Video Democracy at Work

Recently, I watched an in-flight video done by Delta which featured Bob Mothersbaugh from DEVO and thought this was a good opportunity to talk about how even your most casual of internet viewing affects content production. If you watched the previously mentioned example consider how it works versus your standard in-flight video; honestly which would be a more entertaining five minutes of your time? Short of calling Delta and saying "Hello, love the video, please do more" how can you, the viewer make this a constant or a staple? 

The short and easy answer is watch the hell out of it. And furthermore, watch the whole thing. Nothing I'm going to tell you about how to make a video go viral or effective is new, but for those of you who have never sat in on a meeting where a client needs proof your work IS actually effective this will hopefully make you a bit more mindful about your YouTube rabbit holes.

Every time you watch, like, or share (WLS) something it goes into the metrics and becomes part of the feedback the marketing/advertising company can show to their client. Metrics are simply the ways we measure a variety of things concerning online content. For video we often look at the number of views, how long a viewer watches the video, and it's reach once they've seen it. Google did a really good job of breaking down the core metrics when it comes to a YouTube video (or any online video really) here. These metrics are a big deal when presenting or proposing work; for example, if I wanted to create a show based on a series of videos I did online about video games that no one watched, think about how hard it would be to prove said show could have legs? On the other hand, if a company were bidding on a commercial and reasonably wanted a little bit more than the proposed budget, they could justify this with a track record of online commercials that not only were watched all the way through 89% of the time but whose reach went into the millions.

When watching or browsing through videos please consider some of these things. It's no different than using your dollar to vote, your time is money and that money can be quantified into someone's career and livelihood. Take a moment every now and then and give the things you want to see more of an extra minute to comment on or share them. Miss music videos? Well make sure to watch them online and help beef up their metrics, because if you do then record companies will hire someone like me or one of my friends to make more!

While your mindful viewing is all well and good for someone's career, how does this affect you? Let's jump back to Delta's in-flight video again. Your influence online can simply be broken down to this...