Video clip

Video clips were and still are used in advertising. With online entertainment sites delivering high-quality television programming content, free of charge, online video entertainment rose substantially in popularity.

With consumer attention came advertisers. MAGNA estimated that online video advertisement spending would approach nearly US$700 million in 2008, an increase of nearly 32%.[2] Today, as businesses seek to tighten budgetary allocations, online video is a highly measurable and results-driven delivery platform. Advertising on video sites was light but it has become increasingly more common to have video advertisements that are longer than 20 seconds. Another way video clips are used in advertising are by vloggers who promote products.

Unlike traditional movies largely dominated by studios, video clips are overwhelmingly supplied by amateurs. In May 2006, The Economist reported that 90% of video clips on YouTube came from amateurs, a few of whom were young comedians. It, in effect, also brought up amateur talents. In 2005, two Chinese students, Huang Yixin and Wei Wei, now dubbed as "Back Dorm Boys", lip-synced to a song by the Backstreet Boys in a video uploaded to some clip websites and quickly became renowned. They appeared on television shows and concerts, and they were also granted a contract by a media company in Beijing for lip-syncing.[3]

An earlier celebrity was David Elsewhere, who was a talent at popping and liquiding. His performance to Kraftwerk's song Expo 2000 at the Kollaboration talent show in 2001 was widely viewed on the Internet, leading later to his being hiring for TV commercials and music videos. Not only did video clips submerge into the world of TV commercials and music videos, but it also became a popular form of entertainment and a hobby for people called "Vloggers" (video blog creators). Many professional video bloggers can be found on the Internet. Additionally, many notable amateur video bloggers also emerged during this time.

Citizen journalism video reporting dates back as early as the development of camcorders, but all videos were screened by the local media outlets of the time. This was until its spread was aided by free upload websites in which censorship was limited to make a vast number of videos available to anyone who wanted to view them. Scenes were rarely broadcast on television, and many first-witnessed scenes have since become publicly available.

Notably, in December 2004, tourist videos of the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami offered worldwide audiences the first scenes of the disaster. In December 2003, videos in Hong Kong showing the bully in De La Salle School outraged the public and raised a wide concern on school violence that led to the arrest of 11 students, 7 of which were later dismissed in 2020.[4]

From late 2005 to early 2006, a new form of blogging emerged called a vlog.[5][6][7] It is a blog that takes video as the primary content, which is often accompanied by supporting text, image, and additional metadata to provide context. Su Li Walker, an analyst with the Yankee Group, said that "like blogs, which have become an extension of traditional media, video blogs will be a supplement to traditional broadcasting."[8][9] Regular entries are typically presented in reverse chronological order.

The potential markets of video clips caught the attention of traditional movie studios. In 2006, the producers of Lucky Number Slevin, a film with Morgan Freeman, Lucy Liu and Bruce Willis, made an 8-minute clip for YouTube. Celebrities in traditional media have proven to confer more popularity in clip culture than most amateur video makers.

The emerging potential for success in web video caught the eye of some top entertainment executives in America, including former Disney executive and current head of the Tornante Company Michael Eisner. Eisner's Vuguru subdivision of Tornante partnered with Canadian media conglomerate Rogers Media on October 26, 2009, securing plans to produce upwards of 30 new web shows a year. Rogers Media would help fund and distribute Vuguru's upcoming productions, thereby solidifying a direct connection between old and new media.[10]