“T’was during one of my daily perambulations about the neighbourhood that I chanced upon a considerable hubbub at the alehouse. Lifting my monocle, I peered through the dusty window and saw a group of people chortling, fit to burst, as a feline clad entirely in a smoking jacket, flailed away at a piano.
‘What a fine thing t’would be,’ said I to myself, ‘to be able to share such a joyous sight with the world. Why, people from hither and yon would surely laugh out loud.’”
– Imagined dispatch from the Toronto Standard, May 29, 1849.
While its print namesake expired in 1850, long before the term “online video” entered the lexicon, the Toronto Standard has embraced its status as a 21st Century media brand with the launch of a dedicated video channel.
The Standard, which marked its first anniversary on April 7, has launched a new curated video website called Daily Cable TV. The standalone site is promising “thought-provoking, eyeball-engorging, smile-inducing videos.” The site soft launched last week and made its formal debut Monday.
The site offers a combination of video created by the Toronto Standard and content culled from the web by its staffers. Content is organized into nine categories including “Tech & Innovation,” “Business” and “Comedy” and will be updated daily. Users are also invited to submit their own videos, which are screened and posted by Daily Cable TV staff.
“Users will be seeing a fresh site on a daily basis,” said managing editor Toban Dyck.
According to Dyck, online video is rapidly becoming a must for modern media brands. “TorontoStandard.com has really prided itself on its video content, and… a niche that needs to be filled in today’s media,” he said.
“A lot of news sites now, especially print stalwarts, are going online and haven’t figured out how to do the video thing or realized that it’s an important aspect of what they do, so I think we’ve kind of jumped on that.”
The Standard is featuring some pre-roll advertising on its in-house content. The site itself will feature banner ads.
Marketers are increasingly gravitating towards online video, with a recent report from eMarketer indicating that online video ad spending in Canada more than doubled to $84.6 million in 2011. The research also projected a more than 67% increase in marketer spending on online video this year.
According to comScore’s recent report “2012 Canada Digital Future in Focus,” the number of total online videos viewed by Canadians increased 58% last year. YouTube currently accounts for one of every two online videos viewed in Canada.
Meanwhile, the March “Canada Video Study” from Google and Ipsos MediaCT found that almost 40% of internet users spent as much or more time watching online video than they do watching TV, with respondents watching an average of 7.7 online videos per work. The study also found that 11% of respondents watched 20 or more videos per week.
The Toronto Standard’s audience is primarily urban, 25 to 45. While the site is currently Toronto-specific, Dyck said that the ultimate goal is to transform it into a global site.
DailyCableTV.com was developed by Pilot Interactive.
