What Happened To Leap Year?
::::: UPDATED with response from Wilson Cleveland of CJP Digital Media
wilson said...
Hi Guys. We challenged the suspension and have been trying to get a response from YouTube since it happened on the 17th (which is why the views dropped to zero that day), so you know as much as I do at this point. Believe me, I've been all over this for 3 weeks now. There were multiple agencies involved in marketing the show and there were definitely legit YT 'Promoted Video' runs but I assure you there was no spamming, scamming or 'commercially deceptive content,' nor was there any actual notification/explanation from YT about the suspension.
It would be great if you could give us the benefit of the doubt until either the account is re-instated or we have some kind of explanation from YT. I have every reason to believe this will get cleared up soon and I'll let you know when that happens. Thanks.
"This account has been suspended due to multiple or severe violations of YouTube's policy against spam, scams and commercially deceptive content."
http://www.youtube.com/user/leapyearTV
Daily views:
Weekly views:
Note: There were always some questions about the view count for Leap Year. The first week of the show seemed to have relatively few (lets say in the order of 2000 views) yet after each of the videos had been released for a week or more, they would receive a sharp spike in view count. The most likely explanation of this is that after the video was buried in the Youtube stream they received views either originating from an ad or from paid views. Whether or not this has contributed to the suspension of the account is hard to say at this point. All we know for sure is that the account and the videos are for now gone.
Previous posts on Web Series Today
http://www.webseriestoday.com/search/label/Leap%20Year
Insurance, Entertainment for Startups and Entrepreneurs
http://news.tubefilter.tv/2011/05/18/hiscox-insurance-leap-year
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The views dropped to zero on Oct 17, 2011.
ReplyDeleteWow.
ReplyDeleteI smell a smoking gun...
ReplyDeleteHi Guys. We challenged the suspension and have been trying to get a response from YouTube since it happened on the 17th (which is why the views dropped to zero that day), so you know as much as I do at this point. Believe me, I've been all over this for 3 weeks now. There were multiple agencies involved in marketing the show and there were definitely legit YT 'Promoted Video' runs but I assure you there was no spamming, scamming or 'commercially deceptive content,' nor was there any actual notification/explanation from YT about the suspension.
ReplyDeleteIt would be great if you could give us the benefit of the doubt until either the account is re-instated or we have some kind of explanation from YT. I have every reason to believe this will get cleared up soon and I'll let you know when that happens. Thanks.
Thanks for the response.
ReplyDeleteUpdated the post with your comment.
Please let us know what you find out from YouTube.
The more we understand the YouTube "limits" on promoted videos the better. The fact that you were dropped after a particularly large 100k view "boost" does seem to suggest that was a factor. Had you received any previous warnings from Youtube as suggested by:
"This account has been suspended due to multiple or severe violations of YouTube's policy against spam, scams and commercially deceptive content."
That said, this surely calls into question the entire notion of view "boosting" and how it fits within the marketing mix for Web series. It would be nice if you could share with us some of your experience and the video analytics from this type of promotional activity.
For example do such promoted view "boosts" actually lead to engagement with the Web series as might be seen by comments. Do the viewers from promotional activities watch the entire video or at what point do they click off the video. etc etc etc
Also you state that:
"There were multiple agencies involved in marketing the show and there were definitely legit YT 'Promoted Video' runs"
This suggest that some of the other marketing activities involved promotional "boosts" from outside the YouTube ecosystem. I suspect that display ads are allowed by YouTube TOS but is it possible that "paid views" from outside the YouTube ecosystem violate their TOS. If so, were such outside "paid views" (which have been commonly used for branded content) employed in the marketing of Leap Year?