YouTube Chapters Is A Great New Feature

YouTube started testing Chapters earlier in 2020 and on the 28th of May YouTube confirmed Chapters are here to stay and available to all who upload videos to the platform. I missed the announcement and found Chapters in a video last week, which led me to investigate further.

0:00 We heard you and added Video Chapters.
0:30 You liked it.
1:00 Now it's official: Video Chapters are here to stay.
1:30 Creators, try Chapters by adding timestamps starting at 0:00 to your video description. Viewers, scrub to find exactly what you’re looking for.
2:00 Enjoy! pic.twitter.com/bIHGsGVmyW

— YouTube (@YouTube) May 28, 2020

Chapters is a fantastic new feature that will benefit both content creators and viewers, by allowing people to jump ahead to parts in the video straight from the timeline. This feature will likely be best suited to longer videos for things like recipes, tutorials, news, travel or documentary videos.

Applying Chapters to your videos is easy, all you have to do is add timestamps to the video description, starting at 0:00, each chapter should be 10 seconds long (9 seconds worked for me) and you should have atleast three chapters listed in ascending order.

Here is what YouTube Chapters looks like and how to apply them:

This is fully customisable

When I searched on mobile for YouTube chapters, they seem to be indexed on the Google results page and allow people to deep-link into a chapter of the video straight from the search result page. The timestamps become links in the video description once saved. This makes me think that Chapters might be used as a ranking signal in the near future - we all know how mobile usage and video consumption is increasing year-on-year, so I predict Chapters may play a role in video Search Engine Optimisation. I love the feature, although I find it a bit strange that Chapters doesn't seem to work when videos are embedded off YouTube. 

See it in action on my How To Make Pineapple Beer or Five Royal Caribbean Cruises videos.

Google Maps Street View Miniatur Wunderland

Google went inside the largest model railway exhibit in the world based in Hamburg, Germany to create a street view version of Miniatur Wunderland. It has over 15km of railway track and 263 000 figures at present, now you can navigate some scenes online. Nice one Google Maps.

See the specs of Miniatur Wunderland.

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Google's Project Soli Is A Game Changer

Playing gesture based video games is cool, but imagine your devices could do the same. Google are using radio frequency spectrum to capture micro human motions in order to operate wearables and devices. They have taken radar technology that is used to track planes and large objects, right down to the size of a microchip. Project Soli is remarkable, just think about its potential applications.

Google Expeditions Provides Virtual Travel For Kids

The next best thing to classroom outings. Google Expeditions brings international experiences to just about any classroom, anywhere in the world. The kids love it, a smartphone housed in cardboard, beautiful work assisting visual learning for students. Playing them a movie isn't good enough.

Lucky enough to experience it first hand, exceeded expectation!

A Remarketing Banner That Makes You Like Banners

This remarketing strategy is completely different to the norm. Usually online advertisers use remarketing to re-engage previous users of their website. 3M decided to give users the digital equivalent of a sticky note, fully interactive and customisable; so the banners you see following you around the internet are notes you want to remember, rather than hard sell messages that can often lead to ad fatigue and irritation. Did it sell more Post-It products? I'm not sure. Did it allow potential customers to participate with the campaign, add value and yield positive brand sentiment? I think so.

Head-On Collision, Only If You Fast Forward

You only see the crash with a truck if you fast forward the video by hovering over the time bar from left to right, viewing the preview thumbnail as you move. "Don't Rush" says InTouch Insurance. Not sure it's mobile friendly and branding not great, but clever video feature usage.

Carlsberg: Probably the Best Billboard in the World

#ProbablyTheBest

Toyota Turns Car Hoods Into Mysterious Stories

By: Saatchi & Saatchi

The Collective Project: Special Iron Man Bionic Arm Delivery by Robert Downey Jr. to a Kid.

The Collective Project

Douwe Egberts Yawn For Coffee Vending Machine

Douwe Egberts is not new to clever vending machine activations, but I like that this was done locally at O.R Tambo International Airport in South Africa and turned over 210 yawns into smiles. Using facial recognition, tired travelers simply yawned at the vending machine to activate it and dispense their free cup of Douwe Egberts coffee.


Related:

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Coca Cola - Happiness Without Borders

Coca Cola's clever small world vending machines helped bring the people of India and Pakistan together. Two cities that are, "only 325 miles apart, but seemingly worlds apart due to decades of political tension". Find out more about Happiness Without Borders.


Related:

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Coke Zero and James Bond: Unlock The 007 In You

This is very cool, a Coke Zero vending machine offers customers the chance to partake on a short mission to receive James Bond Skyfall movie tickets. It only requests your name (for a clever reason) and then the fun begins. Don't blame me if you get the theme song stuck in your head for a little while.

YouTube Pre Roll Ad Campaign - 5 Seconds

Brilliant idea based around the YouTube TrueView ad "Skip" button, offering a more favourable action.

via

Lego Plays Star Wars Theme Song

20 thousand Lego pieces used to play the Star Wars theme song. The huge organ with four Star Wars worlds, traveled to the launch of Star Wars 3D, where people could play it. The experience was fully integrated for the digital audience, who could order Lego pieces from mobile and micro sites, brilliant. Enjoy the Star Wars feat. Lego remix.

Related:

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Salta Rugbeer Vending Machine

Salta Province, northwest Argentina, the New Zealand of Argentina! 'Chicken' meter indicates tackle strength, when the green light is reached, purchased beer drops out, because it's, "better to tackle for a beer". 332 tackles in one night and a 25% increase in sales across pubs is very well done.

BOS Ice Tea Vending Machine in Cape Town

The Twitter powered, sampling, vending machine! Bev is parked in Wembley Square until tomorrow Friday, 22 June. "Enjoy your BOS Ice Tea, says Bev (robot voice)".

via DigitalBuzzBlog & BandWidthBlog.

Lynx Anarchy Invisible Ad

Lynx Anarchy launched their first female fragrance in Sydney with the world's first invisible ad. Using LCD screens, sexy and silly visuals were only visible through polarised sunglasses, for him and her.


Related:

• Lynx Excite Fallen Angels Augmented Reality

via

Tipp-Ex Hunter and Bear are Back!

Tipp-Ex celebrate the birthday of their first bear encounter, select your year and enjoy the response.
"46 different scenes available and 8 scenes that will require interactions" - via

BMW Projection Mapping South Africa

BMW South Africa (iLogic) created an interactive gaming experience using Tablets, projection mapping and Facebook Connect. The prize? One of six Mission Impossible 4 model cars, per venue. Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town and Plettenburg Bay, ±105,300 race results shared on Facebook.

Angry Birds: Life Size & Interactive from T-Mobile

Angry Birds in real life with real exploding pigs and destruction. T-Mobile bring you this very cool activation in Barcelona, Spain and the video has already seen over 3.2 million views in just four days! Best part is that the whole thing is controlled by smart phones. Even the band is real and jamming the Angry Birds theme song. Very well done indeed! Remember the Angry Birds playable cake?

Us BlackBerry device "limited" people can still play Angry Birds on Chrome!

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