Quite recently I interviewed Lewis Webster of Little Orchard about video online.

I was in no doubt after talking to Lewis about what video can deliver and what its potential is – the SEO power & potential of video is something in itself, let alone just the content.

So the first SAScon speaker, Bruce Daisley from YouTube should have pulled few surprises.  But he still impressed….

Video is one third of all web traffic – Cisco

Bruce again quoting Cisco, saying it would be 90% by 2013

Every minute 24 hours worth of video is uploaded onto YouTube

And a few more points of interest….

More people are referred to YouTube than come straight to it

Twitter & 3G is pushing video

YouTube is concentrating on delivering live content such as recent U2 & Alicia Keys gigs, and is aiming to facilitate ordinary users doing the same, albeit perhaps on a smaller scale.

Bruce ended by a little name checking of great viral video: Ok Go’s fantastic video – parodied by The Simpsons, so it must be good and the Evian baby commercial.

The viral potential of both far outstripped expectations: it made Ok Go, leading to sponsorship and big increases in record sales when I believe they were pretty insignificant at their record label; the Evian brass only expected 2 million views, they got 58 million.  Wow quite a return on both.

This brings me neatly on to my selling opportunity: if you are a digital agency that is looking at video, then continue reading….

Vision + Media is heavily sponsoring experienced TV professionals to undertake placements in digital agencies.

The cost is a paltry £30 a day to the agency, everything else sponsored by Vision + Media.

So you can learn about video – could be editing and production techniques as much as camera elements – and use highly skilled professionals to work on live projects from the word go.

If you are interested click here for more, but hurry you only have until this Friday to register (you can use your placement at anytime afterwards).

Have you ever wondered if you have what it takes to get into advertising?  Are you the cream?  Well you might feel a little sour by the following lame attempts by advertising agencies to be creative and funny, about as funny as comediennes Mel (looks a little like Alien Life Form aka ALF, I have pictured the original so you can make a comparison) and Sue.

Scamp the popular advertising industry blog names and shames three:

Ukranian creative agency Provid see their bottom clenching version of Go West by The Pet Shop Boys at www.provid.com.ua/

An old one by a European office of Mind Share which reminds me of footballers singing an FA Cup song, but not a good song, or a Eurotrash feature.

But the worst has to be a tribute to that icon of advertising David Ogilvy by the agency he created.  It did have me in two minds: was it shameful or just awful?

The question is what are they saying about themselves and what they offer?  Very little, except I really wouldn’t want to do business with such annoying people.  Moreover, creative people that are being silly, not original or creative.

I think PushON’s Number One on The Google shows a bit of humour and gets the message across that they are serious about what they do.

So here be the lesson: It is not using YouTube or any channel that counts, it is how you use that channel.  Enough of my superior lecturing.

Anyway enjoy!

The Culture, Media and Sport select committee has stated that a new industry body should be set up to protect children from harmful content on YouTube.

This misses the point for me.

Firstly, you can find quite horrible content all over the Internet.  So if an under age individual wants to find pornographic, drugs related or Manchester United content, it is there unless blocked.  And even if blocked it can surely be found one way or another.

For me on YouTube it is not the video as much as the comments that need to be looked at.  The countless racist, bigoted, hate filled diatribes are not well policed by YouTube.  And there are links back to the YouTube pages of the authors of the quotes.  Well, if you want to hook up with a neo-Nazi it is not too hard.

Some of the YouTube pages for users are truly shocking and frightening and if in print form in the UK would surely be flagged up and dealt with, or you would hope so.

While “saving the children”, why not just save everyone from individuals exploiting YouTube’s blind spot?