Piracy Crackdown Yesterday in New York City, Kalidou Diallo was arrested under the city's new anti-piracy laws when he was caught recording the Transformers on his handheld camera. It's definitely a move in the right direction to protect copyright but is it enough? Lawrence Lessig has been moving towards a copyright free world with his Creative Commons effort and in the Internet world it appears that this is the only way to enforce things: by not enforcing things.
Diallo was caught recording the Transformers and his plan was most likely to sell the "bootleg" on the street for 100% profit. His business model would have him, the retailer, winning, you, the consumer, winning (because you would pay a reduced price to see the film), and the producer, Dreamworks, losing (they don't get to collect a fee for entrance). In essence this equation is shifting power toward the retailer. But if we think about traditional television the equation is also changing. Previously it was: the user pays (with his time), to watch commercials that the sponsors create, in order to get to the content. Thus the brands get your attention, and for that attention they pay producers to create content that you want to watch but will put up with commercials to get to. Now the equation is changing with TiVo and DVRs. Now the user doesn't pay, but brands are still paying. Content is still being made so there's an imbalance. Who's losing? It's the same case as Diallo - the guy footing the bill. In TV its the sponsors.
I think that pay per entrance still works. After all, you get the luxury (at least in some theaters) of comfortable seats, big screen, shared movie going experience, and last but not least, new cutting edge content. It's worth $9 ($12 in Manhattan). But TV? In the comfort of your own home you can do anything...including stealing content. There are legitimate tools out there that make this easy for you to do. In the old days you could just tune your brain out but now you don't even have to do that. And with tools like Apple's ITV how can we continue to justify television broadcast and more importantly, costly national media buys?
True, there are some events out there like the Super Bowl, and other sports, awards shows like the Oscars, and other "events" out there (last episode of Sopranos for example) that are worthy of getting a large audience together at the same time. But for the most part we want to watch what we want when we want. I've been an advocate of product placement for some time and I'll put this one thought in your head of cross generation product placement with a strange product known as the female sponge. In yesterday's AdAge the mention of the contraceptive sponge as used by Elaine in Seinfeld, demonstrated the power of perfect product integration. The product had recall among every generation and with the power of Seinfeld's syndication network, even stronger. Now are you Tivo-ing through that?
One last thought: the folks that paid for the production, namely GM, although I haven't seen the movie yet, would probably want this movie to get around as much as possible, although now that I think about it, if you are bootlegging a $10 movie, you probably can't afford a $30,000 Camaro.
Monetizing YouTube? ... Not Yet
On YouTube's blog the "YouTube" team mentions that they are going to begin to share revenue with their more popular users outside of their "partners." Partners currently include the biggest traffic drivers to their site like the NBA, CBS, lonelygirl15, and NBC. Now they are going to share revenue with popular users like LisaNova, renetto, and smosh. Revenue share will include participation in Google's Adsense network. This announcement also comes off the heals of Afterworld (Bud.tv's foray into online video content) was announcement (via Mashable) as the first test of YouTube's ad program.
A few very simple questions spring to mind with these announcements. First and foremost: Why don't they share revenue with everyone? YouTube is easily gamed and they are sharing revenue with channels that have the most subscribers or views. You could easily build a bot to knock your views onto the Most Watched list or create many accounts to build your subscription list. And if its a logistical matter of paying out small amounts, have a threshold amount (like $5), similar to Revver. Secondly, this revenue sharing system (of clicking on AdSense ads) doesn't really work. Maybe its my content but I've tried it out (also via Revver) and perhaps its Revver's smaller advertiser base but I've never really had the desire to click on an image based Revver ad let alone a text based Google Adsense ad. Thirdly, most people watch YouTube content not on YouTube but via YouTube's embedded player. (See yesterday's post on Prom Queen and MySpace). Overall, though, I do have to applaud YouTube for making an effort. They're hit with a billion dollar lawsuit. They're probably getting a lot of heat from shareholders about their ROI ($15 million in revenue vs $1.7 billion purchase price). I'm not sure what this Afterworld model will look like but I hope it keeps the viral aspect of YouTube going with a way to embed the ad within the content.
Video Ads More Effective than Images Doubleclick issued a research release about how inline video ads are clicked on more than twice that of banners and images. The report also says that the overall interaction rate is 8 percent! 8 percent! That's a huge number. A number that includes mouseovers, expansions, clicks etc. That number could also be pretty misleading. I've run into a ton of video ads that pop up right when you get to the webpage and you might have "interactions" with it when looking for that hidden "close" button. Unfair you might say. Well, I think that after hearing about this next statistic, which is 0.32 percent press the play button, you'd think otherwise. While this 0.32 percent is double a banner ads click through rate, this is a huge drop off from 8 percent. If the video isn't playing then what? Most likely you're trying to close it, or find the "stop" button. Then Doubleclick says that most videos on average are played 2/3 of the way through. OK, not bad. It could take anywhere from 10-20 seconds to find the close/stop/destroy button. Doubleclick's overall message: Video is twice as effective as Images....
But images aren't really effective. We know that. Whenever we go to a page, we automatically tune out those banners on the top and the skyscrapers along the sides. (Google Adsense speak there.) So what should you do? I've said it once, but I'll say it again, and even Mashable echoes me on this one. Embed your message within your content! A UK boxing promoter is suing YouTube for $1 million. (Rounding error for the Google guys, and a tenth of a percent of what Viacom wants.) The promoter was selling PayPerView subscriptions through his website. But as Mashable states"[the industry] need[s] to adopt a model that provides unlimited syndication, with watermarking and embedded ads, so the business model remains while users still get access to the content. This model would also solve the issue of unauthorized fan footage: rather than keep your version locked up and fight an endless battle to keep cameraphones and video cameras away from sporting events, just offer a higher quality version for free with an ad attached."
People don't want to be sold, but they do want to buy. Advertisements are an opportunity to sell. Embedded content makes them want to buy.
