YouTube Creator Blog: April 2012

Upcoming Live Streamed Google+ Workshops

Friday, April 27, 2012

YouTube Creators Google+ Page

May 2: Introduction to cinematography (add to calendar)

May 9: Importing & Exporting: Dealing with codecs and compressions (add to calendar)

May 16: Building your audience on YouTube (add to calendar)

May 23: Improving your channel with YouTube Analytics (add to calendar)

RSVP here Austin Lau, Creator Programs Specialist, recently watched "Bohemian Rhapsody On The Way To School."

STRskillSchool is April’s YouTube Partner On The Rise!

Thursday, April 26, 2012

STRskillSchoolOn The RisehomepageRonaldinho/Neymar step overknuckle balls and free kickshard flick over your head

My name is Steve Roberts and I am a UEFA qualified football coach. STRskillSchool is me and pretty much all the videos are filmed, edited and performed by myself and I am self taught in film making. I have loved football (soccer!) from a very young age. I always dreamt of being a Pro Footballer but sadly didn't make it. Two years ago I thought I would make tutorials to share with players, as the content I found was incorrect or frustrating to watch. I now have over 100 videos teaching many parts of the game, which players, coaches and parents can enjoy. I have been so overwhelmed from the worldwide support shown on my Youtube channel. I would like to thank everyone who has supported me in the past and thank you those who rallied round to help with the voting. My fans are the people who keep me motivated to create new fresh content. There are lots of new videos to come from me, so please subscribe and see what the future has to offer! Thanks again! On The Rise channelChristine Wang and Devon Storbeck, YouTube Content Partnerships, recently watched “Birth to 12 years in 2 min. 45 sec. Time Lapse Lotte.”

Helping creators play big on YouTube

Monday, April 23, 2012

Stacy Perry has been a knitter for over 35 years and taught local classes in Austin, Texas. She found a way to turn her hobby into a full-time job when she began posting instructional videos on YouTube two years ago. Now, she has built Verypink.com into a successful business by tapping into a global classroom on YouTube. You might come across some of her students in places as far as Greece, Turkey, Thailand, and India — to name a few.

With more than 800 million unique visitors on YouTube every month, one video can launch your career - whether you’re an entrepreneur, musician, or a filmmaker. And by promoting your videos with video ads you can increase views and reach a broader audience that’s searching for similar content.

To help even more businesses and creators play big with video, today we’re introducing a number of new products, resources, and tools to make it even easier for you to stand out from the crowd:

Google AdWords for video now available to all. Similar to search advertising - where you pay for clicks and set budgets with bids - we created a new model for video advertising. With Google AdWords for video, you only pay when someone chooses to watch your ad and you can create and manage video campaigns from the same platform as your search and display ads. You can create an account and start promoting your first video in less than 5 minutes. With AdWords for video you can:

Find the right audience: AdWords for video provides a range of options to reach the right audience. For example, you can promote your video by keyword to appear in YouTube search results, or you can choose to show your ad against content your customers are most interested in - such as sports or music. Connect with your audience on YouTube and the Google Display Network, which includes millions of websites. AdWords for video links to your YouTube account so you can easily start a video campaign with your existing videos.

Measure the effectiveness of your spend: On average, we’ve found that YouTube video ads drive a 20 percent increase in traffic to your website and a 5 percent increase in searches for your business (Google Campaign Insights, 2011). With AdWords for video you can find out how viewers are engaging with your brand during and after they watch your ad. You can see how many viewers watched your entire video, visited your website, stayed on your channel to watch another video, or subscribed to your channel, after viewing your ad.

Only pay for engaged views: With TrueView video ads you only pay when viewers choose to watch your ad so you aren’t charged when viewers skip your ad if they aren’t interested or have already seen your video. This means your ad budget is focused on viewers interested in your video. By displaying a call-to-action overlay on your video you can talk about a sale or specific offer to your viewers, share more information about your business, or drive traffic to your website.

$50 million in free advertising. We’re giving away $50 million in free Google AdWords advertising to help more than 500,000 businesses and creators get into video. If you are new to AdWords, you can receive a $75 credit when you sign up. To put that into context, with $75 your video campaign can reach more than 1,500 of your most valuable viewers on YouTube for one month. Request your free credit here.Advertiser Playbook and support. To share best practices and tips on how video can be a core part of your business toolkit, we created a YouTube Advertiser Playbook. The Playbook covers everything from creating interesting content to promoting your video with ads. If you need help making a video (which you probably don’t), our My Business Story is a free tool you can use to create your first video. AdWords advertisers can also call our free phone support line, 866-2-GOOGLE, to get started with AdWords for video. YouTube Ambassador program. To recognize business owners that are already using YouTube to grow their business, we’re naming 9 businesses from across the country to our first ever YouTube Ambassador program. These businesses have seen outstanding success in reaching new customers, building a brand, and engaging their fans with video. Hear their stories and learn more about the YouTube Ambassador program on the Official Google Blog.If you have a video you want to promote, get started with AdWords for video. And, join our YouTube for Marketers page on Google+ to stay up-to-date on our latest video marketing innovations.Baljeet Singh, Group Product Manager, YouTube

New Upload Page & Metadata Editor for Partners

Thursday, April 19, 2012

We want to make uploading and publishing as fast and easy as possible for you. So, we’ve got a round of updates that will be made available over the next few days that make key parts of the process more efficient: configuring monetization and choosing custom thumbnails on the upload page, and improved metadata editing.

Configure monetization settings: The new upload interface features a Monetization (or Claiming Options) tab where you can select monetization settings while you upload. Click the “?” icons to learn more about the different options available. Basically, more monetizing, less scrolling and clicking.

Custom thumbnail uploads: Lots of you have been asking for custom thumbnail uploads directly on the upload page. If you have this feature, you can now upload a custom thumbnail after the video reaches the processing stage. This means less waiting, clicking, and general hassle to get your custom thumbnail image ready to go before your video is published.

Metadata, meta-easy: The metadata editor you have in the upload process is also available in the Video Manager. To access and edit these settings after your upload is complete, go to the Video Manager and click the Edit icon next to the video.

This will direct you to the new metadata editor page. Here you can adjust settings you made to your video during the upload process, such as change monetization settings or publish a private video by changing it to public.

If you have any ideas about how we could improve the experience, drop us a line through the feedback link at the bottom of the page, and we’ll continue to roll out new features for this interface in the coming weeks.

Give it a try right now, or read our help guide and watch this overview video to learn more.

Johannes Leitner & Ben Bernard, Software Engineers, recently watched "Cool Sound and Water Experiment!"

Upcoming YouTube Creator Education events in Los Angeles

Thursday, April 19, 2012

ANNOUNCEMENT:visit this websiteUPCOMING EVENTS in LOS ANGELES:5/8 at 7PM-10PM - YouTube/Tubefilter Panel DiscussionSh*t People Say: Formula For SuccessSign up HERE to apply to attend.Date/TimeLocationAgenda

7:00 Doors Open

7:30 Screening and Panel

8:30 Networking Mixer

Panelists

Billy SorrellsSh*t Black Girls Say

Tripp and TylerSh*t Nobody Says

The Trashy ClassSh*t People Say in LA

Shit Girlfriends SaySh*t Girlfriends SayTubefilterStreamy Awards5/15 at 7PM - Making Webisodes 101 WorkshophereAnd for those of you not in Los Angeles, stay tuned for more workshops that will be livestreamed over Google + Hangouts!!

Video Editing presents: Audio Editing

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Your video’s soundtrack can be just as important as its visuals. Let’s face it: as cute as your kitten’s antics are, as amazing as your Little Leaguer’s home run, as radical as your buddy’s skateboard stunts, the ambient sounds captured with many videos leave something to be desired.

We introduced AudioSwap to let you replace a video’s soundtrack for free with a song from our library of thousands of tracks. With more of you using AudioSwap and giving us lots of feedback, we have some cool improvements to share today in YouTube Audio Editing:

You asked for more tracks, and our library of songs now includes more than 150,000 tracks--and growing!

You can now mix music into your video’s soundtrack at levels ranging from “soft background” to “completely replace.”

Our “featured tracks” make it easy to find the best songs across genres for a variety of moods.

We’ve revamped the Audio Editing user interface to make it easier to use. Here’s a look:

These improvements will be available over the next day to all creators around the world. To try it out, go to Video Manager > Edit > Enhancements > Audio. Here’s a little video demonstration:

These are only the first in a series of exciting improvements we have planned for Audio Editing. Stay tuned for more updates (and tunes!), and in the meantime use some music to start turning your videos into YouTube gold!

Bob Glickstein, Software Engineer, recently watched “Skate 3 funny stuff compilation part 1” and laughed himself right out of his chair.

Last Day! Apply for YouTube Next Vlogger

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Today is the last day to apply for YouTube Next Vlogger. Get your application in by tonight at 11:59PM PST here.
Participants earn:

Promotion: Receive more than $10,000 of on and off-YouTube promotion to build your subscribers and increase your views.

Training & Equipment: Learn new skills through Google+ Hangout workshops and receive a $5,000 video equipment package.

Mentoring: Be mentored by YouTube star vloggers like iJustine and other industry leaders.

Posted by Bing Chen & Austin Lau, Global Creator Initiatives Managers

Using annotations to help fund your creative projects

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Over the past year, crowdsourced fundraising has exploded as great way to raise money for creative projects. We’ve seen lots of you using platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo to fund projects, and we want to make it easier for even more of you to use these tools. We’ve teamed up with these platforms so you can now link directly to project pages on Kickstarter or Indiegogo through annotations.
We’ve been inspired by creators who have funded projects through these platforms, like Freddie Wong’s Video Game High School and James Rolfe’s Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie, and we hope this helps many more of you launch the projects you’ve been dreaming about. To use the feature, go to your Video Manager, click “Edit” and select Annotations. You’ll see the following screen, with an option to link to any existing Kickstarter or Indiegogo project page:

Some creators are already using the new annotations feature to help fund their latest projects, and here’s what it looks like:You can find more information on annotations here, and in our help center. For even more fundraising goodness, we have a page on Kickstarter highlighting some projects to check out, and if you’re interested in being considered for the page, you can share your project with us on this form.Andy Stack, product manager, recently watched “Visiting the Abyss” and “Push to add drama!”

Showing viewers more relevant ads

Monday, April 16, 2012

[Update: This blog post was updated at 3:00AM PST on 4/18. Default ad settings and smarter ad serving will now be available 4/19]

Last year we introduced a new type of ad format that gave viewers choice over the ads they watched. These ads allow users to skip an ad after 5 seconds and are called TrueView in-stream video ads. We believed that giving viewers choice over ads they watch would lead to a better, more engaged viewing experience—benefiting the entire YouTube community of users, partners and advertisers.

Over the past year, TrueView ads have been one of our fastest growing ad formats on YouTube and now 60 percent of all in-stream ads are skippable. Our research shows that 9 out of 10 consumers prefer ads they can skip, and we’ve seen that TrueView ads benefit you as a content creator too:

More revenue: TrueView in-stream ads tend to earn equal to or higher revenue than standard in-stream ads
Viewers staying longer: TrueView in-stream ads reduced audience drop-off by 40% when compared to regular in-stream ads
More advertisers: TrueView in-stream represents the majority of all in-stream ads and will allow you to access to a broader base of advertisers

Since we’ve seen such positive results we’re rolling out a series of changes that will help you more fully leverage the benefits of TrueView in-stream video ads:

Changes to default ad settings
Starting Thursday, April 19, we’re introducing an easier way to control how ads appear on your content by allowing you to set default ad settings for all newly uploaded videos. Due to the benefits of TrueView in-stream, it will now be a default ad format, in addition to overlay ads. However, if this doesn’t work for you, you can adjust the settings at any time. Learn more with this help center article.

Introducing a new analytics report
To find which ads work best for you, we recently launched a new report in YouTube Analytics to help you compare ad performance. Within this report, you will be able to easily see the gross revenue and the CPMs (cost per thousand impressions - the price an advertiser paid for the ad) by ad type and across countries! This information can be used be used to ensure the best ad format is being displayed for you and your viewers. You can go the help center page to learn more.

Smarter ad serving
Also starting on Thursday, April 19, we’ll begin taking a more intelligent approach to how we serve in-stream ads and will no longer have a seven-minute frequency cap. Now, when showing in-stream ads, we’ll use a number of signals, such as content type and how a user discovered your video, to dynamically determine when is the best time to show ads.

Our research shows this should maximize long-term viewership and revenue by placing ads in front of users at the best possible time. While this change will benefit most partners, some may experience a reduction in their in-stream revenue—so it’s important to monitor your ad performance report to find the formats that work best for you. You can learn more about this change in the help center.

We encourage you to view the help pages above and the ads help center page, so you can be fully informed about the impact of these changes.

Steve Stukenborg & Phil Farhi, Product Managers, recently watched “Ultimate Cat Tease”

Being a YouTube Creator Just Got Even More Rewarding

Thursday, April 12, 2012

[Update: This blog post was updated at 6:39PM PST on 4/12. Please read more below.]
Some videos reach millions of viewers, while others satisfy the appetite of a precise, yet passionate audience. Whether you want to become a global pop star, create the Ultimate Frisbee Channel, teach math to students around the world, or publicly muse on your daily life, you can do it on YouTube. Partners are already producing videos that draw large and loyal audiences while building careers for themselves. But we know that there are many more creators out there with talents to share, and we want to empower them to achieve their goals, whatever they may be.
So starting today, we are updating partner eligibility across 20 countries (listed below) where the YouTube Partner Program has launched. YouTube uploaders in these countries can become YouTube partners by enabling their YouTube accounts, and successfully monetizing at least one of their videos. You can start your journey as a YouTube partner by reviewing the terms and opting in your account here. Read here for more information.
This change will be in effect today in the countries listed below, and we’ll work to make it more broadly available in countries where the YouTube Partner Program has launched:

Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States

Your journey as a YouTube partner is what you make of it. Whether you’re aiming to score your next million subscribers or just want to learn about the best times to upload videos, there are resources tailored to your needs.
To help you unlock your creativity and further develop your skills, there’s:

Next Vlogger: A few weeks ago, we asked you which category we should choose for our NextUp program. You overwhelmingly selected YouTube Next Vlogger. Participants will receive one on one training from YouTube stars and industry leaders like iJustine, video equipment valued at $5,000, and global promotion on and off the YouTube. Apply by April 18.

Creator Clubs: Sign up for a Creator Club to network and collaborate with other creators in your area. And stay tuned for Partner Meetups to learn new skills directly from YouTube staff and experts.

YouTube Features: Whether you’re looking to improve your production quality or trying to create fun videos, you can use YouTube’s growing toolset to make videos the world will love.

To help you grow larger and more engaged audiences, there’s:

Partner Promotion: Certain creators who were partners prior to April 10th may be eligible to receive free advertising on the Google Display Network—websites that cover more than 92 percent of the Internet. Learn more in the Creator Hub. We hope to extend this feature to additional partners over time.

Creator Playbook 2: The YouTube Creator Playbook 2 is the latest version of the definitive YouTube audience development guide. Find it at youtube.com/playbook.

Creators On the Rise: The On the Rise Program offers high potential up-and-coming partners with homepage, editorial and social media promotion. Look out for opportunities to participate every month.

[Update] We're excited to provide more creators with the opportunity to become partners and have access to programs and resources to help them be successful on YouTube. These programs will be tailored to partners based on their specific needs. We also recognize that custom thumbnails and banners are sought-after features by many creators. We are working on making these and other features available to more newly-made partners over time, like we have done with long uploads and monetization.
You can stay on top of all creator news at the Creator Hub (youtube.com/creators). To help you better discover new opportunities, all partner initiatives will be identified with the new gold play icon. The icon symbolizes the heart of YouTube: you and your content.
If you’re willing to work hard and create videos that entertain, inspire, educate and amaze, then you can find success on YouTube. Whether you’re a novice or a mogul, we’re committed to helping you meet your goals as a YouTube partner.
The YouTube Team

A Universal Language for Video Ads

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Like many New Yorkers, I can’t imagine life in this city without the subway - it’s essential to how the city operates, creates millions in economic value, and even features great mariachi bands. But the subway wasn’t always this efficient. In the early 1900s, there were multiple subway systems, with different size train cars, running on different track configurations - even one propelled by air! Today, after the unification of these subway systems, everything works seamlessly together.
So what does the subway system have to do with video advertising? Well, the two dominant video advertising guidelines -- VAST and VPAID -- are like the unified transportation system for video advertising. VAST and VPAID define a common language that unifies the diversity of the video advertising industry: Flash and HTML video players, ad networks and exchanges, mobile devices and connected TVs, 30 second spots and interactive overlays.

At Google, we’ve been longtime supporters of video advertising standards. We’re happy to announce our support for the latest set of guidelines announced at the IAB’s Digital Video Marketplace Event today. This means that we’ll be implementing VAST 3.0, VPAID 2.0 and VMAP 1.0 across our video advertising products. Together, these three guidelines strengthen the video advertising infrastructure already adopted by most participants in the video ecosystem. The Video Suite also adds support for skippable ads, podding, in-ads privacy notices and ad sequencing, while offering greater clarity around compliance and mobile scenarios.

What benefits can you expect from VAST 3.0, VPAID 2.0 and VMAP 1.0?

If you’re a publisher, interoperability will improve and you’ll be able to accept a wider set of video ad formats with less technical work. The new error codes will also help with troubleshooting of third party served ads.

If you’re an advertiser, the Video Suite allows you to create more engaging brand stories that reach a wider audience across all devices. You’ll be able to take greater advantage of skippable ads, which offer new pricing models focused on performance.

If you’re a vendor, the technical details of these specs really matter, and we’ve provided much more clarity around the compliance requirements for video players and ad servers.

So much has changed in the online video space in just ten years, that we thought we’d take a trip down memory line with this infographic:

Click through for the full infographic

As an industry, we’ve started to take VAST and VPAID for granted, much like New Yorkers and their subway system. That’s a good thing, because it means they’ve become an essential part of powering our economy.

Posted by Payam Shodjai, Product Manager, Video Monetization

Last Week! Apply now to YouTube Next Vlogger!

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

A few weeks ago, we announced a new program to help find the next superstar vloggers.
Applicants have one more week to apply to become one of sixteen promising vloggers to take part in three months of intimate educational workshops held on Google+ Hangouts. Each vlogger will receive $5,000 worth of video equipment and more than $10,000 worth of promotion on and off YouTube. Participants will also receive mentoring from industry experts, such as iJustine, one of the most successful vloggers and content creators on YouTube! YouTube creators from Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States are eligible. If previous Next Creator participants are any indication, the Next Vloggers will be an incredibly talented and engaging group. We can’t wait to introduce them to you on April 30, but they need to apply first!

Vlog on!

Austin Lau & Bing Chen, Global YouTube Creator Program Managers

Celebrating YouTube Live’s first birthday

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

To celebrate the first birthday of YouTube Live, we went through the normal birthday thought process: rent a bouncy castle or bring in the magicians. Neither of these seemed just right to celebrate the millions of you who’ve seen live videos, so we went with our favorite gifts: new features from our tireless engineers.

If you have YouTube Live, here’s what you’ll see:

Wirecast for YouTube Live: This new software is free for YouTube partners and allows you to produce and stream professional-looking live events directly to YouTube from your desktop. It allows capture and switching between multiple video and audio sources, roll in of media files and images and add live effects and overlays. If you’re enabled for livestreaming, you’ll see a link to download Wirecast for YouTube in your YouTube account.

New publishing flows and real time analytics: You now have a guided flow to set up and preview live events before you go live. You can also see real time access to data like playbacks and concurrent viewers of your live streams by geography and format.

Monetize live streams: You can now monetize your live events with advertising or paid options. A live event can be claimed in the new video manager like any other video and monetized with instream ads or paid options where you can set price by country. You can see more details on this in our Help Center on ads and paid livestreaming sections.

If you’re one of the many people who’ve asked for YouTube Live but don’t have access yet, we want to thank you very much for your patience. We’ve developed these features with the expectation many more of you will eventually use YouTube Live, and like we said last year, this process takes time to roll out broadly.

Learn more about YouTube Live in the Help Center and check out youtube.com/live for everything happening right now.

Varun Talwar, YouTube partner product manager, is getting ready to watch “Americas Cup” live tomorrow!

Creator Blog

Upcoming Live Streamed Google+ Workshops

STRskillSchool is April’s YouTube Partner On The Rise!

Helping creators play big on YouTube

New Upload Page & Metadata Editor for Partners

Upcoming YouTube Creator Education events in Los Angeles

Video Editing presents: Audio Editing

Last Day! Apply for YouTube Next Vlogger

Using annotations to help fund your creative projects

Showing viewers more relevant ads

Being a YouTube Creator Just Got Even More Rewarding

A Universal Language for Video Ads

Last Week! Apply now to YouTube Next Vlogger!

Celebrating YouTube Live’s first birthday

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