VideoVoo: Online Video Marketing

Blip.TV, named the Best Broadband Website of 2007 in the Webby Awards, is grabbing more from the video limelight. The latest Blip.TV vlogger big fish is RocketBoom (which I have never got hooked on though -as it is, as my colleague likes to put it, a bit ‘cheesy’). Other tenants in the video apartment block are Wallstrip, TreeHugger TV (a green vlog), Alive in Baghdad, Goodnight Burbank, or the video self-reflective niche site I started to frequent, Beet.TV.

The interesting thing about the move is that Blip.TV is putting down its roots to ideas sparked by RocketBoom. As Blip.TV says on their blog: “I’ll never forget the day, about two and a half years ago, when Jared Klett turned around and said “Have you guys seen Rocketboom?” We were entranced. We had been looking to start a company together, and had spent the last year and a half hacking away on software called Otter … trying to sell it as a knowledge management platform. … Once we saw Rocketboom we knew that we had to change direction. We were going to build a video platform. … The five of us launched the first version of blip about a week later, on May 9.”

I remember first seeing RocketBoom and thinking: this is a great idea. And the thought immediately followed by ‘it could be done better. Where are the others?’ (meaning other vloggers). Since then, after several months, bits and bytes, there have been new vloggers coming but I still have not fallen in love with any of them really (including Beet.TV, which is a bit dry, lacking in community, comments, and a ‘Recent comments’ section.

RocketBoom will put your money to good use. But how do they generate money? While Blip.TV is stating that “the ads you see on Rocketboom starting today are sold and served by blip.tv” TechCrunch is claiming “As with most of those shows, the relationship between Rocketboom and blip.tv is not exclusive. For instance, Rocketboom will continue to sell ads on its own site. But the more top-quality shows that blip.tv can sell ads against, the stronger its position becomes in the embryonic world of Web-only video.” What makes things even more confusing is that RocketBoom has not updated its about page yet, it still reads “We differ from a regular TV program in many important ways. Instead of costing millions of dollars to produce, Rocketboom is created with a consumer-level video camera, a laptop, two lights and a map … Also, Rocketboom is distributed online, … and thus has a much larger potential audience than any TV broadcast. However, we spend $0 on promotion, relying entirely on word-of-mouth, and close to $0 on distribution because bandwidth costs and space are so inexpensive.” Hey guys, how is this then?

Anyway, currently RocketBoom is featuring a somewhat intrusive sponsor ad for the Sarah Silverman Program, which can be easily closed down though. I find the ad too wide and too, hm, swinging (I may not have closed it if it had not been a flash). But Joanna, the RB news vlogger, is saying that ‘if you don’t like it, we will change it.’ Great, please rethink the use of flash and the fingerful width.

And here is a regular viewer’s reaction (Sylvia) literally begging on the RocketBoom site: “ Please, please get rid of the ads, if you can. There is a reason I get almost all of my news from the internet. It is not because I love the feeling of screen glare. It is to escape the irritating, irritating ads on TV. Especially the ones that pop up as overlays over the image I am trying to watch….an especially annoying trait seen on many channels such as Comedy Central. If you HAVE to have ads, PLEASE use banner ads. Still ones, without animation. Please, respect your viewers, who are so very sick of ads overpowering every bit of media they see, and we will respect you.”

Not all users are against the ad though, as ‘they happen to like the Sarah Silverman show’ and appreciate two likeable people coming together on the web. And a user called ECUU is in fact delighted: “I watch Rocketboom with my family on AppleTV but whenever we saw something funny that we wanted to forward in email to friends they could never watch it because they didn’t have Quicktime. Now there’s Flash with a SHARE link in every video! I expect your viewership to go up a lot from that alone.”

The technology of the ad? “That new technology is an entirely interactive QuickTime overlay advertisement that looks and behaves just like a Flash overlay. We believe it’s the first of its kind” says Mike at Blip. Also they are tracking views and CTR in QuickTime, and soon plan to show how many people see how much of the overlay.

The interactive QT overlay ad has been developed by Jared Klett & Allan Grinshtein aided by Dennis Backus and Josh Paul of Aweli. While the tech is really great, as a user, I simply sharpen my mouse click and make that dart to the eco-tiny cross in the upper right corner. My tolerance for flash is only for those few seconds of download time, after that, no flash while the main part of the screen is also moving. Still text is OK.

And what does Mike Hudack say? “Blip.tv has offered pre-roll and post-roll ads on video downloads for about a year, but this is the first time a mid-clip overlay is available. Overlays, which usually look like a banner that pop up during the video, are preferable because, Hudack tells TechCrunch “pre-rolls have the potential to turn off viewers and post-rolls don’t get watched.”