Online Spending Passes TV in UK - eMarketer

Online ad spending has been fortunate in the economic downturn—recession-resistant due to its high level of accountability, Internet ad revenue growth has remained positive as spending in all other media dropped.

In the UK, the effect has been so dramatic that online took the biggest slice of advertising revenues in the first half of 2009.

Trendrr: YouTube's Back Catalog KILLS Pro Content - (Advertising Age)

Twilight vs. Harry Potter vs. Star Wars Three Year Old vs. Evolution of Wedding Dance vs. Funny People (YouTube Views Per Day)

 

Key:
Twilight - Official Trailer New Movie 2008 (source: YouTube Views Per Day)
Star Wars according to a 3 year old. (source: YouTube Views Per Day)
Brian & Katie's Evolution of Wedding Dance (source: YouTube Views Per Day)
Funny People - Official Trailer (source: YouTube Views Per Day)

This week's chart takes a deep dive into YouTube data to compare recent daily views for five videos -- and the stats are totally scary not only for purveyors of pro content but for the bean counters at YouTube's parent company, Google. A few observations:

 

  • "Star Wars According to a 3-Year-Old" -- you've seen that video already, right? Chances are, yeah, because it's been viewed more than 12 million times as of this writing, and it's been on YouTube since February 2008. You'd think it'd be more or less played out by now, but no! On Monday alone, for instance, 10,091 people watched it -- which isn't that much less than the total for the official trailer for the movie "Funny People," which had 15,910 views on Monday and is generally on a steep downward slope.

     

  • Truly mind-boggling: An amateur wedding video, "Brian & Katie's Evolution of Wedding Dance," first posted on YouTube on Nov. 9, 2007, and closing in on 9 million views total, had a one-day peak so far this month (on Aug. 3) of 87,878 views -- leaving pro content such as the official trailers for "Funny People," "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" and "Twilight" in the dust. Now, keep in mind that Harry Potterheads and Twi-hard fans tend to disseminate various bootleg versions around the web, so surely these trailers are getting more views than the official-trailer tallies suggest, all told. But still!
  • What's it all mean? Funny toddlers and dorky dancing couples in all their non-monetizable glory will live forever -- draining money (for server costs) from YouTube/Google's coffers until the end of time. Because people will never, ever tire of them. Ever!
  • It's only going to get worse when Brian and Katie have kids and they start doing funny dance videos too, or when that 3-year-old "Star Wars" analyst grows up and has a 3-year-old of her own -- who will proceed to break the billion-views mark with her hilariously adorable deconstruction of, like, J.J. Abrams' remake of "Star Wars" (coming to a theater near you in 2028).

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Dumenco's Trendrr Chart of the Week is produced in collaboration with Wiredset, the New York digital agency behind Trendrr, a social- and digital-media tracking service. More background here. A basic Trendrr account is free; Trendrr Pro, which offers more robust tracking and reporting tools, comes in various paid flavors (get the details here).

Simon Dumenco is the "Media Guy" media columnist for Advertising Age. You can follow him on Twitter @simondumenco.

 

Online Video: Primetime Rules Don’t Apply

Internet video-viewing patterns are dramatically different from traditional TV-watching patterns and require a different approach to advertising and a new model for measuring video engagement online, according to a study conducted by Interpret LLC.

The study - which was commissioned by Yahoo, Havas Digital, Warner Bros. Media Research, and PHD - found that online video viewing patterns are more spread out during the day than TV patterns and online video is more likely to be shared with others. It also suggested that  online videos are watched during work and school time.

Key viewing-pattern findings from the study:

  • There are similar spikes in online video consumption for people at work and at home, with approximately 70% watching during the day and at night.
  • There are spikes in online video consumption among men, women, students and full-time employees during the hours of 12 pm- 3pm, and then again between 9 pm- 1 am.
  • The lowest amount of online video consumption is around dinnertime from 6 pm- 9 pm.
  • Regardless of time of day, one-third of people who watch a video share it with friends, family members and colleagues.
via marketingcharts.com

 

The Online Video Advertising Picture Clears Up - eMarketer