Advertising on WorldTV / Google Adsense
The launch of our new advertising platform in December was a great success. More than 400 of our users have now inputted their own Google Adsense code into their channels, allowing them to earn money from their channels, wherever they are in the world. Reaction from our users has been universally positive.
Our goal has always been to create an innovative platform that empowers anyone to easily become a video publisher and earn money from their creations if they wish – hence the name for the system WorldTV Empower™.
Regrettably, a number of channels on WorldTV which carry advertising have been deemed by Google to not be in compliance with Google Adsense Policies – these are policies which specify the kind of content that may not have advertising carried against it. Examples of content that is not allowed include alcohol, excessive profanity, copyrighted content, gambling and adult themed content.
With over 100,000 channels on WorldTV it is not possible for us to monitor every channel by hand. For this reason we have spent considerable time and resources developing an automated system that actively scans and disables advertising on channels which may be in violation of Google Adsense Policies. This system attempts to replicate Google’s own automated system for flagging inappropriate content, and has been in place since the ad platform launched on Dec 8th.
The system is backed up by a manual system which allows us to disable advertising on channels that we become aware of, or which we are notified about, as having inappropriate content for Google Adsense, and which can further train the automated system to make it better.
Despite these efforts, we were notified yesterday by Google that there are channels on WorldTV showing advertising which are not in compliance with their guidelines – specifically channels with copyrighted content. As a result, Google has disabled ad serving to WorldTV and we have disabled the ad platform on our end.
We are attempting to work through these issues with Google and hope we can find a satisfactory resolution. We remain committed to providing progressive and innovative options for all our users and welcome your comments, thoughts and input.
Read MoreWorldTV on Techcrunch France and USA
Our recent news announcement about the new EPG feature was cross-posted to Techcrunch.com on Friday and earned a separate review on Techcrunch France.
We have many loyal users in France and some 2,000 French channels. A translation of the Techcrunch FR article is below and we’re grateful to Alain Eskenazi for his ongoing coverage.
“WorldTV is on a roll. We last wrote about WorldTV a few months ago, the service that allows you to aggregate videos from different platforms like Google Video, YouTube, Metacafe, MySpace and AOL, and create your own TV channel. The long-term goal of WorldTV is to cross the divide in future to web browsers on WiFi enabled TV sets and games consoles.
With this in mind, WorldTV this week launched an EPG feature that lets you view the programs of other channels without having to navigate elsewhere (more on EPG’s here), making the user experience close to that encountered on cable, for example.
WorldTV also launched an advertising platform in early December; allowing producers to monetize their channels inserting their Google Adsense code. All details (in French) on this new platform here.
The concept of WorldTV goes a little against the current trend of traditional video sharing platforms, yet WorldTV is having some success; Alx Klive, the CEO of WorldTV reveals that more than 100,000 channels have already been established on the platform by 70,000 users from 190 countries including over 2,000 in France. The site claims 600,000 monthly visitors. The company has recently reduced the number of employees and spending by 50% to achieve break even.”
Read MorePopular Italian technology site gives WorldTV the thumbs up
Italia SW is a popular Italian technology site and revisited WorldTV for a review following the launch of our recent EPG feature. A translation of the article is below…
“Remember WorldTV? WorldTV is an aggregator of video clips found on YouTube, Google Video, Metacafe, MySpace and AOL. Compared to the hundreds of other Video Aggregators found on the Internet WorldTV has proven to be an innovative product, because anyone can create their own custom channel inserting links to favorite videos, all hosted on a video sharing portal.
YouTube is embracing HD video (YouTube has been testing HD video for months) and WorldTV is innovating as well by launching new features.
When we last reviewed WorldTV on Italy SW, WorldTV was a small startup, but now it has over 100,000 channels and also 600,000 users each month. Comparing the numbers of WorldTV to those of these other startups, people might snigger, but this is a victory because this site does not host any videos. Videos are streamed from the main video sharing and embedding sites.
What’s new at WorldTV? The first thing to tell you about is the new player – where a new sidebar is located on the left for the scrolling of videos. The sidebar provides a user experience similar to that of browsing the channels on a Web TV station, but it is individual video clips presented in a specific order or random. Also new on WorldTV is a sidebar on the right – a random list of stations determined using geo-location. This means that we have a high probability of finding stations created by users of our own nationality.
WorldTV is a Web Application to try because we are not just limited to video input, but we can also record broadcasts from our webcam. The most advanced technology is that you can also broadcast programs from your phone, in which case you will need an account on qik.com.”
Read MoreWorldTV picked as Top 100 site by the Guardian
In its first update to the list in two years, the UK’s Guardian newspaper has picked WorldTV.com as a Top 100 site in the World for 2009. Right alongside the BBC’s iPlayer, YouTube, Joost and Vimeo.
We’re proud and just a little humbled to be in such prestigious company, and are very grateful to the Guardian for their inclusion.
Read MoreWorldTV’s EPG feature on Techcrunch UK
Mike Butcher of Techcrunch UK has written an excellent article on WorldTV’s new EPG feature.
In it he says…
“In some sense WorldTV is going up against other user-generated video sites like YouTube, Magnify.net and Kyte.tv. But the difference is that this has been built from the ground-up to actually work on a TV… The experience is much closer to a TV one and that’s important.”
Mike is a sterling advocate of the UK and Irish based startup scene and doing a steller job. See him in full Santa garb as master of ceremonies at the recent Techcrunch Talk / Xmas party just a few nights ago.
Read MoreWorldTV introduces EPG feature
We’re all very excited (and a little relieved) to announce a major new feature on WorldTV that we’ve been working on for months and which has been widely requested by users on our feedback forum.
Starting today all channels on WorldTV now have an Electronic Programme Guide (or EPG) which lets viewers scroll through a list of videos on a channel (see left), and scroll through a list of other channels to watch. In typical WorldTV fashion it is both easy-to-use and should work fine on a wide range of computers.
The best way to explain it is to experience it, and you can see it in action on this channel here (opens in new window).
The new feature is enabled by default across all channels on WorldTV starting immediately, but you can choose not to display it if you wish. You can choose between showing just the Playlist or just the Channel list if you prefer. The new controls for doing this are on the Player section of the Channel Settings tab (see right).
Within the next month we plan to offer the ability for channel owners to have control over which channels appear in the channel section, meaning in effect you’ll be able to create your own TV network! You’ll be able to link between different channels that you and your friends create.
For those interested in how we determine which channels are shown on the EPG, we take the best channels on WorldTV (those with a ‘pick’ status on the World page) and display…
- Some from the same country as the channel you are watching
- Some from the same continent as the channel you are watching
- Some from around the World
All the more reason to get your channel chosen as a ‘pick’ by writing to us and letting us know what a great channel you have!
We hope our users enjoy this new feature and it certainly makes watching WorldTV even more of a pleasure. You can now surf through and find all kinds of interesting channels and videos.
You can also read the Press Release for this announcement.
Read MoreWorldTV Empower™ goes live!
WorldTV’s new advertising platform that empowers users to monetize their online video channels went live today shortly before 5pm GMT.
Users can now add their own Google Adsense details to their channel to immediately begin earning a 50% share of the ad revenue on their channel. Users can upgrade their channel to receive a 95% share of the ad revenue if they wish, or eliminate advertising entirely.
A couple of other new ‘Pro’ features were also launched alongside the ad platform including the ability to debrand a channel (remove all WorldTV branding) and remove the 100 clip limit within the Library and Playlist.
Full details of the ad platform are in our previous post.
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