cup and will happen again for Olympics.

I think it will be difficult for Yahoo to generate big traffic from their official presence despite them having the best legal coverage. Their overall sports offering is weak traffic wise, which means they won't have the residual audience of a WWOS or Fairfax's masthead sports offerings. Personally I think it is imperative that 7 really push their online content during the Opening Ceremony ... like REALLY flog it ... because this will rate highly and is their best chance at pushing their TV audience to their web destination. I haven't seen Yahoo!7 nail this with Sports (or anything aside Dancing With The Stars) in their 2+ years of marriage so it will be interesting to see the execution. Remember too, Yahoo!7 had the official socceroos online presence during World Cup 2006 but were beaten by their rivals (the real winner being worldcup.com - which was a Yahoo! global property)

The one to watch will be ninemsn. They have 3 core things on their side. They have a huge sports audience already through WWOS. They have the biggest homepage in the country - hitting 1.4m people every day, and they have the Messenger product and it's MSN Today popup which reaches huge numbers and can drive massive volume to their key properties. Remember too that wwos.com.au reaches 1m people per month as well. My bet is that ninemsn's Olympic presence will only trail Olympics.com in terms of usage during Beijing.

FoxSports and Fairfax will enjoy usage increases as well. Fairfax have the massive homepage volumes of The Age and SMH to drive traffic to stories as they happen. I don't feel Bigpond will play much of a role online.

The iphone isn't just the 'jesus phone'

..it is BIGGER than Jesus!

Check the data - http://www.google.com.au/trends?q=iphone%2C+jesus&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

Since mid 2007 there has consistently been more searches on Google for the iphone than Jesus, indicating that Google users may have perhaps found a new god in their music player/phone handset.

However both can't hold a candle to the almighty 'porn', which smashes both Jesus and the Jesus Phone. Good old porn, the backbone(r) of the Internet.

http://www.google.com.au/trends?q=iphone%2C+porn&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

Interestingly, porn traffic (via search volume index) is rising (pun intended) each year.

Does Google have a problem with YouTube?

It's being reported YouTube is proving a slight thorn in the side of the search power, with estimates predicting the $200m USD in global revenue for the site for this year will be below expectations.

The WSJ covers it here - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121557163349038289.html

It's interesting that this is proving a problem. It's good that Google's ad head honcho is digging around finding problems with the process that need to be solved.

Memo to local Google - the main problem is that you impose an above market minimum ad spend for brands to be on the site which is based on flawed logic. If you want a reason the local ad migration to YouTube is relatively slow - this is it.

In 06 when the GOOG acquired YouTube I think the industry let out a collective sigh of relief that the troublesome area of video content would be nailed by the company that could do no wrong. Trouble is, the billion dollar question of how to nail the 30 second spot for the online video environment hasn't been answered.

YouTube faces issues many of its local competitors doesn't. One is advertisers have a reluctance to appear on the site due to the amateur nature of the content. Many entertainment advertisers don't feel they need to advertise as their content is going great guns without any help. Some refuse as they're in the middle of legal action. Whilst YouTube makes up about 60+% of all video streams in AU, there's less resistance to ad placements on ninemsn or News as advertisers are more comfortable with editorial.

Personally I rate the channel and want to explore it more. I like the fact it's ad hoc and sometimes raw ... that's what makes it appealing and engaging. And the numbers don't lie - YouTube is still enjoying phenomenal growth and engagement - it is incredibly efficient at giving order to millions upon millions of videos and making them accessible. Trouble is - Google put obstacles in front of advertisers when they want to trial the medium.

Tim Armstrong: "The next five years of the Internet is about execution."

Seth McFarlane and Google?

Am I the only one who doesn't understand the commercials behind the Seth McFarlane/Google deal for Cavalcade?

The show is distributed via the Content Network within ad units, with placements targeted to McFarlane's target audience (16-24m would be the sweet spot I imagine).

The shows also run on YouTube.

Pre-roll videos are placed on the content ... but revenue only comes (if I am reading this article properly - http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/30/business/30google.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1&ref=business&oref=slogin) when someone clicks.

The revenue is shared through various parties - Google, McFarlane, McFarlanes representitives, the site owner.

I am unsure how this can make anyone money. I can understand pushing the content out - but I think what will happen is word of these will spread virally and YouTube will become the central point for people to obtain the clips.

As an agency guy the concept confuses me - and would confuse clients.

Wouldn't the easier model be to run the pre-rolls, charge them at a CPM and use the Content Network to drive the traffic to YouTube with co-branded ad units (that showcase the related advertiser)

Or push the content out to the main video sites and revenue share with them - Hulu, Yahoo! video, AOL etc - instead of limiting it to one network.

I think Google might be patting themselves on the back a little prematurely when saying they've 'recreated the mass media model'. Don't get me wrong - the idea of web only content from a big name is great ... but I think the commercials around it sound a little confusing once you scratch through the hype.