Choose your Youtube ads, online video streaming and Facebook names

I just received IPG’s emerging media lab’s newest newsletter – here are some of the articles I found interesting:

Choose your own ad:

Joining Hulu and other content providers who have decided to let users choose their own ads, YouTube has begun a small ad test. Users will now be offered a choice between watching a “promoted video” before watching the video they want to see or  watching “a few” (up to four) in-stream ads placed in commercial breaks throughout that video. This not only gives users a say in the ad process, but the behavioral data alone will lead  to more accurate targeting efforts when it comes to serving up the right content to the right user profile…a semantic Web approach to advertising. Smart!.

Online video streaming on game consoles:

Video game consoles are increasingly being used to stream online video. According to a recent In-Stat survey, 29 percent of console owners 25 to 34 years old stream Internet video to their consoles. As a general behavior, 40 percent of young adult US households streamed Internet content to their TVs once a month. Considering the recent announcements at E3 by Microsoft, this number may grow at an even quicker rate than expected.

Facebook name:

Did you get your Facebook name? For the few who may have missed the Facebook username rush, usernames are an attempt to make Facebook profiles and pages easily shareable. Facebook custom URLs are certain to rank high in the search engines, so individuals and brands should claim their username NOW. Only brands with 1,000 fans can claim a URL, forcing companies to market their pages to reach that number. Brands can prevent their trademarks from being registered as usernames, by using this form.

Source: www.ipglab.com