Search Ads Come To YouTube
Quiz: What’s the No. 2 search site?
Answer: If you guessed “Yahoo,” you’re wrong. Internet users now conduct more searches on YouTube (2.5 billion in August) than they do on Yahoo (2.4 billion), according to comScore’s expanded search query report.
So it is not surprising that YouTube’s parent, Google, is thinking of turning those searches into dollars. The company has begun testing video ads that are targeted to specific YouTube searches. The system works a lot like the hugely profitable AdWords system for search ads on Google. Type “Tina Fey” into YouTube’s search box and, along with the search results, you may find a somewhat relevant ad for the movie “W” as well as a significantly less relevant ad for the University of Phoenix. (This is a test, after all.) The “W” ad links to a trailer on YouTube for the Oliver Stone movie and the University of Phoenix ad links to that school’s YouTube channel.
“We are constantly testing a wide range of options to find the right advertising format, for the right content, for the right video experience on YouTube — whether you’re watching short videos or long videos, uploading videos, or even searching for videos on our site,” said Aaron Zamost, a YouTube spokesman. “We do not believe there is one advertising solution for YouTube, but lots of valuable ways for advertisers to engage with our audience.”
Generating Leads in a Web 2.0 World
Marketing is going through a revolution online, thanks to the continual adoption of the Web 2.0 concepts originally defined by Tim O'Reilly and Dale Dougherty.
If you want to see some excellent graphics and analysis explaining Web 2.0, subscribe to Ross Dawson's blog, Trends in the Living Networks.
A New Conversation
Social networking has removed many of the obstacles that got in the way of better understanding prospects and customers, and serving them.
A New Way to Search: Use Your Mouse
Here at TechCrunch 50, there are a slew of interesting companies worth writing about on-stage. But I came across one in the Demo Pit that’s just as noteworthy.
Called KallOut, the service allows you to search the Web without minimizing the screen and going to the Web and replaces that with a couple clicks of a mouse. According to the company, its research shows that users can search the Web up to ten times faster by using KallOut. I’m not sure it’ll be that fast, but it’ll definitely improve efficiency.
Overlay.TV Helps You Customize, Monetize Streaming Video
Overlay.TV, a startup that lets users augment streaming videos with customized text, audio, images, and links, has launched to the public. The service overlays videos from a number of video sharing sites with a new layer containing this customized content, which can be used for entertainment purposes or as an easy (and potentially effective) means of monetizing video.
To use Overlay.TV, you first give the site the source URL of the video you'd like to modify. Overlay then streams this video from the original host (the site doesn't host any video content, so it shouldn't have to worry about the copyright violations that plague sites like YouTube). After loading the video, users are free to add their own content as part of a new layer with options that include text, links, custom images, and clip art. The site includes some basic timeline functionality, so you can set specific times for each item to fade in or out, but it can be hard to finetune the position and timing of each element.
Okay, so what the heck is Web 3.0?
The lurching, heaving behemoth of the Web will become a self-feeding entity someday, symmetrical and aligned with itself, ubiquitous and pervasive, not constrained by the browser or even a PC. That's the vision for the world wide Web after Web 2.0 - a concept where apps are islands, users interact only through portals that let them interact, programming languages don't understand each other, and we're limited by what the OS, the network, the browser, and the computer will permit.
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The Democrats Lose: Comparing the Convention Web Sites
I've been fighting this sinking feeling that we're headed for another four years (or eight) of a Republican President. Not that I have anything against John McCain except that I'll never vote for him. But I'm a pretty staunch Democrat, and it'd be nice to blame my own party for the world's problems for a change.
In the last presidential election, I formulated a theory that the most social media-savvy party would win. John Kerry and the DNC pretty much screwed the pooch every chance they got. Bush, on the other hand, had some remarkably media-savvy folks doing everything from real-time blogging and spin of debates to carrying their Swift Boat campaign to YouTube.
Kerry, of course, went on to lose by 3 million popular votes and a lot more states.
Could John Kerry have reached another 3 million people online? Dunno. But surely a few smart moves online could've helped when his image started to crumble.
Fast forward. It's 2008. The Democratic National Convention is going on now, and the Republicans start theirs in a week or so. So I decided to compare their respective convention sites based on simple stuff.
I may just have to change my party affiliation.
Broken Links: Democrats Lose
I checked the Republican National Convention site using Integrity. 1000 pages, no broken links. A few timeouts, but that was it.
I checked the Democratic Convention site. 2000 pages, 200+ broken links. Ouch.
Democrats lose.
Social Media Hooks
Then I checked each site for social media 'hooks': Ways to easily follow each party on Digg, Twitter, etc.
The Republicans seem to have their act together:
The Democrats don't. They opted for 'gavel to gavel' hidef video. Which is neato, but not quite as helpful. Plus they made a totally unexplainable technology choice. But I'll get there in a second.
Brand
The Democrats have billed their convention as open to all. Their home page, though, looks more like a Nike commercial:
It's pretty. It's also utterly devoid of any updates, any text, or any call to action for me, a long-suffering Democrat. Oh, yeah, and given how many e-mails and phone calls I've gotten from the party asking for unity, don't you think the home page should, I dunno, ask for unity?!
Oh, yeah, and the DNC home page still shows 'one hour to go' as one of the blog headlines, 24 hours later. Way to stay up to date, guys.
The Republicans' home page, on the other hand, is kind of folksy, like you're going to a county fair:
Not my style, but I'm not their audience. And their page has several calls to action: Form a local 'watch party' (which somehow makes me think of the McCarthy era, but no one's perfect) or sign up for e-mail updates. The DNC site has the e-mail signup too. But I could actually find it on the Republican site.
Video: PHAIL
I'm old, so I'm not sure I used 'Phail' right. But the Democratic National Convention site uses Silverlight for all video:
Huh?
Why on earth wouldn't you use YouTube, or another video streaming service, or at least use Flash on your own server?
So, playing video on the DNC site required that I download not one, but two plugins. Not a major hardship for me. But kind of dumb if you're trying to spread the word to as many people as possible.
Oh, did I mention the dire warning message I got when I tried to install the plugins:
In 2012, when you're running to unseat John McCain, try using Flash, which has a ridiculously large user base. Or at least get up-to-date certificates for your plugins.
I know, Microsoft probably wrote them a big honking check to use Silverlight. But isn't "we're for sale" kind of the wrong message to send when you're trying to elect a President? Even if it's true?
To Be Fair
The Republican National Convention site has its problems, too: Two conflicting e-mail signup forms, a writing style that makes me cringe and a candidate that can't remember how many houses he owns.
It's About the Effort, Stupid
It cost about $15 million to prepare the Pepsi Center for the Democratic National Convention. Plus a whole lotta money for security.
I'd cheerfully have built their web site for, oh I dunno, $250,000. My therapy bills would probably top that by the time we were done.
For this tiny slice of the pie:
I would have cheerfully made the effort run a link checker on the damned site. I would've thrown in a few social media links for good measure, made sure their plugins worked properly, and hit them with furniture when they mentioned using Silverlight as their video platform.
I hope I'm wrong. At least a President from my party will take my money and give it to the poor, instead of taking it and giving it to Iraq. But if not, you guys know where to find me in 2012.
Whither DART Search?
SES San Jose 2008 is now in the books and another Google Dance -- that annual bash that provides us all with so much safe, clean YouTube fodder -- has come and gone. Among the various features and benefits -- upscale backyard barbecue fare, free beer, modified karaoke, dancing, and light shows -- is the most fascinating spectacle of all: Googlers meeting other Googlers. (Oftentimes, I ran across Googlers just sticking with their own little clique and talking among themselves, but what do you expect... it's a "campus".)
Google is such an enormous entity by now that it carries a real risk of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing. Overall, though, the company does a pretty good job of keeping its initiatives in sync.
But if Googlers are always needing to meet other Googlers for the first time, imagine the effort of digesting a large company in the digital ad space whose founding predated Google's by two years, and which brings to the table a variety of legacy technologies and platforms along with its own corporate culture. Googlers, meet DoubleClickers!
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