What makes compelling online media? the technology used, the audio/visual quality or the content (loosely based on a marketing strategy)?
I first went at this last year by analyzing various sites that had online media assets and compared it to Sun's.
1. Technology: We needed to identify what's the most available/deployed media player in the world. That one was fairly easy... that's Flash. It's the most flexible technology. We really wanted to use Java...
2. Audio/Visual quality: Everything we created must be of the highest standards. People are very proud of these production standards. When I looked at other corporate sites, production quality varied from ok to broadcast quality. When I went on YouTube, the quality was from "barely viewable" to broadcast quality.
3. Content: That was a tough one, just because of the targeted audience of various corporate sites/programs and the various marketing strategies behind them. The best were honest and useful information programs that keyed on real-world problems and their solutions... without all the marketing fluff. One of the examples didn't mention the company name until 12mn into the program.
I came away trusting the company and feeling like they really want to help me, wether I buy their products or not. This was above and beyond content, and the information it contained... it was about a story. A light bulb went out.
I then focused on who does the best storytelling on YouTube.. and amazingly enough, quality didn't matter. People are viewing poor quality media as long as it contains relevant, useful information scattered through storytelling. That's useful data. It's the story, not the production value.