For starters, the proposition part of WeTransfer’s advertising packages: at $120 per year, brands get the opportuntity to launch their own space for efficient transfer of large files, between the brand and their users or users among themselves. Branded Channels are created as a ‘secure’ environment (i.e. using the https:// instead of http:// prefix) and use the brand name as a dedicated machine name (i.e. https://brandnameXYZ.wetransfer.com). Existing examples include those of Ontwerpkantoor and Dinnick & Howels.

Brands have to supply a 1680×1050 pixel background image, from which WeTransfer generates a scalable version for most any screen being used to visit the service. “The confirmation e-mail will stay WeTransfer, but when your clients go to download/upload files they will go to your own WeTransfer Channel and see your own background with the link to your site”, says Elena Kitkevich,
Support Manager at WeTransfer.com.

So why is this relevant for brands?

Being Branded Channels, I had to set up and try for ourselves. Please see the results at https://brandedchannels.wetransfer.com.

From now on, anytime I will have to transfer a video (or any other large file) to a client, I will use this channel to do so. The result is a pleasant surprise for most clients as they will be reminded of my service through the background image displayed when downloading. Clicking anywhere on the image, they will also be transferred to this site.

But does this mean this service could transcend beyond professional services providers? Sure! Imagine a real-estate agent that enables its clients to upload a video, for use on the brand’s YouTube channel… or a travel brand offering a chance to win a free holiday for those that create a winning video.

Just let your imagination run for a while and you’ll come up with more creative ways.

The article provides an in-depth analysis of why brands should consider posting video to video sharing sites as opposed to *exclusively* hosting video themselves (or using a proprietary video platform). Based on 19 criteria, accompanied with my somewhat biased explanation, readers can create a balanced scoring card. By giving plusses (and perhaps some minuses) on either side of the table (hosting versus posting) readers can decide what best meets their needs.

The idea behind the article came to fruition after reading other posts on the topic of video marketing strategy. I noticed a tendency among video platform proponents to dismiss video sharing sites as “UGC-communities” and point brand owners to fears for advertising, image association, poor branding, loss of clip control, aggregate statistics, et cetera. Although some of these arguments do have some validity to them, many of these acclaimed negative features are in fact either outdated, exaggerated or simply untrue. Why video platform buffs employ such tactics in their sales-pitches is something that wonders me still. Now, at least, as a brand owner, you can make up your own mind.

Judging from the response, hosted versus posted video really is a key question to marketers. Thanks to Bit.ly (gotta love those open social statistics!), you can see that more than 500 have taken the time to click the link through Twitter, Twitter Apps or other social networks.

The ReTweets made it clear that the topic struck a cord with those involved in video marketing.

I am curious to learn how you feel about it. That’s why I created the following poll:

What started with a pilot with a dedicated channel for the Whitehouse in June 2009 now forms an integral part of SlideShare’s offering for brands. According to CEO Rashmi Sinha from SlideShare: “We have been thinking about channels for a while, and spent almost 6 months building it.”

Today it’s here – alive and kicking. SlideShare branded channels now form an integral part of their offering to advertisers (see slide 18/20). SlideShare co-operated with Federated Media, Universal McCann and Microsoft to build the branded channel dubbed the Microsoft Office Parent Toolbox: “work, play and everything in between” the channel’s tag-line reads. It features presentations and documents centered around home and family usage of Microsoft Office products. The channel can be reached externally with a brand-name friendly URL-structure. Simply add the name to SlideShare’s URL: http://www.slideshare.net/MicrosoftOffice. Please note the use of capitalization in the brand name – this makes it easier for users to recognize branded content from Microsoft Office in SlideShare’s (and Google’s) search results.

However, the branded channel is more than an environment within an external medium for showing off branded content. SlideShare deliberately chose to stay true to its original course. SlideShare branded channels are seamlessly integrated with the community’s core features: allow users to upload and share presentations with one another.

Through integration with a branded channel on a social network, brand owners can benefit from the community as oppossed to building traffic to their own website from scratch.

With the use of branded channels, SlideShare advises its advertisers to also work with channel curators and bloggers. The Parent Toolbox channel is moderated by Asha Dornfest (Parent Hacks), an authority in the parenting space. Dornfest, however, shares blogging responsibilities of the channel with some of the Web’s most talented parenting bloggers: Danny Evans, Ree Drummond and Maggie Mason, among others. They are swapping tips and documents that make family and home life easier and actively engage in conversations with users. Users based in the USA, in turn, are motivated to contribute content as well – everytime they upload, they enroll in a sweepstake in which Microsoft gives out 50 Microsoft Office licenses.

The vibrant community of SlideShare offers brand owners the opportunity to benefit from the virality aspects, as opposed to building traffic from scratch. Aside from integrating blog content on the channel, SlideShare also allows for inclusion of video content on the channel – both real life stories of users and product tips and tricks from Microsoft. For example, see this video of the Cheese Guy that uses Office to keep track of his scientific approach to producing cheese: “I especially like Roquefort [...] which is like smelling old soccer shoes. Cheese is molding bacteria, with controlled delay.” Love it or hate it, this is fun content to watch. What surprised me, however, is that Microsoft decided to host their videos on SlideShare, instead of YouTube and then embedding it within the branded channel on SlideShare. Single-source video really helps in terms of video SEO.

Expect more advertisers to follow Microsoft’s lead: “This offering is open to other advertisers, this is just the first one,” said Rashmi Sinha. SlideShare, however, declined to give specific details on the investment involved, other than that it involved a media buy requirement, comparable to what Google uses for YouTube. “Right now, we are negotiating one at a time,” SlideShare’s CEO said. “We are talking to more advertisers and expect to see more channel announcements in the future.”

In the article, Richard discusses why Google should enable advertisers to start building traffic from their own content on YouTube back to their own site. Currently, this is not possible. With an estimated 3-15% of views currently being monetized on YouTube, Google could easily increase this value by allowing advertisers to buy ads against their own content on YouTube.

Right now, selected videos on user channels have autoplay, while videos on brand and partner channels feature click-to-play.

How long this glitch will be live is unknown.

Update: 11:45 PM – The bug is now fixed by YouTube. All things back to normal.

According to the NewMediaAge article, commercial broadcaster ITV lost an estimated £1.3m in ad revenues because no ad deal was in place for the popular Britain’s Got Talent content. Susan Boyle’s performance generated more than 85 million video views on YouTube (more than 70 million on this video alone, for which embedding has been disabled!?).

In the regular partnership agreement, Google is responsible for ad sales and media owners get a share of the revenues (typically 50-60%). Since these media owners know their content best, they are ideally positioned to sell such positions. One can imagine that referring clients to Google for buying such inventory is not preferred.

Many media owners use YouTube to either syndicate their content (in full or in part) or use it as a video platform to host and subsequently embed content from YouTube on their own site. With syndication, YouTube may simply enlarge ad inventory: “We sell out of our video-on-demand space so this would be additional space to sell,” an ITV source was quoted on NewMediaAge. With embedded content, having control over who advertises around the content increases overall value of advertising packages, which then includes in-video or pre-roll. Moreover, it extends reach as videos are both featured on YouTube and embedded on the media site.

The missing link

For somewhat different reasons, advertisers that own and operate a brand channel on YouTube, want control over their videos as well. Driving traffic towards selected sites is what is missing in the brand channel proposition today. In my recent post with 7 tips for better business on YouTube, the number two suggested improvement is the use of YouTube as a conversion tool.

Most advertisers I talk to ask how much traffic YouTube will generate back towards their own site. Unfortunately, the only way to do this today is to include a back-link in the video description. Google requires brand channel owners to invest in media spend to drive traffic towards the brand channel and its content – on YouTube. Advertisers can use the available inventory on partner channels and other sites within the Google content network to purchase display, in-video and – in some markets – pre-roll. But once you have the attention of your audience on your own brand channel videos, you cannot instantly drive traffic back to the brand site from the video itself. Exclusive use of in-video advertising on your own content would be a desired feature. Advertisers should be enabled to use part of their required media investment to purchase such positions at Google’s ratecard prices (instead of AdWords, since there is no one to bid against).

Other than perhaps some technical and administrative hurdles, I cannot imagine why Google would not offer such features to brand channel owners. It clearly adds value to the brand channel proposition, while it also helps Google to more effectively monetize YouTube.

Agree or disagree? Please comment.

Coldwell Banker combines the features of YouTube with the power of localisation through Google Maps by enabling visitors to find real estate locations throughout the United States. Very smart move. The production quality of the videos shown on the channel varies substantially (compare this one with this one), but the idea is great. The channel already features more than 600 videos and new content is added daily from various locations. Mainly in the USA and a few listings from Italy.

“YouTube doesn’t offer the ability to find out what videos are local, but we geo-targeted the videos and populated them onto the map,” said Mike Fischer, Coldwell’s SVP of marketing. The goal for Coldwell, recognizing the popularity of YouTube, is to generate traffic outside of its own site. “Many go to YouTube first, instead of the normal site. It’s the place to engage people where they look for info,” Fischer said.

That says it all: think outside the site!

Thanks to ClickZ.