Thursday, December 28, 2006

Video ads that work in a YouTube world?

Earlier I read this Chris Anderson 2007 prediction in the LATimes:

I’M WILLING TO bet that 2007 is the year that somebody figures out how to make video advertising work in a YouTube world. And if I’m right, the TV industry is going to get very rocky, very fast.

Later I came across this from Cory Bergman at Lost Remote:

Earlier this year, Google rolled out click-to-play video ad units as part of its AdWords network (demo here).  Now Google is testing in-stream video ads, a sort of video AdSense for content publishers.  Here’s how it would work: Publishers upload video to Google Video, embed the players on their own sites and the Google-powered ads are embedded in the streams (currently as post-rolls).  The revenue is then split.  Google has been testing the in-stream ads on Beet.TV (although I didn’t see them when I checked today) and also working with MTV.  Add YouTube to this equation and you have a massive network of video blogs that are shooting, posting and embedding video content, a market ripe for video advertising.

Hmm.

The iPod vending machine

The AJC says:

The top treat in the sleek, high-tech machines operated by her company and ZoomSystems at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport is a top-of-the-line Apple iPod that fetches $349 before tax. It comes with a money-back guarantee, and it doesn’t drop from anywhere.

A sophisticated robotic arm gently guides the mini-music machine to the buyer’s hands.

I wanted to see the “sophisticated robotic arm” so went to YouTube, searched ”ipod atlanta airport” and voilà....

Gotta love the world of “we”

LATER iPods top the annual Amazon charts:

Not only did various versions of Apple’s iPod comprise the hottest-selling consumer electronics item on Amazon, but the fifth-generation 30-gigabyte model with video playback topped Amazon’s list as the most wished-for product and the most popular gift item in the consumer electronics category for the year. [...]

Hitwise reported that Apple’s iTunes Store saw a 413 percent increase in traffic between December 24 (Christmas Eve) and December 25 (Christmas Day). And the company saw a 110 percent increase when comparing Christmas Day 2005 with Christmas Day 2006.

As goes Kansas, so goes Red America

Kansas comes out:

[A] dramatic shift...has taken hold lately among gay and bisexual Kansans, many of them well into midlife and ensconced in long-term relationships. An energized culture of coming out has emerged, apparently in reaction to what many see as the anti-gay climate that led to the marriage ban.

Nowhere is this change more obvious than in a new analysis of census data by Gary J. Gates, a demographer at the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy, a think tank at the University of California, Los Angeles. He found a 68 percent jump in Kansas households headed by same-sex partners between 2000 and 2005. In 2005, 11 out of every 1,000 couples living together in Kansas reported themselves as same-sex, according to Mr. Gates’s review of the Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey data, a figure closer than one might expect to those recorded in New Jersey and New York, where 12 and 14 out of every 1,000 couples, respectively, are same-sex.

What the increase suggests, Mr. Gates said, is not so much that gay Americans are flocking to the state, but that the ones who live there have been galvanized to declare themselves to their neighbors and communities.

Here‘s the Gates’ study. Kansas wasn’t the only state to see a dramatic jump in households self-identified as headed by same-sex partners (see p.12); Colorado is up 58%, Indiana increased 54%, Iowa 58%, Missouri 56%, Nebraska 71%, Ohio 62%, Oklahoma 42%.

Overall same-sex couples in the U.S. grew by more than 30 percent, an increase five times the six percent rate of growth in the U.S. population. We in Georgia are up 27%, but then we already had the 8th largest gay population in the country.

I’m betting stories like this are going to be told more and more:

Ms. Slayton found that the more she opened herself up, the more she found solace. The day after the marriage amendment passed, her handyman, a Rush Limbaugh fan who came to install her air conditioner, expressed his sympathies. “He came upstairs and said ‘I’m just so sorry, Cyd, I know how hard you worked on this,’ “ she said. “He put his arm around me and it was just about as touching a thing that happened around this whole issue.”

MORE FROM KANSAS: Kansas Sen. (& Pres hopeful) Sam Brownback wants a Senate panel to question a judicial nominee who has already been approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee about attending a lesbian commitment ceremony; said the Times, “Whether someone has attended a same-sex commitment ceremony is not a worthy litmus test to impose on someone seeking an important office. Whether someone holds hateful views toward gay people certainly is.”

Lawrence, KS is considering a domestic partnership registry that would be run by the city. Gov. Kathleen Sebelius will be chair of the Democratic Governors Association. Check out the LeftyBlogs Kansas feed. And in case you missed it, The Onion’s Kansas bans evolution is a hoot.

Not you, “us”

From Siva’s MSNBC column about Time’s Person of the Year:

The important movement online is not about “you.” It’s about “us.” It’s about our profound need to connect and share. It’s about our remarkable ability to create among circles - each person contributing a little bit to a poem, a song, a quilt, or a conversation.

So it’s not about your reviews on Amazon. It’s about how we as a community of Web users choose to exercise our collective wills and forge collective consciousnesses. So far, we have declined to do so. We have not harnessed this communicative power to force the rich and powerful to stop polluting our air and water or to stop the spread of AIDS or malaria. We have not brought down any tyrants. We have simply let a handful of new corporations aggregate and exercise their own will on us. And we have perfected online dating.

But there are signs of real profound triumphs of “We.” Wikipedia is the best example. Blogs are another. Communities - both local and global - have generated amazing collections of content and communication in recent years. They have truly challenged the status-quo in ways that Time hypes so well.