Comscore released data saying that 139k people visited Oscar.com on Oscar Sunday. Seperately, Mashable reported that the Oscars asked Youtube to remove videos from the show that had been uploaded. In the same report, Mashable had a screen capture that showed that an Oscar Comedy Musical video had been viewed more than 200k times. Lets say that those 200k views translate into about 100k actual people viewing the video.
The question is: Do the Oscars benefit or are they harmed by their video being seen on Youtube.com rather than Oscars.com ?
Its a simple question with a very important answer. Youtube proponents want everyone to believe that every impression is a new found impression that can only benefit the brand. Others, myself included believe the opposite. That the last thing you ever want is for another entity, that is completely out of your control, becoming the defacto manager of your brand.
So the question is this. If a content owner, like the Oscars, wants to control their content and their brand, what can they do ? If the Oscars wanted to capture 100pct of Youtube viewers of Oscar Videos on their site, what would it cost them ?
Its actually a cheap and easy operation to do so. Just overwhelm them
To capture Youtube viewers, the first step would be to OVERWHELM Youtube with partial clips of full length that tease Youtube users and point them to Oscars.com. For this Will Ferrell clip, I would have created a video that showed the first 10 secs of the clip, then had 4 minutes of a billboard that said ” Great videos from the Oscars telecast and exclusive behind the scenes videos are all available at Oscars.com”
IN addition to the billboard in the video you would have an active link to Oscars.com on the Youtube video page. I wouldnt post this video 1 time. I would post this video 100 times.
And i would do the same thing for EVERY moment and segment in the Oscars.
The reality is that Youtube viewers will grow tired of scanning through every video and just click over to Oscars.com where they will see all the unique video that isn’t anywhere on Youtube along with the Oscars.com paying advertisers.
The cost of hiring 10 people to slice and dice videos and post them on Youtube while the Oscars is going on, ? Lets say $20 dollars per hour and 10 hours of work during and after the show is over. Thats $ 2k dollars.
Thats the value of the Oscars videos being on Youtube.
Old Media of course hasn’t figured this out. The old media way is to try to pre empt new and better ways of enabling entertainment. They just don’t get it. Rather than sending take down notices, they should be leveraging the technology and medium and making it their own.
Youtube and Google Video, by adopting the DMCA Safe Harbors has defined themself as a hosting provider. They have made the choice to provide these services, along with links back to a destination of the uploaders choice for free. Content owners shouldn’t fight this. They should celebrate this and fully take advantage of Google’s generosity.
As a hosting provider, Google and Youtube don’t know or care what videos are being hosted. They don’t see them (other than reviewing them for porn of course), they just host them. So let them do their job. Let them spend their money on bandwidth hosting your promotions and videos. Let them provide free links back to your sites next to every video.
What about the Youtube Community ? Won’t they be upset ? No. They don’t care. Sure a couple people will bitch and post videos, just like they have when Viacom and others took down videos. Just like they do when they get takedown notices around their uploads. Who cares ? Youtube and Google Video are a hosting service. Nothing more or less. Let them do their job.
So my message to every and any content owner is this: DO NOT send take down notices. Look at how much money you spend on lawyers on the notices. How much you spend searching the site looking for your content. Instead, hire a bunch of interns to continuously upload videos that suit your purposes.
Make the math work in your favor. For example, if you have a movie called Ghost Rider, do a 90 minute video with 1 minute from your movie, 2 minutes of promo for the movie and where to see or buy it and 80 minutes of a cat chasing its tail. Call it – Ghost Rider the Full Movie and post it 100 times. Every day.
The net result is that you are using the tools that Gootube makes available to you while minimizing the chances of anyone finding infringing content. Its not a new idea, but it sure is effective.
Of course, none of this changes whether or not the final product, whether a movie, tv show or website delivers on user expectations. If they dont, none of this is matters.
If they do. Then promote it. Use the resources our friends at Google make available. Its what new media is all about !
There is one major problem, and that is the function to sort videos by rating and number of views on youtube. This can be temporarily counteracted by using several dummy accounts, but soon enough the community will find a non-partitioned video and everyone will flock to that one particular clip.
Comment by someone -
Super powerleveling 60-70 Grand Marshal\’s or High Warlord\’s weapon package:wow powerleveling
friendlink:hitachi
Comment by wow powerleveling -
Finally, someone at a high corporate level sees the \”street level\” way of maximizing current technology.
Mark, you just put one lawyer out of a job and employed 20 interns! Net loss = $0
Comment by gwewe -
lestai
Comment by lestai -
I think taking this spam approach would damage their brand even more than going after YouTube like they already are doing. The world is changing and brands should change with it, not try to maintain status quo. That strategy will not work in the long run.
Consumers are taking control and smart brands understand this and focuses on the great advantages that comes with this change. Great video clips from the awards will increase the young consumers interest for the Oscars and they might even take a look at the TV award show next time. But going after YouTube like that or spamming content at consumers is a bad idea.
Comment by Tomas -
i thought your idea to slice and dice videos is not only a great idea, it\’s classic. you\’re always going to have people who\’ll upload illegal content, but this would help all us intarweb losers who get so annoyed with seeing the wrong file over and over again that we\’d just go and get the real version. i know i\’ve done that multiple times.
i don\’t think that you\’d get yourself banned from sites for flooding with this. if youtube was going to ban people for flooding, they\’d have already banned people for illegal content and the like. you\’d think that they\’d have posted a \’illegal content\’ button by now, but they seem set on allowing it.
Comment by Brad -
Mark, this is nothing new–media owners have been \”flooding\” P2P networks for years.
But you inadvertently raise a good point–why haven\’t these same oweners adapted the flooding technique to the video-hosters like Gootube?
Comment by Kristian -
So then why did your company go to court to subpoena google to remove your companies property? And why did that start even before this post occured?
Is it just that you don\’t have a day-to-day hand in Magnolia or ?
Comment by scott -
Isn\’t it possible that \”old\” media isn\’t simply trying to \”pre empt new and better ways of enabling entertainment.\” and the statement that \”They just don\’t get it\” is just plain ironic?
Let me call your attention to the post you made the same day as this…
\”Is there any more lame a comment than \”You just don\’t get it\”. Its a simple, dismissive phrase that says more about the person saying it than the person/organization its directed to. Its a way of saying \”You dont agree with me, but i dont have anything of consequence to say. \”You just don\’t get it\” stops any discussion where i might be asked to say something worthwhile dead in its tracks\”
With that said…
I think that the \”old media\” gets it in a certain way. They\’re just waiting for someone else to separate the chaff from the wheat so they don\’t have to take the risk involved in developing the market. In favorable comparison, I\’ll speak about the industry with which I\’m most familiar.
In the 1990\’s, I was involved with several local ISP\’s in a mid-sized midwestern college town. We all knew that, in the long run, the telcos and cablecos had an insurmountable advantage because they controlled the physical layer out to the premises. At the end of the day, they have the wires that go to the customers, giving them final control over what gets distributed to the end user and how. But, for years, they didn\’t really take action in the ISP market.
There were vague threats of action regarding telco switch utilization, but nothing every materialized. Both the telcos and cablecos fought open access to their cable plants more than anything else, and they did so in a way that hamstrung (but didn\’t entirely prevent…important for working out the bugs) others from using their wires. It appears to me now that they were simply avoiding competition and waiting for the market to develop and mature.
Basically, someone else was taking the risk on which they would eventually capitalize. They were willing to give up the market in the short term because they knew, in the long run, that they would be able to mount such an overwhelming response as to render those who didn\’t control the critical element (the wires, which they guarded jealously) obsolete.
With online media distribution, I think that the companies that control the critical element (the content) are still sitting back, waiting for companies like Gootube to flesh out the details and solve the problems. They still think they can swoop in, after the market is developed, and reap all of the profits with a minimum of risk.
Thus, the model of a completely new discovery->creation->production->distribution chain is much more of a threat to the established media than Gootube will ever be. Gootube is an experiment. The old media are sitting back, watching, and taking notes, learning from Gootube\’s mistakes at little or no cost.
Comment by aiden -
The only problem with your \”Ghost Rider\” suggestion is you can\’t upload 90 minutes worth of material, because A. you can only upload 10 minutes and B. you can\’t upload more than 100mb
I don\’t know if that changes if you have a special channel or something, but I know for regular folks, you can\’t do it like that.
Comment by Gary A. -
Now YOU get it.
Power to the people Mark.
You are making the new 800# gorilla smile.
If you can\’t beat em, join em, and kill em with kindness.
Comment by gary -
Another great post, and a take on the issue that seems pretty \”obvious\”, yet is counter to how corporate America sees it. You\’re dead-on when you say Google and Youtube don\’t care what you post, and they have to handle and pay for all the bandwidth to play all these videos. Companies should take advantage of the free \”airwave\” (bandwidth) to get their company name and message out. Bravo on another great post.
Comment by maui -
This sounds great, but I know that you are smart enough to realize that if people actually did this it would sabotage the YouTube portal. It would convolude their library and drive away traffic. Now of course Google would allocate resources to take down your 100 videos of cat hissing, but at some point they would work to change their model. The continual uploading of \”trick\” videos is not a long term solution to online media distribution.
As far as not letting others that are out of your control manage your distribution…..How do you feel about Comcast, Time Warner, DirectTV etc…They are often not serving the interests of HDNet or any other content provider, yet everyone knows that they are a necessary component for feeding viewers with your content.
Mark, I know its frustrating to see YouTube profit off of a model that seems so flawed. How did these two guys rise to the top despite blatant distribution of copyrighted material. If you ask me, they got really really lucky to pass off this mess to Google and cash out with billions. Mark I can sense that it bothers you on several levels that they are still getting away with this. It doesn\’t make sense. The big companies and our judicial system just don\’t think the way you (and I) do. They don\’t see the critical flaws of their systems and nor do they see the obvious workarounds and loopholes. It is people like you (us) who see these visions and can actually push out society in a positive direction. Its just a lot easier to do this was a couple $B in your pocket.
Comment by Zach -
OR content providers can provide content specific to YouTube\’s audience via the full length clips, w/ YouTube\’s Ad embeded technology.
Why are the old school media companies so arrogant and greedy? I just don\’t understand. It is like they don\’t realize how to maximize their gain.
DRIVING TRAFFIC AWAY FROM YOUTUBE DOES NOT WORK. The content needs to be contained, and easy for the audience. Youtube\’s viewers are there to see YouTube videos, not get redirected to a more compersome complicated old media site where they have to watch a 15-20sec ad before they see a video 1 minute long.
EVERYONE INVOLVED WITH OLD MEDIA NEEDS TO GET WITH THE PROGRAM. even you.
Comment by echotoall -
Doran and I, co-hosts of the show, Digital Village Saturdays 10-11AM, KPFK 90.7FM) which has been broadcast from for 12 years now, have been saying basically the same thing you just did for about a decade now. Few have listened. Hopefully, due to your name recognition many more will do so now. Thanks, Ric
Comment by Ric Allan -
Dont agree…….music companies have already tried this tactic on kazaa and limewire and all the other p2p servers. certainly not an original idea. for every twenty interns you hire there will be twice as many bored college students who will post the real deal just to spite you. people are not going click on a link to go to your site to buy your movie. the reason they are on youtube is to get it free. if they cant get it free then they will go look at something else.
Comment by ryan -
It seems to me there must be a middle ground. Allowing YouTube to control your brand doesn\’t make sense. But not allowing YouTube to post your content doesn\’t make sense either.
Can big media not accept that YouTube actually helps their traffic flow? Allowing to post pieces of their work guides people to additional offerings from that organization, whether it is media or some other kind of corporation. And YouTube allows organization\’s to spread their message in another way. Posting strategic clips also can help organizations.
I appreciate the discussion.
Comment by John -
So this post actually got me thinking how oscar.com is and has made a really bad mistake. So I wrote about it on my blog. You Tube really should be the #1 place a company or marketing team should focus on if they want to get their video\’s watched widespread AND if they had done the same thing as NBC did, they could control their own video content and manage what get\’s seen.
Comment by Sandy -
I agree mark, Your idea is genius!
– I would also think to contact, Google/Youtube 2 months before the oscars in hopes of reaching a deal, where YouTube could host every video uploaded plus whatever they wanted from the HD cameras that are recording the oscars … etc. (Surely the deal would pay more than the adverts on Oscars.com)
– But if that didn\’t work out, I would for sure, start that little \”army\” of video slicers and uploaders! – I did it long ago with registering Yahoo Id\’s richardbowles001 – richardbowles099 this was to game some old yahoo games.. etc. Anyways create 500 youtube id\’s and then start slicing and dicing and uploading! .. I would even do some practice runs! lol
Rbowles
Comment by Pallet Rack -
Your suggestion ignores the part where the Oscars failed to make more than a five minute highlight reel of the real ceremony available. People who were looking to see, for instance, the Jack Black/Will Ferrell song about being a commedian couldn\’t go to Oscars.com to satisfy their desire. They could go to Youtube or they could bug their friends who taped the show, but the MPAAS failed to provide a legitimate ad-supported or purchasable method of obtaining the content.
Comment by zvi -
It\’s the same with the music and movie business. By the time they figure out that M$ hoodwinked them into DRM (aka, CRAP) when they could have been \”leaking\” slices and then marketing the song online for a fraction of what DRM is costing them, it will be wayyy tooo late. In fact it probably already is with Apple in the lead and now Ruckus. Only in America, eh?
Comment by Jim -
Post 19 nailed it. I\’m not sure how anyone can disagree that you should never hand over your brand image to someone or something that you can\’t control. It\’s why outsourcing things like Customer Service to the wrong place can kill your business. However, I also disagree with Mark here that you should create extra long video of \”garbage\” and have that represent your brand – one step forward with at least one step back.
The question that I have in this specific situation is \”Can Oscars.com even handle the extra traffic?\” that something like this would bring it if it works. My gut says no.
I don\’t have the solution but the idea for the Oscars to use YT as the hosting for it\’s clips and let it pay for the bandwidth and handle the traffic, is solid. Perhaps the Oscars can produce the clips on the fly with Sponsorship and then upload them to YT in different forms so that they control the quality and content of the clip and can create some revenues.
And PS Mark, I don\’t care one way or the other but could you just buy the cubs so that I don\’t have to read about it here anymore?
Comment by bromo98 -
Mr. Maverick,
I enjoyed your post, but I must tell you that I take issue with this part of it:
\”a 90 minute video with 1 minute from your movie, 2 minutes of promo for the movie and where to see or buy it and 80 minutes of a cat chasing its tail. Call it – Ghost Rider the Full Movie and post it 100 times.\”
I consider that to be false advertising, and if it were done the way you suggest, that the COMPANY actually DO the false advertising themselves, that\’s pretty low.
Just take out the words \”the Full Movie\” and post it a gazillion times for all I care, but let\’s not have honesty go by the wayside.
Just my one cent.
😉
Comment by Trading Goddess -
I agree DMCA takedown notices are not the answer, absolutely. But flooding YouTube, essentially adding noise and confusion to the marketplace, doesn\’t seem like a healthy solution.
Oscars.com was not hosting some of these clips at all, and indeed has idiotically stated it will remove clips there now to \”generate interest\” for next year\’s Oscars. HUH?
Oscars.com also does not allow people to share, embed, or comment upon the videos. YouTube is the place to be because that\’s where people are! YouTube lets you share, lets you comment, lets you participate in video and deepens/extends its impact.
Comment by Chuck Olsen -
\”IN addition to the billboard in the video you would have an active link to Oscars.com on the Youtube video page. I wouldnt post this video 1 time. I would post this video 100 times.
And i would do the same thing for EVERY moment and segment in the Oscars.
The reality is that Youtube viewers will grow tired of scanning through every video and just click over to Oscars.com where they will see all the unique video that isn\’t anywhere on Youtube along with the Oscars.com paying advertisers.\”
Actually, I wouldn\’t click over. I would start bitching about what assholes pulled this fucked up maneuver and start demanding that YouTube ban them.
Overwhelming a system like YouTube is the kind of process that ruins a good channel, just as sp@mmers have ruined MySpace.
You\’re really thrown by Gootube and related phenomenon aren\’t you? Your blog has really gone downhill since you started obsessing on this topic. I\’ve never seen you miss the point so many times.
But I\’m still a fan.
Comment by Clyde Smith -
In my opinion, it is difficult to overwhelm them in YouTube\’s game which are providing video clips with easy access and fast speed. Oscar.com needs to find other ways to attract people. For example, make a oscar forum where people can discuss about the oscar or post some ads offering gifts or certificates
Comment by Kevin Jang -
Why not just encourage people to make \”fan videos\” that mix your content with something else? Random people on the Internet will \”spam\” YouTube more cheaply than interns that you have to supply with computers, software, and net connection. And fan videos will stay up longer than deliberate spam.
This is what Fox seems to be doing for the show \”Prison Break\” — you can\’t find actual show clips on YouTube because almost all 98,200 search results are fan videos.
To encourage the behavior, just put some outtakes from the show up on a login-required site for fan video makers only. If a viewer makes a video that scores well in competition with the pirate clips on a search, he or she gets an account on the site. Do really well and you get a jacket or something.
And you get all kinds of PR for being a Pioneer of User-Generated Content when you\’re really just using the fan video makers to help you spam YouTube and keep people from finding your real show.
Comment by Don Marti -
there is something you forgot. It just takes one person to find a good quality rip not endorsed by the Oscars and share the link around.
Comment by superdave -
Mark Cuban… advocates spamming?!
Gootube is already full of shit, so sites like
http://www.tv-links.co.uk/ and http://www.peekvid.com/ are appearing
to deeplink through the muck.
Like all attempts at digital restrictions, this effects novices but
not anyone wired to social networks. And all it does is damage the brand for the novices, since they\’ve _heard_ you can watch Ghost Rider on gootube, but just get spammed, and makes those wired think the brand is even more laughable.
Comment by dave -
I don\’t think the Oscars should resort to spamming. There is an easier way to get attention, make your site a destination worth going to. Put up some teasers (maybe some exclusive composite clips) with a MORE AT OSCARS.COM splash at the end. Not a 10 minute splash, just a friendly note. Then at Oscars.com have a really nice site with high-quality videos that are easy to link to, embed and email. Most of the time content producers put up their videos in the most hard to access fashion. On my Mac I usually can\’t even view them. YouTube is popular because it\’s easy.
I just went to their website and the videos are pretty good quality, but you can\’t even link to them. That\’s no fun. There\’s also not much to choose from, none of the good moments (not that there were many!). Very underwhelming.
Comment by Jon Gales -
Really happy to see Mark write a post on this topic, and I agree with the ideas he presents. As business development manager for a new action sports video-on-demand site, this is exactly the strategy we emply with our content providers. Most of these independent filmmakers (think Warren Miller at the top end, the local high school kid who expertly shoots and edits his own skateboard film at the low end) need to sell DVDs. Whether it\’s in the local ski shop, or out of the trunk of their car, that\’s where they currently make their money. So with our site, we ask for \”scenes\” from their latest film. We show \”teasers\” of these videos scenes in flash (a la YouTube), and then show the full video scenes via download into our secure media player. At the end of every video is a link back to their site. Of courese they could also send people to where the full DVD is for sale. Bottom line, they control the release of their content in the \”new media\” arena, and drive DVD sales under the \”old media\” concept. Eventually DVDs will go away, and pay per view or ad-supported video downloads will be their primary source of income.
Comment by Mike -
Mark, this makes no sense. On one hand you are worrying about another company taking a bite out of your brand, and at the same time, you are offering that the solution is to further damage the value of that brand. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot…
As a consumer, if I\’m going to YouTube to find the last quarter of the last Mavericks/Heat game, I click on the video, and I see the first two baskets, and then a 15 minute billboard for NBA.COM, or Mavericks.com or HDTV.Net, I\’m turned off of that brand IMMEDIATELY, because you\’ve just *wasted my time*. I\’m mad at YOU.
I\’m not arguing the point that you should RARELY, if ever, give up your rights to the image that you present to the customer. Branding should certainly be protected. Plus, I appreciate that sometimes you have to use guerilla tactics to fight an asymmetrical battle, but your suggestion is to carpet bomb, instead of finding a way to be *smarter* than your adversary. You, OF ALL PEOPLE, should know that the last thing we need is more SPAM. Shame on you.
The smarter way to approach this is similar to the advertising you run across on streaming audio – append an oscars.com ad onto THE BEGINNING of all of the posted clips, and just happen to mention that the HD quality version of this clip, and all other Oscars highlights is available at oscars.com., blah, blah, blah. *THEN* you\’re driving traffic to the site, where you can pitch them to your heart\’s content, and steal viewers from the tiny, grainy YouTube junk-o-rama.
No matter how many games and video clips it contains, the Academy and ABC do not budget TWO CENTS for oscars.com to exist for for my entertainment and/or education – they do it to serve up Cingular ads, and make a buck, and that\’s all that they are worried about here.
Comment by KilljoyTXinMI -
There is a term for this. I believe it is called \”flooding\”. Doing this in a chatroom will get you banned from the chatroom.
If flooding becomes a problem on video web sites, this may prompt efforts by the sites to control the flooding. (Banning the people who do flooding, \”flag as inappropriate\” option for flooding.)
Comment by Matt Dittloff -
Here\’s what I would do if you used that tactic…
I\’d go to Oscars.com, then when they presented me with a login/registration screen I would immediately back arrow back into youtube and wait for more illegal posts.
You and I both know that there\’s no way that they would be satisfied with providing that content without registration. That\’s a huge thing that people love about youtube that most execs outside of youtube don\’t get.
Comment by Sam -
Excellent post. I agree with nearly all of your points. I would love to be in charge of placing clips on Youtube for companies. And as long as someone else hasn\’t illegally uploaded the clip, your concept is perfectly sound. Looking for illegally uploaded clips should also be another part of that person\’s job.
Comment by BURT -
One small problem with that. The NBCs, ABCs, and Oscar.coms of the world have horrible video programs on their sites. The younger generation wants to and will sift through the crap/spin just to get to video. That\’s what makes YouTube what it is….a low budget way to get your site noticed (for example…what I\’m doing now by posting this).
Comment by AwfulAnnouncing -
This \”overwhelm them\” strategy you describe seems like a cat-and-mouse game that the old media companies would inevitably lose.
The power of crowd-sourced media is in the power of crowd-sourced filtering. For example, there is a crushingly large number of people that post crap teasers or fake listings to Craigslist, but after 3 or 8 (or some other magic number) of flags as \”spam\” the listing is pulled. YouTube doesn\’t have a \”flag as \’spam\’\” system, but it does have a rating system that works quite well. To use the example from your post, I\’m sure these crap teaser videos would be rated very poorly, and the high quality full-length videos ripped from TV would bubble up in the ratings. Whenever I search for any video on YouTube, if I don\’t find what I want right away, I just change the sort method to \”sort by rating\” and the video I want almost always bubbles up to the top (unless it was hit by a takedown request recently).
Comment by Andrew Parker -
I like this. I\’m glad there are people out there who \”get\” that the rules are changing. I disagree with Mr. Zimmerman that this should just be accepted by content providers, though… Now is the time when the precedents are being set.
PS to Mark – remember MRC? we were both there back then.
Comment by tompayne -
google should just buy oscars.com
Comment by Sandy -
Great post Mark. I agree with you that allowing others to manage your content is not smart, but I also think that the Oscars DOES need to adapt to the changes and post free video of different segments of the show. As it is, there is only a highlights video (last I heard). This is very foolish of them, as their is a vacuum of Oscar content on the net and they are only making people frustrated with them.
Love your blog. I don\’t read it enough, but I am pulling for Mavs for the West again in the playoffs and will not be sad the Heat are probably going to be missing.
And if it\’s true that you are trying to buy my beloved Cubs, I wish you all the best as you wrest (is that even a word??) this glorious franchise from the clutches of the Tribune.
Godspeed.
Comment by Cooper Gillan -
Don\’t agree with the tactic, but agree with the strategy. I\’d break it up into two parts:
1. If company A is \”selling\” a brand, then \”A\” better be smart enough to make YouTube work for them. It should be \”free\” eyeballs, \”free\” publicity. If I\’m selling a brand, I love YouTube.
2. If company B is selling digital content, and YouTube is cutting into their top line, then they better look at their business model. YouTube is just a symptom of today\’s age. Want to dedicate resources to a symptom, or to understanding the real cause and figuring out how to deal with it?
Mark – I hope you buy the Cubs. Incredibly valuable franchise and loyal fan base, despite the way that the Tribune has mismanaged. I\’d love to see what you do with it. But I don\’t want to see the first pitch of every Soriano, Lee, and Ramirez at bat on YouTube followed by 10 minute tours of the outfield ivy.
Comment by gzino -
The larger issue here really is that the world is changing more rapidly than ever before and some people and institutions want to fight the change rather than adapting. The technique you propose here is simply that: adapting rather than fighting the current.
As we increase the pace of change to the point where those who resist are simply flattened by the massive force of forward progress the ones who will survive, and thrive, in such an environment are those who will analyze each new development and see how to use it to their advantage.
Fighting YouTube is difficult and costly. But using an approach like this is easy, cheap AND can actually provide virtually free advertising/traffic to your site. Brilliant.
Comment by Josh McDonald -
This is unrelated, but I can\’t post it elsewhere. PLEASE! PLEASE! PLEASE! For the LOVE OF GOD, buy the Chicago Cubs franchise and make us winners.
Comment by Woodridge Ryan -
For example, if you have a movie called Ghost Rider, do a 90 minute video with 1 minute from your movie, 2 minutes of promo for the movie and where to see or buy it and 80 minutes of a cat chasing its tail.
Mark, eighty minutes of a cat chasing its tail actually sounds more interesting than the real Ghost Rider movie.
P.S. buy the Cubs.
Comment by Rob I. -
I disagree.
>>That the last thing you ever want is for another entity, that is completely out of your control, becoming the defacto manager of your brand.
Comment by Lee Marks -
The problem with your spam suggestion is that it\’s just as easy to get around as it is to do the spamming.
I think it would be better to pay that army of interns to build a community around your products/media. Give people a reason to be passionate about your stuff, give them some measure of control, perceived or real, over the brand. Otherwise you\’re missing the point of all of this activity.
Or you can take the immature route and add even more noise to an already overwhelmingly noisy environment.
Comment by grant -
I think it straight translates to 100,000 people that saw it on YouTube that wouldn\’t have seen it at all on oscars.com.
The generation looks to YouTube for video, not the web or a closely related source such as oscars.com.
The only way oscars.com could get that kind of traffic is to spend millions of dollars on marketing, to show that video clips can be watched on their website. This isn\’t feasible at all because they probably don\’t benefit enough from marketing that way, considering the YouTube video\’s were free advertising.
Comment by Jolly Roger -
Finally, someone at a high corporate level sees the \”street level\” way of maximizing current technology.
Mark, you just put one lawyer out of a job and employed 20 interns! Net loss = $0
Comment by Mike -
> the last thing you ever want is for another
> entity, that is completely out of your control,
> becoming the defacto manager of your brand.
If that were true – and I believe it is, then why do you set by and allow them to do it to this very site?
http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:www.blogmaverick.com/2006/10/30/some-intimate-details-on-the-google-youtube-deal/
Comment by Brett Tabke -
I agree that this is a better strategy for content providers, as compared to what they are currently doing, but disagree with the idea that the YouTube community won\’t care. This is they type of thing that would drive me and many others I believe away from the site. You are talking about having them spend 2k to take control of their videos, which I am sure is nothing to them or you, but goes against the whole spirit of having a community site where all providers start on equal footing.
Here\’s another suggestion: How about content providers just learn to live with the situation as it is? I\’m sure it is affecting their bottom line very little or probably not at all.
Comment by Charles Zimmerman -