January 17, 2006

Search Marketing for Video Content

In today's SearchDay article, Video Search: Still "Early Days", guest writer Greg Jarboe offers coverage of a recent Search Engine Strategies panel focused on the unique challenges search marketers face in creating and optimizing search-friendly video clips. It's a different world than the one we're accustomed to with written content.

A longer version of this story for Search Engine Watch members offers specific tips for encoding search engine friendly video, including recommendations for optimizing for specific engines, best types of meta data to use, tips on encoding tools and more. Click here to learn more about becoming a member.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 9:06 AM | Permalink

December 16, 2005

Sorry Bill and Steve, WSJ Reports Google Near $1 Billion Deal With AOL

If Gates and Ballmer wanted a deal with AOL (Time Warner) as a Christmas gift, it appears that they're not going to get it. The MSFT vs. GOOG game of the "Price is Right" appears to be ending according to this just posted story from the Wall Street Journal: AOL Nears Deal With Google (sub req).

Here are a few key facts and passages from the article by Julia Angwin, Kevin J. Delaney and Dennis K. Berman:

+ AOL and Google are now in "exclusive negotiations." Microsoft has been "shut out" of the negotiations at this point.

+ Google will pay $1 billion for a 5% stake in AOL.

+ "AOL would be able to sell advertising among the search results provided by Google on AOL Web properties." At the moment, sponsored links come from Google...AOL's sales staff would also sell display ads across Google's network of Web publishers."

+ "Google will promote AOL's Web properties among the sponsored links in its search results, and will include AOL's collection of online videos among its search results. Google's arrangement to provide search technology for AOL, which was set to expire at the end of next year, would be extended for five years."

+ Don't look for a deal and/or an announcement until next week after a Time-Warner board meeting.

With multimedia search being one of the hot topics of 2005, I find it interesting that AOL Video, which we've been talking about a lot this year both in terms of content and UI, will be visible in Google results in one form or another. It's obvious that video and video search have been a high priority to the company over the past year and they've done some impressive work. AOL has easy access to lots of video content from Time-Warner, deals with other providers, and also its own multimedia crawler with SingingFish. It will be interesting to see (no pun) if any exclusive video that Google has would/will begin appearing on AOL? Also would future deals that both companies make for video content be made so the material would be accessible on both services? Will the AOL Video database of crawled video content continue to use SingingFish technology or will Google begin to using the SingingFish crawler?

Btw, don't forget that AOL is currently testing (it works great for me) the delivery of high-quality videos while your computer is quiet.

I'm also wondering about future issues with Google and AOL in the instant messaging space. AOL is the leader. Will Google Talk become interoperable with AIM, so the two systems and their users can chat or talk to each other? Earlier this year, MSN and Yahoo announced a deal that will allow users of either service to chat with each other. Would the AIM and Google Talk tech be merged? I could go on with VoIP, broadband, wi-fi, cable tv, and all sorts of other stuff but let's not get way ahead of ourselves.

From the SEW Archives: + Overture & Inktomi Out, Google In At AOL (May 1, 2002) + AOL Moves Fully To Google (August 5, 2002) + AOL Renews With Google (October 8, 2003)

Want to discuss? Check this thread in the SEW Forums.

Postscript: Reuters has now published a story on the still yet to be announced deal. The Google-AOL talks would expand on a relationship which analysts estimate account for 2 percent to 4 percent of Google's revenue on a net basis. AOL uses Google's search engine

Postscript 2: Perhaps the most interesting part of all of this is found (via Searchblog ) in this coverage from the NY Times that says that Google will give AOL preferred placement on the Google site.

Here's the passage: Google, which prides itself on the purity of its search results, agreed to give favored placement to content from AOL throughout its site, something it has never done before.

Does this mean "favored placement" of ads or of organic results? I think before starting to speculate we need to know more on just what Google is thinking here. If Google would start giving "favored placement" for organic results then it would sure be a "wow" moment/change of direction in Google's history. From an advertising standpoint it would be interesting to see how the SEM community would respond. Battelle uses the expression "jump the shark" to describe the NYT passage in his post but adds that it also just might be a "trial balloon."

Of course, it's very unlikely we hear anything official about any of this until next week.

Postscript 3 (Saturday): David Vise's article from the Washington Post on the possible deal. From the article: + AOL also will get the exclusive right to sell online banner ads for Google. AOL will keep about 20 percent of the proceeds from those ad sales, while Google will get about 80 percent.

+ "AOL is a valued partner," Google spokeswoman Lynn Fox said yesterday. "We look forward to continuing to work with them."

+ AOL has provided Google with more than $400 million in ad revenue so far this year, according to public filings.

+ The existing arrangement -- under which Google provides text-based ads and free search results on AOL -- will continue, with AOL keeping 80 percent of those ad proceeds and Google taking 20 percent.

+ One source said AOL will also have the right to buy graphic ads that appear alongside the text-based ads Google traditionally has displayed to the right of its free search results.

+ Google's search results, based on equations that rank them according to relevancy, will not be changed as a result of the new partnership with AOL, sources said.

Postscript 4: See AOL's Choice of Google Leaves Microsoft as the Outsider has more details on AOL having concerns over MSN's new ad network and arguing that its own ad serving software was beter.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:44 PM | Permalink

June 30, 2005

AOL Begins Rolling Out New Video Search Engine

Today, AOL begins rolling out their new, improved, and free video search service (beta) and so far, pardon the pun, I like what I see.

The new AOL Video search provides access to two databases of multimedia content.

First, you'll find more than 15,000 licensed and originally produced video assets that come from various AOL services, other Time Warner properties (CNN for example), and many content partners like the Associated Press. I've already come across news clips, movie trailers, music videos, and television programs. This material is labeled "Featured Videos" on a search results page.

Second, an AOL Video Search results page also includes listings of open-web video files. This content comes from SingingFish, a multimedia engine that's owned by AOL. This material is labeled as "Video Results from the Web" on a results page.

AOL Video Search offers several new features including:

Inline Playback of Video Clips via the AOL Video Player

A New Relevancy Algorithm

Dynamic Clustering of Video Search Results

Ability to Sort by Results by Relevance, Video Quality, Duration, and Release Date

Preview Video Clips With Animated Thumbnails

Search Every Word Spoken in a Video Clip (Transcript Search)

SingingFish

User Created Playlists

Some video content requires a free AOL Network login to view. If you use AOL Instant Messenger, you're login and password should work here.

Finally, another feature for AOL Network members allows you to have AOL Video Search recommend video clips you might find interesting in a box on the video search homepage. I've noticed that most of the recommendations I've been given today are movie trailiers. This makes sense since I clicked the "Improve these Recommedations" link at the bottom of the box and was asked to complete a very short survey (three questions) from MovieFone, another Time Warner service.

More about AOL Video Search when I have more time to test it out.

The full text of the AOL Video Search announcement is available here.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:59 AM | Permalink

June 8, 2005

Stefanie Olsen has written an article about SingingFish, the multimedia search engine that's owned by AOL, adding several new video content partners. Olsen is correct when she points that AOL has a treasure chest of video and multimedia content to tap into via Time Warner, AOL's owner. In fact, CNN (a Time Warner company) is one of the new SingFish partners.

New SingingFish video content partners include:

CNN
iFilm
Atom-Films
CBSNews.com
Hollywood.com
Like Television
ManiaTV.com
MarketWatch
The One Network

SingingFish allows you to search metadata associated with each video clip and then stream the clip online. This is the same situation at Yahoo Video with one exception. Yahoo does allow you to keyword search each and every word spoken on Bloomberg Business Television (using the closed captioning) and then view the video online. BlinkxTV uses speech recognition technology to let you keyword search every word spoken and view online content from many content partners including Sky News, C-SPAN, and the BBC. Blinkx.TV also allows you to use their speech recognition technology to search some video content from CNN. However, you have to subscribe to CNN's video online video service to actually view the content.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:12 PM | Permalink

May 13, 2005

Singingfish, AOL's multimedia search engine, is now carrying content from Reuters. The new deal means that breaking and archived video news clips from Reuters can now be found through the service.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:53 AM | Permalink

December 1, 2004

Over the weekend we blogged about a new beta interface from AOL's multimedia engine, Singingfish.

It's no big surprise then that AOL is officially relaunching the Singingfish today as another one of its ad-supported standalone sites.

The Clickz article: Singingfish Relaunches Under New AOL Strategy, has the details.

Though Singingfish.com has long existed as a standalone site, the company had largely used it as a test site for new technology and a way to show potential new clients what it could offer. Now, AOL will develop Singingfish as a standalone destination, to take advantage of what, up until now, has been word-of-mouth-generated traffic.

Btw, over the weekend we also blogged an item about a new music search site called GoFish.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:48 AM | Permalink