YouTube - The Visual Google

Not very long ago viewers would wait with bated breath for the one hour TV entertainment per day provided by Doordarshan. And how the time has changed! Now everything is a click away. Unlimited resources are available free, fast and furious. The wonderful speech of Mark Anthony “Friends Romans countrymen, I came to bury Caesar not to praise him” from the movie Julius Caesar’s isinstantly accessible and downloadable. Imagine the type of impact that the video can create in a class of personality development/business communication. Similarly anyother world event that has to be seen is available in the world’s biggest visual repository. So much so that YouTube is being referred to as the visual Google.

YouTube is the video sharing website stared by three friends, all ex-colleaguesof PayPal. They started YouTube.com in 2005 and sold it to Google in 2006. This site allows uploading of videocontentthat can be shared or watched by any one in the world. Any type of videos can beuploaded as long as they conform to the rules and regulations.

Most of the videosare uploaded by individuals but many NGOs, corporates and other organizations too upload as YouTube is one of the most effective methods of product promotion and advertising. Anyone can watch free but only registered userscan upload.

It is said that YouTube has over a billion users (almostIndia’s population). Millions of viewersregularly visit the site and watchthousands of videos every day. Youtube has become the default search engine for video content. The most striking feature about YouTube is that one can watch the videos of his/her interest. There is no compulsion or force to watch any content. YouTube is compatible with multiple platforms including mobile phones.

Check out these statistics: Over 300 hours of videosare uploaded every minute. It is impossible to watch all videos on YouTube. By the time you've finished one video, there will be 1,000 more added to the website. If we assume that no more videosare uploaded while you are watching, it would take you 60,000 years of non-stop watching to watch each and every video on YouTube.

There is an unbelievable variety and depth of videos. Total number of videos uploaded could be in the range of 12–15 crores! One web site reports a figure of 220 crore videos. Many have created their own YouTube channel where theycustomize and watch the content that they like. This is a big game changer!

Youtubeusage depends on internet speed that is provided by the serviceprovider and internet speeds in India can be very slow. And that means lot of video buffering. The victims of the slow internet speed are the advertisers who sponsor the most popular videos. Videos are interspaced with advertisements at an interval of 10 minutes. Viewers have to compulsorily watch the advertisement for five seconds. After the mandatory five second time frame the advertisement can be skipped.

Adversity brings out the best in the protagonist/necessity is the mother of invention: The 5 seconds syndrome: Horlicks India has used the 5 second skip button of YouTube to highlight the brand proposition of its product; chocolate Horlicks which mixes instantly in milk. The tagline reads – ‘Instant Chocolate Horlicks -mixes in milk even before you skip this advertisement.

This is brilliant conceptualization and even more brilliant understanding of Consumer Behaviour. Online customers tend to be impatient and hardly watch any advertisements. They do watch - only if they are compelled. Most of us automatically search for any videos first on YouTube and wait impatiently for the first five seconds of the advertisement to play out before skipping the later part of the advertisement.

By putting it in the first five seconds Horlicks is ensuring eyeballsas customers have to watch it and the message gets transmitted within the time frame of 5 seconds. YouTube clutter and how to break it: The huge challenge with Youtube is the variety and choice of videos available. Viewers are spoilt for choice. In the plethora of options available it is quite possible that the videos that we have uploaded get lost in the crowd. So howwe stand out in a crowd?

Ananalysis of some of the top India specific videos watched by Indians has been attempted. The results of which are given in table. The video watchers are netizens from throughoutthe world and may include non-Indians. But as the content is Indiacentric it can safely be assumed that most watchers are from India, or Indians living on other countries or people of Indian origin.

For example the table topper “Gangnam style” music video even though not of Indian origin has a viewership base of a whopping 235 crores. That islike each and every Indian watching Gangnam style video twice. That is the power of YouTube.com.

The major findings are Music and film based videos do well: Most of the top views either belong to music videos like “why this Kolavari di” or popular film songs. Music is a great draw for YouTube and videos with good music content tend to do well.

Comedy as a genre does well: Most Indians love comedy and itis not surprising that Hindi shows like Comedy Nights with Kapil and a Telugu comedy show Jabardast get many viewers and even repeat viewers. Comedy sells but itshould be woven into the fabric of the product or the service. The viewersshould laugh with us and not at us.

Man biting dog is great news not the vice-versa – Correct and intriguing key words help in making videos popular: In the era of unlimited visual stimulus,information and entertainment,viewers get bored easily and become jaded. The usualdoesn’t warrant attention as much as the unusual. The search for the “worst song” will load a song of “Vennu Mallesh”. Undoubtedly the song is funny but not theworst song by any stretch of imagination. The curiosity of watching the worst song has netted Vennu Mallesh a viewership of nearly 60 lakhs. 60 lakhviewers is a figure that is not touched by many regularly released Telugu feature films.

Truthis stranger than fiction:“Battle at Kruger” is an eight-minute wildlife video that depicts an unfolding confrontation between a herd of buffaloes, a small pride of lions and crocodiles. The video begins with the herd of buffalo approaching the water. Upon seeing the lions, the buffaloes runaway and the lions charge and disperse the herd, picking off a baby buffalo, which in a panic to escape gets thrown into the water.

While the lions try to drag the baby buffalo out of the water, the baby buffalo is grabbed by a crocodile, which fights for it before giving up and leaving it to the lions. The lions sit down and prepare to eat, but are quickly surrounded by the reorganized buffaloes, who move in and begin charging and kicking at the lions.

After a battle which sees one lion being tossed into the air by a buffalo, the baby buffalo is still alive, much to the astonishment of the onlookers’and it escapes into the herd. The emboldened buffaloes then proceed to chase the remaining lions away.

Topical content does well:Contemporary and relevant content targeted at the youthwill always attract attention. A short film depicting the travails of engineering students facing the annualtorture called “Viva” caught the imagination of the youth and got a viewership of 62 lakhs.

But care should be taken to keep the subsequent offerings as fresh as possible. The latest attempt by the Viva team “Facebook Baba” did not get the same viewership and it could attract a viewership of only 9.69lakhs. Niche is here to stay: Niche areas like cooking classes, education centric sites like Khan Academy do very well as they attract specific viewers. Any one investing time and effort into niche areas willdefinitely reap the benefits.

YouTube providesdemocratization of the visual media: any one can be a filmmaker and he/she can become an instant celebrity. One can imaginatively direct a short film and get it uploaded. Once it becomes popular it will generate advertising revenue and catch the eyes of movie producerswho are on the prowl for fresh new talent.

By:Dr M Anil Ramesh