Here we are, another week and another couple of blogs from me. This week, I’ve been attending the Technology For Marketing & Advertising event down at Earls Court.
The exhibition, like many of its ilk, I found rather bitty as of course it is an incredibly broad subject. The presentations on the other hand, were much more interesting than I’ve generally come across.
Two of the key areas that are grabbing attention at the moment aren’t exactly new, and have had more days in the sun than Ashley and Cheryl’s matrimonial difficulties. Video and mobile (though not necessarily together,) are very much still at the top of the list of where most people expect to see significant developments. More on mobile at a later date, but having sat through rather an interesting presentation from YouTube (which can be found here,)I wanted to share some initial impressions with you.
Back in the days of yore, when you had to be an East coast preppie at an exclusive school to have even heard of Facebook, Google purchased video hosting/sharing service YouTube for $1.65 billion (this was November 2006, and therefore before the bailouts, and this then still sounded like a lot of money.) The reaction at the time, with commentators seemingly divided between whether this was smart (though many seemed unable to define why it was smart,) and those who thought it was a lot of money to pay for a site that seemed dedicated to hosting videos of monkeys doing the sorts of things that monkey’s do.
What a difference 3 and a bit years make. Though the jury might be out on Buzz (though it seems to voted on Wave,) most of us would now agree that Google’s purchase of YouTube was indeed a very smart move to make. For me the much heralded death of the mass market (don’t worry this is another death that has been exagerated,) has been over taken by the growth of what I see as the mass delivery platforms.
According to figures presented by YouTube, presently about a quarter of all web traffic is video, this will rise to 90% by 2015. One of things I should have done at the presentation was have this quantified, is this in terms of traffic or bandwidth used. Of course this being a YouTube seminar we have to take these figures with a pinch of salt.
It is without doubt though significant growth, but is it perhaps indicative of another less expected change in terms of how we use the web. Video, even through the web still seems to be ineffective as a direct response medium, but can be seen to be a more effective branding mechanism in terms of subsequent advertiser uplift than comparable TV activity.
And so back to the title of this blog, will the rise of video mean that the web becomes more of a lean back than lean forward medium, or will the rise of video only mean that content currently delivered via other means (through arials, cables and in LoveFilm’s case, the post) now comes courtesy of the web.
As always any comments welcome, and we’ll be back with more on the rise of the mobile and Facebook Vs Google soon.
Rob MD, One