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 !