YouTube recently launched and rolled out their advertising product called Sponsored Videos.
Promote Your Video
I set up my first YouTube Sponsored Video ad this afternoon.
I will outline the steps I went through to get my first YouTube advertising campaign set up as well as the results I experience as they become available.
Below is a screen shot of the YouTube Sponsored Videos Dashboard.
YouTube Sponsored Videos Dashboard
Here is a screen shot of my first YouTube.com Sponsored Videos campaign.
You Tube Sponsored Videos Dashboard Promotion Detail
I have yet to see my Sponsored Video ad displayed anywhere…
Google continues to experiment with universal search – displaying two videos side by side when queries have more than one relevant video result.
A search for “geotargeting adwords” produces the following search result:
Geotargeting Adwords Two Video Results
Has Google determined this particular spelling of “geotargeting adwords” – as two words – warrants displaying two video results for any particular reason?
It appears so.
By placing the two video results horizontally, Google has also increased the total number of search results displayed for this particular search from ten results to eleven.
Yet, a search for “geo targeting adwords” – as three separate words – still continues to produce a single video link within Google’s universal search result – albeit much further down the page.
Any idea why the two word query generates two video results while the three word query gets just one?
The The Pulitzer Prize is administered and awarded by Columbia University in 21 categories.
Presently, no Pulitzer Prize honors videography.
Could video be the 22nd category of Pulitzer Prize to be awarded?
Although not called a Pulitzer Prize, YouTube in partnership with the Pulitzer Center, has announced their Project: Report, a journalism contest for non-professional, aspiring journalists to tell stories that might not otherwise be covered by traditional media.
In each of three rounds of competition reporters will be given assignments to complete.
In Round 1: Profile someone in your community, in three minutes or less, highlighting a story you think deserves to be heard by a wide audience.
Videos have to be submitted by midnight EST Sunday October 5th.
10 semi-finalists will then be chosen by a panel of journalists from the Pulitzer Center.
Round 2 and its 10 semi-finalists will be given their assignment and then judged by the YouTube community to produce 5 finalists.
The 3rd and final round will produce the winner who will be granted a $10,000 journalism fellowship with the Pulitzer Center.
Although not technically called a Pulitzer Prize, isn’t it time a prestigious award like the Pulitzer Prize be awarded to an aspiring journalism student or otherwise deserving videographer?
According to Insight, YouTube’s statistics package, 100% of YouTube viewers of my 2:25 minute Google Keyword Suggestion tool video within the last 30 days were 45-54 year old males.
Not 50% or 80% but 100%.
If women aren’t watching keyword suggestion tool videos on YouTube, I wonder what types of videos women are watching on YouTube?
YouTube Insight statistics also provide data on a video’s popularity within a country and how it was discovered through its source of views “discovery” tab.
YouTube Country Stats
YouTube Discovery
YouTube Insight provides statistics to everyone who publishes their videos on YouTube.
Get insight into how your videos are performing by logging into your account and clicking on “My Videos”.
Each video has a dashboard with Play, Edit, Annotations and Insight buttons.
Click on Insight to learn how each of your videos are performing on YouTube.
I bought a new car and sold my 1994 Mercedes Benz S420 after using a combination of Craigslist, AutoTrader.com and YouTube to advertise my old car for sale.
I had installed an aftermarket XM Radio in my S420 a number of years ago and upon selling the car needed to deactivate that particular XM Radio signal.
Listening to XM Radio on my laptop, I am accustomed to navigating the XM Radio website to select channels and manage my account.
Not having ever deactivated one of their radios, I went to their website’s Frequently Asked Questions section where I was unable to locate any mention of how to turn off an XM radio signal or cancel an XM account.
XM Radio Frequently Asked Questions
I then drilled down into my account’s “Listener Care” section where I thought surely I could deactivate my car’s XM radio unit. After much searching, I concluded XM Radio does not allow its customers to deactivate their radios online.
XM Radio Listener Care
XM Radio cares so much about me and my business they won’t let me deactivate a radio without my first having to call and speak to them about it!
The thought nearly moved me to tears – just not tears of joy…
After realizing they weren’t going to let me go without a fight, I then had the pleasure of speaking with a XM Customer Care representative half way around the world in India.
As their website had directed me, I called XM Radio @ 1-800-XM-RADIO (1-800-967-2346) between the following hours:
Mon-Sat: 8 AM – 11 PM ET
Sun: 8 AM – 8 PM ET
My ‘Listener Care” representative notified me he personally wouldn’t be able to help me deactivate my radio but would forward my call to the appropriate department where they could.
I was then placed on hold for about 15 minutes.
I hung up and dialed back where I told the next person who answered I had been on hold for 15 minutes and had all the “Listener Care” I could handle today.
The conversation then moved to the point where I explained how I wanted to deactivate a radio – not close my account. He then addressed my previous comment by saying the cancellation department can have extended queue times and that he could not guarantee I wouldn’t have to hold for a prolonged period of time again and that it would probably be better for me to call back on the weekend!
XM Listener Care Phone Number
I then asked him: “Can I not cancel an XM radio subscription online?” He said, no.
At this point I told him if he wasn’t able to help me cancel my radio signal right then that I would instead cancel my entire XM Radio account. I also mentioned I would now be writing about my XM Radio experience.
At this point it was obvious our call became “monitored” and I was magically wisked to the cancellation department in under one minute.
I was finally able to cancel the XM Radio in my now ex-S420 Mercedes Benz but not before having to go through 20 more questions about why I was canceling followed by a couple attempts to get me to put XM in my new car even though it came from the factory installed with Sirius.
If you are needing to cancel your XM Radio subscription – Good Luck – you will probably need it.
After nearly ten years of driving the same car, I recently bought a new one.
I decided to sell my old car the new way – online.
Having been on the web now for nearly a decade, I have found a lot of inefficiencies remain when it comes time to bridge the gap between generating a lead online and closing a high ticket sale offline.
When it comes to selling cars online there are several options.
eBay Motors and AutoTrader.com were the two resources that came to mind.
Up until yesterday, I didn’t have an eBay account so eBay Motors wasn’t an option. If I recall though, eBay Motors is the largest single used “car dealer” in the world – last time I looked I think they generated $2 Billion in car sales annually.
I have an older Mercedes and because of its limited appeal, I sought the advice of a local used car dealer on how best to go about selling it.
He recommended trying AutoTrader.com.
I set up an account and got my car advertised online within a day and then in the local Auto Trader print publication within a week.
I started getting calls soon after my ad came out and then slowly came to realize some of the aforementioned online lead to offline sale time related inefficiencies.
The internet is great for connecting sellers with buyers they wouldn’t have otherwise likely ever met, however when it comes time to sell something large and physical it presents a whole new set of problems.
Half of the inquiries I received about the car resulted in the callers desire to see and test drive the car.
Well, I am not a car salesman and I don’t have time to drop everything I am doing to go show a car at unpredictable times of the weekday. Scheduling time to meet potential buyers on the weekend is even more difficult.
The problem: How can I “show” my car to prospective buyers without having to take an hour or two of my time to do it?
My answer: Produce a short video clip of the car that shows its condition to prospective buyers and post it on YouTube. Prospects can then “look” over the car without either of us having to physically meet to do it.
I shot a couple of minutes of video and then posted it in my YouTube account.
I also modified both my online and print AutoTrader ads to include “Search YouTube” to see this car.
The video has been up a week and according to YouTube’s insight feature the video has already been viewed over 100 times primarily from searches within YouTube.
YouTube Video Insight:
I have also posted a Craigslist ad for my car. It too mentions viewing the car online beforehand by searching for it in YouTube.
Now whenever I get a call about the car, I ask them whether they have seen it on YouTube or not and then direct them to its YouTube page to see it first before we arrange a time to test drive it.
Using YouTube to preview used cars for sale reduces the inefficiencies of showing vehicles to non buyers while further qualifiing the prospects most interested in potentially buying my car.
I have set a couple of appointments for prospects to test drive my car this weekend.
Regardless of whether the car gets sold this weekend or not, I haven’t wasted my time showing it to someone who hasn’t already convinced me they are a highly qualified –ie., interested – prospective buyer .
YouTube India has launched with a local home page (youtube.co.in) which features user-generated videos and content from their existing Bollywood and broadcaster partners Eros Entertainment and New Delhi Television among others.
The site resolves to its India specific YouTube sub domain.
Other partners include the International Indian Film Academy Awards, Krishcricket.com and the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi.
YouTube India YouTube.co.in launched Wednesday May 7th, 2008.
According to Sergey Brin via Search Engine Watch, 10 hours of new video are going up on YouTube every minute.
YouTube’s bandwidth costs are estimated at approximately $1 million a day.
Forbes reports YouTube’s traffic is 50 petabytes per month.
The amount of original cable, television and radio content created annually totals 100 PB.
The content being uploaded onto YouTube every two months now equals the amount of traditional media content produced every twelve months.
Although still in its infancy, Internet video – according to Jim Cicconi, vice president of legislative affairs for AT&T – will cause the Internet to reach its “physical capacity” by 2010 without further significant infrastructure investment.
Who ever figures out how to monetize free online video distribution first will own the next upcoming incarnation of the internet.
With YouTube now consuming 10% of internet resources, its only a matter of time before every conceivable human activity will have been broadcast over YouTube.
Its only fitting the first notable digital divorce was staged by Broadway on YouTube.
Search Marketing Communications 
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