distribution service

So yesterday I wrote part 1 of this 2 part post on why I am moving all of my video posts to YouTube. Basically, TubeMogul finally had enough, told me to get a life and to stop free-loading off of their video distribution service. So, I went off to see what other options I had available, and to review the content I had on the sites TubeMogul used to post to for me. The primary video sites I post to are:

Viddler
Vimeo
DailyMotion
Yahoo
YouTube
Blip.tv
Metacafe

A funny thing happened when watching my videos

As I was reviewing my videos on each of the sites I mentioned above, I was stunned by the amount of advertising that was placed in pre/post roll and companion ads. The worst of the bunch was DailyMotion, who not only made me sit through 30 seconds of pre-roll but a companion ad that took up half the video!

Here is a picture of the companion ad they placed during my video playback. DailyMotion was even kind enough to cut off most of the bottom part of my face, including my mouth – maybe that’s a good thing though!

Here is the pre-roll screen for some new show on ABC. Literally nothing to do with the content on the video. I sure hope ABC didn’t pay a lot for that ad!

Don’t get me wrong, I know that there has to be give and take when it comes to video hosting, I mean the bandwidth bills must be crazy! But when these sites go overboard with the ads they water down the message. I mean, who the hell is going to wait through 30 seconds of pre-roll to watch my videos?

To make it worse, most of these sites don’t have a revenue sharing option. Meaning, whatever revenue they generate from the ads placed on top of my content they keep for themselves. Now again, I know ad revenue has to help pay the bills, but let me wet my beak a little!

And that’s when I started hitting the delete button!

In the end, I opted to remove all of my videos off of all the sites listed above except YouTube, where my videos play ad free. Think about it, would you want ads for your competition displayed while your video plays of that new deck you installed? Hell no!

So, as long as YouTube is being a partner to me, I will partner with them, until they start charging me!

About 20% of the posts here on darrenslaughter.com are video posts. Up until last week, I used a service from TubeMogul to upload and distribute my videos to about 6 other video sites all at once. TubeMogul does all the behind the scenes leg work to get your videos up on the most popular video sharing sites without having to log into each one and upload your video one by one.

Then last Sunday (during the Eagles win over the hapless Lions) I was trying to upload a video when I got this message:

After a few emails back and forth with their customer care, I had to come to grips with the fact that I am not a businessman, but a business, man. In other words, TubeMogul considers my site here a commercial enterprise and therefore I need to pay for their distribution service. That’s fine, except they charge $100 a month for something I can do for free.

So, I opted not to upgrade. But while considering what to do next with library of video posts, I uncovered a nasty little secret many of you need to be aware of if you are going to start to post videos on your sites. For that, you are going to have to tune in tomorrow. That’s right, I am going to make you read on a Friday, so check back in the morning for the rest of this story!

Tag

Why I Post to YouTube and Why You Should Too, Part 2