YouTubular Conversations

Announced in Sept of 2016, “YouTube Creators for Change is a new initiative dedicated to amplifying the voices of role models who are tackling difficult social issues with their channels. From combating hate speech, to countering xenophobia and extremism.”

Creator For Change Ambassadors; screen image taken Feb 25, 2017
`

Creators For Change (#CreatorsForChange) is encouraging YouTube creators to bring their unique voices to social change and has committed one million dollars annually to support this effort.

Omar Hussein

The effort is managed by Juniper Downs YouTube’s Global Head of Global Head of Public Policy and Government Relations. They are working with a variety of companies across the globe to support the program including Upworthy in the US.

I believe that YouTube has gone to significant lengths to promote and contextualize this program – Harry Hawk

Franchesca Ramsey

There are a variety of areas within Google site where the landing page for Creators For Change can be found, but their navigation isn’t universally implemented. From the Creators Community site, Creators for Change isn’t available. I point this out as it can be very difficult locating and finding all of the sites that YouTube has created.

On this community page the link to the Creators For Change page isn’t available.

The landing page for this effort can be found on: https://www.youtube.com/yt/creators-for-change

The announcement for the program is available here:

The post Youtubular Conversations On Creators For Change appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Major articles continue to come out about PewDiePie – often reporters responding to his taken-down of their prior stories

The real issue seems to be that nuance, thoughtfulness, and consideration is dead.

We live in a world of snap judgments, gut feelings, and expressions that are rather starkly black or white.

Below links to Vox, Forbes and Variety, etc.

Clearly it would seem like PewDiePie hasn’t taken any professional advice here (but who knows).

Is this really a crisis for him?

For the last 30 days he has a net gain of about 808K+ subscribers, gaining 26k each day on average. He has only lost about 400k of his 53 Mil. subscribers. Imagine you had been dropped by Disney and down-graded by Google/YouTube and you gained 800k+ subscribers? Hardly a crisis – perhaps a reason to even celebrate.

Does someone who speaks for themselves need council?

It’s very clear to me that there is a new generational gap here. Not between the Great Generation and the Boomers but rather between 20-somethings (and those younger) and everyone else.

I very much believe this is a generational issue

PewDiePie And HIs Art Is A Generational Rorschach Test

When we think about youthful folks getting there news from social media, and Felix (PewDiePie) goes all in on bias and persecution from the mainstream media – this adds serious support to similar claims from the Republican administration, and various fringe groups.

This way to the Egress –> (for our society) – PT Barnum (& Harry Hawk)

PT Barnum, Trump and many others have used hyperbole and puffery rather than nuance. It makes for great entertainment even if something isn’t literally “the greatest show on Earth.”

I can’t imagine PewDiePie’s stakeholders coming to any other conclusion than the media is evil — despite the following links which rather clearly show that Felix has exaggerated his case.

That’s entertainment

http://variety.com/2017/digital/opinion/playing-the-pawn-in-pewdiepies-blame-game-1201990190/

The post Youtubular Conversations | Blaming Media – PewDiePie’s Response appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

[PowerPress]

Antisemitism and YouTube stars are in the news. PewDiePie paid to stage the message “Death to all Jews” within in a sketch piece and Parker from Vehicle Virgins reported he was subjected to a large volume of anti-Jewish vitriol following the break-up with his apparent co-host Eddie.

The biggest news is after releasing an episode filled containing antisemitic comments PewDiePie (whose channel is synonymous with YouTube) has had his partnership status reduced by Google/YouTube, lost a show on YouTube Red (their premium subscriber offering) and his relationship with Disney’s Maker Studios terminated.

YouTube, Google and Disney acted fast (to their credit)

The offending post has been removed; I never saw it while it was up.

PewDiePie is the pre-eminent YouTube STAR with over 53 million subscribers.

In a story that has attracted Global attention (link), PewDiePie hired two guys in Indonesia via Fivver to hold up a sign that said “Death to Jews.” PewDiePie then reacted to the guys and the sign in his video. It was reported that he claimed to have been trying to put a spotlight on what is possible to do via Fivvr.

Fivvr which monitors all communications within it’s market. If true that Fivvr was used, then if there is blame here, certainly Fivvr deserves it’s share of it (for allowing that message to be sold).

 “I apologize for the words that I used as I know they offended people and I admit the joke itself went too far.” 04:24

“I acknowledge that I took things too far” 08:48

PewDiePie considers himself a “Rookie Comedian”

Felix mentions the Wall St. Journal reporting that in the last Six Months 9 of his videos have had antisemitic messages, charges he claims “are insane.”

Although PieDiePie does present comedic material, and often creates pieces with exaggerated drama — it seems he could have used a less offensive statement and still made his point. Although he over a million fans in the last few days he has released a video claiming this is because of a YouTube glitch.

While I think folks should have a lot of latitude when creating humor and social commentary, I am certainly angered and upset by what has been reported; it seems bigoted, hateful and not appropriate for the youthful demographic on YouTube.

Around the same time as this crisis with PewDiePie, Parker from Vehicle Virgins claims to have received a large number of antisemitic messages including some that wished, “his family had died in the Holocaust.”  It’s worth mentioning it here for several reasons including that given the rise in anti Jewish and Muslim threats – PewDiePie’s content (which I have not seen), seems to play into this culture of hate (no matter what his intent).

The Vehicle Virgins channel (link) which I discussed in several previous episodes (including here) has had a failing out among the hosts Parker and Eddie. In classic he said/he said drama it’s not clear here who was at fault. It’s also not clear previously who owned the channel. Parker has asserted that the he created the channel years before he met Eddie.

Although Parker hosted most of the videos on the channel. The plurality of the name “virgins” and their sign-off catch-phrase “please subscribe to our channel” seemed to imply a relationship beyond simply work for hire. None-the-less, they have gone their separate ways. Parker released a video which detailed the situation and plugged Eddie’s new channel.

Uniquely, although he plugged the Eddie’s new channel he didn’t provide “a link in the notes” which is rather de rigueur. Part of the blow-up here is a livestream that Eddie did complaining about the situation.

Eddie’s new channel (link) has picked up over 25k subscribers. Eddies channel which was created in 2015, as of late January 2017 only had 1,600 subscribers; between the 11 – 15 of February 2017 the channel picked up over 13k new subscribers (data from SocialBlade.com (link).

In the same time frame, the “virgins” channel has lost only 37 subscribers with 595k subscribers as I write this (Feb 15, 2017).

I have reached out to Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg (PewDiePie), Parker, Eddie and YouTube press email account asking to talk to them on this channel; I have not heard from them but I would be delighted to talk about their prospective on this story.

It’s one of my long standing contentions that major YouTubers have as large or larger audiences than top rated TV shows; although the length of the content (YouTube videos are often fairly short), and the frequency of release (YouTuber’s often release multiple episodes weekly) is hard to compare. Here is some data.

Total viewers for the top rated shows in 2015/2016 in the USA. From IndieWire. We can see that PewDiePie’s weekly viewership fits in here very well, although we don’t know how many unique viewers he has.

In the podcast I conflated another chart that had ratings points with viewers. Ratings point are the share of total viewers. I’m sorry for the mistake.

The last four videos at the time this blog post was written showing a 4 day viewership (not unique) of ~15 Million.

On site promo for PewDiePie’s Channel.

SERP from Google.com for the search term PewDiePie from Feb. 15, 2017. This SERP demonstrates how PewDiePie’s brand and image dominate Google and YouTube. It would be hard for the largest brands to have this level of SERP domination.

[PowerPress]

The post Antisemitism on YouTube | The Culture of Hate appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

This week in Youtubular Conversations I look at how Google Analytics can be used to learn about visitors from YouTube. I wanted to talk about paid YouTube ads but failed. My research lead a story about organic traffic from YouTube and understanding its value. This episode is also a gate-way to semi-advanced Google Analytics.

Google Analytics is NOT Scary, it’s FUN

Today professional communicators are being ask to provide qualified leads, and even sell products. That means directing folks to a web site, not once but multiple times. Even on a community or not-for-profit site where education and outreach is “the product,” it’s likely that folks who come more then once, are more likely to be activated, engaged, educated and inspired.

YouTube Is A Major Component Of Attracting Visitors Who Will Visit Again and Again – A Goal For Most Brands

Communicators need to amplify their storytelling with paid media. I wanted to compare YouTube Ads and AdWord Ads; they are very different in nature.

AdWords are triggered by searches that are often questing for answers that have a tangible immediacy like “restaurants near me open now,” “where can I eat Italian near me?,”  “best laptop under $500,” or “computer store near me open after 8pm”). In-Market searches indicate folks are close to making a purchase decision, or semantically indicate a purchase decision has been made, and they are looking at where to buy it “where can I buy an Samsung Chromebook model XE513C24-K01US .”  Ad buyers track users through there entire series of queries and pay a premium to reach folks “ready to buy.”

YouTube is considered the world’s second largest search engine, regular visitors to YouTube may rarely search. Regulars are often subscribed to specific channels and the user interface (UI) floats episodes from subscribed shows to the surface, along with curated selections based on user interests, and general trends.

YouTube is The World’s Second Largest Search Engine

Those who are searching on YouTube are not likely to be “ready to buy.” They search early in the  information research stage, or even after a purchase. A Google Millard Brown study found folks 64% of folks search YouTube regarding electronics both a week before and a week after purchase. Other searches may have nothing to do with purchasing like those looking for a rant, review, to hear a story, seeking new skills, or general education (5 Ways A Car Wash Will Destroy Your Car, or How can I make a fence without cement).

Paid YouTube

I’ve bought ads that run on YouTube direct from Google and through 3rd parties. But I was looking for some data I could share with you for this episode. As I noted above I failed. If you have data that can be publicly shared. I love to hear from you [email protected].

TGMT: Cheap Trinkets and $300 Learning Thermostats

The Google Merchandise Store (TGMS)

Google runs paid ads to drive some traffic to their merchandise store ($3k in 2016) and they make the data available through Google Analytics. This is a real store that in 2016 sold ~ 2.5 million dollars — about .01% of Alphabet’s* 2016 gross revenue (*Google’s parent).

It turns out that TGMS doesn’t buy paid spots on YouTube, at least done that I found in the data from 2016, or 2017. They do get a fair amount of traffic from YouTube, more than any other social network. They also don’t get a lot of sales directly from folks who directly visited from YouTube. The data as I discuss in this episode of Youtubular Conversations indicates that in 2016 YouTube was the largest source of organic traffic from all social media sites. YouTube wasn’t however the largest source of revenue as you can see below.

TGMS direct revenue from social media referrals (2016)

In 2016 TGMS had less than $700 in direct sales from YouTube. For this episode I examined data from July 20, 2016 to Dec 20, 2016; in that period of time there was less than $150 in direct revenue spread across seven transactions. But direct revenue isn’t the only story here.

Gini Dietrich, my friend, FIR Podcast Host, (and client) agrees that PR Can generate sales but don’t forget about ESO (Earned, Shared and Owned).

Time May Be Your Best Sales Person

At TGMS  about 70% of their sales come from folks who have visited more than once. I know because I’ve spend about 40 hours reviewing the data for TGMS in the last 6 months for a class I teach.

One thing I’m sure of (in general) and specifically for this store… it takes time to make sales. Which should make sense to communicators. It takes time to build relationships, trust, and mind share. It takes time to find the time to engage, research and transact.

Blue – All Visitors
Orange – YouTube Visitors
Green – All Multi-Session Visitors

As the chart indicates, YouTube visitors are less likely that the average visitor from returning to the site. But the they do return. Many folks who do transact on TGMS do so on their 2nd, 3rd, 4th or 5th visit.

Google Analytics has lots of amazing features but many of them only retain data for 90 days and they don’t allow for retention of any personally identifiable information.

Example Reports

In the episode I mention a number of the reports I looked at. I have included them here. Unless otherwise notes, all of these reports were recorded on Sunday Feb 5th, 2017 and is for TGMS using a data set from July 20, 2016 to Dec 20, 2016.

Shows all traffic vs. social traffic and then breaks down the social traffic by network.

We can see that visitors from the YouTube referral cohort gravitated towards particular SKUs. In the next report we can see the specific details for a single SKU.

Product (SKU) centric view – shows traffic by segment and dimensions for that SKU; in this case a pouch.

Attribution attempts to value each step in a conversion. This view shows two attribution models. One that weights the 1st interaction and 1 that weights the last interaction. When weighting the 1st interaction, YouTube contributes more to the sale.

Similar to the previous image but for a period of 45 days. How many days should your model look back? From this data and other studies we know traffic from YouTube is valued for a few weeks and then drops as the likelihood of conversion drops off.

We can see when looking back 90 days the influence or value of the first visit drops.

We can see that the vast majority of folks who add items to a shopping cart abandon it.

The same report as noted above but in this case looking all all users who have visited more than once “Multi Session Users” which is a pre-set segment within Google Analytics.

We can see that even once the checkout process starts, there are multiple steps (some would say way to many), and there is “friction” that causes a drop off. However,; 4.83% of those who start, finish which is more than double the number in comparison to all users. However, the data set is small we can’t have confidence in that result.

This report shows the next stage of the funnel.. after starting the check out process we can see that our YouTube cohort continues to drop out of the process. Making this process more friction-less would likely pay off. This also explains why repeat purchasers will have an easier time, and maybe more likely to purchase (if they do come back).

We can see that all the revenue directly from social network visits is very small (17k vs 2.5 Mil), and YouTube visitors where highly engaged (lots of conversions (goals like looking at product info, or time spent on the site, etc.) but only purchased a small amount.

Looking at all sessions (Orange) vs. Social Sessions (blue) we can see that while in some places it matches general traffic trends at other points it is highly divergent. We can see that is at its peak during the US Holiday selling season.

Many brands use page depth (the number of pages viewed per visit) as a KPI. This report shows a large number of YouTube referral traffic have only visited a few pages. There were ~ 1 million sessions total, and 400k YouTube sessions — roughly only 10% of all traffic looked at 1 page only, but 1/8 of YouTube traffic did.

If TGMS was using paid ads on YouTube that would have entered the cost here, and it would have been listed as CPC or another type of paid visit. You can see that ad costs from AdWords have been entered (line 5). ROAS stands for Return On Ad Spend, and you can see they had a 1% click through rate, and a 1049.36% ROAS; for every dollar spent, they received a 1049.36% of that cost in sales (they spent ~3k).

We can see that for all users (blue) and all multi-session users (green), folks aged 25-34 where the dominate demographic (other reports show that this age group buys the most in the store). In comparison the YouTube referral cohort is both younger and older. ~4-5% more folks aged 18 to 24, and a similar amount less age 25 to 34, and increases (over the average) as well in the 56 – 64, and 65+ range. If TGMS wanted to get more sales from this cohort they might attempt to attract more folks in the prime 25 – 34 age group.

Revenue for all of 2016.. we can see it start small in Jan and ramp up through the holiday buying season. We can see some of the best performing SKUs were Nest product. We know from earlier reports that the YouTube cohort didn’t buy these products which are far more expensive than other items on the site.

You Too Can Access The Demo Account

The demo account is open for everyone. If you don’t have a free Google Analytics account you will need to create one. If you normally access Google Analytics through a work emai/loginl, etc. you may wish to use a personal account if you don’t want the demo account showing up on the same dashboard you use at work. Click here for the instructions and link.

The post YouTube and Google Analytics appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

This week I talk with Zoom senior product manager Nitasha Walia. Nitasha and I discuss Zoom’s new live streaming features. Live streaming has the potential to engage and influence millions of stakeholders.

Zoom’s cross-platform video webinar software can now steam to YouTube or Facebook Live. In the past, Live Steaming was about dull single “camera” presentations. Zoom’s video webinar product will allow live streamers to mix and switch between multiple sources including live video, white boards, slides and desktop sharing. Analytics best practices can enable these audiences of millions to be qualified, retargeted and recorded for KPI tracking.

The Zoom menu option to start live-streaming to Facebook or YouTube

An organization, brand or stakeholder community could host a video webinar to highlight a single speaker presentation, a 1 on 1 discussion, or a 1:many conversation and share that:

(1st) with a secured webinar group.

(2nd) additionally re-share the webinar via live streaming to Facebook Live or YouTube (for no additional fee). Live streaming into YouTube allows for public, unlisted or private “streams.” On Facebook live streaming can be distributed via personal, or brand pages.

Picking where your live stream will appear within Facebook

Within the Zoom video webinar platform an active participant can share their desktop screen, meaning anything you can put on a desktop can be added to a live stream. For example:

What-Ifs/Imagine:

Live streams need to be authentic and engaging, and still communicate important messages. We can get a simulacrum of authenticity using poor quality video but will that hold our audiences? [E.g., watching video from someone shaking while holding a 3 year-old smartphone, in poor light, (while forgetting to look into the camera) and moving in and out of focus.]. The Zoom video webinar features hold the promise to make a more interesting, engaging and exciting live stream.

I think the best “add-in” feature is incorporating social proof. This could be including live conversations with micro or macro influencers, or discussing and responding to social media messaging in real-time. There is the ability to add in nearly limitless voices as the webinars can have up to 50 “active” participants.

Starting up a live-stream from Zoom to YouTube

Thousands to Millions

1000’s can watch within the webinar product, but through YouTube or Facebook millions can follow along., although they can’t directly participate. Nitasha notes that chat comments on YouTube/Facebook stay in those ecosystems (for now). She suggests that organizations might need a moderator to watch the livestream chat boards. My suggestion is that a moderator could pull chats back into the webinar using good old “cut n paste.”

I am enamored of the idea of breaking down rigid kabuki-esque presentations, adding in vital, dynamic and hopefully non-scripted elements. ZOOM can handle dozens of active participants — some of those “slots” could be allocated to staff members with high quality mobile devices with quality microphones. They could walk-through an audience or behind the scenes at an event. Whoever is “driving” the webinar could then select one of those “camera POVs” effectively giving a live streaming event a multi camera production quality (thanks Lucy*!).

Savvy organizations could use micro or macro influencers (including paid creators) to start up personal live streams (outside of the webinar) and after gathering an audience let them know they are joining the “main event” (about to start or already in progress) and promote the URL for the live stream. The bonus is is that all those folks would already be online, warmed up and ready. With the right storytelling elements fans, and friends of the influencers would be eager to watch them interact with the larger event, and the other stars, creators, or community members.

Image of a live-streaming webinar appearing on YouTube

It’s not clear exactly how much control there is within the Webinar dashboard, but ideally the dashboard (and the team controlling it) could function very much like a TV control room. Selecting from and placing multiple video feeds, whiteboards, videos, and desktops on the screen on an ad-hoc basis or following a script. Let’s imagine that input from drones will come soon as well.

Nitasha points out that the 1000’s those who officially use the Zoom app to sign-in and watch a webinar/event can be required to provide their email address and other data. However data from the publics who are watching live need not be lost. All of the fans on YouTube could also be “pixeled” and added to a variety of retargeting programs from Facebook’s to AdRoll’s. Because the YouTube streams are easily embedded in a corporate web site, this sort of tracking and attribution may already be in place. Facebook also has lots of new options to build audiences based on engagement.

As I alluded to above, modern analytics focused on attribution can track both anonymous and known individuals recording activities, demographic and technical dimensions plus conversion paths. For internal events (where folks need to sign into an intranet) it would be easy to record engagement on an individual and departmental levels and correlate it to other online and offline activities. For external events, communicators could directly tie the “millions” watching a free live stream back to corporate marketing automation and CRM systems contributing to qualified leads, maintaining entanglement and providing the opportunity for shareholder engagement.

Zoom supports phone line audio, allowing for secured call-in numbers for guests and other stakeholders. All Zoom products are highly cross-platform available on Mac, IOS, Android, Windows, Linux and Chromebooks. Specific zoom functionality (meeting room, conf. room, webinar, persistent live chat) is limited by licensing but uses the same software application(s). Visit Zoom.us for details.

*Desilu Studios is widely credited with inventing the 3-camera shoot; it may not be true but think of it as an alternative fact (LA Times article on multi-camera production).

The post Live Streaming Zoom Webinars on YouTube or Facebook appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.