Serious about Business

Online Video Brand Building

A recent post on Media Post's Online Video Insider entitled, "But Sir, What about Impressions?" brings some thought provoking context to brand building capabilities of the Web and accountability.  The emergence of online video advertising CAN provide advertisers, of any size and not just the big packaged goods ones, the ability to drive measurable brand impact - through longer view times and interaction - if people could only start seeing the branding world beyond the :15 second pre-roll. 

Of course, the notion of measurable results that drive brand impact (through action and interaction) is what Mixpo is all about.  It's nice to see others catching on to the notion.

Enabling Video SEO & Online Video Marketing for SMBs article

Mark Robertson, on his blog Reel SEO, wrote a great piece about Enabling Video SEO & Online Video Marketing for SMBs - and also provided a nice overview and introduction to Mixpo. We're honored to be written up in Reel SEO and included in an article that speaks to the "unique opportunity" as Mark puts it for small and medium sized companies to start leveraging online video to market more effectively. We hope you take a read of Mark's article and give us, and/or Mark, your feedback.

Small is Beautiful

We were asked by the good folks at Search Engine Land to contribute to a column: Small is Beautiful. Small is Beautiful is for small businesses with a focus on:

"millions of small businesses that have to compete against larger, often better staffed and funded rivals for top positions in search rankings and ads. Columnists offer creative advice and tips that smaller, nimble search marketers can exploit to gain a competitive advantage online. The Small Is Beautiful column appears on Tuesdays at Search Engine Land."

We just published our first article entitled: Online Video Advertising + Search Engines = Opportunity For Small Businesses. Take a read. We'd love to hear what you have to say.

Online Video Boom Carries On

10 billion video views online! That's the statistic that just came out from ComScore measuring last December's online video views and reported on the Kelsey Group blog.

We've always held the belief that consumers' changing media habits will drive the business need to adjust, and this data and the reported 141 million total unique users to video sites are proof points that businesses will want to take advantage of online consumers' growing appetites for video consumption and start marketing with video online.

A quote from the Kelsey blog summarizes the trend toward online video and how it benefits local businesses: "As video gains more exposure and acclimation among local searchers, demand will only grow among small and medium sized businesses, which will increasingly see it as a viable local marketing tool. Online video should be enticing to most SMBs in theory because it lowers the traditional barriers to video advertising (previously limited to cable spot tv)."

Video Ads on Google: A Win-Win for Consumers & Advertisers?

As many of you may have seen in the NY Times last week, Google will be testing online video ads in its search results. Reaction from consumers and advertisers has been swift and has varied widely, but for those of us who have been entirely focused on developing online video advertising, this uptick in interest is exciting.

We wrote a piece digging into this a bit more that was published today in Search Engine Land, the vehicle of search industry veterans Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman. We invite you to check out the article here: Video Ads on Google: A Win-Win for Consumers & Advertisers?

If you have any of your own thoughts and comments, please send them our way!

Google and VideoAds

An interesting article just ran in the NY Times Technology section entitled, Google Tests Video Ads on Search Results Pages. It's interesting to see Google validating the promise of video advertising online, as well as seeing comments from concerned readers regarding the potential impact on the quality of their Google experience.

It is really too early to understand the full potential of online video ads for advertisers and consumers, but if video ads just end up becoming another way to: take advantage, manipulate, shock into action, or annoy consumers, then you can bet you'll see the backlash hinted to by the NY Times article readers.

We believe in the premise that VideoAds should truly inform readers and invite them to interact with a brand, not shock them into action as most online ads try to do today. Some of our own research, working with small and medium sized business clients shows that VideoAds longer than 4 minutes are getting surprisingly deep viewer engagement and even repeat plays. Why is that? It's because the content is relevant, informative, and engaging. Hitting people over the head, the way most display ads do, is not the direction we believe will drive viewer satisfaction and advertiser benefit.

At the end of the day, Google is the master at providing relevant search results. VideoAds that move beyond the manipulation offered by most display ads, and actually inform, engage, and even excite viewers about a brand can be highly relevant in the Google context.

Effective Online Video Marketing is About the Experience, not the Ad unit

There was an interesting article in MediaPost's Online Video Insider entitled, It's Experience, Not Ad Format, That Brings High CPMs provided by Steve Robinson. In Mr. Robinson's article, he talks about the ad formats coming to market (pre-roll, post roll, lower third, ticker) that are equally hailed as the latest (greatest) way to present ads to consumers while, at the same time, discounted as another way to annoy consumers.

Lots of video ad formats. Lots of confusion. For me, one thing is clear: It is way too early to predict what is the optimal video ad unit that will satisfy consumers and drive action.

As Mr. Robinson says, " we need to remember the basic premise of advertising is to communicate valuable information. We especially need to recognize that every time the message needs to be a fresh exciting experience that engages and resonates with target customers..."

What's needed is a format that allows advertisers the ability to make changes on the fly and test different treatments that drive action. In short, whatever the format (s), it has to empower advertisers with the flexibility to test and optimize their message and to find the right formula that engages their customers and drives action.

I don't believe successful video advertising will be when consumers habitually click on pre or post roll video ads. Rather, success will be when consumers find value in the information presented in video ads and additive value in the interactive functionality afforded through the web. Success is matter of creating a better experience for consumers. It always has been.

SMBs take to Online Video

More and more insights are coming out supporting predictions that 2008 is the year for SMBs to begin leveraging video for marketing online. In Greg Sterling's Screenwerk blog entitled, Survey: Print YP ' Most Effective for SMBs, Greg references a survey conducted by AT&T (yellow pages).

Here are some interesting findings:

- About 53% of SMBs said they expect to buy online ads featuring videos within the next couple of years

- About 23% advertise online currently, and two-thirds have their own Web site

- 43% said they spend more on keyword-search traffic this year compared to last year, and 34% expect to keep increasing that spending next year

None of this is to say that other advertising media (particularly offline), like newspaper, radio, or print Yellow pages are dead. This just speaks to the growing options SMB advertisers have now to reach, engage, and convert more customers. It also speaks to, how publisher's like the Print YPs, must evolve to act more like an agency and bring new products like online video to their SMB clients.

As Greg says, "there's high demand and it (online video) can be sold as a premium offering" driven by the belief that online video will deliver measurable results for SMBs.

There really is nothing holding back all these predictions on 2008 from coming true.

More Predictions (or hot trends) from Michael Boland

Michael Boland writes for SearchEngineWatch and his blog is entitled, 8 White-Hot Trends Lifts Local Search in '08. The first trend Michael cites is Local Search in Motion. He talks about how the popularity of Youtube for watching entertainment videos online has paved the way for small businesses to leverage video for local search.

Michael says we are only seeing the beginning of this, and we couldn't agree more. We believe, for video to take off in the local space, video marketing solutions have to be turnkey, drive action, and provide measurable results.

Right now, everyone's focus is on just getting videos up or how to produce videos. Our hypothesis is that that is just the beginning and the real focus will become how to optimize video.

Interesting Blog from Reel SEO

The New Year always brings with it a host of predictions for the coming year. Predictions are meant to answer questions about the future and, in this case, it's the future of SEO and Video SEM. An interesting post to answer questions about the future of online video came out on New Year's Day by Mark Robertson on Reel SEO entitled 50 Online Video Predictions for 2008.

In actuality, Mark provides only 9 predictions, not 50 (Isn't distilling predictions down to the top few more meaningful anyway?) on the future of SEO and Video SEM. We'd like you to take note of three of Mark's predictions:

#4) Local Advertising Adoption: Mark talks about the growing consumer adoption of online video and how that will drive video advertising. A side post from Forrester Research estimates by 2012 online video ad spendng will reach $7.1 billion.

#5) Local Video Search: Mark mentions how, in 2008, SMBs will finally have business solutions for leveraging video to drive leads and conversion. Mark mentions Mixpo as a turnkey solution for helping small and medium size businesses leverage to better engage customers and drive conversion. To Mark's second point, we see our video marketing solution as a perfect compliment to what search engine marketing companies do.

#6) Video Marketing and SEO: Mark speaks to the advent of change for both SEO and SEM professionals driven by video. Video SEO is completely different from text based SEO and we, at Mixpo, believe we are on the cutting edge of leveraging SEO for videos - doing the right things to optimize VideoAds for search.

More than just predictions, the New Year brings with it promises of things to come to help SMBs finally leverage video the way big companies have. At Mixpo, we've always held the belief that online video marketing is coming and that it will be "game changing" for how SMBs will market in the future. Now that we see posts like Mark's that predict online video marketing is here, the question is no longer ong>when will video come but rong>how exactly will video marketing help SMBs.

At the end of the day (or year ending 2008), we believe what SMBs really want is to drive action, measurement and ROI, not video for video sake. "Did video work for me? How many calls did I get through using video? How do I optimize my marketing with video?" Those are the questions we aim to answer in 2008.