The Long Tail of Video

In "The Long Tail," Chris Anderson outlined the untapped audiences that exist beyond mass media targeting. Waves of consumers who participate in niche media and markets, in aggregate, can be greater in size and more valuable than the traditional "mass media" audience.

The same holds true for video as well. When people think of online video, two  sites come to mind: YouTube and Hulu. Indeed, both of those sites have a huge number of videos viewed per user (96 videos/viewer and 26.7 videos/viewer, respectively). However, a comScore study shows that more than half of the online video minutes viewed are being viewed on video sites ranked #26 and higher. The long tail of video site is garnering more than half the total online video viewing.

The important takeaway is that your online video strategy shouldn't begin and end with YouTube. As my colleague Paul Dyer points out, YouTube should be only one part of your video marketing mix. You need to be wherever people go to view video, and that isn't always YouTube.

Diesel Dressing Room Camera

Okay, it's not as scandalous as the headline may seem. Nothing perverted going on here. Diesel is taking advantage of the "haul videos" rage, where consumers videotape themselves trying on clothing, accessories, etc. to ask for their friends' opinions.

Diesel stores in Spain have installed Diesel Cams in their fitting rooms so that customers can take pictures of themselves trying on clothes and instantly post it to Facebook. I actually thought of this idea a couple of months ago, but I couldn't crack the 'creepy factor' of having a camera in a fitting room. Putting the camera not right in the dressing room (obviously) was the solution. Nicely done, Diesel.

They can hope that this instant feedback from customers' friends will help with upselling or will invite customers to try on even more clothes to get even more opinions. This will be an interesting model to watch.

Let me know if anyone has tried one of these out.

Nielsen Online TV Ratings

No, not that Nielsen. The Nielsen Company recently announced that they will be integrating online video viewership into its traditional television viewership measurement. This is a valiant effort, if not three years too late.

For one, Nielsen has long been criticized for its less-than-accurate ratings system. I recall heated discussions within Rysher Entertainment (remember them?) when we'd get the overnight ratings back on Entertainment Tonight that varied greatly from the national ratings we'd get a few days later. Further, their sampling size is still grossly underrepresented. With only 25,000 Nielsen "metered market" households representing 114,500,000 U.S. households, 97.8% of American households have no input into what is actually being watched. (Note- I didn't cite the Wikipedia entry here, because I wrote it.) Now Nielsen's plan is to introduce Internet meters in 7,500 of its metered homes. This brings the percentage of online U.S. households not represented to 99.11%. (Calculation note- 74.1% of the U.S. population is online.)

What this means is that television ratings, commercials, brands you see, Christmas ideas, movie openings, auto financing deals, and billions of TV advertising dollars are being decided by data from an incredibly few number of people.

This shortcoming was put best to me by my old boss at Rysher Entertainment. She said that she and her colleague, who were completely different people with completely different TV viewing habits, were seen as equals in Nielsen's eye, simply because they were both caucasian women, mothers, 35-54, in the New York metro region.

The big "however" here is, Nielsen's the only game in town. Literally billions of dollars ride on what they report. And they're doing a pretty darn good job keeping this industry afloat, considering the astronomical costs of running a service like theirs. Imagine if, next April, they said, "Well screw you, then. Figure it out on your own during May sweeps!"

YouTube in HD

If you've been following Twitter activity today, you'll know that YouTube quietly and unofficially upgraded their video playback to HD (sort of). The reason I say "sort of" is due to the ambiguity as to what is "HD." Technically, if the video has at 720 (or 1,080) horizontal lines, then yes, it is HD. However, with bit rates at around 1 mbps (1 megabit per second or 1,000 kilobits per second), the quality, in my opinion, would not qualify as true HD. Certainly nothing like the 18 mbps HD content that CBS spits out over the air.

This is a great leap forward, though. And kudos to YouTube. I can only imagine they're waiting for the power users to kick the tires before making a formal announcement.

For a quality comparison, I've shown here still captures of the first frame of this great video done by Derek Truesdale. Below are the three quality options now available: HD, Higher Quality, and Normal. As you can clearly see in the HD still, Derek has a mole on his left cheek, just to the right of his mouth. (Apologies to Derek -- he is quite fetching.) While watching the "Higher Quality" version, you can still make it out, and in the "Normal" version, you can barely tell it's there. This gives a good indication of the quality differences.

HD

HIGHER QUALITY

NORMAL

You'll also notice, along with the lack of fanfare about this, that the user's video playback quality settings have not changed. They remain the same as before the introduction of the HD option:

If you wish to play around with this yourself, click to watch Derek's video. When it's loaded, you can either toggle among the different playback quality settings just below the video to the right or add this text after the video's URL and reload:

• &fmt=9 for Normal quality 
• &fmt=18 for Higher quality
• &fmt=22 for HD

Play around with it, and comment back to let me know what you think.