If you haven’t already realized the importance of video content on the web, then now is the time to open your eyes. I think that it’s pretty safe to say that online videos have established an overwhelming presence throughout the web.

ComScore, time and again has stated that more than 80% of the total U.S. Internet audience views online videos throughout the month, and many companies still aren’t tapping into this audience.

ComScore, just recently released statistics that confirm that 183 million people in the U.S watched online videos during the month of May compared to 178 million in April. That’s nearly 84.8 percent of all Internet users in the U.S. According to comScore, YouTube.com achieved record levels of activity in May with an all-time high of 14.6 billion videos viewed. This surpassed their past average of 100 videos per viewer to approximately 101.2 videos per viewer.

Naturally, YouTube remains the dominant player in video, with 43% of online videos being seen on their site. According to YouTube, every minute 24 hours of video are uploaded to their network, and on average, 2 billion videos are being watched a day. The average visitor spends 15 minutes per day on YouTube.

Online videos are a hot trend that doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. This rising popularity has been inspiring a trend for marketers to create and distribute more informative and even viral videos. At this stage ignoring the demand for creating videos could be a great detriment to your businesses. Creating online videos is a great opportunity for companies/brands to become a part of the ever going demand for online videos.

I continue to see articles concerning AOL’s slow implosion in the press.  The latest in the salvo concerns the management at AOL consideration of shedding Bebo.  AOL bought Bebo for $850 million two years ago, while they were still a part of Time Warner Inc.  Bebo was an important piece of their transformation plan in which AOL wanted to move away from being a subscription based service for Internet access to a media business generating ad-supported revenue.  When a business with the resources of a Time Warner makes a billion dollar bet and fails to monetize, one must wonder if they performed the proper vetting process or were they simply following the herd.

This is not the first failure in the firm’s acquisitions; Buy.at was recently jettisoned for $17 million after paying $125 million in 2008 for the dgital ad firm.  Will its instant messaging service ICQ be next?  When will the shareholders demand better stewardship from the leaders making these bets?

The small to medium business (SMB) owner would not survive if they followed the herd at each new fork in the technology path.  SMBs must be better shepherds of their funds than the large public companies that they compete against, if they want to survive and flourish.  So how does a SMB determine when to launch a social media campaign and which platform?  Many variables must be considered such as these outlined in a recent blog post.   When you are ready and have performed your due diligence, give us a call and hear how we can help you to make the correct bet.

YouTube has undergone massive changes in the past few months. One major change is the move toward concentrating on advertisers and partners. YouTube has discovered how to better monetize their site by adding features to help brands, big and small, with their marketing initiatives. In an effort to reach that segment of its users, YouTube launched the YouTube Biz Blog.

YouTube Biz Blog is targeted specifically for partners and advertisers and provides tips, tricks and the latest feature updates. The forum was designed to introduce business opportunities to advertisers and partners.  By showing businesses how to leverage YouTube, the video giant hopes to help businesses engage their audiences more.

There have already been a few blog posts on topics such as the integration with YouTube Brand Channels and Google Analytics, YouTube Partner Program, and Mosaics. Partners also have the option to subscribe to the RSS feed so they are always kept up to date.

With businesses still trying to discover ways to use social media to build brand awareness and boost their bottom lines, the YouTube Biz Blog is another tool in getting helpful ideas designed solely for advertisers and YouTube partners.

In an effort to give their viewing audience what they want or may be looking for, YouTube.com has come out with yet another new homepage layout. This latest round of changes comes just after the recent rumblings that YouTube, in effort to compete directly with Hulu.com, will start showing full feature movies and television shows.

In a recent blog post, YouTube explains that they did this, in part, to make the page(s) easier to navigate. You can also customize your homepage, when logged in, to add or remove specific modules.

Among these big changes are Spotlight Videos, which when displayed, will be more prominent on the homepage. These videos are deemed by YouTube to be the best or most relevant in the video community. In addition, to help display a wider variety of video results, YouTube is now organizing their Most Popular videos by category.

Finally, in order to have the ability to continue growing and testing out different designs, YouTube is finding new ways to get more advertisers on to the site. Recently, they changed the name of these video ads from Sponsored, to Promoted. The cost of advertising remains very low and allows for just about any business to take advantage of the large amount of viewers.

They assure their audience that more changes are soon to come, so stay tuned!