VideoVoo: Online Video Marketing

Currently what you can do is that you embed youtube, daily motion, revver, metacafe, etc. videos, but if you want to see the votes, views, and direct vid comments, you need to go to the original video social networking, or search or whatever vid aggregator site.

Could it be a killer app to enhance video embedding and provide HTML codes that give a peak into what’s going on around the video, what’s more, you can vote or comment on the embedded version and do so without clicking through?

From a video contest point of view it would be awesome. Admittedly, I don’t know if it is possible to realize such an extended version of embedding  programming-wise or not, so wash my head if the idea is much too crazy or unfeasible. Even if it is, I guess you get the gist of the idea for a potential market opportunity.

But watching excitedly the ever growing number of online video contests, and seeing that there is a limited number of service providers who build their apps on the fact that you cannot make a video contest branded on your site without help (like memelabs or votigo), it seems to be a viable option to let for/non-profit businesses organize their video contests on their own sites (including cheat-proof votes, comments), while hosting vids, comments in fact on video social networking sites. The screens make the video service provider co-branded anyway, videos can already be embedded, so why not go further?

OK, maybe this ‘embedded video contest’ option would not be free but would come at a lot more moderate price, let’s say about the tenth of other co-branded video contest prices, approx. $3000 for a 3 month video contest?  Developing a highly affordable video contest platform could mean a huge market advantage for struggling video sites competing against the youtube monogamy.

But would co-branding be enough for the video hosting sites? How would they monetize their own sites then? Some of the options are:

• moderate revenue from video contest hosting
• ads running on user generated video contest entries (non-competitive text links, overlays, post-rolls, etc. E.g. if it’s a TicTac video contest, ads for ‘food’ would be automatically excluded, or Ferrero/Tic Tac could say that they opt in for sports, wellness ads. Likewise, a Best Western Video Contest could exclude all travel ads, or even better include water cooler, water management, water-water ads, as their present contest theme is water coolers)
• running related videos outside the video contest in question (it’s not so great for contest organizers)

Another potential cheap option for a video contest may be on startyourtube, where anyone can set up a personalized, branded youtube-like channel for free (showing their own domain address!), and keep 60% of the advertising revenue! If Start Your Tube is really like youtube, it should have a cheat-free voting system too. And what more do you need than a branded efficient video uploading and sharing site with views, votes, comments featuring your domain? If contestants need to upload their videos on a self or cobranded video site, independent from youtube if you wish to be, then why pay thousands of dollars when you can have the same effect practically for free (OK, sharing ad revenue with Start Your Tube). Can you?

Don’t keep back your feed-back, I really wonder if this is a good or bad, a timely or futuristic, a gray or green idea.