What do they all have in common? It all revolves around the Web, but not only that, the online is also outperforming all other media.

Take a look at the graph below. It’s taken from an article by Luca Conti, featured on today’s IlSole24Ore technology supplement, Nova24. It’s a comparison graph between Web 2.0, Email and Video that shows how Web 2.0  surpasses email and video.

We can certainly attribute this growth of the online medium to social networks due to the fact that brands continue to see more opportunity to exploit the digital enviroment as an effort to increase brand visibility and overall revenue.

The big story here is that social networks have opened up a whole new world for brands and marketers. Now, instead of anticipating what consumer’s reactions will be after the launch of a product or new brand design, brands can instead turn to the different social platforms for feedback and valuable opinions.

In like manner, brands are also realizing that they can change the way in which they communicate with the consumer and use these social channels to listen, interact, answer questions and share experiences with their own target markets.

According to Nielsen, Social networking sites eclipsed E-mail in global reach at 68.4% vs. 64.8% in February 2009.And even more significant, in only the first few months of 2009, the reach of these sites is growing at a brisk pace, faster than any other online sector.

Twitter, as we’ve mentioned before, has been and will continue to be the biggest social media story in 2009. However, MySpace and Facebook are not left too far behind as it clearly shows on the following buzz graph.

It’d be interesting to see some corporate social media stories revealing how companies have decided to tap into this whole new world of connectedness and interactivity and how it’s proven to be effective for them.

When Google acquired YouTube in 2006 for the astronomical figure of $1.65 billion I realized that the Internet Revolution would have soon hit the way advertising is created for users of the Videos.

I genuinely thought that Google would have found a way of engaging YouTube users and monetize the traffic very quickly.

I was wrong.

Google has been experimenting new advertising formats on YouTube but has not yet found one that could really work. I believe the main reason for that is that YouTube users are very different from traditional TV users…yes YouTube is a social media where users rely on other people recommendations and comments to determine what is worth viewing.

And YouTube users are demonstrating the power of user generated genius (UGG) and I am using the example of the Daft Hands video to explain how powerful the social and viral effect can be. This video was first shown to me by the Italian DJ star Linus.

Look at this video:

This original version was produced by a non professional user and has received over 18 million views and almost 60K comments…The video is based on the interpretation of the famous Kanye West Daft Punk song “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” using hands to show the lyrics in a creative way.

But this is only the beginning…as it happens in YouTube, the viral effect has pushed thousands of other users to generate similar videos and the result is unbelievable:

Just looking at the top 4 related videos you can add another 11million views to it…

So in a very short period of time a very creative user generated video has reached almost 30million users…

What can I say: New Media Marketing = Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

The option to watch streaming video on TV is a huge step towards the merge of television and Internet, a development that was up to now held back by lack of processor speed and CPU power requirements.

At 77 we can’t help pointing out that we’re moving towards an age where we, as marketers, chose only the video content we advertise on and completely disregard the time slot it would appear in. Within a few years, there will be no need for TiVo or TV guide as all the programs will be on-demand. Market research will have to be more accurate to identify viewers of programs and their interests, but targeted marketing can be much more precise. Christmas holidays 2007 might be a good time to consider how you will use on-demand TV as a marketing vehicle.

When will Yahoo! give in and introduce equal sitemap format?

Google introduced the use of sitemaps for video today. It allows webmasters to let Google know the location and description of their videos, which is undeniably good for video SEO. If you are featuring videos on your site, you can attract a decent amount of traffic if these videos pop up in search results on Google Video. And Google Universal Search which also shows videos.

But the service has received some critique on its own blog, and rightly so. The most important questionable point is that this service is – for now – only useful for Google search. Google representatives say that they hope that other search engines will follow, but this means that we will still have to work with two video sitemaps to upload. Three for the sites that also have a mobile version. And since we work with Yahoo! as well, which demands its own sitemap formats, that means that the total amount of sitemaps we will have to upload is between four and six. We think that it is time for a universal sitemap format, and we suppose Yahoo! will have to come up with it; they have more to gain as Yahoo! is often the second advertising platform after Google, and it is hardly ever the other way around.

We expect Yahoo! to introduce the same format as Google for their sitemaps soon, and think that in the end also video sitemaps will be included into the general sitemaps, making the lives of us SEO specialists a lot easier.

• One in four students are willing to forward a viral
• Two thirds of all young people will be exposed to a viral, on average
• The attitude towards virals is more positive than towards TV commercials (2.8 vs. 2.4)*
• Evasion rate is smaller for virals than for TV advertisements (3.0 vs. 3.3)*

* Scale of 1-5 – 1 is very negative or low evasion, 5 is very positive or high evasion.

The complete result will be published in the December issue of Adforesult and will be posted on the website of De Vos en Jansen within two weeks.

From Searchcowboys (Dutch).

Google is making things very easy for all people involved with video advertising and at 77 we think this will become really big really fast. Wondering what might constitute a publisher for Google in the future, I imagine myself putting videos on my Bebo page and making cold hard cash every time someone watches them.

That seems like quite a bit of content, but many channels only have trailers and teasers so far. And we do not think that 30 second advertisements preceding a two minute trailer will be a great success. For this to become interesting for advertisers, Bebo is going to need to bring more quality content. Now it only seems to be an advertising opportunity for the partner channels, that all place links to their own sites on their Bebo pages.

This poll seems to reflect what form of advertising users would like to see when they watch video online, not necessarily what they think would be the best method to advertise. In that sense, it’s noteworthy that users seem to go with the least intrusive of all methods. Dead last in the poll are, for now, pre-rolls, mid-rolls, and post-rolls.

TechCrunch further mentions these numbers:

‘A recent study by IBM, titled “The End of Advertising as We Know It,” found that 40 percent of the 2,400 consumers and 80 advertising executives it surveyed found ads during an online video segment more annoying than any other format.’

but does not point out that it just might be that 40 percent of the respondents did not know any other form of advertising than the pre-roll or post-roll. The LINK IBM report itself does not provide clarification.

In short, we think that it’s too early to give up on ‘in-roll’ video advertising; also because people have just gotten used to free ad-less content that the networks have been throwing at them to attract a large customer base. Now that the time has come to monetize on popularity, the public will soon get used to the television-like marketing form.

Online competitive skill games have gained in popularity immensely lately and at 77 we expect this to be a good move in order to (re)gain popularity. We suppose their aim is to come up with games that are more professional than Facebook’s Applications. This will cost a bit of cash, but increased popularity will also add advertisement revenue that is not directly linked to the games.

Game advertising is about to take a flight over the next five years, and we expect these types of social games to be leading in this field. The challenge will be to connect types of games with types of audiences, and social networks like MySpace – that have an array of personal information on all its users – will be first to make such connections.

MySpace seems to be working hard to regain ground on Facebook; recently we reported that they will introduce ad-sponsored video channels in – at least – the UK market. All in all, it seems MySpace is taking the professional road in content, where Facebook is now relying mostly on home-made applications.

The 3D map was helped being put together with Photosynth technology, for which you can find a demo here. Photosynth is able to take shared photos of a certain subject (in the demo the Notre Dame church is used) from all over the Internet, and merge these into one 3D model. For further details, take a look at the Windows Live blog.

The marketing possibilities are groundbreaking, especially when this type of map will be used from a mobile phone – related 77Article – Potential customers will never get lost trying to reach your business, and can get a look and feel from their mobile phones. The 3D model could even be extended with a view of the interior of a business (think hotels, restaurants, etc) to give a potential customer really a good idea of how you do what you do.