insight :: the evolution of broadcast media
video seo
Video SEO
Now on Streaming Media TV: @C-Level Grill With Twistage's David Wadler
Sep 1st
[brightcove vid=36478068001&exp=1344656541&w=510&h=550]
Twistage CEO David Wadler stopped by the Bandwidth Bastard studio last week for a deep dive into the world of video platforms, funding versus financing in the current market and the life of a hands-on CEO. Lots of laughs and heartfelt exposition take us on an emotional journey.
HULU IS PICKING UP STREAM :: IS IT THE AD'S?
Apr 14th
I have had a theory that if Hulu plays the game better than Netflix or Blockbuster, Hulu could potentially reinvent the business model for “movie” and “broadcast” distribution and licensing via streaming media. Check out the latest numbers on HuLu from Neilson Online – as reported by Mark R Robertson | from ReelSEO –> According to new research released from Neilsen Online, almost 10 billion (9.6B) video streams were viewed in March of this year by an estimated 130M US web users. This represents almost a 40% (38.8) increase year over year from March 2008 and is an increase of 9% month over month from February 2009. Mark thinks it may have something to do with the fancy Hulu ad’s, and you know what? I agree!
NetFlix is not on the list perhaps they opt to keep the numbers “private” and not participate to in the Neilsen on-line rating system. Of course, the question is… Do you trust the Neilsen’s numbers, hmmmm…..
Here is the Raw Data from Neilsen for March

What do you think?
New Media Keyword Comparison
Mar 24th
Technorati charts allow you to visualize the impact an individual tag has on the Blogosphere by graphing the number of times the tag occurs in blog posts across the web.
NEW MEDIA PLANNING :: BUDGET HACKING :: WHERE TO CUT AND WHERE TO SPEND
Mar 18th
I want to start by stating very plainly, there is no such thing as a simple web page. Not anymore.
Consider this, interactive new media products are living organisms that will either thrive once launched – like living creatures, if they have a healthy gestation, these things can grow strong over time leading long, healthy lives – or, if malnourished or traumatized during their incubation, will die a slow, painful death in the petri dish. The cost of birthing one of these “organisms” can not succeed if the stake holders don’t respect the process. More >
NETFLIX :: NOW HIRING :: BETWEEN THE LINES
Feb 22nd
I discovered a NetFlix job posting for the role of Director of Encoding Operations on the StreamingMedia.com job board – I decided to red-line the job post with the dialogue as I heard it play out in my head - There is a true irony about the timing and wording of their post, especially in light of the recent announcement Chief Executive Officer Reed Hastings made, “Netflix Inc. may allow customers to pay solely for online-video streaming by late this year or 2010 as more viewers watch content directly from the Internet“. I suppose they have to get it working first though…
The special “skill set” as described is foreboding, to say the least – but jobs are tight and it seems like they are hiring, so go for it if you qualify.
Secret Sauce :: VIDEO SEO :: Tastes great! Less Filling!
Jan 29th
Today was an especially productive day – I sent the final draft of an article I wrote for Streaming Media Magazine on The “search” for real VSEO… to the editor.
It was an exhaustive journey into the realm of SEO. I spent a lot of time in WebEx sessions and engaged on my own traveling the paths of the end user to discover video on-line. I asked myself a lot of questions, went a step further and really tried to listen to some experts for guidance. I’d like to thank Mark Robertson publisher and founder of ReelSEO for his patience and enthusiasm, Accordent Technolgy’s for being my Enterprise go-to guys/gals and EveryZing that let me get inside their product and their minds!
Here is just one of the fascinating revelations passed down to me from Tom Wilde, CEO of Everyzing :
There are many tools that can be used to help users select keywords that result in good positioning for Google results; such as Google Insight for Search.
Google Insight reports that over the last 90 days, searches with the keyword video outnumbered keywords searches for sex, god, and Obama. So what do the numbers on the graph mean? According to Google Insight for Search, “The numbers on the graph reflect how many searches have been done for a particular term, relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time. They don’t represent absolute search volume numbers, because the data is normalized and presented on a scale from 0-100; each point on the graph is divided by the highest point, or 100. The numbers next to the search terms above the graph are summaries, or totals.”
In practice, simply adding the word video to a site makes it more likely to come up in a search, but there are also 3.38 billion other results for the keyword video on Google, so the competition is tight. The trick is to find the magic combination of keywords that eliminate the competition and push results for your content to the top of the list. You must take the same route one would take to Carnegie Hall, “Practice, practice, practice.”
When asked, “What makes for good VSEO,” Wilde points back toward the fundamentals of “old school” SEO: “Optimize the video’s presentation page using standard SEO techniques; this is also true for videos uploaded to sharing sites. Logical file naming schemes, site structure, use sitemaps and relevant keyword usage throughout the landing page will result in good VSEO.”
If you upload a video to YouTube, you will see how often it is viewed in different geographic regions as well as how popular it is relative to all videos in its market over a given period of time. You can also delve deeper into the lifecycle of a video, determining how long it takes for it to become popular and what happens to video views as popularity peaks. (figure 2) YouTube is also rolling out paid search, a new feature that enables video distributors to buy keywords in YouTube on a pay-per-click basis. Currently, this is only available to agencies.
It’s faster to get a video indexed when uploaded to YouTube or an existing site that is already in Google and the other major search engines. When a site is submitted manually, it takes at least 90 days to begin showing up in search results, but YouTube, MySpace, and other established sites can list the same site in less than 24 hours. Just make sure you don’t rely soley on an up-load of your video, but create a full “channel page” for your videos, those weigh more in Google and others. Make sure you clearly indicate the link back to the site you want end users to go to, include links in the channel pages, and include a lower-third graphic in the video itself with a text advertising your site.
************* End of Excerpt *** To read more, you will have to subscribe to Streaming Media Magazine or check out StreamingMedia.com for possible a digital version
Video SEO:: How do you know when it is working::Who cares?
Dec 30th
Ok, maybe it comes off as kind of hostile, but I am having a hard time actually finding an ROI on SEO for on-line video content — e.g. If I am a website with Video that is expertly tagged and optimized, where exactly will I see the results? Google? Yahoo? Or does the end-user have to be looking specifically for video on the “video” portal for the major SE’s? Wouldn’t a person searching on-line benefit as much from seeing a video about milking cows as they would from reading about milking cows?
The subject of VIDEO SEO frustrates me because everyone is telling us we need it, but for who and to what end?
Join me on my journey as I seek out what VSEO is and why we should give a crap-dang-it about it ;-p
I welcome your feedback.
** All the early feedback focuses on Metrics starting with the end user already at the video view stage, and I am focusing on what VSEO promises, more or less, how the end user arrives at the video not what they do once there… but I know my Peeps will keep me in check
Why Broadcasters are failing at ROI:: Discovery and others are scaling back:: That's Whack!!
Dec 15th
A recent post read: Discovery CEO David Zaslav, speaking at the conference, said that despite the large content library that Discovery owns, viewers are unlikely to find any of it on line in the near future. I had to investigate and was quite surprised by what I “discovered”. When I visited Discovery.com and the homepage loaded, it was covered in advertisements for Maxi pads. Although I am a female, and they do track demographic information (see Privacy Policy bullet 4 (four) under (2) Non-Personally Identifiable Information ), any demographic information that could be tracked via my PC or Browser would Identify me as a 72 year old male, by design.
That is strike one. Having paid close attention to how and what is advertised at me over the years, and being a marketer and a technologist who is known for intensive QA (Quality Assurance) processes – it is clear that no one is actually checking to make sure that the campaigns that are going out make sense and/or that the targeting is working correctly.
OK, homepage is one thing – I made my way through the site to track down a long form video “full episode” on the Discovery.com site – I found something that was even more bizarre.
There are only two Programs left in long form, so I navigated over to Prototype This!: Robotic Firefighter Assistant and as the page loaded, I found all the ads were also pointing at a different demographic than what I had expected – so what is with the baby products and feminine hygiene obsession? More >
RESEARCH PROJECT:: VIDEO SEO :: SHOW ME THE SAUCE
Dec 1st
There is a lot of noise lately regarding how video content and SEO work together – there are many companies evangelizing their ‘wares to the hungry marketers of such video property; however, I don’t believe any of it for a second – it’s not working as advertised.
Recently I sat through a demo of a product that promised enhanced search-ability for video content that was essentially “tagged” by their product. At the end of the demo, I asked if we could examine how the tagging impacted the SEO of the client sites we looked at, using organic keywords that pertained to the video content we had just reviewed.
They proceeded to “plant” ordered keywords into Google to show how their tagged video appeared magically – with a rigid set of keywords that no human would “organically” input for a search. Having said that, the tagged video did not come up first nor did it come up as a prioritized web asset with more or less relevance than any other web page that pertained to the keyword set they used.
The tagged video appeared third and had no special indicator that this was a link to video enhanced web content.
On Google the special video category is relegated to video content originating from YouTube, so many of the products and “specialists” out there on VIDEO SEO are just going to post clips on YouTube and point back to the client website – so save your money and do it yourself.
Here is an example, if I do a search for keywords “interviews with madonna” on Google, I get the quick drop down from the homepage that tell me there are over 4 million results that have relevance. More >





