July 25, 2007

Key Points:

• 57% of internet users have watched videos online and most of them share what they find with others
• 62% of online video viewers say that their favorite videos are those that are “professionally produced”
• 74% of high-speed broadband internet users watch or download video online

April 20, 2007

We present an analysis of a person-to-person recommendation network, consisting of 4 million people who made 16 million recommendations on half a million products. We observe the propagation of recommendations and the cascade sizes, which we explain by a simple stochastic model. We analyze how user behavior varies within user communities defined by a recommendation network. Product purchases follow a ’long tail’ where a significant share of purchases belongs to rarely sold items. We establish how the recommendation network grows over time and how effective it is from the viewpoint of the sender and receiver of the recommendations. While on average recommendations are not very effective at inducing purchases and do not spread very far, we present a model that successfully identifies communities, product and pricing categories for which viral marketing seems to be very effective.

January 9, 2008

Key points:

• 48% of internet users have been to video-sharing sites such as YouTube.
• The daily traffic to such sites on a typical day has doubled in the past year.
• 14% of the 30 to 49 year-old internet using demographic visits video sites “on a typical day” online

June 2007

Key points:

• 44% of video viewers discover videos ‘randomly’ (via search, related video, etc) while online
• 43% of video viewers receive emails with videos or links to videos from ‘friends and family’
• 80% of online video viewers were aware of seeing an advertisement
  • 52% of those took an action from those advertisements

Goals of this document:

• To continue to provide insights into consumers’ online video content consumption
• To help agencies and marketers understand the most effective ways to provide in-stream advertising to their clients’ audiences
• To provide the initial foundation for “best practices” for maximizing ad effectiveness and optimizing the user experience with online video advertising

January 2008

Kevin Nalts is one of YouTubeʹs least talented ʺweblebrities,ʺ with some 20 million views of his more than 550 online videos. He is one of the most‐subscribed comedians on YouTube, and his videos routinely rank in the top ʺhighest ratedʺ and ʺmost discussedʺ lists. You need only watch several of his videos to know these rankings are not due to his video‐making abilities alone. Here, the career marketer reveals some ʺinsider secretsʺ to developing a following on YouTube (and other online‐video sites), and getting your videos widely viewed globally. The techniques he shares do not include ʺtricksʺ that ultimately undermine a video, but proven strategies that are often not intuitive. To subscribe to Naltsʹ videos, please click here. To subscribe to his blog, WillVideoForFood, click here.