Campaigner 'Granny D' Stops Running at 100

Doris Haddock (better known as Granny D), who walked across the country a decade ago to publicize the need for campaign finance reform, has died. She was 100.

At 94, she ran for U.S. Senate against Republican Judd Gregg. Haddock's political endeavours were profiled in the 2007 documentary film "Run Granny Run," which is showcased on KobreGuide's "Got an Hour?" channel for feature-length documentaries.

Watch it here.

We Watched 33.2 Billion Online Videos in Dec.

American online video viewing continues to surge in popularity. December 2009 data from the comScore Video Metrix service shows that nearly 178 million U.S. Internet users watched online video during the month. A record 33.2 billion videos were viewed during the month.

The top outlet by far is YouTube/Google, with 13.2 billion video views.

Hulu ranked second with more than 1 billion videos viewed, an all-time high for the property, and representing 3.0 percent market share. Microsoft Sites ranked third with 561 million (1.7 percent), followed by Fox Interactive Media with 551 million (1.7 percent) and Yahoo! Sites with 539 million (1.6 percent).

Nearly 178 million viewers watched an average of 187 videos per viewer during the month of December. Google Sites (YouTube) attracted 135.8 million unique viewers during the month (97.5 videos per viewer), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 59.8 million viewers (9.0 videos per viewer) and Fox Interactive Media with 56.8 million viewers (9.7 videos per viewer). The average Hulu viewer watched 22.9 videos during the month, representing another all-time high for the property.

This certainly bodes well for purveyors of videojournalism who were once worried that people wouldn't sit still long enough to enjoy videos on their computer screens.

Read more here.

ComScore: Online Video Viewing is Booming

Mashable: The Social Media Guide reports that Hulu and Facebook are shattering online video records, according to the Web analytics firm ComScore.

While YouTube draws 125 million viewers per month (one billion views per day!), Hulu and Facebook are closing in with double-digit percentage gains that shatter their previous video-viewing records.

There were 27.94 billion videos viewed in October, up 7% from September. Out of that, Google/YouTube is still on top with 10.52 billion videos viewed.

The big mover in October though was Hulu. In September, the News Corp/Disney/NBC joint venture delivered 583 million views. In October, that number shot up by 31.8% to a total of 855 million video views. This is by far a record for the TV video website....

The biggest winner seems to be Facebook. In September, it had 31.18 million unique viewers. In October, that number skyrocketed by nearly 25% to 41.15 million uniques. Once again, this is a record for the world’s largest social network, and one that speaks to how powerful Facebook is becoming in the video space...

We urge newspapers that are still not convinced about the future of video, and pulling back on resources instead of investing in its future, to look at these eye-popping statistics:

* 84.4% of U.S. Internet users watched at least one online video in October.

* The average person watched 10.8 hours of online video in October.

As Mashable notes: "Online video continues to grow and the end is nowhere in sight."

Tell us, how much video do you watch every day? How much for business? For pleasure? How much at work? At home?

We still hear folks whining about having to wade through a lot of video swampland to get to the good stuff. It's faster to scan a page of headlines, and a few sentences of text, to decide what to read -- but committing to watching a video is a bigger investment of time and attention. We realize that, and that's why we created KobreGuide -- to help you find that golden needle in the haystack every day!

Guess How Much Online Video We Watch?

How many online videos do you watch every month? How much time do you spend watching them?

The average U.S. Internet user watched 111 videos, for a total of 6.4 hours, during the month of April, according to data released yesterday by ComScore Video Metrix service.

Nearly 152 million U.S. Web users collectively watched 16.8 billion online videos, an increase of 16 percent from the previous month.

What's especially remarkable is that Google's YouTube accounted for 6.8 billion of those viewed videos (or 40.7 percent of the online video market), with 107.8 million viewers -- a 15 percent increase over March.

Fox Interactive Media (MySpace) ranked a distant second with 513 million videos and 58.8 million viewers (3.1 percent), followed by Hulu with 397 million videos and 40.1 million viewers (2.4 percent) and Yahoo! with 355 million videos and 45.4 million viewers (2.1 percent). Also in the top ten: Viacom, Microsoft, Turner Network, CBS, Disney, AOL.

Other notable findings for April 2009:

• 78.6 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
  
• The duration of the average online video was 3.5 minutes.

For the record, here at KobreGuide, we watch many hours of videojournalism every month to find the best story every weekday for you! If our average video is about 5 minutes, that would add up to nearly two hours of high-quality viewing we provide you every month. And, if you're an "average" consumer (as measured by ComScore), that would still leave you more than four hours a month for goofing around on YouTube!

So our advice: Enjoy your candy, but don't forget your veggies. They're good for you, and taste good, too!

Hulu Expands Documentary Fare

KobreGuide gladly showcased Hulu's first hour-long documentary, Crawford, an illuminating look at the townsfolk in Pres. George W. Bush's adopted hometown, and how they were affected by his arrival.

We wondered whether viewers would have the time, patience and inclination to commit to spending an hour or more gazing at a movie on a computer monitor. But we also realized that this fare will soon appear on your TV set, among other screens. So, despite the fact that most of what's on KobreGuide is in the 2- to 7-minute range, we subsequently devoted an entire section of KobreGuide to longer video stories, in our "Got an Hour?" section.

Hulu is an NBC Universal-News Corp. joint venture that mostly streams primetime sitcoms online after they air on TV. When we recently checked in, we were amazed to find that, in the past few months, Hulu's feature-length documentary offerings have increased exponentially. They've even been given their own section.

Andy Forssell, Hulu's SVP of content acquisition and distribution, recently told Broadcasting & Cable magazine that its documentary section will feature films as well as short-form content. “It is really an exciting part of the industry. These filmmakers and their distributors are really looking at streaming carefully,” Forssell said, adding that the site is working with its major content partners to seed the section as well:

One of the opportunities in the movies [section] was to focus more on documentaries because the online availability provided them with a great chance to find and reach an audience. We focus on making a great platform but we love making connections between audience and content.

It is a great outlet for the content creators, because a very small percentage of their films may be in theaters; they are looking to be online.

According to B&C:

The section puts all of the documentary movies, TV shows and shorts in one place, making it easier for users to find. Plus it will help Hulu form relationships with independent filmmakers and studios, which could become a valuable source of content down the line.

Hulu's documentary channel features television programming from PBS, as well as the recently canceled FX show 30 Days. Newly added films include Super Size Me, which was the inspiration for the FX show, as well as Kicking It, which aired on ESPN last year, and Confessions of a Super Hero.

We'll be looking through their selections to find programming worthy of KobreGuide. Our feeling is that, if the material is meritorious and engaging, people will commit to it. We hope you agree.

What's the Perfect Online Video Length?

How much of a typical online video is actually watched? TubeMogul attempted such a study, though its definition of typical included only short-form content, and excluded YouTube.

For a two-week period, TubeMogul measured viewed-seconds for a sample of 188,055 videos, totaling 22,724,606 streams, on six top video sites (due to partnership limitations, we cannot disclose which sites). Limitations of this approach include the fact that we are only studying short-form content (full television episodes being streamed on sites like Hulu were not included), and that, because our code is not yet in their player, YouTube was not included (although many of the videos in the sample mirror identical videos on YouTube).

The results are dramatic: most online video viewers watch mere seconds, rather than minutes, of a video.

Online video viewers' short attention span seems especially relevant to advertisers looking to strategically trim ad budgets as the economy contracts. For starters, it is clear that post-roll ads are of limited effectiveness. A three-minute video that has a post-roll ad in the final seconds, for example, will only be viewed by 16.62% of the initial audience, on average.

Another takeaway is that overlay ads should be displayed as early as possible in a video, preferably within the first few seconds. On YouTube, where most overlay ads appear at about 10 seconds in, 10.39% of a video's initial viewers are not likely seeing the ad.

However, another analyst found a different way to interpret the same data, to determine the ideal length for Web video:

Nothing too surprising about the numbers. They seem to support the notion that “shorter videos work better on the web”. But that conclusion depends on us using a metric that is based upon “complete views”. If we count only viewers who watch the entire video then a shorter video will always have “more viewers”. To retain even half the viewers the video has to be under a minute - 30 seconds would be even better.

But supposing we add another metric - say “minutes watched.”

Going from the chart:

1000 people watch a one-minute video, 464 are likely to finish - total 464 minutes watched
1000 people watch a two-minute video, 237 are likely to finish - total 474 minutes watched
1000 people watch a 3-minute video - total 484 minutes watched
1000 people watch a 5-minute video - total 471 minutes watched
1000 people watch a 30-second video - total 330 minutes watched

CONCLUSION: Ideal run-time for web video - 2.5 to 4 minutes.

But because video is linear, does that mean producers will try to guarantee ad views by leaning toward the "inverted pyramid" print model (i.e. putting the important stuff at top, and then filling in the details)? If so, that puts the kibosh on good old-fashioned storytelling -- with a beginning, middle and end; and rising action, climax, denouement, conclusion. Wouldn't it be better to put a "hook" at the top, inject some foreshadowing, and let the suspense build throughout, to keep viewers riveted to the end?

Also: As with "browsing" a text article, are we taking into account folks who "fast-forward" through a video, sampling a little bit here and there, and skipping other parts? That's how plenty of people watch DVDs or shows/movies on Tivo. (Note: Some platforms forbid viewers from "sliding" through the story, usually at their own peril -- if you're impatient and can't fast-forward, you're more likely to abandon the piece entirely.)

And the one seemingly immeasurable factor that no study has yet taken into account is quality. Presumably folks will stick around a couple extra minutes for excellent videojournalism that holds their interest. That's what we at KobreGuide are banking on!

What are your online video viewing habits? We know you're busy, but under what circumstances would you watch a video that's longer than 3-4 minutes?

Neatness Counts!

One of the things we pride ourselves on at KobreGuide is how we've nicely organized our video listings -- by channel and topic -- so that it's easy to find something great to watch. Unlike some video sites we know, wherever you are on KobreGuide, you're just a click away from more great stories. Our confidence in the importance of our well organized and easy-to-navigate grids system was underscored by this New York Times blog item: YouTube Pales Next to Hulu’s Spiffy Multiplex

Even though YouTube is a huge success with its audience, the site itself is a mess. It is visually distracting, and I never can find what I want when I want it. On Hulu, it is a lot easier to understand what is going on and find the episodes you may want to watch.

Let’s say you wanted to relax and watch a movie on your computer. What does Hulu have? One click at the top of any page gets a list of some movies and ways to find more. How do you find all the movies on YouTube? I spent five minutes wandering around the site and I still don’t know.

So maybe before Google sends more people to Hollywood seeking films, it might want to build a better online theater in which to watch them.

Going Back to Crawford

It is as remarkable that Hulu chose "Crawford" as it is that George W. Bush chose Crawford.

Before launching his bid for president in 1999, Bush decided he needed a home in Texas, other than the governor’s mansion. Both supporters and opponents agree that he moved there to enhance his regular-guy image, but even locals wonder why he chose tiny Crawford (population 700) to be his “Western White House.”

Hulu was founded by NBC Universal and News Corp as an online distributor of mainstream entertainment from Hollywood movie studios and TV networks. For their first feature-length online film, they curiously selected the 75-minute documentary, "Crawford."

However, if you watch "Crawford," about the impact of Bush's tenure there on the local citizenry, you'll agree that, whatever your political leanings, it is indeed hugely entertaining, and in many instances hilariously funny. Suffice to say, you just can't make this stuff up. It combines the best of Hollywood storytelling with serious video journalism, and should serve as a beacon to all news outlets who yearn to inject quirkiness and levity into non-fiction multimedia stories, without sacrificing gravitas. So: kudos to Hulu!

In any case, you can understand why "Crawford" seems like an especially topical "end-of-an-era" selection this week for KobreGuide. It's longer than the videos we normally showcase, but we encourage you to carve out some time this weekend to savor it.