Chicago Video Production

YouTube has secretly introduced a brand new streaming video store to their website recently joining iTunes and Netflix in distributing online streaming video at a cost.

YouTube’s rental service, which you can find at Youtube.com/store, still looks to be under construction (perhaps that’s why they didn’t make a big fuss about its initial launch). The pickings are slim right now as the majority of rental offerings include independent films including Precious, The Blair Witch Project and Kids among others. As for TV shows available for rent, unless you’re a big Japanese Anime fan, the isn’t much there either.

The films range in price from $.99 to $3.99 for a newer film. According to Reelseo.com, the viewer has two days to watch the film before it expires.

I find it a bit strange that YouTube has suddenly, and stealthily, decided to offer streaming content at a price since they’ve become the free online video destination. I guess only time will tell if this takes off, but for now color me skeptical.

Time to hand out our weekly Video Professionals Award.

Today, it’s shoe manufacturer NIKE taking the prize. Why NIKE? Because on their main website, they have a special section dedicated entirely to marketing videos. Some are funny, some dramatic – but all of them are excellent clips that focus on marketing NIKE as THE athletic show company.

Take a look at a few at Nike.com including a video on NIKE’s new Air show featuring comedian David Koechner, a field report from the 2010 Winter Olympics in Canada and one on snowboarding. Good stuff. Excellent idea.

At this year’s Superbowl, one commercial that caught the attention of the millions who were watching was the “Parisian Love” ad from Google. Of course, at this point in time, Google probably doesn’t need to market itself as the search engine has become THE search engine as people often use the term “Google” as a verb these days.

Still, the commercial, which you can watch at YouTube right now, was funny, clever and heartwarming all at the same time. Quite a feat for a 30 second spot that only included images of Google searches.

Well now YouTube has created a clever little application on their website which allows anyone to create their own search stories. I’m sure some will be pretty interesting despite the information cut off (YouTube limits the stories to seven keyword entries). After writing the story, the user can also add in their own set or pre-selected YouTube music – most of which really captures the “cute” theme Google’s original had.

Want to create your own search story? Head on over to Youtube.com/searchstories and have a go.

We couldn’t resist making one of our own, so check it out below:

Reelseo.com has some excellent figures from comScore on online video viewership from February 2010.

The biggest news is that Hulu viewers watched 2.4 hours of online video and the site grabbed 3.2% of all videos watched (up .4% from January 2010). Still, the leader in online video viewership is Google who leads the pack with 42.5% of all videos watched, which is up three percent from January 2010.

The Reelseo article also reported more interesting facts, which you can read below:

The top video ad networks in terms of their actual reach delivered were: Joost Video Network (by Adconion Media Group) with 38.3 percent penetration of online video viewers, BBE with 18.3 percent, and BrightRoll Video Network with 18.1 percent.

83.1 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.

132.4 million viewers watched 11.9 billion videos on YouTube.com (89.5 videos per viewer).

The average Hulu viewer watched 23.3 videos, totaling 2.4 hours of video per viewer.

The duration of the average online video was 4.3 minutes.

You can read the full article, which also includes some great numbers on online advertising networks and their potential reach from comScore, at ReelSeo.com right now.