YouTube has recently made interesting changes to their website that impact how users interact with the site, as well as the level of information available to ‘channel’ owners. The most notable introduction is YouTube Insight, a comprehensive video analytics program.

Google and YouTube partnered to create YouTube Insight. Users can now log into their account (channel) and view statistics on video traffic aspects. Members can view the number of times the video is watched cross referenced with geographical region. Channel owners can view their video’s popularity in comparison to similar video types over a given time period. Other features include measurement of how long it took for a video to become popular and when it reaches its peak viewing volume.

YouTube Video Views

YouTube Insight Video Analytics: Total Video Views

Breaking It Down

Each category has unique, simplified features. The main features of YouTube analytics can be broken down by a summary of all videos or by individual video. The categories include:

• Views
• Discovery
• Demographics
• Community
• Hot Spots
• Popularity

The following gives an overview of each category along with illustrations:

Views: Views uses a graph to display how frequently a video has been viewed in a given period of time. The timeframe on the graph can be adjusted, a beneficial feature if a user is looking to see how often a video was viewed in a day, multiple days, a month, or up to a year. In the Views section, a world map is also displayed. Users can see where the video is being viewed all over the world.

Discovery The Discovery option allows uploaders to see how users found their videos. A variety of options are available, including a YouTube search, no link referrer, related videos, Google search, external links, and an ‘other’ category. Insights breaks these down to percentage of total views as well as creates a stacked or line chart.

YouTube Insight Video Analytics: Total Video Links

Demographics This video analytics option breaks down the age groups watching a video. A pie chart displaying male and female viewers is also given.

Community The Community option allows uploaders to see how viewers engage with a video over time, including the geographic location, as a means to break down the statistics.

Hot Spots This Insight tool graphs the ups-and-downs of viewership. At any given time in a video, it can be seen if a viewer has left the video or replayed a specific section. “Hot” signifies that fewer viewers are leaving a video at that point compared to other YouTube videos of a similar length. This feature offers the ability to really fine tune video messages to the target audience.

Popularity This option is available on the Summary page, and allows uploaders to view how popular their video is in comparison to all other YouTube videos on a scale of 0 to 100. The popularity scale allows channel owners to once again break down by geographical location (country, state) to see how it ranks compared to other videos on the site.

YouTube Insights: What it Means for Online Marketers

Online marketers are constantly looking for ways to measure the impact of social media marketing and solid metrics can be hard to come by. Most businesses know the serious impact viral venues such YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter have on today’s instant response culture. The problem has been finding relevant metrics to present to top corporate to gain budget, create a cultural buy-in to social media, and to fine tune campaigns to the audience.

YouTube Insight delivers lots of data that marketing managers can wrap their reports around. The tool is easy to work with, much like Google Analytics, and a welcome addition to the digital marketing tool kit that’s been long awaited.

It is an internet based phone forwarding service which assigns you a single phone number that rings all your phones. It gives you a separate phone number, which you pick from an extensive list of numbers. Before I signed up, I thought I was going to have a number automatically assigned to me, perhaps a number like 999-555-0000, so I was surprised when I was asked to enter in my area code, and it gave me a list of numbers that were somewhat similar.

After you choose your number, you can then change your settings to have calls forward to any of your phones (i.e. work, mobile, home).

Some awesome features to note:

Call Screening - announce and screen callers

Listen in - listen before taking a call

Block calls- keep unwanted callers at a minimum and mark them as SPAM

SMS - send, receive, and store SMS

Place calls - US calls are free

Taking calls - answer on any of your phones

Phone routing - phones ring based on who calls

Forwarding phones - add phones and decide which ring

Voicemail transcripts - read what your voicemail says

Listen to voicemail - check from the web or by phone

Notifications - receive voicemails via email or SMS

Personalize greeting - vary greetings by caller

Share voicemail - forward or download voicemails

Conference calling - join people into a single call

Call record - record calls and store them online

Call switch - switch phones during a call

Mobile site - view your inbox from  your cell phone

GOOG-411 - Check directory assistance

Manage groups - Set preferences by group

It’s only limitation may be that is it only offered to users within the USA, but we will see how long that lasts!

It is available by invite only. Click here to get an invite.

Mortierbrigage and Group 94 got together to create a stunning viral presentation in the form of a Moonwalk Tribute website.

The Eternal Moonwalk website features user generated videos of real people performing the moonwalk. the Flash website features sliding content so it appears that people are “moonwalking from the center to the left of the screen.

surely worth looking at to bring a smile to your face and help you remember the impact the king of pop had on all of our lives.

RIP Michael

view the Eternal Moonwalk website here

Marketing Minus the Middle Man – Made By You, For Your Own Consumption

Many companies are choosing to up their marketing to viral. This is the practice of spreading information in nonconventional ways, so that when it is consumed it is passed on. Many different industries have turned to viral marketing. The convenience of YouTube and Google make putting promotional videos out and getting them viewed very simple. The videos can be made with limited cost, and uploaded and viewed for free.

Viral marketing is a relatively new concept, first truly mastered by Hotmail. They added an invitation to join Hotmail at the end of each email, inexpensively exposing themselves to mass quantities of people. The logic is simple: save money on advertising, gain more exposure through creative avenues.

Warner Bros. Watches You Watching the Watchmen

One of the most pronounced and an intricate viral marketing campaign to be waged was the epic superhero movie, The Dark Knight. There were videos highlighting the story line between Batman Begins and its sequel; false Gotham newspapers were created; short campaign videos and advertisements for characters in the movie; and an interactive scavenger hunt. By involving itself in the life of the consumers, The Dark Knight became more than a movie, it became an event. The in-depth, interactive development and execution of Warner Brother’s viral marketing campaign paid off with the second highest grossing movie of all time.

The Watchmen, which premiers on March 6^th, shows Warner Brother’s perfection of viral marketing. Building off their interactive viral marketing, Warner Bros. led contests where fans following the movie’s production could make commercials for products used in the movie. Videos were put out during production highlighting different aspects like the costume and wardrobe, set design, and different pieces on character exposure.

For Warner Brothers it has become a simple formula: give the people what they want, keep them enticed, keep them following the progress of the movie’s production, and it will yield record breaking results.

Going viral is good for just about any business. Low quality videos from huge names like ESPN, Mentos, and Coca Cola have positively impacted those companies’ exposure and revenue. By offering video contests for the general public, those companies save money on shooting an actual commercial while still increasing awareness and consumption. The key is keeping people involved, keep them interested by the product and they will spread the word about the product.

Ethical Issues

Viral marketing does dance on a line of empowerment and manipulation of the consumer. Word of mouth marketing seems innocent enough, but it has lead companies like Proctor and Gamble to enlist teenagers to spread word of their products to their peer groups. This tactic can dupe people, rather than enticing them. If a person does not disclose the fact that their job is to create buzz for the specific product they are recommending, then their tactics becomes unethical.

Because of the nature of viral marketing and the ever changing technologies, this strategy has the ability to adapt and has the potential for longevity. Similar to other types of marketing, there is also the possibility the general public will become so inundated with viral that they will become desensitized. Until the viral immunization however, it is seems to remain a recipe that almost guarantees success.