Was it a plant? Wasn’t it a plant? The guy who posted the video on Youtube and Nintendo claim that there is no link between them and this is not an attempt at social/viral media which has gone wrong. In reality the arguement is unimportant as Nintendo will have benefited massively from the exposure Wii fit has gained through this story so whether it originated from them or not doesn’t actually matter, it is still a huge success. Im not sure whether the viewers on Youtube are marvelling at the technology behind Wii fit but they are showing an interest in something!

Some of the articles relating to this story:

Wii Fit Underwear Girl a Marketing Hoax
Wii Fit YouTube clip gets two million admirers
Wii Fit turns YouTube sensation

And here is the link to the video, I would have embedded it but for some reason it is messing up the page layout!

Wii Fit YouTube Video

BBC’s iPlayer service is wiping the floor with its rivals in the on demand TV market recording up to 500,000 programme downloads a day. 11m TV shows were streamed or downloaded through iPlayer in January in comparison to 2.7m for channel 4’s system 4od and 2m for ITV. The massive amounts of advertising dollars spent promoting the service have no doubt prompted its dominance but will also have given the on demand market as a whole a boost as people become more aware that you can watch your favourite shows from your laptop at any time of the day and night.

The opportunity and issue now facing BBC iPlayer is how to monetise this growing service without annoying its users. Advertising in online video files has been debated far and wide and yet the most appropriate format is yet to be decided upon. Pre-roll, post-roll and overlay are the main considerations with the option of mid roll placements as well but all interfere with the user experience in some way. The key is to strike a balance between the exposure of the ad and the interference with the viewing.

Youtube are still to achieve this and at a recent seminar they were still asking the advertisers what their preference would be for the ads. Youtube have gone with an overlay style ad for in video but admitted trialling preroll and post roll with both showing negative results. I wonder whether the BBC will be able to crack the code?

As part of its record breaking 2008 marketing budget Cadbury are planning a follow up to their much loved drumming gorilla advert. According to the latest edition of Marketing the new ad will also feature an animal playing an instrument. The original advert was a major viral success achieving numerous blog postings, massive word of mouth and many a parody on Youtube (you can see some of them here). So the follow up has a hard task following in its footsteps, as do he agency charged with creating the ad. The original one worked well due to the human like actions of a gorilla but I cant see many other animals having the same impact without looking too comical. Answers on a postcard what you think the new animal and instrument will be and heres the original again just for fun!

A useful little list of video search providers.

Search Innovation Spotlight: Video Search
by Bob Heyman, Friday, April 6, 2007

THIS MONTH’S spotlight falls on video search.
While Google and Yahoo offer this service, smaller companies are also making a stir.

Blinkx is a category leader in dedicated video search. The Blinkx technology combines voice recognition with image and contextual analysis. The company has a partnership with Microsoft to power the video search on MSN and Live.com. Blinkx claims the deal made it the “single biggest video search engine on the Web.” Blinkx already powers video search on AOL, Lycos, Times Online and other major sites. It also indexes video clips from around the Web and allow users to search them on Blinkx.com and partner sites.
Here are several other competitors:

Flurl is a Belgium-based video search firm in which Brad Greenspan, the founder of MySpace, has acquired a majority stake. Flurl claims to be the “leading independent video search engine.” In addition to video, Flurl also indexes images, audio and flash content.

SearchVideo is a video search engine and directory created by AOL that lets you search for videos by categories and relevance. Users can also search within specific video channels like MySpace and YouTube. SearchVideo classifies videos according to 10 general categories. It has a feature that allows users to filter videos by cost, length, quality and format.

PureVideo is a video search engine that enables users to search within the most popular video directories and video sharing sites. It also provides a celebrity video directory. Every search result has its own RSS feed, and you can track its status through any feed readers.
Singingfish is a video and audio search engine that enables searches within hundreds of online video channels and video-sharing sites. It allows users to search videos by format and length, and also save search results and email them to friends. There’s also a safe search filter available to block adult content.

ClipRoller allows you to search across the most popular video sites — and as you continue to log in and search for videos, ClipRoller learns your preferences to deliver content that you would like. It also allows you to easily syndicate a video to any other Web site. There is also a ClipRoller ticker to search for your favorite videos from the desktop.

Users of Pixsy can search across dozens of video sites and can save searches and single videos to watch again. Pixsy displays a description of the content of each video, when available, and enables emailing search results.

is the fallout between google and viacom a route to market for smaller online video providers who are willing to play by the rules? personally I think whatever the outcome Youtube has a bg enough grip on the market to hold its share. That is unless people start pulling all their content which could be a problem. individual users will be slower to boycott however and these are the best videos anyway arent they? fat guys dancing, practical jokes, hidden cameras…priceless!

Viacom/Google Fallout: Prime Time For Smaller Competitors To Woo Content Partners
by Shankar Gupta, Wednesday, Mar 14, 2007 6:00 AM ET
IT’S PRIME TIME FOR SMALLER video players to step in and make content partnerships as relations between Google and traditional media companies grow increasingly frosty. That was the assessment of industry watchers in the wake of the $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit filed Tuesday by Viacom against the search giant and its subsidiary YouTube.
Viacom is likely to seek out other partners who are more responsive in developing strategies to pay media companies whose content appears on their sites, said Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey. “They think they’ve waited long enough for Google and YouTube,” he said. “What they’re going to do is work aggressively to get distribution everywhere else.”
Citing a major deal with YouTube rival Joost and smaller initiatives that allow small site owners to create custom clips of Viacom content and syndicate them on their Web sites, McQuivey said that major media companies’ dissatisfaction with Google-YouTube is an opportunity for up-and-coming players.