Ok, here is a difference – you can skip the advertisement – but only after 5 seconds. 5 Seconds!!! Hell – thats a lot of time to lose a visitor. Any seasoned webmaster knows the price of those opening 5 seconds.

Google normally does not try to do that – they have always acted like ‘content is the prime focus in a page’ and did not allow more than 3 AdSense ad units in a page. Google is not a traditional content producer like Yahoo. It depends on content produced by others to run the search engine. So, why?

There are 2 types of advertisements now under TrueView – Instream and InSlate.

The Instream advertisement will grab your 5 opening seconds and the InSlate advertisement will be played at regular commercial interval. Oops .. Google copying from traditional media – even the terms!!

You must agree that it is not “Google like”. – Is Google hacked?

By the way – people watch YouTube because it is cool. It does not force you to take commercial breaks. People even watch advertisements on youtube because they are good. People love Youtube for the freedom to watch whatever they want to and without interruption.

What is drying up there @ Google?

Finding a niche is nice but the “niche” poses many problems for online branding too. For example, having an account at Flickr is both good and bad for a photographer’s brand identity development. Because Flickr is like an aquarium and there are millions of other fishes in it. It is really tough to grab unique attention in such a crowded place. It is like having thousands of tee shirt brands in one store (good for buyers) and no advertisement allowed.

At the same time when you live in isolation (personal website / blog) you are missing the brand value and user volume of Flickr. And if you do not have a website, people will not take you seriously.

So how to go about developing an online brand (example – a photographer)?

You need to find out less crowded places and verticals to promote your brand apart from staying at Flickr. For example, a photographer may create a cool slideshow (storyboard + photographs) / videos etc and publish them at places, where there are everyone else but photographers – e.g. slideshare.net. You need to find out nodes, who will connect you to hundreds of other people. For example: do something that smashingmagazine.com will publish.

Now, here are more niches. For example, if you want to catch the online business community and get freelance photography projects from them, try to get yourself covered by powerful people in that community e.g. Seth Godin / Guy Kawasaki.

One must develop as many point of impressions as possible… Doing more partnerships and highlighting your achievements by “others” may help

Or do something crazy / funny / stupid (must go along your brand identity) that people will share via social networks.

Once people start seeing you at different places – you know what you earn – brand value…