Week 2 - Digital Engagement

Wow, there are a lot of sources for video on the web, ranging from silly videos to advertisements. I did not realize how many different websites and groups there were out there involved with video. This reading had so many different websites to post videos, get ads in your website, and connect with others via video that I am going to hold onto this article for future reference (although it might be outdated by then). The two most important pieces of information I took away was the numbers it takes to be successful website as per number of views / hits, and the video success formula.

"'I don't know if you should quit your job, but if you reach 500,000 people a month or more, you will have opportunities to monetize it.'" WOW! To make any money I need a half of one million people to view my video / series in a month to have advertisers even want to join or make enough substantial cash to focus my work efforts on the web?! That is incredible. I guess it makes more sense to me when you hear about all these successful web people who started something as a hobby and it just blew up. It sounds like one would need patience and perseverance in order to try and make it big via the web.

I enjoyed the formula for success for videos via the web (mainly because I have a engineering background and it just seemed suiting to me). The 15% promotion success criterion probably scares a lot of traditional marketers when they read this. The content and metadata did not surprise me as being 65% of the success of a web video. The thumbnail attributing to 20% of the success of a video caught me by surprise. But the more you think about it, when viewing a video, or if you have a selection of videos to choose from, you will look for the most relevant picture (thumbnail) of the topic you want to view. I definitely do this when I am on youtube. The big question is to what extent do you ensure your thumbnail captures audiences without the deceiving them or missing the point of your video. I think you will lose loyalty if you deceive viewers like the Britney Spears video example the reading referenced.