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Online Video Market Share

From time to time I pull up comScore's Online Video Rankings.  It has some useful info like viewers of the top 10 online video properties, top YouTube channels, and top video ad properties.  One of the things that I don't understand is why Yahoo doesn't get more serious about video and why Apple is a no show.  Thought I would share some of what I found.

  • Monthly viewers is up this year (taking a 10  month average) to 188 million monthly viewers.  That is an increase of 2.2%.  That growth has not been shared across channels.
  • YouTube monthly viewers is actually down to 155.5 million.  That is a decrease of 3.6 pts.  That said, 82.7% of viewers went to YouTube, making YouTube the market leader.
  • Facebook is catching up.  They had an average of 92.8 million, up 15.2 points.  Huge gains for Facebook.
  • Yahoo is also up to 52.7 million monthly viewers.  That is a 4 point increase.  That said, only 28% of viewers are watching videos on their site.
  • I also noticed that Vimeo is gaining traction.  They had 19% market share.  They only showed up in the top ten once in 2013, but where their almost every month in 2014.

Why Strategically Taylor Swift Leaving Spotify Is Important

I am going to admit two things that, for me, are hard to admit.  First, I am a fan of Taylor Swift.  I'm listening to Blank Space as I write this.  In the past, I have always been vocally anti top 40.  I have traditionally had the same opinion of top 40 as I do of McDonalds: it's shit but somehow millions love it and will pay for it.  Second, I paid for Spotify.  That's hard to admit because Spotify is the devil.  I am sure you react to that as most of my friends do.  "It's better than piracy."  Not the best response, yet exactly what Spotify says in this response to Taylor Swift deciding to leave their service.  That response should come as a shock to no one.  It represents a big threat to their business model.  It also shows what artists think of their service.  It just doesn't pay well.  Allow me to explain from their response.

"Myth number one: free music for fans means artists don’t get paid"  I assume they are suggesting their service is free.  It isn't.  You pay for it.  They have a free version but as I found out recently, once they have you as a  paying customer, if you try to listen to them for free, they will charge you.  Fuckers.  "Today, people listen to music in a wide variety of ways, but by far the three most popular ways are radio, YouTube, and piracy – all free. Here’s the overwhelming, undeniable, inescapable bottom line: the vast majority of music listening is unpaid. If we want to drive people to pay for music, we have to compete with free to get their attention in the first place."  That is pretty misleading.  Two of their three channels pay, as do they.  Radio pays labels, although I am not sure of the econimics.  I don't think it is much, but it was always thought to drive the sale of albums, which I think many would say still holds true.  YouTube will serve commercials infront of content if the content owner requests it.  That too is a closely gaurded secret but I have heard it can be about $25 per 1,000.  If that is true, Taylor Swift might have made as much as $8.8 million from Shake It Off from YouTube.  For the same number of plays on Spotify she would have made under $3.8 million.  I can only assume this must be true or she would have pulled her song from both YouTube and Spotify.  I think someone realized all plays are not equal and she could be making 3 times as much on YouTube.  Then again, VEVO is the second biggest channel on YouTube, so the economics is probably better than $25 per 1,000.

"Myth number two: Spotify pays, but it pays so little per play nobody could ever earn a living from it."  So what can people live on?  The median income in the US as of 2013 was $51,900.  Spotify states that, "the equivalent of that one play and its 500 thousand listens on Spotify would pay out between three and four thousand dollars."  So an artist would need to have 6.5 million "listens" a year, assuming there is just one person.  If it is a band, you can multiply that by the number of people in the band.  A group of four would need 30 million listens.  To put that in perspective, Pearl Jam's Alive has only 20.6 million listens on Spotify, which comes out to $41,286 per band member.  If fucking Pearl Jam can't make it on Spotify, who can?!?!

"Myth number three: Spotify hurts sales, both download and physical." Spotify is drinking the Kool-Aid if they believe that.  Clearly a service where people can listen to tracks on demand is going to hurt sales.  The whole reason people use Spotify is that they can listen to as much as they want and only pay $120 a year.  Presumably they would spend more than $120 a year on albums if Spotify is a better option.  Spotify claims that this isn't true because it isn't true in Canada, where they point out they don't operate.  Well guess what, Spotify, you aren't the only fucking streaming option, you arrogant ass of a service.

The only reason that Spotify is still in business is because their model, evil as it may be, is better than piracy.  And since piracy is a real threat, Spotify wins.  After all, they have 12.5 million paying subscribers.  The most damning part of all is they claim they have paid out $2 billon in the last 7 years, $1 billion of which was just last year.  12.5 million subscribers times $120 a year is $1.5 billion, of which they say they paid out $1 billion.  That would be 66.7% paid out to artists or their reps.  Uber pays more than that.  Maybe Uber should get in the music streaming service.  They pay out 80% to drivers.  Good for you, Taylor Swift.

Getting Started with SEO

I was recently asked by an attorney that wanted to know what I could do and things he could do to improve his site traffic.  He also wanted an idea how long each of these tasks would take me.  I decided to write this post on a basic overview of SEO and Social Marketing and outline what I can do and help with.  If you are interested in help, I would love to help you with your site.  Feel free to email me at jason dot bunnell at gmail dot com.  Often having a contractor help can be beneficial because there is a lot more stuff to do initially and after the first few months it is more maintenance.  Basically there are 4 main areas of focus: site optimization, content, backlinks, and social marketing.

<h3>A.  Site Optimization</h3>

  1. CMS for a site – The first thing I would suggest to anyone wanting to build traffic is to make a site using a content management system like WordPress or Drupal.  According to this Wikipedia article, 60 million sites use WordPress and 23% of the top 10 million use WordPress.  The great thing about WordPress is that it is like having millions of people constantly working on your site to make sure it is up to date and using the best practices.  There are tons of themes and you can purchase some at Themeforrest much cheaper than it would cost you to have a developer develop a custom one.  Updating your site and plugins become as easy as pushing a button and creating content for WordPress is as easy as writing an email on an online provider.  I can install the latest WordPress, half a dozen plugins I think you would want, and a theme of your choosing in about 4 hours.
  2. Have page loads below 500 milliseconds – There are a liteny of things to do from caching pages, utilizing a CDN, have a fast host, optimizing images, and more.  You can see how your site does using Google's PageSpeed Insight.  This can take several hours depending on things like your theme and plugins.
  3. Submit your site's XML Sitemap to search engines – You need to create a sitemap.  There are some plugins that help with this.  Once the sitemap is created, you want to submit it to Google and Bing.  I can do this in a few hours.
  4. Google Webmaster Tools – You need to set up your site on this site and check for errors.  Google will crawl your site once you submit a sitemap and if it finds broken links or any other problems, it will list them here.  And trust me, you want to fix them in a timely manner.  This would be a task I would suggest performing on an ongoing basis.  The time it takes to perform this task depends on the types of errors you are getting and how long it will take me to fix them.

<h3>B.  Content</h3>

  1. Initial Content – You need to be sure your site has the information your visitors are looking for.  I suggest a blog, a contact form, and an about page.  Depending on what your site is for, you may want a FAQ page.  If you perform a service, you will probably want a page that explains pricing.  Being transparent about pricing can really help as that is one of the things people are often coming to your site to check.
  2. CMS Tutorial – It is important that you have a good title, a well written body, tags, and outgoing links.  There are tools like Yoast that can help with this.  I think it would be worth the time for me to sit down with people in your organization and give them a quick tutorial of how to use the CMS you implement so they can add content.  I can help with content, but it is better if your organization produces content on an ongoing basis.  The basics are pretty self explanatory and you may think having me come in isn't worth it but showing how to optimize content for search engines can be tricky and that is where I will focus my time.  I can present the basics to everyone in an hour or so.
  3. Identify Keywords – It is important to research keywords, identify sites that rank high for these keywords, identify keyword alternatives, and determine traffic and competition for each keyword string.  I can do this in about an hour and you should probably have this done monthly.  You want to be sure when you are creating content, you are targeting keywords that help your ranking.
  4. Google Analytics – One of the plugins I set up initially is Google Analytics.  It is a powerful way to see what content people are coming for, how people are finding your site, how much traffic your site is getting, and demographics on visitors.  If you have a site on Dallas, how many people are coming from Dallas versus other cities?  How long are people on your site?  What pages do they leave from?  These are important questions to answer.  I can produce weekly or monthly reports to answer these questions.
  5. A/B Testing – If your site is getting a lot of traffic, A/B testing is a great way to test out alternative formatting or layouts to see what works and what doesn't.

<h3>C. Backlinks</h3>

  1. Guest posts – Guest posts are one of the best ways to get backlinks.  The idea is to find sites that are high traffic and have an audience that overlaps with yours.  Often blogs will allow others to guest post on their site and include a link back to their own site.  These links are really valuable in improving your rank on search engines.  They also can generate traffic organically.  Finding sites that offer this can be hard and I can help find some.
  2. Comments – some commenting systems will allow you to include your name.  Some will allow you to add a link to your site so that your name becomes an outbound link.  If your comment is spammy, the site owner will probably block you but if you can offer something of value, those comments can help as well.  Obviously you want to post on sites that are in some way related to the content on your site.  I can help find sites like this as well.
  3. Evaluate Competing Sites – There are some great tools out there that help with this.  I have listed some SEO tools on this site.  If a site is ranking higher than you, it would be a good idea to figure out where they are getting backlinks and seeing if you can get some as well.  I think this is something you should be doing on an ongoing basis.  I can put together weekly or monthly reports on this.

<h3>D.  Social Marketing</h3>

  1. Identifying and Setting up profiles – You should spend time considering which sites you want to spend time on.  Some may be counter intuitive.  Remember, backlinks are nice but the goal is traffic to your site.  You can do this by engaging with customers/clients on social networks, engaging with people that are interested in the area you want to rank for, and even engaging in businesses you use.  Anyone that can help get your message and story out there.
  2. Managing Messages – Depending on how much you rely on social, you might want to consider one of the many tools out there that will help you monitor your brand for both negative and positive messages.  If someone gives a positive message, you want to amplify that message so others see it.  If there is negative messages out there, you need to address that.  Your biggest critic can become your biggest advocate if you take a little time.
  3. Plugins – If you are active on a particular social platform, you may want to install a widget on your site to show that content.  I have a Twitter plugin on this site that shows my latest Tweets.  The idea was that people seeing I have an account might follow me.

Equity Crowdfunding: Open letter to lawmakers

You know what creates jobs?  New businesses.  I have heard people argue that it doesn’t and that is crazy.  I am trying to start a business and it will create 13 new jobs in Texas.  And don’t you think the jobs they leave will probably need to replace them?  All this creates a greater demand on the workforce, lowers unemployment, the increase in demand on the workforce raises the average income per capita.  And the people with new, higher paying jobs?  They spend money and all this creates an economic ecosystem.  My guess is anyone saying otherwise is vested in a business that does not pay its employees very well.  I have no sympathy for them.

So what is equity crowdfunding?  It is raising the money for small business through unaccredited investors through online solicitation.  Unaccredited investors are investors that have less than $1 million in assets or make less than $250,000.  So the 99% of us.  If you are familiar with Kickstarted, it is similar but instead of getting goods or services, you get equity.  Here is a great video that explains some of the ends and outs.

I think the coarse Facebook and other recent startups have taken is both interesting and telling.  Facebook raise a considerable amount of money through angels and VC.  Traditionally, people have used IPOs as a way to raise money.  In other words, they would sell shares on the open market to fund their business.  Facebook instead raised money in a non traditional fashion.  I imagine because they could artificially keep demand high and get more equity for themselves.  By the time Facebook had an IPO, arguably all the growth was realized.  It is this growth in startup businesses that has value.  It is the reason we invest.  I think this demonstrates that the opportunity to make huge gains comes by investing early in a company.  Not once the businesses growth is realized.

If that is true, people could potentially see greater returns investing in startups.  Investing in startups is riskier but the higher the risk, the higher the reward.  Taking risk is part of investing.  Another thing that is interesting about equity crowdfunding is that the level of interest in a campaign can indicate the markets interest in a business.  If Google Fiber did a crowdfunding campaign to bring high speed internet to Dallas, you better believe every Time Warner Cable customer would be the first to put money in that.  Why?  They want the service.  And they can invest money to make it happen.  I am sure that scares the shit out of shitty companies that sell shitty services or products or exploit there employees.  Imagine a world where employees could quit their job and start a business that competes with their previous employer.  And if a lot of people give small amounts to a business, it indicates to larger investors like VC and Angels that this is a good investment.  If there is a strong demand for equity in a business, there is probably going to be a strong demand for that service or product.  I heard a great example from my friend Chris Camillo, who wrote Laughing at Wall Street.  He told me of how there was a friend of his that was going to make dance shoes and was looking for investors.  The idea sounded a little crazy until he put it on Kickstarter and pre sold the first batch.  After that, Chris invested because he knew people that dance wanted this particular type of dance shoe.  But equity crowdfunding is different in that instead of pre selling products or services, you get equity.  It would be like buying shares of Dell while he was still in the dorm room before the IPO.  Those shares would see the greatest return.

Right now lawmakers are trying to decide what rules to put around equity crowdfunding.  How much can each person invest in one startup?  How much can a startup raise?  What documents must a startup disclose?  How do you avoid fraud?  These are all important questions.  As far as how much can a person invest, I would say there should be no limit.  There is no limit to playing the lotto and that is considerably more risky.  By a magnitude of infinity.  The amount a startup can raise should be dictated by the market.  This is a good thing for the economy and investors.  I think they should be prudent and have a diversified portfolio but a few investments in startups could be very lucrative.

I plan on running a equity crowdfunding campaign in the new year for Jables.  Go sign up for our email list and we will be sure to keep you informed.

Why Edge of Tomorrow is great and misunderstood

Let me get right to the point.  I think the aliens won.  This is a great movie.  Everyone is comparing it to Groundhogs Day because of the time loop, but it also reminded me of the book Ender’s Game.  The reason it reminds me of Ender’s Game is because the aliens are looping time for a reason.  Why are they looping time?  To refine their strategy.  By starting over, they get to correct their mistakes.  This advantage is passed through blood to Tom Cruise as it had been on Emily Blunt previously.  She used that advantage to win a decisive battle.  But there is an important plot point that I think a lot of people are not really considering.  Emily Blunt and Noah Taylor (Dr Carter, the weird scientist) believe the aliens intended to lose that battle so that 1) the humans would believe they could win and 2) they would pour all there forces into a combined effort so that they could eliminate the insurgency in one effort.  There is another plot point I think people are overlooking.  The aliens had a plan in the event their power was passed to their enemies.  Do you remember that?  They gave false visions.  They showed that the Omega was in Germany in or around a damn, which they later realize is not so.  It is actually in the Louve.  But something unexpected happens when they kill the Omega.  Tom Cruise is killed in the successful attempt on the Omega.  And time resets.  Obviously the twist is we expect, since the Omega died, that they would  continue on.  But not only does time reset, it resets at a different time period than it has throughout the movie.

I would suggest that killing the Omega was indeed a big blow to the Mimics, but not fatal.  Presumably this isn’t their first rodeo.  They can control time, after all.  So they reset.  That is actually bad news for humanity because this time and each consecutive attempt will fail since the Mimics will refine their strategy.  That is, after all, the whole reason they loop time.  This time, as like in the first battle when Emily Blunt loses her ability to loop, we can only assume Tom Cruise has also lost his, losing their strategic advantage over the Mimics.  Strategically speaking, if you held the bulk of Europe, you would place your critical chess piece, so to speak, in a better protected position.  If in water, deeper.  And you would prepare for an attack regardless if you thought it was possible.

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