Using The Apprentice as a great example of branded entertainment, she really drove the point home that branded entertainment is everywhere and growing.

She also brought up Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy, which was sponsored by Burger King and an interesting way to brand content in a compelling way for audiences today.

Three principles of Google Branded Entertainment:
1. Destination: Develop the Concept
2. Distribution: Make it Discoverable
3. Accountability: Measure the Results

Alexandra went through each point with more details, talking about how to develop the content, distribute it, and measure the results. She, of course, promoted Google products like YouTube, saying that it would be the best place to put video content, as it is the biggest.

“You need people to be caring about your content.” – Alexandra Levy

The whole speech continued to progress as a pro-Google session, with very little actual content other than “use Google for everything” sales pitch talk. It was frustrating, but also fairly understandable. Google is the largest, but did we need around one half of the session being used to re-enforce that? Probably not.

The content outside of “Google is god”, was really decent though, and was a great reminder of what can be done with branded video entertainment. Reminding people that it isn’t just about display advertisements, logo overlays or other such basic ways to brand content to make money.

My hope from this session is that media businesses here at nextMEDIA realize that sponsoring branded content could be both profitable and fun as I would love to work on, develop and promote sponsored content that worked well both for me and the advertiser’s business.

The introduction by an executive from CBC wasn’t interesting, and it was rather long winded, but it was nice to hear that CBC wants to find a way to do better in online video beyond just their YouTube channels.

They are concerned about copyrighted content and control over it.

Jordan Hoffner took the stage with a fairly strong presence and comes from the Google side of the YouTube/Google merger.

“You have to partner with the media companies.” – Jordan Hoffner

They provide fingerprints to YouTube and then if there is uploaded content that matches the video fingerprint, the content producer then gets to choose: leave it, get advertisements around it, or take it down?

With more and more content going up online, it creates a great revenue footprint for producers, and content owners. They were able to switch from being in a defensive mode, to being able to be proactive and give creators money while still keeping the videos available. Ninety percent of flagged videos are marked as “advertise on”, rather than being taken down or left alone.

They have added YouTube Insight which is like Google Analytics for YouTube that gives great data stats on the type of viewers that are using their videos.

The advertising opportunities for YouTube videos include video overlays, a “video within a video”, as well as display advertisements around videos. A new opportunity has grown as well in the click to buy market. Where you can sell DVD’s, songs, and other products as that industry and need grows.

YouTube is also creating new co-branded initiatives going forward. Like the People Magazine, Be a Red Carpet Reporter Contest where they can grow their brand more than just taking in revenue.

The latest thing YouTube is doing is the full length content. Higher quality player, 16×9 aspect ratio, and secure streaming. They have added in mid-rolls and pre-rolls to the longer format videos. They hope this is a big section of their business going forward.

Can multiple types of content, both random short videos, and full length television shows and movies, survive and co-exist in a profitable way on any single site? YouTube isn’t sure of that yet, but is trying to create a market in where it can.

Great question at the end about YouTube creating content for their site, and the answer was a simple: no. YouTube will not commission content as they would rather focus on search algorithms or promote intellectual property, rather than trying to create successful content themselves. It would also put them in an issue regarding the neutrality of the results on YouTube. They would rather just be a distribution platform.

I have worked for people that are focused on making money online, and they are good at it, but far more people get to the point where they receive a return on their time and energy investment if they aren’t overly focused on the money aspect of running their site.

In fact, most of the successful people that I know gained more fame, money, links and other benefits because of their strong desire to gain attention to themselves.

While gaining attention is getting more difficult online due to people quickly hitting their saturation point with regards to new people, products, services, and companies, there are still ways to stand out from all of the noise and get the attention you are looking for.

One of the hottest trends for gaining attention right now is to run a contest, but many people would probably say that we have passed the apex of attention grabbing through contests, and so it might be time to focus on new and interesting ways to drive attention to yourself.

A mix of techniques is probably the most effective way, but if you come up with something new that works really well, then let me know in the comments below.