As more people take greater control of their media-consumption habits, many marketers fear becoming irrelevant. One of the fears involved with online video is its image as a chaotic dumping ground.
ClipBlast! is an online video search engine, so it certainly had a vested interest in commissioning a survey on what people hate about online video from Synovate. The survey asked people to describe the medium with words like "inconsistent," "frustrating" and "funky."
Still, the results are worth seeing, because they provide a look at the pitfalls of online video at a time when most of the view comes through rose-colored glasses.
Respondents said they generally do not like commercials in online video, which means that ads need to be specifically tweaked for the online audience, and by all means they should not be too long.
Most of the other complaints concerned online video organization and the ability to get to the good stuff.
Part of this comes with the territory. eMarketer senior analyst and online video specialist David Hallerman notes that the rise in online video use has meant a loss of control for marketers. "Sometimes people watch consumer-created video on the Internet rather than the networks' ad-supported offerings," said Mr. Hallerman, "or clips of TV shows on sites such as YouTube — but only at their leisure and not on some network's schedule."
The "chaos" and "frustration" online video viewers say they hate is, again, closely linked with the current nature of the medium. Search engines are not the main way people find video online. This is largely because it is inherently difficult to index video content — not because people don't want to use video search engines.
Only 37% of respondents cited in a September 2006 AP/AOL survey said they use a search engine specifically to search for video. Set lists (typically browser bookmarks), word-of-mouth and random chance are more common methods of discovering online video.
As video search becomes more effective over the next several years, it will undoubtedly become a more popular way of finding online video content, creating further opportunities for video advertising.
For a closer look at how online video users connect with content, read eMarketer's Internet Video Audience report.