Adsense on You Tube: How is it going to help?

Google is finally opening up Adsense for You Tube Users. So far, monetizing content was the privilege of a few. From now on, Google will let the owners of popular videos join the Adsense Programme and make some money out of it. What are the implications of such a move?

People say Google is struggling to make good money out of You Tube, though it is a very popular web service. People watch You Tube Videos a lot more times than any other video site in the world, to the extend of forcing Microsoft host their Jingle Video Contest on it. Yet, it seems, You Tube fails to deliver in terms of dollars.

I can understand why people want to watch videos on You Tube - it is entertaining. But it is not enough that the videos are entertaining to make some good bucks out of it. Let me tell you why I think so! There are only two reasons as I can see why people would want to upload content on You Tube. Let me explain - there are only two kinds of videos on You Tube. One, personal videos that you want your friends and family to watch. Two, promotional videos or videos that are advertisements themselves. So people upload videos only for personal reasons or because they want to promote their brand. What does this lead to? This is a serious limitation.

Pay-per-click Advertising survives only if people have reasons to click on the links. The most legitimate reason to click an advertisement is the interest of the person who clicks, in the product. Now, imagine that you are watching a home video that I produced because you are my friend. Let us say, the video is on how my dog eats food. And Contextual Advertising would probably put an advertisement on Dog Food along with the video. I am damn sure no one would click that advertisement. Because people who watch that video are going to watch it not because they want to know more about Dog Food, but because they know me and they are curious to know what I'm up to. If I am lucky, the video will become viral and a few more people would watch it. They too would watch it not because they are interested in Dog Food, but because they are curious to know what is happening. No wonder Google makes no money out of You Tube.

Talk about promotional video content. Watching such stuff usually takes us to other sites, if I am interested in what I am watching. And there again Google loses out in the game as in the You Tube Model, Video is much more important than anything else on the site.

And here comes Google with this cool idea - let users monetize their videos. Probably the JK Wedding Dance inspired the idea. Which ever way, all of us are going to gain from this decision. How? Look at the key to this idea - Google is going to let only the publishers of popular content monetize their videos. Some people say Google is doing this because they are worried they can not monetize all the content on You Tube. Some are so worried about how advertisers will have to put up with sponsoring things they do not want to sponsor. But I am not worried about anything. I look at this decision as an opportunity for publishers to make good money out of what they post. I am sure in the days to come You Tube is going to be more than just personal videos and promotional videos. I'm sure You Tube is going to see more quality content as publishers compete to make videos that make people watch. I am sure people are going to come back and watch videos and click on the advertisements because they are interested in what they are watching and advertisements will hopefully cater to their interests. And I'm sure slowly You Tube will become another research tool as more quality content is going to show up.

After Thought: Now we know one reason why Google bought ON2. I'm waiting for the rest of the reasons to surface.

Happy News Bloggers: Mr. Murdoch will charge for online content from next year!

Rupert Murdoch is an old man now. 78 years old. As an old man, may be he has lost that spark which saw him rise to the position of the media emperor he is today. Perhaps, that is the reason why he has announced the most uncharming business decision of his career the day before yesterday- a decision to make all his news sites available only to users who pay, from next year.

He said, :"Quality journalism is not cheap,..The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive distribution channels but it has not made content free. We intend to charge for all our news websites."

You should read people's reaction to that. Many reacted as though, it is not a big deal and they consider News Corps news sites as crap. Most of them said they don't care as they are not going to pay to read his sites anyway. News Analysers sounded very disappointed that a person like Murdoch took such a naive decision. Stories ran on blogs and technology review sites on how this decision is all about News Corps digging its own grave. Journalists are wondering how and why this is too risky for nothing. One reviewer even went to the extent of saying only Apple can save newspapers.

Is Murdoch serious about what he said or was he just testing the waters? True, his business ventures reported a net loss of $ 3.4 Billion this fiscal year. True, recession is at its best and on-line advertisement revenue is dipping. True, Wall Street Journal, a paid news site from Murdoch is doing relatively well and has users paying to read news. But, is he serious? Or was he, as I said, just testing the waters? Or, was it just a sudden outburst of frustration? May be, it was all the three put together.

Why do I say that? I think Murdoch is missing a key point here. On-line content is just a tool. I don't believe that Internet is all about Information. Internet is about advertisements. Certain products are just tools to sell certain other products. Why do Google let me search for free? Why does Google or Wordpress permit me to upload content on my blog for free? Why do social communities allow me in for free? Why are there many sites that give me many of their services for free? Why are open source applications free? Why is the news free, after all? I think these things are free because they want me to stick around as long as possible. You stick around so that you buy something, sooner or later.

 This is not a new business model. In India we have temples and churches organizing festivals around their theme of worship. They spend a lot of money, organizing a fare, staging plays or other performances by professional artists etc. These religious festivals last for five to ten days. The plays or other performances go well into midnights. You don't pay anything to watch a play during the festival. Why do they do it for free? Because, they know that people who come to the festival will visit the temple or church to pray. But the few coins they offer when they pray is not the target! People come to these festivals to set up stalls that sell from glass bangles to kitchenware. They pay lovely loads of cash to people who run the temple or church as rent for these five to ten days. In fact, there are groups of people in India, who travel from one festival spot to another and make a decent living!

To me, Internet sounds like a temple or church festival. And people who make content available or provide spaces for people to meet are like the Temple or Church Committee Members. They run the show. Sites like Murdoch's or Google's or Facebook's or Twitter's are these plays or performances staged during this Big Bang Festival called Internet. People come to the festival, because these performances are for free. And as they come, some of them, sooner or later most of them, will buy from the people who set up stalls in Google's or Murdoch's or Facebook's or Twitter's premises.

What happens if Murdoch makes his sites 'pay-per-click' as he says? May be there are going to be people who are willing to pay like there are people to read Wall Street Journal. But imagine the number of people who would have read Wall Street Journal, if it was available for free?

And if Murdoch is going to hide his content behind the 'paywalls', what about those people who hit the search engines for anything and everything? Google, Bing and Yahoo! If they won't have traces of Murdoch's Sites, won't he disappear from the minds of people gradually? This is why I said, Murdoch's announcement is happy news to Bloggers.

I am sure he will not hide all his content behind the paywalls. He will float enough summary of news stories around to make sure that he is on search engines. May be he will enter into deals with Search Engines to make sure that he is there, when people search. But even then,, it is happy news for bloggers!

Experts say that about 90% of his traffic will die because of this decision. Let Murdoch take his ten percent! Where will the rest go? The rest will trun to sites that make content available for free. I think, if Murdoch will implement his decision, there is going to be an increase in traffic to blogs we have around. Is this not happy news bloggers?

Image from Wikipedia

Google buying On2: What difference does it make?

Yesterday, in a Press Release Google and On2 announced that Google is finally acquiring On2 Technologies Inc., a leading developer of video compression technology. On2 is about 'creating and delivering high quality video over IP networks." Google is also about Youtube, we know. And it is a $ 106. 5 million deal they say. 'Each outstanding share of On2 common stock will be converted into $0.60 worth of Google class A common stock in a stock-for-stock transaction,' according to the Press Release. What difference is it going to make, if Google acquires On2?

Now, experts say the game is all about video codecs. Video codes enable video compression and On2 makes them. VP6, VP 7 etc are high defenition, high quality video codecs, developed by On2, used in Adobe Flash Player, Web2.0, VoIP, mobile video and other embedded devices.. But at present, VP6 and VP7 are losing out in the game to H.264, which comes under GNU General Public License. That means H.264 comes under free licence and people have the freedom to modify and distribute it. VP6 is a licensed codec and expects companies to pay a licence fee every year. VP6 of course is about quality videos. And people hope and pray that Google makes it open source.

What happens if Google makes VP6 open source?

1. Companies like Adobe,AOL, Skype, Nokia, XM Satellite Radio, Sony, Yamaha, TI, LSI Logic, Analog Devices, VideoEgg, Brightcove, Cox, Naver.com (Korea), Daum (Korea), Tencent(China) etc, who are already using VP6 will continue using it and building on it for free, without having to pay licence fee to On2. This means they come back to use the more superior VP6 and we can forget H.264. Quality of videos across platforms will improve.
2. HTML5 is on the way and it will enable browsers to handle videos without the help of plugins like Flash Player or Silverlight. This will help developers stop bothering about a lot of software compatiability issues. It will also help users save a lot of hard drive space, as plugins need not be downloaded.  
3. Mobile phone users will be able to send their MMS Videos to other mobile phones, without the fear of losing quality.   
4. People who do Video Conferencing using Webcams can then start thinking about videos that are viewable and not distorted as they are these days. 

Google can go ahead and not open source On2 video codecs at all. What happens then? Apple has its QuickTime. Microsoft has its Silverlight. Adobe has its Flash. And Google has what it takes to give them the foundation - VP6 and VP7. This means, at one point or the other, these biggies will end up paying licence fees to Google. This sale was a smart move, wasn't it?