The YouTube Video Spam Flood is Coming (or is it here)

Posted on January 20, 2008
Filed Under Social Media Marketing, YouTube

It’s time to run down to the nearest electronics store and grab a video camera while they’re still available. Many of the businesses who haven’t been posting videos to YouTube will be jumping on the bandwagon soon.

There were 34 news stories listed on Google news for January 17th and 18th, 2007, stemming from the latest comScore video metrix results that have Google video sites owning over 31% of the online video market. YouTube accounts for a huge portion of that.

Alexa data shows over 18% of Internet users worldwide visit YouTube, while Compete data has YouTube approaching 60 million visitors a month.

Perhaps most importantly, Google, Yahoo!, and some other search engines are starting to give very strong rankings to videos in their natural search results, especially those from YouTube.

All of these things point to one conclusion: the rise of video spam.

Marketing firms are already rushing to market with new products that center around YouTube. Commercials, testimonials, interviews, product demonstrations — if it can somehow be put on a video and marketed to the public, it will be. The industry is lucrative, with some companies asking for thousands of dollars to put videos (supplied by the customer) on YouTube and other video sites. They promise massive exposure and search engine domination.

The only problem (other than the fact that it takes anywhere from a couple of minutes to a few hours to do what it takes to get a video on YouTube and optimized for particular keywords) is that viewers won’t be clicking on them for long. There will be a spattering of interest, especially for useful things like product reviews, but eventually, we’ll go back to looking for extreme video crashes, Family Guy clips, and normal people doing abnormal things.

The effectiveness of the campaigns will pass, but the spam will continue for a while.

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Read more stories about YouTube and other social websites at the soshable homepage.

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Comments

4 Responses to “The YouTube Video Spam Flood is Coming (or is it here)”

fatlester on January 20th, 2008 10:18 pm

YouTube commercials broadcast on other sites have the potential to make web publishing far more profitable. Just because something is a commercial or an advertisement doesn’t mean it’s spam.

Spammers will go away soon enough — spamming can’t be very profitable…
Who is Tom and how did he get so many MySpace friends? | Soshable | Social Media Blog on January 21st, 2008 9:37 am

[…] user data tracking. MySpaceTV has met moderate success, but far below expectations because of YouTube’s momentum. With the portal sites able to focus on their products more feverishly, it appears that MySpace […]
Anonymous on January 30th, 2008 6:25 pm

The YouTube Video Spam Flood is Coming (or is it here)…

(* Source: Soshable.com *) It’s time to run down to the nearest electronics store and grab a video camera while they’re still available. Many of the businesses who haven’t been posting videos to YouTube will be jumpin…
Electronics Store on February 24th, 2008 1:06 pm

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