What Comes After YouTube?

We’re going to jump into the fray surrounding the evolution of YouTube for advertisers and NBC’s new all the time video site Didja. By the way, don’t get this confused with their still unnamed You-Tube killer with their partner News Corp. NBC is trying to figure out any way to a get a slice of the online video market’s buy and really – they have the best avenue of any of the new video sites (see below) to achieve this. NBC is sitting on a host of advertisers already and will be able to double charge them for placement on this network if it to be a hit. Add that to their plans to sell back user date and information to Madison Avenue and Didja could be a cash cow.

We’re not going to hate on them for trying to make more money. This is America. However, everyone should be skeptical because:

1. We’ve heard nothing about the inclusion of virals like Smirnoff’s Tea Partay or consumer participation. Without these two things any ad site is going to fail. Millions of views watched Ray-Ban’s spots. Part of the joy of watching these ads is that they aren’t on television, they’re a bit of off, quirky which is perfect for the internet generation. Meanwhile, thousands have remixed various brands like the Bravia spots and PS3 ads. What makes watching YouTube fun is the spoof’s and parodies that come from consumer participation. What kind of ads is NBC going to include? No one cares about diaper or aspirin ads. Honestly. Content and participation are going to really matter.

2. YouTube has refrained form selling branded channels where consumers can feel the direct punch of marketing. There’s no way to buy products, get coupons or recipes – all of which Didja is planning on supporting. YouTube still feels like a choice. If you watch a commercial it’s by your own volition. You aren’t being “sold” to.

3. YouTube is an actual community, which means there is also an inherent element of trust. Searching by “most viewed” or “most commented” will bring up the videos that have naturally risen to the top by consensus. If an advertisement happens to be within the top ten, then so be it. If the community has rated a commercial that highly, then it must be worth viewing. With Didja being nothing, but commercials, the site may become a community for ad industry geeks and nothing more.

As noted in several other blogs and papers, they’ve got serious compeition too. There’s TBS’ niche veryfunnyads.com and ad.tv though the latter has lacked in promotional dollars. We’re going to try and be opened minded, but you know… we think that Droga5 or Yahoo’s site might fair better. Droga’s site will be called Honeyshed and it is “celebrating the art of the sell creating episodic content around brand’s. Nothing unusual about that. That’s basically MTV’s model at this point. If the creative is good, they will come. Yahoo meanwhile is establishing “brand universes” to gather consumer-generated content related to 100 popular brands. This is could also work considering that it would be nice to have a warehouse of all the consumer generated content by brand, of course – Youtube just do that by adding a category.

Anyway, we’ll see who sinks and swims this fall.

More: One Ad Exec’s View Of The Future Of Consumer Generated Media

Or, AdAge – Masters Of The Obvious