So much for the idea that YouTube and Hulu aren’t direct competitors. The New York Times reports that Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios will start posting full length movies from its catalog on the popular video sharing service. The partnership will be announced today, and viewers will immediately be able to watch shows such as “American Gladiators,” full-length movies like “Bulletproof Monk” and “The Magnificent Seven,” as well as clips from popular movies like “Legally Blonde.” MGM’s movies and shows will be free to watch with the only hassle being some ads which will run alongside the videos.

While these movies and shows are hardly the latest blockbusters, it’s an important step forward for YouTube, which obviously wants to shrug the reputation of the place to find short, odd, and poorly filmed user generated videos (although there’s nothing wrong with that), and start offering full length features.

Unfortunately, they still have a long way to go, as even MGM is not ready to move their entire catalog to YouTube. “We will have some long-form videos up on YouTube, but I don’t think that’s the platform to have 30 or 40 movies up at once. I feel much more comfortable doing that on a site like Hulu,” says MGM’s co-president Jim Packer. In other words, this is merely an experiment to see how YouTube’s audience will respond to being able to see full length movies; if YouTube passes this test with flying colors, then maybe, maybe the big studios will start offering more material.

It’s a race against time. YouTube can’t afford to wait until Hulu gets too big; it needs to leverage the fact that it’s the biggest video sharing site around without completely giving in to the (often ludicrous) demands of big Hollywood studios. Winning or at least settling that Viacom lawsuit would definitely help, but whether YouTube will manage to achieve this delicate balance before it’s too late remains to be seen.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:YouTube Eyes Full-Length Movies; The TBS of Online Video?YouTube Begins Streaming Full-Length Shows from CBSFancast: Comcast Launches Rival to IMDBSpout Social Network Acquiring Users for $1 EachHabbo, The MovieFour Eyed Monsters: Watch The Full Film on YouTube…100% LegalLycos Cinema Launches - YouTube For Movies

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—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Propeller: Netscape Digg Clone is LiveLook Out Digg: Mixx Public Beta Coming on TuesdayPropeller: The New Name for Netscape’s Digg CloneNBC.com Social NetworkMySpace News: The Digg Killer?RiverWired Receives $1.5 Million For Being GreenFacebook to Launch Advertising Through News Feed - WTH?

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YouTube is set to begin offering full length feature films within “30 to 90 days” according to CNET. Parent company Google is said to be discussing a deal with at least one of the major movie studios that would bring ad-supported movies to the Web’s most popular video sharing site, which recently started testing full-length TV shows as well.

As CNET points out, YouTube has had a dicey relationship with the movie studios since inception – much of their early success was based on the ability to view TV and movie clips that had been posted illegally, and Viacom sued the company for $1 billion in damages.

But, with Google’s considerable financial muscle behind it, they are now looking to make nice with the studios – largely so they can get more easily monetizable content on the site. While YouTube enjoys a considerable advantage in terms of traffic over its competitors, user-generated video has proven difficult to sell ads against, despite a number of new ad formats introduced by Google recently.

My question about full-length movies – especially those that are ad-supported –is will anyone watch? The law of large numbers says that of course a few people will, but looking at the movie selection on Hulu or Joost – which contain nothing but professionally produced TV shows and films - it’s hardly like walking into Blockbuster (think TBS, but way worse). While Hulu’s online TV selection has proved popular by quickly re-purposing timely content like the Sarah Palin-Tina Fey SNL skits, how many embeds have you come across for “Dude, Where’s My Car?”

It would seem that the studios will continue to be reluctant to offer up their best content in an ad-supported model, and instead prefer to offer their new releases online through services like Netflix, who now let you pay to watch movies on your PC. So far, the online model is evolving exactly like TV – pay for the best, new movies (premium TV channels like HBO) and get the free, older stuff on basic cable with ads (TBS).

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:YouTube Begins Streaming Full-Length Shows from CBSFancast: Comcast Launches Rival to IMDBSpout Social Network Acquiring Users for $1 EachHabbo, The MovieFour Eyed Monsters: Watch The Full Film on YouTube…100% LegalLycos Cinema Launches - YouTube For MoviesImeem Partners with Palm Pictures for Interactive Indie Film Access

A person with money; a person who spends it; a person who is easily influenced: an Advertiser’s dream is to reach those individuals with targeted messages on the go. Mobile application advertising is extending the mobile advertising paradigm with new inventory, larger audiences, and more advertiser budgets to reach exactly those users.

Within the social media space, in-app advertising on Facebook has a higher eCPM than Facebook advertising. Following that model, a new breed of applications is now available for Smartphones such as the iPhone, which, at close to ten million sold, is becoming the must-have gadget of the decade. Google’s Android OS gadgets also push mobile application execution to its limits – the key will be seeing how viral the actual devices become.

A Huge Opportunity for Advertisers

According to industry reports, iPhone users have downloaded more than 100 million applications since the App Store opened in July 2008, and the Android platform is predicted to significantly raise the marketshare of Smartphones by allowing more device makers into the marketplace.

A recent forecast by Magna Global predicts that mobile media will be one of the fastest growing of the emerging media channels, estimating it to grow by 43% to approximately $300 million in 2009. That reach provides advertisers with a huge market opportunity to reach and engage with consumers in a new and scalable way by staying ahead of the curve in advertising innovation – reaching people when and where a decision is most likely to occur.

So why not just mobile advertising? Why mobile application advertising? By integrating into an application, you have much more control over the type of advertisement and the level of interaction available with users, as opposed to the mobile Web where ads are generally static banners. This mobile application platform provides an infinitely engaging and accessible device for targeted advertising, but if social networks are still untested waters, advertisers are still wary of this new environment. And just like social media, when you get past the education, advertisers really just want to know - “How can we make money there and how much is it costing me for a new customer?”

Creating Revenue

The good news is: many of the tenets of social media and mobile marketing apply to Smartphone application marketing, and there are several ways to approach it to ensure you walk away with some real value.

Smartphone application marketing connects brands with their target audiences no matter where they are. Ads on iPhones, Android-enabled devices and other Smartphones have the ability to deliver high-impact interactive rich media to an engaged, targeted, self-selected audience and the new breed of application analytics companies help measure the success of campaigns, interaction and brand recognition.

More visibility. Brand awareness. High impact creatives. Mobile applications and Smartphone technology allow advertisers to extend their imagination to the path of reaching targeted audiences. Users can interact with a brand by tilting the phone and using the built in accelerometers, poking and playing with the product, or getting location-based advertising. Essentially, for the first time consumers become a part of the advertisement springing open the advertiser wallets.

Mobile Application Analytics

Applications only drive higher revenues if advertisers can identify the users consuming those apps. This has opened the door for many mobile application companies focused on identifying who the users are, what they do in the application, and what devices they are using.

Analytics provide application developers with granular insight into how users interact with applications, helping them identify user experience challenges and improve the overall performance of their applications.

What Are You Waiting for?

Smartphone applications are starting to make waves in the digital advertising world, but advertisers need not be daunted by a new platform. These apps operate in essentially the same ways as social media, targeted display and mobile marketing models. However, they offer deeper engagement, more sophisticated analytics, and a great way to broaden reach beyond the computer — significant opportunities for advertisers to boost revenue and build consumer relationships in a unique personal way.

Mobile advertising has the potential to exceed not only Internet advertising, but also the four traditional pillars of advertising as well: TV, radio, print and billboards. We are only in the first phase of the real mobile application market and this is a significant player that’s here to stay.

Former BlueLithium co-founder and general manager Krishna Subramanian has spent a 10-year career on the forefront of emerging technology. He is currently focusing on creative and inventory optimization, predictive targeting as well as scaling and monetizing social applications. Prior to BlueLithium’s acquisition by Yahoo!, Krishna led corporate and product marketing initiatives, positioning BlueLithium as the leading behavioral ad network; launched the first national online/offline social network, MingleNow, and led BlueLithium’s strategic acquisition of 123out.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Frengo’s Mobile Toolkit Makes Your OpenSocial Apps MobileGoogle Search Now on Windows Mobiles, TooGet Your Celebrity Gossip To-Go: TMZ Now on AOL MobileiZoho - Office Apps for your iPhoneLOLz on All Networks and Your Mobile, with FrengoWebwag Widgets Go MobileFlurry Offers Free Analytics for iPhone, Android, and JAVA ME App Developers

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Animoto is a mashup tool that allows users to make movies from the images and music they already have on their hard drive. Over the last year they have introduced a variety of features and functions. The latest of these is Animoto for Photography.

Animoto takes the pictures as slide show concept a bit further than most by incorporating a kind of artificial intelligence into the process. This twist means that the movies you get often seem more like trailers than home videos. Over the last few months they’ve applied this approach to a variety of things, from creative music mixing to business videos and everything in between.

This new feature, Animoto for Photography, enables photographers to use Animoto’s interesting technique to make their photography into a video. Animoto makes it easy to create these photography-based videos, freeing up a photographer’s time by reducing the amount of time spent futzing with the computer.

How is this different from the existing Animoto mashups for music, business and more? The company has added adjustable speed to the image display. Formerly the “intelligent” Animoto program would match the images to the tempo of the song they were being displayed with, now photographers can make the images appear at the intervals they design. they can also let Animoto match images to the song tempo still, if that’s what they want. Animoto for Photography gives them the choice.

The other feature Animoto has added is a button at the end that can call viewers to action. This makes Animoto a new way for photographers to market their work and services. Photographers who have tested the software seem to love it as a sharing and marketing tool:

“Animoto is a perfect fit for professional photographers,” said award-winning wedding photographer, Linda Jennings. “I can quickly upload my photos, pick just the right song, and Animoto automatically creates a show-stopping video. And when the video is complete, I can easily share it in more ways than ever before: email, blogs, my own website, Facebook, iPhone. The possibilities are endless with Animoto.”

Animoto for Photography is not free. It will run you $99 for three months or $249 a year. The subscription does allow photographers access to a library of music that is licensed for public use, which is a great benefit in addition to the other features subscribers get access to. Animoto’s claim to fame is that its artificial intelligence (aka Cinematic Artificial Intelligence) ensures that no two videos are ever the same, even if you use the exact same images and music.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Animoto: When Using Amazon Web Services Gets You FundingAnimoto Mashups Promote Artists with New ProgramAnimoto Officially Launches Video Mashup ToolAnimoto: Turn your Images Into a Movie TrailerDownload Animotos Directly to Your PCImage Animation App ‘Animoto’ Announces DVD Quality VideoAnimoto Emerges from Beta with 4M Videos

In an announcement that some people are calling major, Amazon announced today that it will start streaming movies and TV shows on its own site – for a fee. Amazon’s Video-on-Demand service will feature 40,000 titles and hit the ground running today. And although it probably won’t turn a profit in the near-term due to the high royalty costs it’s forced to pay the film studios, I’m more than a little suspect of just how much Amazon can make by charging you to stream movies online.

Sure, at first glance, charging you to stream movies may look like the best alternative because it offers a guaranteed cash flow and is easier to regulate, but is it really best over the long-term?

The way I see it, free streaming movies should be the norm, not the exception.

Right now, you can surf your way over to Hulu.com and play some movies for free without a hitch. Granted, they’re not the best movies around and most aren’t even close to new, but that doesn’t mean we should downplay its significance.

Hulu movies can be viewed as often as you’d like and feature commercials before they start and a handful of commercial breaks between scenes. And while that works fine, it’s quite obvious that Hulu and the film studios aren’t willing to make it more compelling.

But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t happen.

Here’s how I see it working:

Streaming old or crappy movies just doesn’t work. Why would someone want to waste time sitting through Attack of the Puppet People?

But if new and extremely popular movies were made available, things would be totally different. If after a movie like No Country for Old Men leaves theaters, it’s made available on a free streaming service, can you imagine the advertising revenue the service could generate from it? And in turn, how much revenue the movie studios could generate as well?

But in order to generate serious revenue, the services would be forced to play commercials. Playing them before the movie starts is a good idea, but I’m not too fond of dropping them in-between. It not only proves to be an annoyance, but it takes you out of the movie and totally changes the flow of it. Instead, maybe the service should start overlaying ads during the playback, or, if need be, it still can resort to commercial breaks if that makes it more financially viable.

Either way, the point of streaming movies is to turn an even greater profit than making people pay for the stream and with enough viewers and a logical revenue scheme, it should work.

In just a few months, Hulu has already proven to be a cash cow for TV studios and its success is most easily shown in the number of networks that have joined the fray and allowed their content to be made available since its launch. We also shouldn’t discount the fact that Hulu is run by the networks themselves, meaning they get all the benefits of ownership.

Why can’t the film studios follow suit? Instead of trying desperately to stop piracy and spend too much cash on it, it should save its money, invest in a service like Hulu, break out from its foolhardy misconceptions about the Internet, and embrace it. Upon doing so, it can establish advertising schemes in the vein of Hulu and allow you to watch movies whenever you’d like for free.

Sure, it may run against the way things have always been done in the movie business, but as theater revenue continues to fall and rentals slowly go away, the film industry needs to find something to pad its bottom line and free streaming movies seems like a great place to start.

Consider the impact of being able to sit at home, stream brand new movies anytime you’d like, and only be forced to sit through a handful of commercials that companies are paying huge sums of cash for.

If Hulu can service millions of people each month and grow at such a rapid rate, why can’t a free streaming movie service grow just as fast?

Paying for streaming may be a temporary solution, but it won’t be enough to stop piracy, nor become the best way to watch movies. If nothing else, Google, Hulu, and countless other services should have shown the film industry that free use of media is what appeals to people and if you invite that kind of service and monetize it thorough advertising, it can prove to be an even greater cash cow than you once expected.

It may sound extreme at first glance, but if it can work for TV shows, why can’t it work for movies?

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Swarmcast Moves Into Live StreamingcomScore Releases Video Streaming StudyNetflix Hack for DRM-Free Movie DownloadsLala’s Free Music Streams Shuttered: Too PopularLast.fm Still Growing. Thanks, Free Music.Last.fm: Free Music Initiative Has Sparked 119% Rise In SalesJalipo Is a Costly (and less cool) Joost

“The more people who visit the site, the faster he bleeds.” Untraceable, starring the always-watchable Diane Lane, opens January 25th. There’s a freeze frame hint in the trailer that says user: owen. My God, the calls are coming from inside the house!