Josh Paul wrote this blog post about the WGA strike. Some quotes below:
“With the huge growth of online video distribution, a strike could be devastating (especially to scripted programming). Here’s why:
“For me, I think it’s obvious that AMPTP (the Producers/Studios) and the WGA see that the future is in internet delivery. Period. If that is indeed going to happen, then we need a well defined measurement standard.”” * During the last strike writers would have people pick up scripts in manila envelopes from “secret” locations (like a phone booth on the corner of Sunset & Gower ;-). With email it’s even easier, simply set up an alias on Gmail/Yahoo/et al and simply email the script(s) in…and you don’t have to pay a runner either.”
My response via comment (comment is awaiting moderation) was:
“Well said. I want real and well designed measurement standard.100,000 views on YouTube means nothing to me (well, it would tickle me on the inside a bit). But I don’t trust view numbers.It is sad that the standard is being set by the hosting companies who have it in their best interest to have inflated numbers. If they claim that a video is getting 1,000,000 views who is verifying this information??? Their internal super secret QA?Also, autoplay is really stupid. Some sites (I read an article somewhere which broke down which sites count partial plays as a view) just rack up the views with autoplay on their homepage. I think “WOW they get that many people to go to their homepage every day???”. I don’t watch those videos, I wonder who does. Small piece of advice for those that are annoyed by autoplay on your hosts website, bookmark the login page or some other page, not the homepage.Ok, now, what do you think?”
So, what do you think?Do you trust your statistics?Are you confident telling others you viewership knowing that the numbers are likely inflated?Or are you too reserved to talk about it publicly… Maybe even a milquetoast producer…
Today was a pretty busy day, even though we only intended to go to one place.
We started the day out lazily by sleeping in until 11:00am. Got up and asked our tour sales guy, Victor, if he could get us to Chitzen Itza; unfortunately the tour left at 7:00am. We ended up renting a car [...]
Today Bonny and I had a very awesome time at Xcaret, Mexico. Think Disneyland in Mexico with a Mayan, jungle and Caribbean theme. It was way one of the best experiences we have had.
The best part for me was when we went swimming in underground rivers and swimming in the jungle. This is just a [...]
Not much today, mostly relaxing for tomorrows wedding. I can’t go getting killed or getting stranded somewhere right before the wedding now can I?
Basically we woke up really late, went to eat, went swimming, then had a fancy dinner.
Above is another bit of video from our day 2 in Cancun, Mexico. We got to go kayaking, meet a monkey, and go on a pirate cruise!
I’d also like to write (type) about what made it possible for me to be here. I am here for work…
Without Bonny, I don’t think I’d be able to [...]
Wow! Cancun is so awesome!
Here is a quick video (30 seconds) recap of our day. We got to see the beautiful beach and water, walk around a bit of Mayan ruins, see some wildlife and go swimming.
We still have not gotten in touch with Aaron (I’m shooting the wedding on Sunday with him) so hopefully [...]
November 7th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
Viewership is useless anyway, until they come up with a way to quantify demographics. If there are 100,000 views from people with no buying power, you can’t sell that to advertisers.
Viewership doesn’t always even indicate UNIQUE viewers, so until they figure out a way to tell WHO’S pressing the buttons and what they might buy, there isn’t going to be much money allocated to monetizing internet shows.
November 8th, 2007 at 12:47 am
I’m glad you mentioned AutoPlay. It sucks and I hate it. Everytime someone sends me a link to Blip.tv or YouTube, I click the pause button on the player as fast as I can. I’ll read the show notes and decide if I want to watch, thank you very much. It infuriates me to think that this counts as a “view.”
And infuriates me even more when I get sent to an autoplay page by accident - because a Twitter friend posted a TinyUrl, for example, so I didn’t know where the link would go. And even more self-serving, YouTube and Blip don’t make videos autoplay on sites where they’ve been embedded, only on their own sites do they autoplay, so they can inflate the number of “views” seen via their sites rather than embedded on users’ sites.
I hate that media hosting sites do something that has been long known to annoy web site users just so they can give better numbers. I hate that they are willing to make their own content providers jump through two or three autoplay pages to get to a login or upload screen, again in the interest of inflating their numbers.
The only numbers I trust are the ones my own site counts for me. I could inflate them, sure. But no, I’m not comfortable with that. If I were a well-watched site, maybe I’d even be tempted to, but I’m not, so that’s all right then.