Online Video viewing nearly doubles since 2006

Online video watching nearly doubles since ’06

Study: Web video draws more users than social networking sites, Twitter

Americans' appetite for Web video, from clips shared on YouTube to TV programs and movies, continues to soar, nearly doubling since 2006, according to a report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project released Wednesday.

"The audience for online video-sharing sites like YouTube and Google Video continues to grow swiftly across all demographic groups, far outpacing the adoption rates of many other Internet activities," Pew said. "Fully 62 percent of adult Internet users have watched a video on these sites, up from 33 percent" in December 2006, when Pew last measured such activity.

"Over time, online video has become more deeply integrated into daily life, and has started to move into the spaces that are typically reserved for traditional television viewing," Pew said. "Overall, 19 percent of Internet users say they use video-sharing sites on a typical day," compared to just 8 percent in 2006.

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Pew attributed the increase in large part to 63 percent of Americans now having high-speed Internet connections at home, and among broadband users, 69 percent "watch video on sharing sites" such as YouTube, and 23 percent "do so on a typical day."

Also, 35 percent of Internet users say they have viewed a TV show or movie online, compared to 16 percent who said they watched or downloaded movies or TV shows in 2007, Pew said.

The use of video-sharing sites far outranks other Internet activities, including social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, or tweeting on Twitter, the microblogging site, Pew found. Forty-six percent of adult Internet users are active on social networking sites, 19 percent download podcasts and 11 percent use "status updating" sites such as Twitter, the study said.

"Online video has evolved into an on-demand Internet activity," said Mary Madden, Pew Internet Project senior research specialist. "It’s an extremely powerful medium — the killer app of Web 2.0."

Pew said that "while much of the content on video-sharing sites is user-generated, there is also a growing archive of professional content available through YouTube and newer network-sponsored video portals such as Hulu," which went online in spring 2008 and is a joint effort between General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal and News Corp. (Msnbc.com is a Microsoft-NBC Universal joint venture.)

The appeal of online video is also evidenced by comScore's Video Metrix report last spring, which found that Internet users in the United States viewed 14.5 billion — yes, billion — online videos during March, an increase of 11 percent over February.

Google sites, including YouTube, as well as Fox Interactive Media, Yahoo and Hulu were among the top online video properties, comScore said. In March, "the average online video viewer watch 327 minutes of video, or nearly 5.5 hours," the company said.

Mobile video viewing

Pew also said there is "growing interest in mobile video viewing" by more cell phone users, with 14 percent saying they have watched video on their phones, compared to 10 percent in 2007.

"Cell phone users are more likely to record video on their cell phones than they are to watch it; 19 percent of cell phone users now say they have recorded video with their phone," Pew said.

More and more mobiles — from flip phones to smartphones — are coming equipped with video-recording capabilities.

"Video-sharing capability is increasingly being hard-wired into the mobile devices we carry with us all the time," said Madden. "So, while online video is far from replacing traditional TV viewing, the barriers to entry for new users are very low, and the sheer amount and diversity of content out there to watch is staggering."

Watching on the big screen

A small number of Americans are also watching TV and movies by using their computers for video content and hooking their computers up to large-screen TVs for viewing "from the comfort of their couch," Pew said.

Among those who watch TV or movies online, 23 percent say they have done this, although Pew said it is mainly men who are more likely to hook up the computer to the TV, and who are "almost twice as likely (as women) to rearrange the living room in this regard."

Driving the computer-to-TV video interest may be the recession.

"Americans who have cut back on cable or TV expenses are more likely to watch online video on their televisions," Pew said. In another recent report, Pew found that 22 percent of Americans say they have cut back on their cable or TV services over the past year, but only 9 percent said they cut back on their Internet service.

"Those who have canceled or cut back on cable and TV services are more likely to have 'rerouted' their online video viewing to their television screen," Pew said. "Among this economizing group ... 32 percent have connected their computer to their TV screen to watch Internet video."

"I think it’s interesting to see that the convergence of the Internet and the TV that many experts have predicted is marching ahead and may have received a boost from those who have cut back on cable costs due to the recession," Madden said. "Another nudge consumers have experienced recently is the digital TV transition, which has prompted many Americans to purchase high-definition TVs" for improved viewing quality.

Reaching all age ranges

Those in the 18-to-29 age range "continue to lead the adoption curve in online video viewing," Pew said in its report, based on interviews with 2,253 adults between March 26 and April 19.

Nine out of 10 Internet users in that age range use video-sharing sites, compared to 72 percent a year ago. "On a typical day ... 36 percent of young adult Internet users watched video on these sites, compared with just 30 percent in 2008," Pew said.

Those ages 30 to 49 "also showed big gains over the past year," with 67 percent now using video-sharing sites, compared to 57 percent last year.

"Online video viewing is still far from being the norm among Internet users ages 50 and older," Pew said, adding, "However, this segment of the Internet audience continues to grow each year."

Among Internet users ages 50 to 64, 41 percent said they watch video on sites such as YouTube, up from 34 percent last year, Pew said. "Likewise, 27 percent of wired seniors ages 65 and older now access video on these sites, compared with just 19 percent who were doing so at this time last year."

Forbes Study Has Google SEO at the Top of Web Marketing

Forbes Study Has Google SEO at the Top of Web Marketing

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Advertising 101 for Small Business Owners

Here is a great how to article from Design*Sponge

YOUR CUSTOMERS ARE ONLINE. DO THEY KNOW THAT YOU ARE?

A lot of the previous Biz Lady columnists have devoted time to showing you all the ways you can promote your business via PR, branding, and elevator pitches. Well, I hope you followed their advice, because this post will be all about how to get started spending money to find new customers. As the header of this paragraph says, your customers are online. How do I know this? Because you’re online. And the chances are good that your customers are a lot like you. So, let’s take a minute to think about where you spend most of your time on the web.

CLICK HERE for the rest of Aaron’s Advertising 101 for Small Biz Owners after the jump!

I bet it’s safe to assume that you spend time on:

• Social Networking sites: Facebook is obviously the biggest social networking site around. They also offer a simple, self-service advertising platform that lets you target customers based on a whole bunch of factors including geography, gender, age, interests, and even relationship status!
• Search Engines: Many people know this, and many people don’t: when you search for something on Google (or Yahoo, or Bing), the results you see on the top of the screen or on the right hand side of the page are often “Sponsored Listings” (they’re marked as such). Advertisers pay the Search Engines each time you click on their link. If you choose the searches you want to appear on correctly, these ads are can be highly effective. You can find a great intro to Search Ads on Google right here. The same basic information applies to the other search engines, even though the software is a bit different. You can learn more about the advertising options offered by the major search engines by visiting their advertising pages: Google, Yahoo, and Bing
• Blogs or other websites: Think about the blogs or sites you read. Almost all of them give you the option to advertise. Contact the ones that seem like the best fit for you and your customers to learn more about the options they offer. Don’t be afraid to send a simple, one-sentence email to any website that says, “I’m new to online advertising, but would love to learn more about the options that you offer.” If they don’t respond or if they do anything that makes you feel dumb, they’re NOT WORTH YOUR HARD EARNED MONEY. Remember, they should be TRYING to sell you and teach you everything you need to know to make a decision to buy, and that gives you buying power. Don’t be afraid to use it. Don’t like their prices? Make them a counter-offer and see what happens. Many sites will say no, but some will say yes or will at least negotiate with you. It’s a buyers market out there. Really.

Are you with me so far? If so, you now at least know where to go to buy an ad online. Not bad!

HAVE A SPECIFIC, MEASURABLE GOAL FOR YOUR CAMPAIGN

Don’t assume that once you buy an ad, everything else magically works out. You need to decide if you want people to:

• Learn some information (such as an event next week)

-Measure using: the number of impressions (or pageviews) your ad received

• Just come to your site (for new companies or publications looking to build traffic)

-Measure using: the number of clicks your ad received

• Take a specific action (buy something, register for your newsletter, most of us fall into this category)

-Measure using: number of actions, action value, cost-per-action (spend divided by actions)

The results of these decisions should guide every aspect of the rest of your campaign, from where you advertise, to what you put in your ad. Make sure that each element serves your ultimate campaign goal in some way – otherwise it’s not helping.

Pitfall to avoid: Trying to do all three at once. This leads to unclear campaigns which gives you data that’s really hard to analyze. (”Well, we got a lot of impressions, some clicks, and one sale…is that good?” Maybe!) If you really need all three things to happen, consider running a separate for each of your goals. It will make your life much easier when you’re trying to evaluate the results.

DON’T FEAR THE JARGON.

If you want to be a successful online advertiser, you’re going to have to learn some of the terminology. There’s no way around it. The good news is it really isn’t that hard. Here are some basics just to get them out of the way:

Impression: An ad “impression” happens when your ad is displayed in a browser on the screen. Every time you go to a web page, and there are ads on the page, each of those advertisers just got 1 impression.

Click thru Rate (CTR): This rate tells you how successful your ad is at getting people to click it. It’s calculated by dividing the number of clicks your ad received by the number of impressions it received. The industry average CTR is approximately 0.1% (Yes, that’s one tenth of one percent. (Pretty low, right? But think about it – how many ads do you see online every day, and how many do you actually click on?) For more info on average CTRs, look here.

Destination URL: This is the page your ad sends someone to when they click on it.

Call-to-Action (CTA): This is and the part of a web page or ad that tells the viewer exactly what you want them to do. It often takes the form of a “button” of some sort that says something like “CLICK HERE”, “BUY NOW”, or “ADD TO CART.” You’d be surprised at how effective they are.

Conversion: This is a fancy way of saying your “desired action” that you want a user to do once they’ve clicked on your ad and arrived on your site (ex, buy something, fill out a form, register for a newsletter).

As you move through the world of learning more about advertising online, you’re going to encounter many more terms that may sound strange or confusing. Don’t ever be afraid to ask what someone means, or just Google “what does _____ mean?” You won’t be the first, and you’ll find there are LOTS of sources to tell you anything you need to know.

THINGS TO THINK ABOUT WHEN CREATING YOUR AD

Unless your name is Don Draper, creating the perfect ad is not an exact science. The tricky part is creating an ad that fits in to the overall look, but stands out enough to be noticed. Just be sure to remember:

• The site(s) on which your ad will appear
• The information you want your ad to convey (a sale, a product, a service)
• What you want your customers to do once they click on their ad?
• Why should your customers want to do the thing you’re asking them to do? Does your ad offer them something of value to their lives? Chances are that it does, but it’s your job to communicate that to them.
• Do you have a special offer or promotion? Do you think people might like to know about that BEFORE they get to your site?

Common Pitfalls:

• Over-emphasizing your logo in your ad. If no one’s ever heard of your business, why should they care about your logo, no matter how cool it is? Show them what you have that you think they might want. They’ll see your logo when they get to your site.
• Making an ad that’s too blinky and annoying. I can’t stand when people do this, and I’m in advertising! An annoyed click is unlikely to become a happy customer.

IF YOU’RE JUST STARTING OUT, DO THE FOLLOWING:

Pick a dollar amount you’re willing to spend on your first 30-day test to gather some data. (You can do any number of days; 7, 14, 60, or 90 days. I personally like 30 because it takes a little bit of the immediate pressure off and gives your ad some time to make things happen.)

Choose a site (or sites) where you’ll run your first campaigns

Create your ad. If you have no idea how to do this, try any or all of the following:

-Email all your friends and ask them if they can recommend an inexpensive graphic designer you can hire to build an ad. If you’re reading this site, chances are you know someone who knows someone.
-Post something about it on Twitter, Facebook, or whatever social networking sites you use.
-Try Craigslist. You can find anything on there.

Set up a Google Analytics account. If you have no idea how to do this, follow the exact same procedure listed above to create an ad.

-If you are trying to track orders, sales, or signups, be sure to set up Goal Tracking as part of the installation process so you can see how many “actions” you got.

Go!

OK, SO YOU RAN AN AD, AND YOU HAVE SOME NUMBERS. WHAT DO THEY MEAN?

How should I know?? (Sorry, I’ve just always wanted to say that in a client meeting.) Once you’ve run your test and gathered the data, you should be able to assess your results by considering the following (warning, more jargon below):

1. Your Conversion Rate: This rate tells you what percentage of the people who actually clicked on your ad and did the thing you wanted them to do. It’s one of the most important pieces of data you’ll get.
2. Your ROI (Return on Investment): This is one of the other most important pieces of data you will use to assess your results. It’s calculated by dividing the amount of money you made (if you can’t track the total number, you can estimate it based on your average order value), by the amount of money you spent. If the resulting number is less than one (negative ROI), you lost money. If it’s one (flat ROI), you broke even. If it’s greater than one (positive ROI), you made money.

Some questions to ask yourself when reviewing the results:

• Did my ad successfully attract clicks? Look at your CTR, think about what sites you advertised on, when you advertised, and what your ad looked like.
• Did the clicks turn into actions? This is your conversion rate. Think about this: does the Destination URL keep the promise that your ad makes? Did your ad even make a promise? If not, what did you expect people to do once they clicked on your site? Did you have a CTA? Remember to give your customers a clear and simple path to get where you want them to go.

A good amount of data to evaluate your campaign is:

• At least 100-200 clicks on your ad, depending on how much your action costs the customer (really expensive products may take much more to generate a sale, filling in an email address doesn’t cost much and should take fewer clicks)
• At least a few hundred thousand impressions to make sure you have enough data to judge the CTR performance of an ad. One note: Google Analytics won’t tell you how many Impressions your ad got, just how many clicks (and hopefully actions). You’ll have to get the number of Impressions from the publisher you bought the ad from. Anyone who’s willing to take your money for an ad should be able to tell you (or show you) how many Impressions your ad got. Smaller blogs may just need to give you their pageviews for the time period you were advertising. Assuming you’re not paying too much for the ad, that’s usually fine.
• One caveat: that these data “sample sizes” are more for small businesses just starting out with their very first ads running on smaller sites. Experienced online advertisers often want a lot more impressions and clicks before drawing any conclusions.

WHAT CAN YOU DO IF YOUR NUMBER AREN’T SO HOT?

Quite a lot, really. You can change where you advertise, what size ads you run, where your ads go on the page, the ad itself, the offer, the destination URL, the content on the page the destination URL leads to, the layout of the page the destination URL leads to, the CTA, and a lot more. Small changes in any one of these factors can make a big difference in your conversion rate, which can dramatically impact your ROI. Experiment with changes in all of the above. You’ll never know what the key factor is until you’ve tried everything.

QUESTIONS NOT TO WORRY ABOUT SO MUCH AT FIRST

• How much should I spend? - There are enough sites and options out there that you can basically spend as much as you want. Just start with a figure you’re personally comfortable with the idea of investing. And don’t kid yourself; online advertising is an active investment, and one that involves time and effort as well as money. And whenever you invest in something, there’s always an element of risk involved. Mentally prepare for the possibility that you could lose some money the first few campaigns you run. Remember that along with the risk comes the potential for great success. Commit to reviewing the results, continually making changes and experimenting with new approaches. After awhile, you will begin to figure out works for your business. You should be looking for the right combination of ad design (also called “creative”), sites to advertise on, offers to promote, and the pages to which you direct your ads. The best online marketers view advertising as an ongoing testing and learning process.
• How are all of my competitor’s ads doing compared to mine? In the words of the fake Joy Behar from SNL, “So what? Who cares?” Honestly, how will that information help you? It won’t. Like exercise, the concept of “personal best” is highly useful. So use it. Strive to beat YOUR last campaign, not theirs.
• How often should I look at my data? Pay attention, but unless you’re a full time marketer, try not to get obsessed. When you’re just starting out, I’d say check your data every week or so, and don’t make changes to your campaign more than once a week.
• What should my Conversion Rate be? As frustrating as it is to hear, there’s really no right answer other that, whatever it needs to be in order for your campaign to have a positive ROI. Again, think personal best, and keep plugging away. At first, the number you should be most concerned about is your overall ROI. If you’ve run several ad campaigns, carefully reviewed the data and considered all the factors listed above, and you’re still just breaking even or losing money after a few campaigns – it might be time to consider the possibility that there’s a larger issue with your website. Could it also be your products or your prices? Of course, but from what I’ve seen, the website your customer ends up on is one of the key factors in any successful online advertising campaign. [On that note, on behalf of all marketers, I’d like to publicly request that Grace have someone write a Biz Lady column on website design and user experience for small businesses. You’re welcome, Grace! AC]

I wish I could say that was all you needed to know about online advertising, but as the title of this post says, these are just the basics. There are many, many more things to learn about and consider, but even having the basics down will but you WAY AHEAD of most of the competition.

The Simple Truth About Success

Success.

That elusive, intangible thing that we’re all searching for day after day, month after month, year after year.

What is success? How does one achieve success? How long does it take? Is it even possible?

What Is Success, Really?

The basic definition of success is incredibly simple:

Success is the realization or accomplishment of goals, desires, or purpose.

The problem is, as you can see from the definition, that success is a different thing for each and every person.

Society has its generic version of success — the high-rolling, powerful, attractive person who vacations on a yacht and commands legions of personnel — but not everybody wants that. In fact, there are millions of people who think they want that version of success but actually don’t.

Let’s take a look some different ideas of success. Here are a few common versions:

• Having lots of money and/or power
• Having lots of free time
• Being good at a sport or hobby
• Being popular and well-liked

What’s really funny, though, is that if you look at people much later in life, success becomes an entirely different thing:

• Finding love or friendship
• Raising a good family
• Spending time with loved ones
• Staying healthy

But success doesn’t just vary with age, either. Think about what it means to be successful in a third-world country:

• Finding enough food to eat
• Staying warm and dry
• Protecting your family and friends

After all of these definitions, what is success really? If it varies so much from person to person, how can it even be called the same thing? Here’s the truth of the matter:

Success is knowing and accomplishing things that are important to you.

How To Be Successful

You’ll notice that the above definition of success has two very different parts. Knowing what is important to you, and Accomplishing the things that are important to you. For most of us, the first part—knowing—is actually the most important.

Understanding what is important to you, what makes you happy, what makes you feel good about yourself, etc… is very difficult, but it is critical because we often get the answers wrong. Many people spend their lives struggling to become wealthy, only to find that once they have wealth it isn’t nearly as important to them as other things like, say, love.

Ask yourself a few questions, and think about what would make you feel successful:

• If you had Goal XYZ — would you really be happy?
• Why is Goal XYZ important to you, how will it make your life better?
• Pretend you’re stranded on a desert island, what would you want most?

Based on what’s really important, you probably already have some areas where you’re very successful. It’s easy to overlook that fact sometimes, but it’s important to remember.

Most people also have aspects of success that they haven’t yet achieved. For many middle-class Americans, Europeans, Canadians, and other first-world country dwellers this elusive element is money.

Accomplishing the elements of success that you don’t yet have requires hard work and perseverance, there’s no other way to put it. If something is that important to you, though, it will be worth working for. To put everything together:

Knowing what’s important to you is key, and recognizing achievements you’ve already made will make you happier. Goals and accomplishments that you don’t yet have will take hard work to accomplish, but it’s worth it if they’re really important.

Success is a Journey… A Long Journey

Imagine for a moment that you’ve achieved your current biggest goal. Whatever it is, imagine that you now have it. In fact, imagine that you accomplished it 6 months to a year ago, and the initial glow has worn off.

Are you just going to stop now? Are you going to be satisfied that you have the big goal, and just relax for the rest of your life?

Probably not.

You’re probably going to act like the rest of us humans and find some other goal to work on. If you wanted money, and you now have it, you might find that you want to do more fulfilling work. If you wanted to do something you love, and you’ve found that, you may decide that you want more money.

The truth is that success is a really long journey.

In order to be be truly successful throughout your life you need to be happy during the entire journey, and not just at the big landmarks. Most worthwhile accomplishments take so much work that it’s not possible to reach them without maintaining happiness and solid morale throughout the process.

The other problem is that some things are just not within your power to control. I’m a firm believer that all goals are reachable with enough effort, but realistically there are things that you might never accomplish.

That doesn’t mean you should give up and settle for what you have. It means you need to be happy the whole time you’re struggling and fighting for your dreams. In fact, the very act of struggling and fighting for your dreams should make you happy.

Final Thoughts…

Let’s look back at some of the main points about success:

• Success is whatever you want it to be — whatever is important to you
• Knowing what is important is the real key for most of us
• Enjoy the success you have, and enjoy working for the things you don’t

What do you think?

About the author: Mason Hipp is an entrepreneur, marketing guru, and writer. He blogs about life and business at FreelanceFolder.com and is co-author of the Book The Unlimited Freelancer.

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