Visible Measures Blog

1) TMZ is relaunching on MySpace TV.  TMZ has gone full circle from starting online to going to broadcast TV to coming back online

Updated on Feb 22: I just realized that we gave an incomplete projection at the very end of this post... see below for the rest (clarifications updates in bold italics, completed calculcation offset). -Matt C.
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Late last week, our friends at comScore reported that, according to their respected Video Metrix service, US Internet users consumed a record 10 billion videos in December of 2007. comScore's Erin Hunter attributed this surge in Internet video consumption to the much-publicized Hollywood writer's strike:

Following the acquisition of YouTube in October of 2006, the video industry began waiting to see what Google would do with YouTube and how they would open it up more to the larger advertising community.  Today, after several months in private testing, Google AdSense for Video has entered beta.  AdSense for Video has 3 main components targeting 3 distinct groups: the advertisers, the video creators, and websites who can bring viewers to videos. 

Everyone here at Visible Measures is super-excited to be involved with VideoEgg's upcoming Engagement Debate '08 event. We were fortunate be included in the fourth panel of the day -- focused on the monetary value of engagement -- that is being led by Adam Gerber from Quantcast and includes top-notch panelists from VideoEgg themselves, TBWA Worldwide, Deep Focus, Bayer, and us (thanks guys!). That's some great company and we're looking forward to introducing some compelling new concepts at the event. 

HD video is becoming more prevalent in our web browsers mainly as a result of increasing broadband adoption, user interest in HD content, and new tools such as the most recent version of Flash having the new H.264 codec.  Movies trailers on the Apple website have been offered for several months in HD widescreen versions in Quicktime, but now major video sites are beginning to offer HD content. 

In 2006, the Dove Evolution campaign, which supposedly cost very little to produce by Ogilivy & Mather Toronto, took the viral web by storm.  Now, more and more "micro-targeted" ad campaigns are happening by leveraging the viral nature of online video.

According to a new research report from our friends at Nielsen and a very nice article in ars technica, male audience members prefer watching user generated content (eg. Heavy.com or Break.com) while women prefer watching streaming network TV shows.   Are there any female-focused video sharing sites yet?  Maybe this gender gap is sort of a self-fulfilling prophesy whereby user-generated sites end up appealling to guys because of all the explosions, car crashes, and hit-in-the-head videos?  :)

In the words of the immortal Mugatu from the timeless movie classic Zoolander, video is "so hot right now."  This week, Yahoo announced their acquisition of our friends from just down the way, Maven, and today they annouced the relaunch of Yahoo Video.  I personally have been a huge fan of Yahoo since probably 1995 and I really like how they are continuing to try to innovate even with all the things that are going on for them these days. 

The entire team at Visible Measures would like to congratulate Brian Shin -- our founder, CEO, and true heart-and-soul of the company -- and his wife Nana on the arrival of their big bouncing baby boy. :)

While it had been widely rumored, earlier today Yahoo! announced that it would acquire Maven Networks for approximately $160 million. This is yet more validation for the potential of Internet video to attract real advertising dollars. To quote Yahoo directly (from the press release):

CNBC is reporting that a deal has been struck to end the writer's strike.   This strike has hurt all involved, and it will be some time before all the lost income and opportunity is recovered. In the interest of forward progress, let us hope that this very serious situation is resolved soon. 

Microsoft is expanding its video offerings in Europe following longer standing efforts by sites such as YouTube to enable revenue sharing with music labels and media companies. It will be perhaps more interesting to see what Microsoft does to better integrate its aQuantive acquisition and their efforts around online advertising and video.

This is part 3 of a 3 part post. If you haven't already, check out part 1 and part 2.

Delivery

Once the script is close-to-final, the last step is to nail the delivery. This not only involves memorizing what you are going to say, but synchronizing the product demo so that what's happening on screen matches the words coming out of your mouth. This entire process is somewhat of an unnatural act and can only be accomplished through practicing everything a whole bunch of times. 

When you watch other companies deliver there presentations, it's pretty obvious who is underprepared -- they either fall behind or race ahead -- and who is overprepared -- they sound like recordings, with such clear diction that you can almost see the punctuation marks running through their head ("... our solution is used by small businesses [comma] medium sized business [comma] and large enterprises [period]"). So the trick is to be 'peak train' so that your best, most natural delivery happens on stage. 

Actually getting on stage is a process in and of itself. You get queued up outside. Then you go into the green room, which of course is neither green nor a room, but is a waiting area backstage with some comfy couches, bottled water, and a monitor so you can see what's happening on stage. Then you move to the 'stage ready spot', where you're standing on the stage itself but behind the curtain. Two funny asides here: 

• The company that went two before us (by my math, they were scheduled to go on stage around 9:49am but shall remain nameless) kind of botched their delivery. It was a little painful to watch towards the end and when they came off stage, they were -- to put it mildly -- pretty bummed and upset. Watching these poor guys unwind just as we were about to go on-stage was un-nerving.
  

• While we were at our stage ready spot, Rishi Dean, our head of products and the one who would be ‘driving’ the product, was watching the monitor and commenting on the presenters who were on immediately before us. He’s a consummate product guy -- he was taking notes right up to the moment before we went on stage.
  

When we actually got on stage, it felt like it went by in less than 30 seconds. I knew once we got through the opening that things would go smoothly enough. The script flowed well and our team here in Boston had done everything possible to make sure the product would work smoothly. It’s tough to see on the video, but the audience was engaged and we had fun showing our stuff off. We hit our major points though parts of the delivery could have been smoother.

So, how did we do? Well, take a look, you be the judge, and chime in. Comments are enabled but will be moderated!

This is part 2 of a 3 part post. If you haven't already, check out Part 1: Demands.

Deadlines

As part of the DEMO process, each company gets assigned a presentation slot (ours was 10:03 am on Day 2, though we probably went out closer to 10:01 am). Each company has to submit a draft script several weeks in advance and then has a 'dress rehearsal' a day or two in advance of the show. After going through this process, I realized that these deadlines are as much about forcing the presenters to do their homework as it is about helping the show staff produce the event.

In other words, the deadlines help. Quite a bit. Because scripting out six minutes on stage turns out to be a lot of work. First it's work to write everything out long hand. Then it's work to cut your first draft back from the initial 15 minutes worth of content to something closer to the six minutes you have. Then it's work to decide which points you really need to make and which might be interesting but are really not central to your message. Then you start simplifying the text so it sounds more like something a real person might actually say, rather than someone reading a piece of collateral.

Then you pass it around for review by folks who have participated in DEMO before and -- hopefully -- know just enough about what you do to be constructive.

Then you start over. And so the cycle begins. Draft and re-draft. Re-order and re-work. Then revert back to an earlier version. Add some new stuff in. Take it all out. Get lost in version control. And so on. 31 times. Honestly. That's how many different file versions we created of our script. Some of course are just incremental changes, but we have two or three full drafted scripts that barely share a word with the final result.

In the end, we honed the script down as far as we could. At a high-level, we boiled everything down to four big points, bookended by a short and to-the-point introduction and conclusion. We eliminated words wherever possible. We even swapped out words to save syllables.

And this was the most valuable part of the entire DEMO process. Boiling your pitch down to the best six minutes (or less) that you have. The dozens of iterations on the script are not about word-smithing, but about refining your communications down to their most salient, most critical points.

And while you don't need DEMO to do this, you do need a deadline to make it happen. DEMO really does provide some great deadline pressure.

Last week we launched the company -- including announcing the general availability of VisibleSuite, our Series B financing, and our acquisition of VidMeter -- at the DEMO 08 conference in Palm Desert, CA. DEMO is a long-running conference where new companies/technologies get unveiled to the public. And while much has already been written about DEMO, I wanted to share my takeaways using some easy-to-remember DEMO alliteration: demands, deadlines, and delivery. To make this a bit easier to consume, this will be spread across three posts.

Did you get out and vote today?

In the last post, we mentioned the Super Bowl ads and how various critics have rated them. Here's another ranking, taken from vidmeter.com, based on the actual user views of the commercials while hosted on MySpace.com - definitely a demographic tilt toward the 18-24 demo :) Somewhat surprisingly, the FedEx "Carrier Pigeons" spot doesn't make the top 10.

If the ads from yesterday's Super Bowl faced off in competition, which ones do you think would fare the best?

Ok, the Pats lost :(  It was a hard fought game and The Giants played very well.  I think the Pats deserve a lot of credit for how they handled themselves all year despite speculation starting as early as midseason that this team might go undefeated. 

2008 is really shaping up to be a transformative year for Internet video.

I think this is the funniest description that I've seen so far about Visible Measures. It appears in a writeup by Joshua Jaffe in TheDeal.com about ranking the 72 companies that presented at DEMO top to bottom.  We come in at 9th place.