Basically, you can now have your typist create a transcript of your video and then directly upload that to YouTube, which will use speech recognition to time-align the transcript and turn it into captions. That’s awesome! You can even download those captions and keep them for some other purpose, such as add them to your local archive of videos.
For some select partners, YouTube is even experimenting with a fully automated captioning system, where the transcript is created using speech recognition. Since we know the quality of Google voice from searches performed through Google searches on mobile phones, let’s be skeptical of the quality of the fully automated solution. But it is certainly a great start and we can certainly expect Google to continue making improvements to their speech recognition technology.
We’re very excited that Vquence and Jimi Bostock have together managed to snap one of the round two projects of the Australian Gov 2.0 Taskforce and that the project has a huge video focus – something that has (for valid reasons and yet disappointingly so) largely been treated as a side issue in Gov 2.0.
The project is about providing a scoping study for the potential of a video.gov.au site – something that we have promoted over the whole life of the Gov 2.0 Taskforce, since we see an enormous potential for online communication and engagement with the public through such a site. Also check out our blog post on the Gov 2.0 Taskforce Website.
Aside from the obvious advantages to the public, the idea is also to enable government agencies to be offered a technology solution for publishing video that is simple, solves the technical (bandwidth, reliability, scalability, player skinning etc) issues, and empowers them to publish more with less hassle. At the same time it should probably not force agencies to use a centralised solution, but only provide an optional service to them. If the service offers enough advantages, it will become popular all by itself.
But let’s not jump to early conclusions: The first step in our work will be to analyse existing best practices in Australian and international government agencies and other organisations of a similar size.
Over the years we have seen many examples of video being used for news, educational purposes, marketing, documentation purposes, or simply to share great content. There is scope to publish old content, but even more potential with a continuous integration of video recordings and a video publications process with new activities.
Technical solutions for publishing video can range from:
creating the video player, hosting and video content management all from scratch,
using open source components for the video content management systems and the video player,
using hosted solutions provided by commercial entities,
to using social video networks for free or a small fee.
Often, we have seen organisations use more than one means of publishing video – a site-internal solution for the organisation and one or more social networking solutions to get the message out more easily. Different types of videos also lend themselves to different styles of publication – some are more prone to pick up attention on social networks than others.
Coming up with a recommendation that will suit all government agencies – from the small to the large – and still provide a central location at video.gov.au for citizens to go to and find government video is our challenge.
It will likely involve some kind of centralised hosting as well as feed aggregation. The latter is necessary to identify video hosted within social networks or by agencies themselves and is an interesting approach to mashing up.
The normalisation of meta data across different hosting solutions will likely be a challenge for a centralised solution, with centralised search being the one huge advantage over non-aggregated content.
In addition, a centralised video.gov.au can allow further engagement with the videos to happen then and there: comments, ratings, sharing on Facebook and Twitter, linking to other relevant videos are all things that are difficult to realise on distributed video.
Another huge opportunity is the creation of a centralised solution for accessibility: not just captions and subtitles, but also textual audio descriptions for the vision-impaired can be provided in a standard manner. This can be provided for centrally hosted or distributed video in the same manner. The ability to crowd source all this extra effort or find an automated solution has huge potential. Not to forget that such text will enable improved and deeper search, allowing to directly point to offsets in videos that are relevant to particular citizens.
Finally we should not forget that a centralised solution can also enable the consistent collection of statistics and monitoring of videos. Frequent reporting on the success of videos is a key enabler to determine the impact and success of the effort spent in this still very new field of public communication and engagement.
These are just some of our initial ideas about what we need to analyse as part of the scoping study.
Have we forgotten any aspects that you care about? Anything concerns you have about the scope of a video.gov.au? Anything that we should really look at when analysing existing best practice?
Promoted videos are videos that take part in the AdWords scheme. Just as you build a little ad to make your Website bubble to the top in Google searches, you can now place your video such that it bubbles to the top in YouTube – a wonderful means to kick-start a viral campaign.
Promoted Videos feature a thumbnail image with three lines of text, and when clicked, will bring the user to watch a video or view a channel on YouTube. They are being specially pointed out on the YouTube front page, in search results, in popular video watch pages, and even across the AdSense network.
These videos are contextually targeted to Web pages. If as a Website publisher you decide to take part in AdSense, you’ll earn from these ads on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis. People wanting to use promoted videos can now do so from the comfort of their known AdWords account, since YouTube have just launched this service for Australia.
A few weeks ago, Senator Kate Lundy organised her third Public Sphere Event. It was a major undertaking between three locations – Wollongong, Melbourne and Brisbane – with heavy use of modern Internet technology with synchronised live presentations and cross-site collaborative document editing.
Our CEO Silvia Pfeiffer gave a presentation about “ICT Innovation is easy – Commercialisation is hard”. It summarises some of the experiences made in Vquence with creating a Web 2.0 business in Australia and also addresses more generally the situation Australian ICT startups find themselves in after the GFC (global financial crisis). Slides and video below, as well as a playlist of all the videos from the Public Sphere event.
This week, WMG and YouTube struck a deal that will give WMG a large chunk of the revenue created around their videos – which was the issue when they broke the deal in December 2008. The partnership covers the full Warner catalogue and includes user-generated content containing WMG acts.
This is great news for anyone wanting to publish video on YouTube and use music by artists under contract with WMG: over are the times of heavy WMG policing and removing of audio tracks that were deemed “infringing”. This is also very relevant to ad producers since WMG music is now implicitly licensed for publication on YouTube.
The deal gives WMG special rights: it will sell advertising around its videos on YouTube itself rather than leaving it to YouTube. YouTube will get a share. To that end, WMG will be given a special high-quality video player by YouTube with advertising capabilities that are not available on the standard player. WMG can thus clutter the video with a lot more advertising. I wonder what that will mean for embedding the music videos on other sites?
Also, YouTube’s Content ID technology will allow them to claim and monetise the audio tracks of UCG content. I wonder what effect that will have on the videos – will there be an overlay with a link through to iTunes or Amazon for purchasing the records? That might be the least intrusive. Or will there be large banners of WMG advertisers around them? Not sure how that is going to pan out, but we will certainly experience it.
YouTube have just published some new market research data on the Australian YouTube market. Admittedly, it’s not independent research, but you can get some pretty interesting new statistics about online video in Australia from it.
One important outcome is that people consider brands that advertise on YouTube to be more current, innovative and dynamic. And 3 in 5 users say YouTube influences their purchase decisions.
Video has been a core part of the Obama campaign strategy. According to Maxwell Harper, Obama’s video strategist during the 2008 campaign, “Video is an investment and if you think about it really strategically it’ll pay for itself through the impact it has.”
In her recent blog post, Senator Kate Lundy states that with such positive experiences in mind, she was curious to explore the new medium herself. She describes the thought process that she and her team went through to start her online video presence and how Vquence helped her team become self-proficient with vodcasting.
In June, after a short period of planning, Vquence proceeded to set up Senator Lundy’s YouTube and Vimeo channels and produced the firstthreevodcasts. These vodcasts alone have attracted more than 1000 views.
However, once started, Senator Lundy and her team were incessantly at work to produce more video as part of developing new strategies of communicating with her constituency. Her Public Sphere events are a historic move toward more citizen participation in government decisions and have created 40 video recordings of speeches that were all uploaded to her video channels, too. It is instructive to analyse the interest that those videos created not just during the event, but long after.
Video views after the Public Sphere
The top graph shows the Google Analytics results of the Web page for the Public Sphere. The day of the second Public Sphere event is clearly identifiable by the large spike of views on that day. What is outstanding though is that the videos that were published shortly after the event and that are recordings from the event continued to have views for more than 4 weeks after the event and are still attracting interest.
The key finding of a 28 page report that Vquence delivered at the end of July on the performance of Senator Lundy’s video activities is that the video strategy caused people to spend 45% more time on her website than before. The following picture is an extract from the report:
Time Spent on Senator Kate Lundy's Website
When people spend 3 min on the site rather than 1:20 min, a lot more information is exchanged. Some people prefer digesting information in video form rather than text, thus with video available, the website becomes accessible to a lot more people. In addition, Senator Lundy has taken our advice and made videos accessible using subtitles – these have also been shown to increase user attention. Removing all other variables, it is very impressive that the videos caused a 45% increase in time spent on site.
In the meantime, Senator Lundy and her team have started shooting and editing her own videos . For a new vodcast, it is important to experiment with the content and production style and find one that works for you. So, it is great to see Senator Lundy continues to come up with new ideas like her new monthly wrap. After all, a vodcast is an expression of your personality and your communication style, so it takes some experimentation to get it right.
Do give her feedback on what you want to see addressed in her vodcast and whether you like or dislike the way in which it is done. Only by giving feedback and getting engaged will we improve the way in which politicians talk to us – and ultimately the way in which our government deals with us.
In March, YouTube announced that they are experimenting with a new “Call to Action” feature. The feature allows YouTube publishers to put hyperlinks that link directly to their campaign site into InSight video overlays.
In March, this feature was only available to non-profit partners. YouTube wrote about one particular instance of a non-profit partner who raised more than $10,000 in one day after including the hyperlink on their video and after YouTube featured it on their front page.
If you are not publishing videos in social networks online, you are missing an opportunity to extend the impact of your brand online.
The situation with video is comparable to the beginning of the Web. Then, only the big brands were quick to embrace the new medium and have a representation on it – mostly a simple Website that re-enforced the existence of the company and its brands online and provided information for the online community. Web presence matured over time as the medium became mainstream, and it spread out to smaller organisations and brands.
Now, 15 years later, we are at the beginning of another era: video has become a medium online. For many, YouTube has become their default entry into the Web and they spend most of their time online on YouTube. For the majority, YouTube is the dominant search engine and the second largest search engine after Google overall.
What do people find when they search for your brand on YouTube? Go and try it out – you may be surprised what your community is posting about you! Would a YouTube user find your message amongst all the other chitter-chatter? What impact will that have on your brand?
Some of the larger brands understand. There are some very good YouTube brand channels online. For example, check out the Nike Football channel. With 8,326 subscribers, it is the number one most subscribed sponsor channel of all time. It hosts 207 videos of diverse football highlights involving Nike. Or look at a new channel like the MINI channel which already has 41 videos after only having been created on the 1st January 2009.
In Australia, other than the political parties and bloggers, not many YouTube channels have been set up. Probably the best are Cricket Australia, XXXX, and Tooheys. Comparing just the two beer brands, it is easy to notice that Tooheys uses the channel just for re-publishing TVCs, while XXXX uses it to create brand engagement – a difference that is also reflected in the number of videos, subscribers, channel views, and friends.
Why are they spending money on social video?
Video has huge advantages over other content. Videos are able to provide a direct and rememberable explanation of what a brand stands for – much more so than text or pictures. Video is therefore twice as effective for conversion actions than text only. An Australian study showed that 57% of online users have watched online videos before making a purchase decision.
But not only does video help in the actual act of selling. Video also has an advantage when it comes to exposure to eyeballs on the Web. In Google universal search, video is 50 times more likely than other Web content to turn up on the first search result page. Yes, you read correctly: 50 times more likely – just think about all the SEO that you’d have to do with other content to have such an effect. On top of that, users are more likely to click on the video thumbnails on the Google result page than on any other results – the thumbnails are strong in directing eyeballs.
Now that we’ve seen the upsides of video, you will ask yourself what the kind of content may be that you should publish about your brand. What would be the purpose of publishing video to social networks? Video is a communication channel like any other. You can use it for any brand strategy that you may be preparing. You might consider creating videos to launch a new brand, to diversify an existing brand, to educate about products, or to start a conversation with your customers.
Here are some examples of what companies have used their YouTube channels for:
Nikon Australia use theirs to provide tutorials and product demonstrations
Qantas provides facts about the company and their TVCs
Sun Microsystems publishes a vlog that includes interviews of executives
My recommendation is not just to upload the videos to YouTube, but also to pick some other social networks that focus more on your actual target audience, e.g. Dailymotion for a European focus or Break.com for a young males focus. Also make sure to consider your release strategy and video SEO to reach a maximum number of eyeballs for your content. And finally: don’t forget to measure your success over and over again – with metrics tools like Vquence’s VQmetrics service you can learn which content and strategy works for your audience and which doesn’t. It is such attention to numbers that Natalie Tran who publishes Australia’s most subscribed YouTube channel reckons has helped her make it such a success.
Subtitles and Captions are key to making video content accessible to deaf and hard-of-hearing people. This in and of itself should be enough motivation to create subtitles for your videos. But if you need more reasons, read on.
In my long years of working with video I have been encouraging everybody who publishes video to also provide textual representations of video, which includes subtitles/captions, but also includes metadata and hyperlinks that will enable video to become part of the content networks of the Web.
The key advantage for me is not accessibility, but it is to increase the value of the content. Content that knows more about itself and can expose that to machines is inherently more valuable than content that is just a dark collection of bits.
Added Value 1: automated translation
Once a time-aligned transcript such as a caption file is available, the video can expose this to a translation engine and provide itself in any language. This capability is now available for some videos on YouTube, e.g. the following winning Eurovision song of this year:
You have to click on the triangle icon on the video player bottom right while the video is playing, and then follow the red “CC” menu to go to “Translate” and turn on subtitles in a chosen language.
Even if Google’s automated translations are not 100% accurate, they still make the content accessible to a much larger audience than if they were not available. And all of this basically “for free” through the automated translation engine.
Added Value 2: increased user attention
Interestingly, recent research has shown that captions and subtitles don’t only make content more accessible to the hard-of-hearing, but also to well-hearing people. Where a video file has captions, 80 percent more people watch the entire video to its completion.
Achieving complete views is one of the most difficult challenges video publishers face, since people loose interest and attention fairly easily in our modern world of media over-stimulation. So, anything that can help people focus their attention longer is great news.
Just imagine the increase this can bring e.g. to the value of post-roll ads and to closing titles that contain the brands that sponsored the creation of the video.
Added Value 3: video SEO
Typically for a video the only text that is available and indexed by search engines are “title”, “description”, “tags”, and “categories”. These are fairly limited when you consider all the action and information that is inherent in a video.
Once a time-aligned transcript such as a caption file is available for a video, search engines are able to index that text together with the minimalist other text related to a video, thus making the video a whole lot more discoverable.
It is a shame that YouTube’s caption files are not yet indexed by Google, but do not fear: Google already has the technology and is using it on the Google video site:
We can only expect that it will be available on YouTube soon, so if you want to give your videos a huge SEO boost, think about uploading a caption file.
Further applications will certainly emerge to make better use of the annotated video content, such as automated summarisation, search that points us directly to offsets (see media fragment URIs), and automatically created mashups based on keywords.
