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Predictive Analytics Can Uncover Opportunity

According to Jupiter Research, as YouTube struggles to find a polite way to shove paid product and service ads in front of their myriad videos, advertisers could be missing some extremely desirable niche consumer audience targeting.

The New York Times wrote about a pilot TV show called "Nobody's Watching" which didn't make it to prime time, but did find its way to YouTube. In a few weeks, viewers had passed the word around that the show was worth watching, and soon it shot to the top of the YouTube list. By now 300,000 people have downloaded it.

So of course, the TV executives are now rethinking their earlier decision to ax the program. YouTube missed a big opportunity to advertise on the pilot. If nothing else, this group of 300,000 can be called influencers. If they can spread the word so quickly about a TV show, surely a sponsor would also have benefited from some viral word of mouth.

YouTube's challenge in this process is determining which clips are going to make it and are worth the big investment. Jupiter believes that they need to put together a group of consultants or editors to guide advertisers through the mass of video content, and pick out the 'good stuff.' Relying on remnant CPMs is no way to go if you're in the business of producing future national hits.

I would add that utilizing predictive analytics would enable YouTube (and their peer group) to better guide CPG companies and their retailers to gain that much needed strategic foresight into where consumer interest was trending within the marketplace. Again, this is the substantive potential of online marketing -- meaningful metrics, being accurately measured, producing validated insights.

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