The Headline of a recent article on emarketer made me laugh “Welcome to the money tube”.

Over 1/3 of the US population over 3 years has watched a video online according to the article. Estimates put that number going to over 50% in 2007. I think both numbers probably Should be much higher.

I do not know anyone that hasn’t watched a video online at least once.

These studies showing the large audiences viewing online videos mean we are looking at a host of services that will be offered by many companies in the coming months and years.

Here are a items we will see:

• Online Video Production - Spotrunner everyone knows about now but plan on many more online video sites making videos on the cheap to come and go
• Online Video Ad Optimization-Got video? great now the RIGHT people need to see it. Who cares if you have a video that gets viewed by a huge audience of all the wrong people. Enter the OVO (Online Video Optimization) or VSEO (Video Search Engine Optimization) companies to optimize your video and all delivery systems of that video to target and reach your best audience.
• Video Marketing companies-1 stop shops doing production and distribution

In the short term I think everyone company will try and jump on the bandwagon, including SEO Firms, Ad agencies etc…most will do a bad job. The most important item when starting an online video advertising campaign is where and how are people going to find it. The best results will be achieved by companies that have the expertise and resources to distribute the video to a network of sites ready display the videos.

An article today titled “Blogs for Shoppers” in the Wall Street journal Personal Journal Section Page 1 gives another validation to what everyone in our company has been talking about for the last year. Retail Websites, and Manufacturers of products can benefit tremendously from a professional corporate blog and a business blog marketing campaign.

Here is a quick excerpt:
“Shoppers scratching their heads for gift suggestions are seeking advice from a cadre of bloggers who are up on the hot products in their fields. Although mining the sites may require sifting through industry news and the occasional life story, blogs can provide ideas from people with particular expertise — backpack suggestions from trekkers or gadget advice from techies”

The article by JESSICA E. VASCELLARO goes on to provide some examples of niche blogs that are popular. The ones they show are good, but doesn’t even scratch the surface of whats out there… pull up some blog stats about how many blogs are created every day and how many people read blogs(55 + Million), and its not hard to see that there are some retailers and manufacturers out there that need to get to work branding their company and products in the blogOsphere. If they you as a retailer or a manufacturer are not controlling your brand, who is?

A recent article talks about the effect of “time shifting viewers” (People that use DVR’s) on TV ad revenue.

Article is found here. Online Video Advertising.

Interesting but not surprising. Online Video and Video Search optimization are quietly being done now by a few companies….

Personally I don’t watch any commercials on TV, except during live sports. I am apparently not the only one since 40% of people are reported to be using DVR’s. (Digital Video Recorders, Like TIVO)

Online Video Ads and Video Search Optimization.

Alexa Rank is accurate. According to a study that shows how Sites with lower (better) Alexa Rankings are in fact getting more traffic. Pretty Interesting. There will always be debates about Alexa but it is still true that its the only universal way of judging or measuring the amount of traffic a site is receiving, short of seeing actual stat packages of a site that is. Who can argue with the the top 5 alexa ranked for the U.S:

• Yahoo
• Google
• Myspace
• MSN
• EBAY

Alexa Ranking is not something I would use as the ONLY way to judge a sites progress but it is definitely something to use as a key indicator of how successful a site is in bringing in traffic.

Saw this on TechCrunch Just thought it was cool.   We love online video here and who doesn’t like free movies?

Check out the post on TechCrunch for more details and head to AOL video on on Saturday for your Free Movies.

Yahoo is building a different kind of social network according to bizreport…. If you heard it described you might at first think “oh yea like myspace”, and it is sort of, they are using brands and products that people are already passionate about and building from there ie the first launch in this product will be http://wii.yahoo.com/ using the Nintendo Wii’s already huge popularity to springboard their site into popularity… sounds a lot like how many blogs have become popular.

I took a look around and while I’m sure sites like this will do well for Yahoo it seemed kind of ho hum.. another portal site with links and message boards and reader feedback and videos.. nothing too impressive but well done. I think IGN has been doing this for a long time. Take a look.

I have not tested this yet but if its true it will mean great things for all of our customers. According to a blog post by Andy, that was sent to me by one of our founders, Google may be incorporating blog search results in its main search results. You can Check out his post here. Really its only logical. Most of Google’s Results have in the past months been full of irrelevant and just plain bad results, incorporating blog search results will only improve the quality of those results. Time will tell if this actually proves to be true. In the mean time keep watching.

We have been hearing about it for a while now and now here it is officially. Google is putting overflow ads in newspapers… I guess if there are too many ads and yours is not generating revenue for Google not to worry ad buyers, they will run some classifieds for you. Called Google’s “overflow display ads” the ads will be redirected to print…. I am sure that is just what every ONLINE advertiser wanted, to instead wind up in a newspaper.

Somehow this is supposed to spur people to advertise online…What is probably more likely is that someone will soon be giving Google credit for reviving newspaper readership.

Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Boston Globe, Seattle Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer are some of the 50 participating newspapers.

A 10 item list of guidelines for marketing utilizing blogs and blog marketing has been issued by the WOMMA. (word of mouth marketing association) There have been a few stories lately of fake blogs and fake viral videos that everyone finds out were really just being done by Wal-Mart or some other corporation. These are sometimes called a “flog” or a corporation fronting blog or “fake” blog. Which is different from splogs which are all spam generate content.

If you think about it “fake” blogs or fake blog posts that someone is paid to do or blog that a company has out there that is not acknowledged is just as deceptive as pay per click search ads would be if they were not labeled. The FTC came in and regulated Pay Per Click ads to make sure that the consumer knew they were ads. If we follow that logic should they also step in and require the same sort of labeling on commercial blogs in order to ensure that consumers are not tricked?

The principle is the same. In search results people were trusting the engines to deliver relevant results when some ads weren’t clearly labeled the FTC said no you have to make sure people can tell the difference. Here is an article about the FTC recommendations from 2002…by Danny Sullivan.
Here is a quote from the article “Commercial Alert filed its complaint last July, claiming that a lack of disclosure about paid content integrated into search results constituted “deceptive advertising,” something the FTC regulates against.” Are some of these blogs deceptive? Will Ralph Nader target them? Stay tuned..

You can check out the Blog Marketing Code of Ethics here.

I ran across an interesting article about the future of retail marketing and on line marketing. The article speculates on a future of Retail in the Web 2.0 Environment.

“It’s a scary scenario. A few major players could take over Web 2.0,” said LeHong, suggesting that a merged entity such as a combined Google and Amazon.com could dominate as a “pretailer,” a product search and price comparison portal.” He calls this GOOGAZON.

The fear here is that such an entity would begin to dominate transactions to a level that they dictate terms to the retailers and business owners. Similar to how a Walmart store effects traditional retail stores in some markets it moves into. This type of entity could flex some big wallet marketing muscle to make sure they are the ones dicatating the terms of the new Web 2.0 Retail Market.

Personally while I agree that in theory this is all possible I have faith that many online business owners and marketers out there will not want to lose their ability to market and sell on line in whatever way they choose. I think that this type of relationship would attract an audience but there is still at least as many if not more consumers for whom the Web 2.0 Retail landscape means more choices, more information and they will want to have choices other than a Googazon type company. The most obvious choice for those consumers is going to be a retail blog and retail blog marketing program.

The retail blog will offer all the features of user input instantly updated information and user reviews that will increase loyalty and attract some of the best most qualified buyers on line. I talked to a company today with a retail blog that recieved 30,000 visitors in the last 3 days. Talk about increase in sales.