We’ve had a lot of famous folks sit down for interviews in the past year, like President Obama, Shakira and Katy Perry, but our next subject, with his tony address and instant name recognition, may have celebrity status that tops all the rest.
Through a partnership with Sesame Street, Elmo will answer your burning questions right here on YouTube. So, moms and dads, if your family has ever wondered, “How exactly do you get, do you get, to Sesame Street?” or whether Oscar’s really as grouchy as he seems, here’s your chance to ask. More details from Elmo himself here:
And if you need some extra inspiration thinking up questions, take a spin through some of these Elmo classics:
Upload your video question to the Moderator gadget on Sesame Street’s YouTube channel and vote on the ones you think Elmo should answer by September 15. He’ll answer the top-voted ones in a few weeks.
On July 24, people around the world made history by capturing glimpses of their lives on camera and submitting the videos to Life in a Day, an experiment to create a documentary about a single day on Earth. In total, 80,000 videos were submitted from 197 countries, making this the world's largest user-generated film. Now, you can explore many of these videos in the gallery on the Life in a Day channel .
To make browsing easy, you can sort videos by geography, time of day, mood and more. The film's Academy Award-winning director, Kevin Macdonald, and his team are adding more videos to the Life in a Day gallery as they are reviewed, so check back soon for more content. You'll also find updates from Macdonald and editor Joe Walker as they lead a team of researchers in reviewing and cutting the footage down to the final feature-length film. Remember to subscribe to the channel for more news on the film's progress as Kevin and producer Ridley Scott gear up for the world premiere in January at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.
Congratulations again to all of the participants. Thanks for making history.
This post is part of our "BizBlog Series", which was formerly its own blog. Check back each week to see articles for partners and advertisers on YouTube, or search under the label, "BizBlog".
In this election season, we've been working with political campaigns to understand how best to take advantage of what YouTube has to offer on a free and paid basis for getting their message out. Recently, we hosted a webcast to provide some tips to candidates running for office and advocacy groups campaigning for ballot issues on ways to present your candidate or your issue and engage with your constituents on YouTube. Did you miss it? No problem, we boil it down to 5 key tips for you here:
Tip #1: Search for your candidate or issue on YouTube. What did you find? With 2 billion video views per day, YouTube is the second-largest search engine after Google. You most likely have a search engine strategy for the top search engines - is YouTube included in that plan? If not, what are the top results - is it your opponent’s message or is it one that frames your message in a positive light?
Tip #2: Master your destiny on YouTube. Set a destination for your candidate or issue by signing up for a politician channel. It’s free and enables you to present your candidate or issue using video. Most importantly, it allows voters to find out more information about your campaign and can connect you to on-going efforts (volunteering, donations, or voter information).
Check out the channels for Jerry Brown and Carly Fiorina as examples of candidates running in California.
Tip #3: Consider paid advertising on YouTube. YouTube offers various cost-effective ad formats to help amplify what you may already be doing with other media. Promote your video as a Promoted Video against search results and related videos. Extend your TV ad assets with InStream Ads on YouTube, which we covered last week. Raise broad awareness with a homepage masthead ad or a one-day mobile roadblock. Included with YouTube advertising is free reporting on how your video ads are performing so that you can fine-tune your message and placement.
Tip #4: Engage in conversation with your constituents. Use free tools such as YouTube Moderator and video responses to start your dialogue. You can ask viewers to vote on topics they would like you to address. You can also hold weekly “chats” or an online “town hall” to directly answer their questions posed via YouTube Moderator or video responses.
For example, Texas gubernatorial candidate Bill White recently used Moderator to collect supporter feedback on curriculum standards.
Tip #5: Consult www.youtube.com/youchoose for more information. This site lists the resources described above and more. Use it to decide which tools work best for your campaign objective and budget. Whatever your issue or whomever your candidate, YouTube has an audience waiting to engage with you.
President Obama set a deadline of August 31, 2010 for ending the combat operation in Iraq and shrinking the U.S. footprint there to no more than 50,000 troops. Tonight, at 8 P.M. ET, the President will address the country from the Oval Office about the status of this effort. You can tune into a live-stream of the speech on YouTube at www.youtube.com/whitehouse -- where you’ll also be able to ask the White House follow-up questions on the future of American involvement in Iraq in a special Moderator series. Click here to submit your question now.
If you miss the live address and the Q & A, tune in to Citizentube afterwards where we’ll feature the President’s remarks, the Q & A, and the Republican response to the Administration’s plan in Iraq.
This post is part of the “BizBlog Series,” which was formally its own blog. Check back each week to see articles about partners and advertisers on YouTube, or search under the label 'BizBlog'.
We’re constantly working to give advertisers control and flexibility over their YouTube campaigns. We place great value on this because ads are an extension of what a company represents as a business, and we want YouTube to be a place where that reputation and image can flourish.
To that end, we’ve been rolling out features to keep advertisers in control of their campaigns. We announced one such example last week, when we launched a feature that gives select advertisers the ability to voluntarily age-restrict their videos. But there’s more work to do.
To date, we’ve given advertisers the ability to pick and choose individual videos on YouTube to target using our Video Targeting Tool. But one of the most frequently requested features we’ve heard from advertisers is the ability to exclude individual videos and channels from the campaigns they run on our site. Today, we’re excited to announce video and channel exclusions, a way for advertisers to pick specific YouTube videos and channel URLs that they don’t want their ads to appear on.
Here’s an example: let’s say you run a vegan bakery. You want to strike a balance between good exposure for your baked goods online, while staying true to your company values in offering items free of animal or dairy-products. Now you can indicate which videos are not the best fit for your audience. Since your customers are probably not watching "Homewrecker Hot Dog," you can provide this video exclusion under the "Networks" tab.
Similarly, you might run a keyword-targeted campaign on bakery-related keywords and exclude whole channels that you don’t feel suit your audience. So if FoodNetworkTV has videos centered mostly around cooking meat dishes, you have the controls to prevent ads from showing on that channel and specific videos.
Alternatively, if your ads are appearing on a video that has content you deem inappropriate for your audience, or perhaps isn’t performing in terms of click-through rate or conversions, you can optimize your campaign by using this new feature to exclude it.
Google has also been investing significantly in ensuring brand safety, transparency and control for advertisers across the Google Display Network. We’re hoping that these added layers of control will make your campaign targeting even more precise. Keep sending us your feedback so we can make future product improvements.
Five years ago today, Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Gulf Coast region, crashing through the levees that held the waters of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet at bay from the city of New Orleans. Overnight, 80 percent of New Orleans was submerged. To this day, only a fraction of residents in the hardest hit areas, like the Lower Ninth Ward, have returned to their homes.
Today, in partnership with ABC 26 (WGNO), a local television station in New Orleans, we commemorate the anniversary of Katrina with a selection of videos on our homepage from New Orleans residents.
Some videos showed how much work is left to be done, like this one from the Ninth Ward, narrated by a resident returning home to survey the damage five years later:
Others discovered relics left behind but not forgotten:
And some chose to honor their city and its resilient spirit through song:
If you lived through Hurricane Katrina, we still welcome your reflections. Please submit your videos using YouTube Direct on ABC 26’s website. A selection of videos will also be featured on abc26.com, ABC 26’s YouTube channel, and broadcast on ABC 26 (WGNO).
For our second cross-post from the Guggenheim’s The Take blog, inspired by YouTube Play. A Biennial of Creative Video, Jaime Davidovich pontificates on YouTube as “public access gone ballistic” and how the 21st century artist might deal with the site’s cacophony of image and sound.
Davidovich was one of the first artists to recognize cable television for its potential for contemporary art, producing The Live! Show, a weekly public-access television program that featured avant-garde performances, artwork, political satire and social commentary. He’s currently working on pieces for his YouTube channel, as well as “video paintings,” or video images projected onto a gestural painting surface. You can read his original article here.
In his recent book Feedback: Television Against Democracy (2007), David Joselit challenges artists with a manifesto that echoes a sentiment common among us: "How is your image going to circulate? Use the resources of the 'art world' as a base of operations, but don't remain there. Use images to build publics."
I have been practicing Joselit's principle since 1976, putting art into the public arena through public-access television. One of my first programs was The Live! Show, a satirical variety show about the art world, which ran from 1979 to 1984 on New York cable television.
In the series I appeared as Dr. Videovich, my alter ego, interviewing artists such as Eric Bogosian, Tony Oursler, and Martha Wilson, as well as Marcia Tucker, founder of the New Museum, and the present-day director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, Richard Armstrong. The idea of The Live! Show was to showcase art on a popular medium — TV — allowing people to watch these works in the comfort of their homes.
Continuing the first-come, first-serve spirit of public-access TV, YouTube, with the tagline "Broadcast Yourself," is the current medium for circulating art outside the pristine walls of the art gallery. YouTube is public access gone ballistic — an anarchist brain on steroids. While public-access television was one channel at a time, YouTube features dozens of channels at the same time, and they are not listed anywhere, but found by user searching. And while public-access television was low tech and a 30-minute format, YouTube is all tech and features short clips with a maximum length of 15 minutes. I currently have a work on YouTube that is a close-up video of a delete key with audio accompaniment. The concept of this piece is to provide a break in the cacophonous overload of YouTube images and sound.
I am a conflictivist, an artist who explores the conflict between high and low culture. The artist of the 21st century cannot live solely in the art world or the “real world.” Rather, he or she should commute between the two.
How should artists today deal with new forms and media? Please comment below (note comments are moderated due to spam) or directly on The Take.
Posts
