WebProNews

Tag: YouTube

  • Google’s Troubles Mount As DOJ Focuses On Ad Tools

    Google’s Troubles Mount As DOJ Focuses On Ad Tools

    According to the Wall Street Journal, the Justice Department is ramping up its investigation into Google, focusing heavily on the company’s ad tools.

    According to the report, the DOJ has increasingly been directing its questions—both of competitors and Google executives—toward “how Google’s third-party advertising business interacts with publishers and advertisers.”

    At the heart of the issue is the fact that Google essentially controls the entire process, resulting in its ad software being the dominant player at every stage of the relationship between online publishers and advertisers. Google reinforced that even more in recent years with two key decisions, according to the WSJ. The first was when it integrated “its ad server, the leading tool for websites to put ad space up for sale, with its ad exchange, the industry’s largest digital ad marketplace. The second move was Google’s decision to require advertisers to use its own tools to buy ad space on YouTube.”

    Competitors have alleged that Google’s tying their services together gives the company an unfair and anticompetitive edge, making it impossible to compete with Google on merit alone.

    At least one rival is pleased with the direction the questioning is going. Michael Nevins, chief marketing officer of Smart AdServer told the WSJ: “They are zooming in on the right topics, and that’s a good thing.”

  • Google and Microsoft Reigniting Browser Wars

    Google and Microsoft Reigniting Browser Wars

    Some things are too good to last, and it appears Google and Microsoft’s BFF cooperation on the browser front is one of them, as both companies are taking swipes at the other.

    Microsoft’s current browser, Edge, uses Google’s Chromium rendering engine. Chromium is an open-source rendering engine that a number of browsers, including Chrome, are powered by. Microsoft retired its own HTML rendering engine in favor of the move to Chromium in an effort to improve compatibility and reliability. Basing Edge on Chromium also lets Microsoft focus more resources on the browser’s front-end and user experience. Microsoft has even added a number of significant features to Edge that have made, or are making, their way into Chrome.

    The cracks started to show up when Google began using user agents to warn Microsoft Edge users they should “upgrade” to Google’s Chrome. User agent strings are the method by which web browsers identify themselves. In the early days of the web, when Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator were vying for dominance, webmasters would routinely code their websites to primarily work with one or the other browser. Webmasters would check a visiting browser’s user agent, or identity, and warn users they needed to “upgrade” if they weren’t running the browser their website was designed to support. Eventually, as the web started becoming more standards-compliant, the practice largely fell out of favor, with webmasters focusing on creating websites that adhered to standards and worked for everyone.

    Now Google seems intent on going back to those dark days of the early web. According to Windows Latest, “Google services are still targeting Edge with scary warnings. In the past, Google has displayed a warning when users opened services such as Google Teams, Gmail, Google Docs and YouTube Music in Edge.”

    Interestingly, if Edge users change their user agent to Chrome, the warning goes away. Google is also not targeting other Chromium-based browsers, such as Opera.

    Microsoft, in turn, has been warning individuals who try to download extensions from the Chrome Web Store that downloaded extensions from “unverified” sources may not be safe.

    Chris Matyszczyk, with ZDNet, reached out to both companies, as well as did a bit of his own investigating.

    “My sniffings around Google suggest the company may have been taken aback by the positive public reaction to Edge,” writes Matyszczyk. “Oddly, Google doesn’t seem to be offering these scary messages to users of, say, the Opera browser.

    “My nasal probings around Redmond offer the reasoning that, well, Microsoft hasn’t tested or verified extensions that arrive from places other than they Microsoft Edge add-ons website. Why, they’re far too busy to do that. And, well, it’s the Chrome web store. Who knows what you’ll find over there? Oh, and Edge gives you more control over your data, so there.”

    Whatever the motivations of both companies, the back-and-forth, tit-for-tat needs to stop. Dragging users back to the ‘90s-style browser wars that emphasized protecting turf over supporting standards is a losing recipe for everyone involved—especially the end user.

  • Clearview AI App Disabled On the App Store

    Clearview AI App Disabled On the App Store

    Clearview AI’s troubles continue to mount, with the company’s app being disabled on the App Store for violating Apple’s rules.

    Buzzfeed News first noticed that Clearview was doing an end-run around Apple’s distribution rules, “encouraging those who want to use the software to download its app through a program reserved exclusively for developers.” Buzzfeed contacted Apple to inquire about the situation, prompting Apple to investigate. As a result of their investigation, Apple suspended Clearview’s developer account, preventing the app from functioning. Apple told Buzzfeed the developer program Clearview was using is only for distributing apps within a company, not the kind of widescale distribution Clearview was using it for.

    In statement obtained by Buzzfeed, Clearview CEO Hoan Ton-That said: “We are in contact with Apple and working on complying with their terms and conditions. The app can not be used without a valid Clearview account. A user can download the app, but not perform any searches without proper authorization and credentials.”

    Clearview has been on an impressive streak of earning the disfavor of politicians, corporations, privacy advocates, journalists and citizens alike. The company has scraped millions of websites to amass a facial recognition database of some three billion photos, in the process violating the terms of service for industry giants like Google, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. The company has been accused of monitoring how police are using the app to discourage them from interacting with journalists. Clearview was suspected of planning worldwide expansion, including to oppressive regimes, only to have its client list stolen, which showed it has already moved forward with those plans.

    Now the company has managed to violate Apple’s rules about how developers can or cannot distribute apps. Given the company’s shady practices, it’s a safe bet no one will be shedding a tear over this one.

  • Chrome Ad Blocker Will Tackle Video Ads

    Chrome Ad Blocker Will Tackle Video Ads

    Beginning August 5, 2020, Google Chrome will begin blocking some of the most intrusive video ads, according to a blog post.

    According to the post, Google relies on the Better Ads Standards, developed by the Coalition for Better Ads. The group recently announced new standards, addressing some of the most intrusive types of video ads.

    The first type is “long, non-skippable pre-roll ads or groups of ads longer than 31 seconds that appear before a video and that cannot be skipped within the first 5 seconds.”

    The second type is “mid-roll ads of any duration that appear in the middle of a video, interrupting the user’s experience.”

    The third type is “image or text ads that appear on top of a playing video and are in the middle 1/3 of the video player window or cover more than 20 percent of the video content.”

    The Coalition has made it clear that website owners should stop showing these video ads within the next four months. As a result, effective August 5, 2020, Google will stop displaying these kinds of ads. Google also makes clear that YouTube will be reviewed to ensure compliance with the new guidelines.

    This announcement is good news for anyone who has had to sit through these kind of ads, and Google is to be commended for quickly implementing the Coalition’s new guidelines.

  • Clearview AI Expanding Internationally—With Authoritarian Regimes

    Clearview AI Expanding Internationally—With Authoritarian Regimes

    In further proof that Clearview AI can’t be trusted, BuzzFeed News is reporting the facial recognition firm is planning on selling its services to authoritarian regimes.

    Clearview claims to have scraped over 3 billion photos from millions of websites, including the major social media platforms. The company then makes those photos available, in a searchable database, to hundreds of law enforcement agencies across the country.

    According to BuzzFeed, “a document obtained via a public records request reveals that Clearview has been touting a ‘rapid international expansion’ to prospective clients using a map that highlights how it either has expanded, or plans to expand, to at least 22 more countries, some of which have committed human rights abuses.”

    Three of the countries are the United Arab Emirates, which is known for cracking down on dissidents, as well as Qatar and Singapore, both of which have far more restrictive human rights laws than Western countries.

    In an interview with BuzzFeed, Albert Fox Cahn, a fellow at New York University and the executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, expressed concern about the implications of the software being used by oppressive regimes.

    “It’s deeply alarming that they would sell this technology in countries with such a terrible human rights track record, enabling potentially authoritarian behavior by other nations,” he said.

    Clearview CEO Hoan Ton-That has been defending his company amid growing scrutiny and concern over the legality and ethics of its behavior. The New Jersey Attorney General recently enacted a moratorium on police departments using the company’s service. Twitter, Facebook, Google and YouTube have sent cease-and-desist letters to Clearview. Now, as lawmakers increasingly turn their attention toward the company, it’s a safe bet this latest news will not help Clearview’s case.

  • YouTube Generates $15 Billion a Year For Google

    YouTube Generates $15 Billion a Year For Google

    Alphabet released its fourth quarter results today and, for the first time, broke down how much money YouTube earns.

    According to the report, YouTube generated $15 billion in ad revenue last year, nearly doubling what it made just two years ago. As The Verge points out, that figure “contributed roughly 10 percent to all Google revenue. Those figures make YouTube’s ad business nearly one fifth the size of Facebook’s, and more than six times larger than all of Amazon-owned Twitch.”

    In addition to the ad revenue, The Verge reports that Google also has over 20 million subscribers to YouTube Premium and Music Premium, as well as more than 2 million YouTube TV subscribers. The revenue from these services is grouped under the “other” category, which accounted for $5.3 billion in Q4. The company also disclosed its Google Cloud earnings for the first time, with that division bringing in $8.9 billion in 2019.

    While Google beat Wall Street’s estimates on profit, its revenue came in lower than expected. That could be the reason the company was suddenly willing to disclose YouTube and Google Cloud’s financial contribution, in an effort to show the company is growing revenue streams outside its core search business.

    “In 2019 we again delivered strong revenue growth, with revenues of $162 billion, up 18% year over year and up 20% on a constant currency basis,” said Ruth Porat, Chief Financial Officer of Alphabet and Google. “To provide further insight into our business and the opportunities ahead, we’re now disclosing our revenue on a more granular basis, including for Search, YouTube ads and Cloud.”

  • The Company That Can End Privacy Just Ran Afoul of Twitter

    The Company That Can End Privacy Just Ran Afoul of Twitter

    Clearview AI, the company that made headlines last week for potentially ending privacy as we know it, has incurred the wrath of Twitter, according to The Seattle Times.

    New York Times journalist Kashmir Hill first reported on Clearview AI, a small, little-known startup that allows you to upload a photo and then compare it against a database of more than three billion photos the company has amassed. Clearview’s system will then show you “public photos of that person, along with links to where those photos appeared.”

    Clearview has built its database by scraping Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Venmo and millions of other websites for photos of people, something that is blatantly against most companies’ terms of service. The database is so far beyond anything the government has that some 600 law enforcement agencies have begun using Clearview—without any public scrutiny or a legislative stance on the legality of what Clearview does.

    To make matters even worse, once a person’s photos or social media profile has been scraped and added to the database, there is currently no way to have the company remove it. The only recourse available to individuals is to change the privacy settings of their social media profiles to prevent search engines from accessing them. This will stop Clearview from scraping any additional photos from their profile but, again, it does nothing to address any photos they may already have.

    At least one company is taking a strong stand against Clearview, namely Twitter. The Seattle Times is reporting that Twitter has sent Clearview a cease-and-desist demanding it stop scraping their site and user profiles for “any reason.” The cease-and-desist further demands that Clearview delete any and all data it has already collected from Twitter.

    Clearview is a prime example of what Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai was talking about, in an op-ed he published in the Financial Times, when he said tech companies needed to take responsibility for the technology they create, not just charge ahead because they can. Similarly, Salesforce co-CEO Keith Block recently said the U.S. needed a national privacy law similar to the EU’s GDPR. If Clearview doesn’t make a case for such regulation…nothing will.

    In the meantime, here’s to hoping every other company and website Clearview has scraped for photos takes as strong a stance as Twitter.

  • CES 2020: Samsung Unveils Rolling Robot ‘Ballie’

    CES 2020: Samsung Unveils Rolling Robot ‘Ballie’

    It’s not quite BB-8, but Samsung may have unveiled the next best thing in a rolling robot named “Ballie.”

    According to Engadget, Ballie is designed to be an assistant, essentially running a smart home. The robot “has a ‘mobile interface’ that looks for ways to improve your life as your needs change using its built-in AI.”

    In a YouTube video the company posted, Ballie acts as a household manager, opening shades, triggering a woman’s alarm clock, assisting her with her workout, turning the TV on for the dog once she leaves, sending her a video feed of the dog happily watching TV, playing with the dog and even summoning the robot vacuum when the dog makes a mess.

    One gets the impression from watching the video that if you imagined a butler, managing almost every aspect of running a home, as a little yellow ball…you would have Ballie. While Samsung has not announced when Ballie will be available or how much it will cost, the company will likely have a major hit on its hands.

    https://youtu.be/Xwi_U-g3wA0

  • YouTube Deletes Then Reverses Course On Cryptocurrency Videos

    YouTube Deletes Then Reverses Course On Cryptocurrency Videos

    YouTube made headlines earlier this week with a wide-scale purge of cryptocurrency videos. Just as suddenly, the Google-owned company seems to have reversed course, labeling the purge a “wrong call.”

    Content creators who use YouTube to publish information about cryptocurrencies were in for a rude awakening this week when they discovered that many of their videos had been removed with no explanation. In some cases, creators even received strikes for some of their content.

    Nugget’s News founder Alex Saunders tweeted about his experience:

    “Hi @TeamYouTube with over 100 videos removed & 2 strikes in 24 hours I have still not even received an email from you. This is really scary. We’ve hired new staff. I have a wife & baby to support. I can’t fix the problem if I don’t know what I’ve done or who to communicate with!?”

    Following appeals from multiple creators, YouTube reversed course and issued the following statement to Decrypt:

    “With the massive volume of videos on our site, sometimes we make the wrong call. When it’s brought to our attention that a video has been removed mistakenly, we act quickly to reinstate it.”

    Unfortunately, not all creators have seen their videos reinstated, and for some it has gotten worse since the reinstatement. Chris Dunn, who runs a cryptocurrency channel with 200,000 subscribers, told CoinDesk that YouTube removed his videos a second time, after reinstating them, and even went on to delete a video they had not removed during the first round.

    Much of the issue, as well as past issues other content creators have experienced, is that YouTube failed to communicate anything. As Saunders said above, it’s difficult to a address a problem without knowing what the problem is. To make matters worse, bungling the “fix” only makes the original issue that much worse.

    Episodes like these make a strong case for Dave Rubin’s recently launched Locals.com, aimed at giving creators far more control over their own content and brand.

  • Dave Rubin of The Rubin Report Launches Locals.com

    Dave Rubin of The Rubin Report Launches Locals.com

    Dave Rubin used his show today to announce the launch of his new venture, Locals.com, “subscription-based communities that give power to creators, not platforms.”

    “Today, is a big day. We’ve got some announcements and some major stuff cooking,” Rubin said to introduce his venture. “This is basically going to be a live stream that will culminate a year of my life that I really haven’t been talking about, that I’ve been kind of teasing about for the last year.

    “But on top of doing this show, and touring, and going to colleges, and standup, and writing a book—somehow I managed to squeeze that in, in the last year or two—I also started a tech company…to solve as many of the problems that are humanly possible that we all know are sort of the biggest problems of the day.”

    Rubin said he wasn’t talking about political problems, cultural problems or just social problems—he was talking about all of them at once, especially in the context of tech often making them worse.

    Using his own show as an example, Rubin talked about the high-quality production they routinely release on YouTube—one rivaling a television studio production. In spite of that, it’s extremely difficult to engage with subscribers. De-boosting, de-ranking and shadow-banning are just a few of the words used to describe how tech companies manipulate viewership and subscriber bases.

    Another concern Rubin talked about was tech companies being the gatekeepers of free speech. When there are large, monolithic platforms, there have to be one-size-fits-all rules about what can and cannot be said. Unfortunately, that often leaves room for abuses on all sides.

    The goal of Locals.com is to avoid all of those challenges by creating smaller communities, each with their own rules and guidelines their members must follow. Therefore, for his own community, he has set very open guidelines, only banning things that violate the law or constitute ‘schmucky, troll-like’ behavior. Rubin likened it to inviting people to his home. While he is a firm believer in free speech, that doesn’t mean he wants everyone and anyone coming into his family’s home and saying whatever they want with no regard for him or his family. Having smaller communities, rather than monolithic platforms, gives community leaders and creators that ability to define the atmosphere for their own community.

    Rubin also highlighted the collaborative nature of Locals.com, where different communities can join together and cooperate on their feeds, essentially creating networks of like-minded communities. This, in turn, gives creators the ability to more quickly grow their subscribers and reach.

    Locals.com already has some big-name creators onboard, with Rubin promising more information and reveals in the coming weeks. If his plan is as successful as it has the potential to be, Locals.com could well be one of the most successful and revolutionary ways for creators to finally control their own destiny.

  • View Velocity Is The Secret To Ranking On YouTube

    View Velocity Is The Secret To Ranking On YouTube

    “To determine rankings on their platform, YouTube uses a metric called the View Velocity,” says HubSpot SEO expert Braden Becker. “The View Velocity metric measures the number of subscribers who watch your video right after it’s been published. The higher your videos view velocity the higher your videos will rank. YouTube also accounts for the number of active subscribers you have when they rank your videos.”

    Braden Becker, Senior SEO Strategist at HubSpot, reveals the secrets of YouTube’s Ranking Algorithm in his latest video:

    The Secrets of YouTube’s Ranking Algorithm

    Since marketers are at the mercy of algorithms on nearly every publishing channel, knowing how each of these unique algorithms work is crucial to attracting and maintaining an audience. Luckily, while some channels are rather reserved about the secrets of their algorithms, YouTube has been remarkably transparent. To figure out which videos and channels that users are most likely to enjoy watching, YouTube follows their audience. This means they pay attention to which videos each user watches, what they don’t watch, how much time they spend watching each video, their likes, their dislikes, and “they’re not interested in” feedback. 

    What YouTube Pays The Most Attention To

    Ranking High In YouTube Search Results

    YouTube’s algorithm also uses different signals and metrics to rank and recommend videos on each section of their platform. With this in mind, let’s go over how the algorithm decides to serve content to its users on their search results, homepage, suggested videos, trending, and subscription sections. First, are the search results. The two biggest factors that affect your video search rankings are its keywords and relevance. When ranking videos in search, YouTube will consider how well your titles, descriptions, and content, match each user’s queries. They’ll also consider how many videos users have watched from your channel and the last time they watched other videos surrounding the same topic as your video.

    Positive Engagement With Your Videos Is Key

    Next is the home page and suggested videos. No two users will have the same experience on YouTube. They want to serve the most relevant personalized recommendations to each of their viewers. To do this they first analyze user’s activity history and find hundreds of videos that could be relevant to them. Then they rank these videos by how well each video has engaged and satisfied similar users, how often each viewer watches videos from a particular channel or topic, and how many times YouTube has already shown each video to its users. 

    Ranking On The Trending Page

    Next is trending. The trending page is a feast of new and popular videos in a user’s specific country. YouTube wants to balance popularity with novelty when they rank videos in this section, so they heavily consider view count and rate of view growth for each video they rank. 

    High “View Velocity” = High Ranking

    Last is subscriptions. YouTube has a subscriptions page where users can view all the recently uploaded videos from the channels they subscribe to. But this page isn’t the only benefit that channels get when they acquire a ton of subscribers. To determine rankings on their platform, YouTube uses a metric called the View Velocity, which measures the number of subscribers who watch your video right after it’s been published. The higher your videos view velocity the higher your videos will rank. YouTube also accounts for the number of active subscribers you have when they rank your videos.

    The Secrets of YouTube’s Ranking Algorithm with HubSpot SEO expert Braden Becker
  • PrestonPlayz on How to Use Super Chats to Increase YouTube Revenue

    PrestonPlayz on How to Use Super Chats to Increase YouTube Revenue

    Popular (7.5 million subs) YouTube live streamer PrestonPlayz recently explained the Super Chat feature to all those trying to make money on the YouTube platform:

    What is a Super Chat?

    A Super Chat is, essentially, a comment that is going to be pinned and highlighted in your live stream chat. Depending on the monetary amount that they Super Chatted, it will change colors and the duration for how long it’s going to be pinned, it could be longer or shorter. I definitely think that Super Chatting gives us and the viewers a really cool way to engage with one another and of course, you can also develop a new source of income for your channel.

    Why Super Chat?

    You might be thinking why Super Chat? One of the coolest things in my opinion about YouTube is the direct interaction we get to do with our audience, whether you’re a gaming live streamer or live streaming yourself cooking something. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing, you can still engage with your audience. Super Chat does a great job at that.

    Super Chat Increases Engagement and Revenue

    Super Chat is integrated into YouTube which means it’s extremely accessible for your viewers and very easy to use, not to mention it’s kind of like a domino effect. When one viewer super chats, then another Super Chats, and then another, it catches on like fire and it’s awesome.

    Not only is Super Chat a great way to start communicating more with your audience and let them be heard, but of course you can also use it to increase your revenue. I actually ended up using a lot of the super chat revenue that I made to fund other videos, it’s a win-win situation.

    Introducing Super Chat to Your Audience

    When enabling Super Chats on your channel for the first time I think it’s very important for you to make sure you introduce it to your audience. You should briefly mention it at the beginning of your next live stream saying, “Hey guys I’ve got this new awesome feature Super Chat. If you guys want to support the channel consider sending a Super Chat.” As soon as somebody does the first Super Chat you can show it off… “Guys, that’s the Super Chat, look at the comments right now. This is somebody who’s Super Chatted.”

    Now their message is up there for everybody to see. Not only do they get to interact with you but they’re Super Chat is now showcased off to everybody watching the live stream, which I think a lot of viewers really like.

    Super Chat Best Practices

    Let’s go over some of the best Super Chat practices. Always thank people for their Super Chats no matter how small or large it is. People are much more likely to come back to your future live streams if you engage with their super chat and of course engage with your live stream viewers directly. If possible, depending on the question of the Super chat try to think about some fun ways you can answer it so that way it’s not the same way each and every time.

    Think of Fun Ways to Respond

    Make sure you’re also noticing them quickly. I’m not saying as soon as they send it you have to read it as fast as you can, but of course the sooner that you can notice them the more appreciated they will feel. It’s also very important to make sure that you’re staying engaged with whatever you are live-streaming about as well as your audience.

    Set challenges in your live streams so when you hit a certain tier of Super Chats or a certain amount of Super Chats you’re going to do something. It should be something small, silly, and fun that the viewers can relate to. Maybe you attach a clothespin to your ear every time you get a Super Chat. Maybe you have a giant bowling pin and you write their names on the bowling pin whenever they Super Chat.

    You can even keep track of a high score of who’s Super Chatted the most out of any viewer ever, maybe like the top five. You can also set up sound effects for certain Super Chats. People love to hear a certain sound effect that’s related to you.

    Use Call to Actions

    Call to action is extremely important when it comes to Super Chats. I’m not saying to mention it so frequently that your viewers get really frustrated and leave the live stream. I would say every few minutes just mention it. Explain to them why they should use Super Chats, how it helps you, how you’ll read their comments, how you’re gonna write it on this giant bowling pin.

    Never force your viewers to you Super Chat. Encouraging them and making it as organic as possible is always gonna be the best way to do it.

  • Chris Brogan Says if Your YouTube Videos Are Boring… Emote!

    Chris Brogan Says if Your YouTube Videos Are Boring… Emote!

    Marketing guru Chris Brogan offers some advice on how to make interesting videos for business owners that produce YouTube videos:

    The Medium Requires You to Amp it Up

    One detail that I see repeated over and over and over again in your YouTube videos is that you forget that this medium requires you to amp everything up a little bit more than what’s probably your normal delivery. When I’m talking normally to other people I still use my hands but not as much as I do in a video.

    One other difference is I’m very vividly aware of this frame. I’m making sure that I have everything such that I’m paying attention to the frame. I’m looking at the lens which means I’m looking at your eyes and I’m paying attention, but what I’m also doing, and this is where it gets important, is I’m emoting.

    You’re Performing Whether or Not You Want To

    I could talk to you about the data, I could just say you know it’s really important to emote, emoting is good, you should emote. But in video, you’re performing whether or not you want to. Notice a difference in how I was talking. When I just kind of talked normal, one of the things I do is there are not really many pauses. It’s just kind of walking along and getting the words out as fast as I get the words out.

    When I’m performing, there are a few more clear pauses and I’m doing a little bit more enunciation and I’m changing and validating and varying all the different pieces of the words so that you can catch up.

    Keep Your Energy Level High

    I’m trying to keep it audibly interesting and I’m trying to keep the energy level high because that’s what we respond to in video. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen some of my friends talking on video and they seem sort of like they’re just being held at gunpoint. No one wants it and so you have to deliver.

    It’s performing, its producing, it’s creating something for someone. It’s not fake. It’s just a way of making sure that everything gets pushed forward a little bit, notches it up. You do this kind of thing when you make a selfie. You might image adjust a little, you might wipe out a zit or something, you might whiten your teeth, who knows. Do the same with your video, produce. Also, when you’re creating a background for your presentation you have to pay attention to that as well.

    I’ve been talking mostly about voice and emoting, but I wanted you to feel and understand how this all connects. You’re not just delivering the information, you have to amp things up a little, you have to push. This is coming from a guy who deals with mild clinical depression. My normal energy level is low, but if I don’t deliver like this then you don’t pay attention.

    Be Like You… Plus

    I learned some of this from watching some of my friends and my kids YouTube videos. My kids watch these people who when they get excited they shout and they scream. You say, but Chris, I’m not that kind of person, I don’t emote normally. I’m not asking you not to be normal, but I am asking you to be like you… plus. Can you be just a little more you for the video? If you’re super quiet and super non-emotive, be just a little more emotive. That’s gonna help a lot.

  • The Nitty Gritty Tips On How To Get YouTube Views and Drive Business

    The Nitty Gritty Tips On How To Get YouTube Views and Drive Business

    Every business should be using YouTube to engage their potential customers and create a sense of authority for their business. The problem is that most people don’t know where to start and don’t know how the YourTube algorithm works, so they serious make mistakes.

    Internet marketing expert Neil Patel along with YouTube branding expert Adam LoDolce, founder of Viewership.com, recently provided the answers that every business needs to expertly use YouTube to communicate with their potential customers.

    Below are some highlights:

    You want to get more traffic from YouTube, there are a few things you need to do. One, check out vidIQ, it’s an amazing tool, it’ll help you out. However, YouTube marketing is not rocket science, similar to SEO. Yes, there are a lot of little components, but if you do them, you can do well.

    Include the Right Keywords

    The first one is, include the right keywords. Similar to how you do keyword research for SEO, you want to do keyword research for YouTube. Suggested apps are vidIQ, Adwords keyword planner tool and Ubersuggest which pulls from Adwords and Google Suggest and YouTube. If you just do that you will get more recommendations on keywords that will drive more traffic.

    Have a Very Appealing Title

    Another thing you want to do is have a really appealing title, one that evokes curiosity. Just having the keywords in there isn’t enough. If your title doesn’t evoke curiosity, people aren’t going to click through, play and then continue watching. That’s really the biggest difference between YouTube and Google Search. With Google Search, people are searching for it, whereas on YouTube, most traffic isn’t search traffic, it’s people who click on your videos from browse features and suggested videos.

    It has to be really good, I don’t want to say clickbait, but it has to be click-worthy for you to get a lot of traffic. When you watch a video on YouTube they’ll recommend other videos or autoplay other videos from other channels. If your video is really good and somebody is watching it, in the sidebar, somebody may see your video and click on it. But if your title is not appealing they’re not going to really click on it.

    You Have to Upload Transcriptions

    In addition to that, you have to upload transcriptions. We suggest Rev.com where you can pay a dollar per minute for a transcription. What that does is when you upload it to YouTube it’ll tell them what your content is about. Yes, YouTube can auto-transcribe your content, but it doesn’t hold the same weight versus if you uploaded an SRT file or a transcription, and that’s what Rev.com provides.

    Increase Engagement With Advertising

    If your a business and want to get your videos in front of a lot of people on YouTube, then you should use advertisement to push those videos in front of people who have liked or commented on previous videos. The reason why this is so effective is that it is going to get much more engagement on the new videos that you produce, and YouTube loves engagement.

    YouTube, like Google, is looking at the authority of your channel and engagement feeds this algorithm. If you have a lot of videos that are doing well it boosts the overall authority of your whole channel, and all of your videos will start doing better. The worst thing you can do is have all these videos out there with no likes, no comments, nothing going on.

    Key Tips for Producing a Video

    One of the biggest things Adam LoDolce taught me (noted Neil Patel) when I was learning about YouTube marketing, was all about how to produce the video. I’m not talking about the editing, I’m talking about your personality and how you create your own video.

    The biggest one is how you want your audience to feel. A lot of people think about keyword topics and that’s nice for your research, but ultimately, it’s about how do you want them to feel. Do you want them to be motivated, or do you want them to laugh?

    For your business channel, the worst thing you can do is to be very stiff, professional and to just give tactical advice. Loosen up a little bit, have a little fun, make a joke, that’s how you can get engagement with your videos. If you are not having fun recording, I bet you the person watching is not going to have fun.

    Your videos need to be a decent length. YouTube’s looking at how long are you keeping people on YouTube! The more you keep them on YouTube, instead of driving them back to your website, the better. Everyone likes putting those captions in videos, like click this link, head back over to my website. That will hurt your YouTube ratings versus just keeping people on YouTube.

    Think of it more as a branding channel, and when you are creating a video that doesn’t mean you need to create an hour video, but typically anything about 5 or 6 minutes is good. Any short videos of 2-3 minutes is just going to hurt you versus creating 5-10 minute videos.

    Video is the Future

    If you are a business and not doing any video, you are missing out. If you can start doing it and start getting more comfortable with it, push your comfort zone and get in front of the camera, you are going to have a competitive advantage out there.

  • How to Harness the Combined Power of Search and Video to Increase Ad Conversions

    How to Harness the Combined Power of Search and Video to Increase Ad Conversions

    One of the most powerful ways for a business to drive sales is via video reviews on YouTube. Earlier this year, Google made that even more effective by combining the power of video on YouTube with Google Search. Nicky Rettke, YouTube Group Product Manager for Video Ads spoke to an audience at Search Marketing Expo 2018 (SMX) and explained exactly how easy it now is for businesses to make use of this marketing one-two punch summarized below:

    As you know we’ve been we’ve been working on direct response video formats for ad promotion for quite a while now, but we haven’t had a comprehensive solution for driving web conversions until now. I’m going to share some of our newest innovations that help you harness the combined power of search and YouTube together.

    I want to start off by just having everybody take a minute to think about the things that you bought last week and how you decided what to buy. If you’re like most people, 86% to be exact, then you know you turned to Google for help where we have the world’s information at our fingertips when we’re shopping. We can read reviews, we can search product details, and we can even watch videos to help us make the best decision possible.

    What that means is that even small everyday purchases like a toothbrush can kick off a big research project. Did you know that mobile searches for toothbrush reviews have more than doubled in the last two years? Whether it’s a car or toothbrush, we want to literally see things in action before we buy them. This is why people are increasingly turning to YouTube in addition to Search for help with their purchase decisions, and we can see this trend in YouTube search data.

    Over the last two years, review videos on YouTube have had over 50,000 years worth of watch time on mobile alone. That’s over 438 million hours!

    It’s not a hard jump to go from review to purchase. We’ve seen 100 percent increase in online conversions coming from YouTube ads globally over the last 12 months. That’s showing that consumers are coming to YouTube not only to research but to take action.

    3 Features Helping Brands Harness Commercial Intent on YouTube

    1. Custom Intent Audiences – Find People Who Recent Searched

    Remarketing lists on search used to be the only way that you could re-engage users who did not immediately convert with custom intent audiences. You now have a second chance at winning them over using the most persuasive tool in the world… video.

    Custom Intent Audiences allow brands to reach people who searched for relevant keywords on Google. All you have to do is create a keyword list, or you could just repurpose the keyword lists that you’re already using on your search campaigns.

    Purple, the online mattress retailer, used Custom Intent Audiences to sell mattress protectors. Targeting YouTube viewers who had recently searched for queen bed sheets, they were able to lower the cost per visit by over 30 percent and they saw a 3x increase in the number of people searching for Purple on Google.

    2. TrueView for Action – Make it Easy to Take Action!

    Once you have found the people with the strongest intent, the next step is to make it really easy for them to take action. TrueView for Action is YouTube’s new format optimized to do exactly that. You can use it to drive whatever action is most important to your business, like clicks to your website or new signups.

    It’s most powerful if you combine it with Custom Intent Audiences, that way you can reach people who are just on the brink of making that purchase decision.

    3. Target CPA Bidding – Auto-Optimize for Results

    TrueView for Action campaigns use target CPA bidding to automatically optimize bids using Google’s advanced machine learning technology. Simply put, you can now bid and buy for your video campaigns just like you do on search today.

    Combining Video with Search Improves KPIs

    This suite of features makes YouTube more actionable and early adopter brands are seeing it in the KPIs that matter most to them. Whether it’s the investment startup, Betterment, who increased their return on ad spend by 6x or the online education platform Masterclass, who grew class signups by over 140 percent, or travel giant Kayak, who reduced their CPA by 80 percent, brands around the world are using YouTube to drive meaningful and efficient business results.

  • How to Choose the Right Social Video Platform for Your Brand

    How to Choose the Right Social Video Platform for Your Brand

    The use of social video has become commonplace in brand promotion nowadays due to its proven ability to generate buzz, increase recall, and produce conversions.

    For instance, the Old Spice commercials are one of the most successful media ad campaigns in recent years, fully utilizing the power of social media to create hype for the brand. In fact, its latest, uploaded three months ago, has already reached over 7.6 million hits on YouTube.   

    The power of social videos is no secret, but the common question asked by businesses, whether large or small, is what type of social video platform should they use?

    Answering that question in 2017 is a lot easier than it might have been in previous years. Today, the number of platforms available has whittled down to just a few, unlike before when there was an oversaturation of choices in the market. The remaining players have been able to survive mainly because they became more social.

    With that being said, the most popular social video platforms currently being used are:

    • YouTube: Nothing beats YouTube for its ability to make a video viral in record time. According to data, almost five billion videos are watched on this social media site every day. One negative aspect is that 80% of these views are made outside of the U.S., which might make it ineffective if you’re trying to promote a local business.
    • Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg’s introduction of native videos that can be shared with friends has been a blessing to advertising firms. In terms of reach, these types of videos are unmatched. Users also tend to share video ads more as compared to photos (27% vs. 17%).  However, businesses do have to trust that their videos are being shared around the community, because there’s no search engine structure allowing people to specifically input the video title, unlike in YouTube.
    • Instagram:  As of April 2017, there were already 700 million users on Instagram. The introduction of Instagram Stories also boosted traffic, with over 200 million unique users each day. In terms of engagement, this social media platform is unrivaled, with a post 58 times more likely to get engagement compared to Facebook. The downside is the limited length of the video, so brands looking to build communities will likely not benefit from this platform.

    Here are some interesting numbers relating to social video marketing campaign:

    • Almost a quarter of website traffic last year was generated from videos
    • One in three people on the internet go online to watch YouTube
    • 500 million people watch videos on Facebook each day
    • Snapchat also hit a milestone by surpassing eight billion daily views last year

    While reach is one thing, converting this engagement into an actual purchase is another. And this is where companies struggle. Whether for brand awareness, product promotion, consumer engagement, lead generation, or to offer value, the important thing is for companies to determine their main purpose before creating a video to be posted on social media.

    Purpose is important since there’s a shift in the way social media marketing campaigns are being launched right now. Whereas in 2016, the need to put out a viral video took precedence over substantial content, this year would be a different story. 

    The top three ad campaigns last year that went viral were Shell’s “Make the Future,” Samsung’s “Galaxy S7,” and the John Lewis Christmas advertisement, “Buster the Boxer.”

    Analysts believe that companies should invest more in generating videos that actually add on to their brands, rather than focusing on gimmicks to get more shares.

  • Over 1 Billion YouTube Videos Now Have Captions

    Over 1 Billion YouTube Videos Now Have Captions

    “I envision a future where everything will be captioned, so the more than 300 million people who are deaf or hard of hearing like me will be able to enjoy videos like everyone else,” said Liat Kaver, a YouTube Product Manager focusing on captions and accessibility. “When I was growing up in Costa Rica, there were no closed captions in my first language, and only English movies had Spanish subtitles. I felt I was missing out because I often had to guess at what was happening on the screen or make up my own version of the story in my head. That was where the dream of a system that could just automatically generate high quality captions for any video was born.”

    Google first launched a video captions option in 2006 followed by automated captions in 2009. Captions are now supported in 10 languages.

    As YouTube grew, so did the number of videos with captions which now stands at over 1 billion. Kaver says that more than 15 million videos are watched each day with captions enabled.

    Caption Technology

    “One of the ways that we were able to scale the availability of captions was by combining Google’s automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology with the YouTube caption system to offer automatic captions for videos,” says Kaver. “There were limitations with the technology that underscored the need to improve the captions themselves. Results were sometimes less than perfect, prompting some creators to have a little fun at our expense!”

    Kaver says that one of their teams major goals has been to improve automatic caption accuracy via technological improvements in speech recognition, machine learning and increases in training data. “All together, those technological efforts have resulted in a 50 percent leap in accuracy for automatic captions in English, which is getting us closer and closer to human transcription error rates,” she says. “I know from firsthand experience that if you build with accessibility as a guiding force, you make technology work for everyone.”

  • Fired From Bakery Job, Alonzo Lerone Resets His Life as a Successful YouTube Creator

    Fired From Bakery Job, Alonzo Lerone Resets His Life as a Successful YouTube Creator

    This is a story of inspiration for all of you wannabe YouTube creators who are afraid to follow your dreams. Alonzo Lerone was working in a bakery, posting some videos on YouTube, but not really believing that he could make a living from YouTube ad revenue. Then Alonzo was fired and his life took a turn for the better.

    Check out Alonzo on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/Alonzo

    How it Began for Alonzo

    “Being from a small city, I didn’t think I could make a living off of YouTube,” says Alonzo. “No one heard of Goldsboro. I was working on YouTube during my stint at the bakery. I didn’t have a nine to five, I had a nine to nine job. YouTube was an outlet for me, it was to escape my problems.”

    “I was getting vibes so I knew it was coming, I just didn’t know when,” commented Alonzo. “When I got fired from it, I shook their hand and said thank you for the opportunity. When one door closes, another window opens and I left it at that.”

    Hard Work and Consistency

    “I made an oath to myself in late 2013 where I said, when 2014 comes along I’m going to my classes and I’m going to upload at least one video a week,” said Alonzo. “When people were at the beach during the summers I was working in the books and doing YouTube. By the end of 2014 I realized, oh my gosh I’ve been doing it! If I ever win an award I would totally give my boss a shout out saying thank you for firing me, it gave me more time to do what I love to do.”

    “I am able to make a living,” said Alonzo. “I bought a house, paid my car off, paid my school loans off. It’s about saving and being consistent. I don’t want to get to that moment where YouTube feels like work. I’m not uploading three videos in one week. I don’t take a six month break. I’m really consistent.

    Advice for YouTube Success!

    “My advice is don’t get discouraged because of low views,” says Alonzo. “Don’t delete your videos. When I first started out I was in competition. When I stopped concentrating on the numbers and started focusing on my own content that’s when the numbers came in. I just hit a million subscribers. I feel like I’m on top of the world right now with my channel!”

  • YouTube Launches ‘Super Chat’ Paid Option

    YouTube Launches ‘Super Chat’ Paid Option

    YouTube has launched ‘Super Chat’ as a way for fans of YouTube stars to make their comments stand out during live stream videos and more importantly as a new financial stream for video creators. Viewers of live streams can purchase a Super Chat in order for their message to be highlighted and pinned to the top for up to 5 hours.

    “For creators, this means Super Chat does double duty: keeping their conversations and connections with (super) fans meaningful and lively while also giving creators a new way to make money,” said Barbara Macdonald, Product Manager, Live Streaming & YouTube Gaming. “We’re excited to start the Super Chat beta today with a few creators, such as iHasCupquake, Great Library (buzzbean11) and Alex Wassabi. And we plan to broadly launch Super Chat on January 31 for creators in 20 countries and viewers in more than 40 countries.”

    YouTube has also announced an end to Fan Funding, which they launched in 2014. Fan Funding enabled viewers to donate money to video creators to support their operations, but it never took off.

    “While we were really excited about Fan Funding, it never achieved widespread usage outside of live streams, where we saw the majority of revenue,” stated Macdonald. “Fan Funding will stop accepting new sign-ups today, but can continue to be used on enabled channels until February 28, when it will be discontinued.”

  • Where to Watch the Presidential Inauguration on YouTube

    Where to Watch the Presidential Inauguration on YouTube

    “From conventions to debates to election day, millions of you came to YouTube over the past year to stay informed and engage in a conversation on the 2016 U.S. election,” noted Brandon Feldman, who is in charge of News & Politics Partnerships at YouTube.

    YouTube is live streaming inauguration coverage from more news sources than ever before:

    “You’ll also be able to feel what it’s like to be in the center of the action – look out for special coverage from some of the channels above in 360 degrees and amazing 4K quality,” said Feldman.

    YouTube has setup a news site for all things politics including live streams here: https://www.youtube.com/news

  • YouTube Rewind 2016 Videos Have Generated 228 Million Views in Just 2 Weeks!

    YouTube Rewind 2016 Videos Have Generated 228 Million Views in Just 2 Weeks!

    YouTube Rewind 2016 is YouTube’s epic year-end celebration of the videos, people, music and moves that made 2016 on YouTube. Starting with an intro video of the event, the 5 Rewind videos on YouTube have generated an astounding 228 million views since they were posted a couple weeks ago.

    This illustrates the massive ability of YouTube to accumulate larger than Super Bowl sized world-wide audiences. No wonder advertisers see their future advertising primarily focused at online video!

    YouTube Rewind 2016: Behind the Scenes | #YouTubeRewind (5,688,493 views)

    YouTube Rewind: The Ultimate 2016 Challenge | #YouTubeRewind (167,064,949 views)

    YouTube Rewind 2016: Epic Group Running Man Challenge in 360° #YouTubeRewind (1,870,665 views)

    YouTube Rewind 2016: Unboxing the Cube in 360° #YouTubeRewind (1,041,470 views)

    Get Ready for YouTube Rewind 2016 | #RewindisComing (53,302,095 views)