Video viewership clusterfuck prompts ultimate philosophical question: what is “seeing,” really?
Today’s links are all about ~video viewership.~ At a time when every publication thinks having video content will King Midas the shit out of their revenue, the most pressing concern isn’t really “How creative can we be with VR/Facebook Live/mobile video/whatever,” but “How can we make money off it?”
The obvious choice being, of course, advertising, wherein $$ made depends on the number of video views, which depends on, well, how you define and measure a “view.” Seems simple, but apparently debating the industry standard can get you into some weirdly philosophical implications, i.e. what counts as a "view," when is a video "seen," what is our purpose here on earth, etc.
Some reading:
“Internet Video Views Is A 100 Percent Bullshit Metric,” from Gawker, which sounds about right on all counts.
These new little 6-second ads that YouTube is building for mobile, calling them “little haikus of video” though tbh maybe “brand flashing” might be more accurate.
“Why Digital Video Players Should Stop Comparing Their Viewership to TV,” from Adweek, which also sounds about right because can any of us realllllly compete with the unearthly magnetism of one of USA’s Law & Order marathons?
The fact that 85 percent of Facebook video is watched without sound! So if you are a video publisher and haven’t been doing the whole caption thing, STOP READING THIS and go fix your life.