May 20th was YouTube’s 7th birthday. Oh, our little baby is growing up fast, isn’t he? Seems like only yesterday he was learning how to walk without falling down, feed the animals without getting attacked. . . ride a bike without hitting a telephone pole.

What’s truly extraordinary about YouTube is that he’s growing at three times the rate of a normal child. Users upload 72 hours of video per minute these days which means you couldn’t watch every minute of every video even if you wanted to. Not that you would want to.

Sure, there are plenty of fun and helpful videos on YouTube but no matter how hard they try to lift their reputation, they’ll always be known as the home of stupid people doing stupid things. And that’s okay, because we all need a good laugh, even if it is at the expense of others.

Google’s Adwords for video that has been in public beta for about 8 months. Now it is being rolled out for everyone which, in business terms, means the SMB’s of the world.

Video is getting a lot of attention lately from the sheer volume of minutes that people log to the number of ads being served. That’s all well and good but let’s not jump to the conclusion that it is effective for everyone as an advertising platform (although many will assume that it is, we can at least say that we said it). So without further ado take a look at the video from Google describing the video ad service from Google.

Google and its video properties which includes the hands down leader in video delivery, YouTube, was head and shoulders above the crowd with regard to unique video viewers. As is the case from month to month and year after year Google is the place where the US Internet video crowd hangs out by a rather large markgin. comScore reported these new numbers for March of 2012.

Now, for a bit of a surprise. Hulu which has a lot less viewers manages to serve more video ads than Google’s properties. Mind you, the definition of the kind of ad being measured is a bit limited as “video ads include streaming-video advertising only and do not include other types of video monetization such as overlays,branded players, matching banner ads, etc“. It’s still interesting to look at though so here you go.

We talk about the need to make sure that marketing in the online space isn’t used as an end unto itself. It’s great theory but as it becomes more commonplace and there are successes to be paraded about, more and more marketers will take the advice and blur the lines between on and offline marketing.

Google Nederland has produced this video to show the impact of using YouTube to support TV advertising and the impact it can have. In this case the claim is an increase in net reach from between 9 – 12%. Granted, increased production costs are part of this equation but that’s just part of the new game of marketing via video.

This video explores this venture. It’s not my kind of thing personally but considering the target audience it makes sense.

The online world wakes up each day and continues its quest for more accurate and trustworthy ways to measure success of online ads. It makes sense since the pitch of the online world is that everything is so measurable. We preach about it every day then we wonder why people are disappointed in the types of metrics we come up with especially around the effectiveness of advertising.

When it comes to video ads this is an even more exasperating exercise. The traditional methods of measuring and defining audience in the video space has been shaped by the way TV has been packaged and sold for years and years. The godfather of audience measurement, Nielsen, has become the go to, the de facto, measurement tool.

In honor of the first anniversary of the program, You Tube has just added monetization options to YouTube Live. This includes the ability to charge a pay-per-view fee and serve up in-stream ads.

To make the service even more friendlier, YouTube has added better analytics and free Wirecast software. With Wirecast, you can customize the live feed with multicamera effects, overlays and b-roll right from the computer.

YouTube Live is a big step forward for a site that is still mostly known for random, short-form content. With the Live option, partners can invite the world (sort of) to watch a concert, a red carpet, a sporting event, or conference. But why has it taken them so long to move into this arena?