Day: September 19, 2017

The YouTube Ads perk you didn’t know existed

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It should be no surprise to anyone that online video consumption has exploded in the last five years. YouTube is the second most trafficked site globally, according to Alexa rankings (behind Google Search, of course), and it has over 1 billion active users on the platform. That’s roughly one-third of all internet users around the world. One-third!

With all that growth and activity, businesses are quickly realizing the advantages of using online video as a means of marketing their services to a targeted audience of their choosing.

The problem is, creating a polished video to attract new business isn’t the easiest thing in the world to do, and there’s data to back that up. According to Buffer’s 2016 Social Media Report, a whopping 83 percent of marketers said they would like to create more video content if time, money and resources were no obstacles.

So what’s a cash-strapped marketer interested in getting into digital video content to do?

Enter Google’s YouTube Director Onsite.

What is YouTube Director Onsite?

YouTube Director Onsite is a recently launched Google service that helps businesses create polished videos to showcase their products and services online. The service itself is technically free, though they ask that you spend at least $150 to advertise on YouTube once the video has been created.

youtube director onsite hero

How does Director Onsite work?

According to Google, the whole process, from the planning stages to having the video in your hands, happens in two steps over the course of two to three weeks. Let’s dive in.

Step 1: Plan the video you want to create

Businesses kick off the project by selecting the video template they feel is best fit for their business goals. Google breaks their video templates down into four main categories:

  • All About Your Business. If you’re interested in giving an overview of your product, service or company, this would be the best category to select.
  • Getting Personal. This category is the best option for you if you’re looking to share some personal information about your business, like founder stories or mission overview.
  • Product Showcase. This category is a great option if you’re interested in showing off a specific product in detail.

There are multiple examples of each category on the YouTube Director page to give you a better idea of the specific template category to select. Once you select your template, Google will match you with a professional filmmaker to help you write a script. This process takes roughly one to two hours.

It’s important to note that once your script is completed, you are no longer able to make any adjustments to the template or the structure of your video. Take some time during the first call with your filmmaker to clearly explain your business and the goals you have for the final video. They will be able to tell you if the template you selected is the best fit, based on your goals, or recommend an alternative prior to writing the script.

Step 2: Shoot your video with Google

With your template selected and your script written, it’s time for your close-up. Your filmmaker will work with you to schedule a time for the video shoot that works best for you and your team.

First email with YouTube director

My recommendation is to stick with the time you selected and only reschedule if it’s absolutely necessary. There’s room for a tiny bit of flexibility here, but if you reschedule the video any time after the 30-day mark of creating your project, Google may make you start the project from the beginning and assign you a new filmmaker.

The video shoot will last for two or three hours, and your filmmaker will edit and deliver the video to you on the same day as the shoot. Not too shabby for a few hours of work.

How is this different from other video creation services?

The most obvious difference between using YouTube Director Onsite vs. a local video creation service is the cost. Having gone through the process of using a traditional video creation service myself, I can attest to spending thousands of dollars on a video that I ultimately wasn’t happy with by the end of the project.

While there are no guarantees that you will be satisfied with the results, the time investment and cost are small enough to justify an experiment. It’s also important to note that Google trains their filmmakers on YouTube best practices. This means the edited video is built to perform well as a standalone video on your website and as a promotional YouTube ad.

What’s the catch?

Surprisingly, there isn’t anything that should prevent a resources-strapped business that’s interested in creating video content from taking full advantage of this service.

That being said, there are a few things you should keep in mind before getting started. First, YouTube Director Onsite is a “free” service — so long as you commit to spending $150 on YouTube advertising. In my opinion, a professional quality video plus targeted traffic sent to that video for $150 is still a pretty sweet deal.

Second, the final video will include the YouTube Director logo in the corner of your video. It appears 10 seconds into the video and lasts for 10 seconds.

Third, the service is only available in seven US metro areas: San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., New York and Boston. Google says they intend to expand to more metro areas quickly.

youtube director onsite locations

All things considered, these are small prices to pay for professional video content that can be used in a number of different ways (video content for your website, online ads and so on).

Teachers Vs Social Media

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Teachers have always faced challenges – time changes the medium but not the content. The teachers of today still face the issues of bullying and abuse, fighting against a tide of inattention. In 2017, however, they are working against smartphones and the digital world rather than pieces of paper and fisticuffs.

One of the areas that teachers find hardest to tackle is social media. Nominet’s recent research into the impact in the classroom found that secondary school teachers lose an average of 17 minutes every day to social media disruption – that’s over 11 days each year. This is not only short-changing our kids but each school’s potential too.

The youngsters of today were born into a digital world and use social media to operate within it. Social media platforms are a place for them to express themselves and discover who they are. They can connect with likeminded people at a distance as they carve their own place in the world.

Unfortunately, sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are playing catch-up when cyberbullying and abuse inevitably appear. Social media has expanded many issues that teachers deal with in the classroom, with students found to be the victims of cyber bullying and online abuse, as well as even sharing explicit content during lessons.

Also alarming is the news from the NSPCC that social media exacerbates mental health issues such as anxiety and depression despite also offering a lifeline for adolescents; it’s a double-edged sword. Our own research found that half of all teachers believe social media contributes to their pupils achieving lower grades than their potential, while 57% think it has negatively affected their students’ mental health.

But social media is here to stay. Young people will find a way of using it however carefully a school tries to clamp down on usage. A case in point comes from one of England’s leading independent schools that admitted to monitoring their students’ comments on social media to check for criticism of the school, prompting protests from the students themselves. Perhaps the only way to progress is to harness social media for good as far as possible in the school environment.

This starts with ensuring teachers feel confident and able to educate their pupils on social media issues, including sharing coping strategies for cyber bullying and making clear the potential ramifications of creating or sharing explicit content. We found that less than a quarter of teachers believe they definitely have the right skills to cope, making a strong case for more training and support of teachers – or even creating roles for Digital Leaders in schools.

Teachers also need to feel confident to take the next step, from broadcasting on social media to using it to communicate with the children they educate or even as a classroom tool. Many schools have already joined the social media bandwagon, using Twitter to contact and communicate with parents and update students on closures or changes to the school day. Positive use of platforms in the classroom could be encouraged with simple steps such as incorporating sites such as Facebook into lesson plans – great for closed group class projects and sharing relevant research and ideas. This must be considered with regard to the official age restrictions for each of the social media platforms, which sits at 13 for Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

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How to Leverage Behavioral Data with Segment

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Behavioral Data is Critical for Driving Growth

Tracking customer event data, such as for Kissmetrics’ behavioral analytics solution, is an integral part to any successful online business–but I bet you already knew that. You might also know that installing Kissmetrics tracking code across your platform is relatively straight forward, though it can get complex depending on your specific requirements.

The complexity and management overhead of event tracking can rise quickly when every data-capturing tool your team adds requires developers to implement tracking code for every product. It is time consuming and can take up resources. And no big surprise, this can create friction between marketing and engineering. You definitely knew that… cue engineers and marketers nodding their head slowly…

Customer Data Management with Segment

Customer data management platforms are the right way to go for leveraging customer event data across your company. We’re going to focus on one we work with quite often, Segment.

Segment, which recently raised a $64m series C, solves the customer data management problem and then some.

Here’s how it works:

You install Segment tracking code once and they’ll collect all customer event data and integrate it with all the top applications and send the data to them accordingly. Segment captures data from every customer touch point and then sends your customer data to the tools where it can be used most effectively. Their goal is to take the step of adding and managing unique snippets with each new tool off the table.

Beyond the ease of adding new tools to your automation stack, all the bugs that can occur by constantly adding snippets and the contradictory data across tools is eliminated because everything flows through Segment.

This is a huge win for engineering and marketing teams. Engineering can focus on creating new products and experiences and marketing is free to work with all the different tools they need without bogging down engineering. Beyond that, experimenting with new tools is easier and more feasible. Cue engineering and marketing nodding happily…

Get the Data and Use It

Understanding customer behavior and triggering actions based on that behavior is the lifeblood of any successful business. Collecting event data from every source possible and sharing that data across applications and organizations is necessary to accomplish that. Segment will collect data from every one of your platforms–mobile, web, server and cloud. From there, it can disperse the data however needed.

First, Understand Behavior

Kissmetrics is a Customer Engagement Automation platform. That’s behavioral analytics plus email campaign automation. Understand who your best customers are, and how to get more of them.

Kissmetrics processes all the customer data and delivers reports so you can understand what’s going on, what’s working and what’s not. It helps you determine how to interact with your customers to keep them on track. You’ll find where prospects fall out of the funnel, where they get stuck and how paying customers use your product.

Get started fast with Segment + Kissmetrics

Because of Segment’s straightforward integration, it’s easy to get started using Kissmetrics’ behavioral analytics. In no time, you’ll see the data you’re capturing via Segment show up in Kissmetrics to learn exactly how your prospects and customers are behaving across your website and products.

Kissmetrics customers with Segment have raved about the integration. It’s simple: your developers only need know Segment’s API and two methods: identify and track. Then you’re off to the races.

If you’re implementing Kissmetrics and don’t plan on implementing any other tool that requires customer data tracking, you can just use Kissmetrics native integration. But if you’re going to be implementing more tools, we strongly recommend using Segment.

Special offer to get started with Segment and Kissmetrics

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Breaking: Google AdSense Stops Showing Ads For Many Publishers

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Google AdSense

The Google AdSense forum has begun lighting up with publishers complaining that their AdSense ads are no longer showing up on their web sites. There seems to be hundreds, if not in the thousands of complaints starting early this morning or last night.

I don’t see any response from Google yet and I am unsure if this is a bug or some sort of quality clean up on publishers. I personally am able to see AdSense ads on some sites, including the one ad unit I have on this site.

There are also complaints of this on Twitter and other social networks. Again, I did not see any word from Google on this but here is a screen shot of just some of the complaint threads:

Again, I see probably over 1,000 complaints across hundreds of threads about ads not loading or appearing on their websites.

Do you have any issues?

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

Update: Google is aware of the issue:

Update 2: Many are now reporting as of around 1pm EST that their ads are showing up again.

Update 3: Google sent us this statment, “​It ​was a minor bug impacting a very limited number of AdSense publishers. ​There’s a​ fix ​- it’s being rolled out currently.”

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Google proposes a new version of ‘rival links’ to remedy shopping search antitrust violation

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In June, Google was fined $2.7 billion by the EU for “favoring its own content” in shopping search results. The company is reportedly appealing the decision.

In the interim, Google has been compelled to propose an alternative presentation of search results to remedy and respond to the EU decision. According to Reuters, the company “has offered to display rival shopping comparison sites via an auction.”

While we haven’t seen any specific details of Google’s proposal, this approach is conceptually similar to the “rival links” proposal that was proposed and failed to settle the antitrust dispute before the formal Statement of Objections (antitrust case) was filed in 2015.