Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Video Search Getting Smarter

ClipBlast has upgraded its video search engine with more detailed categorizations and a cleaner search and browse interface. This is a healthy sign that video search is quickly maturing and will soon be a viable option for advertisers.

ClipBlast doesn't interject video ads into the content, it merely links to other video sources. The interface allows you to search by category such as baseball and by video provider, which makes it easier to find the most desired content.

Google Video continues to be pathetic by comparison, and despite YouTube is not a lock to be dominant in video search. If you look at the "categories" within Google Video, there are links to clips in Russian and German that make no sense to us Yanks.

The big challenge for video search engines is how to maximize revenue. Since they are portals to other websites, they are passing through traffic and today getting revenue from generic display ads. YouTube has some video ads, but their is no contextual advertising. For example, on Google Video or ClipBlast, if you search for skiing, you get links to video, but zero advertising.

Integrating ads into video search remains a mystery that must be solved to attract serious advertisers.

By John Gartner at 11:39 AM | Comments (0)

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