Video advertisers looking to expand their audience should be eyeing televisions, and IPTV can make it possible.

While I've been railing for months for cable systems and DVRs to find a way for web video to make it into home theaters, IPTV and set-top boxes are the path of least resistance. Motorola just shipped its one millionth IP-enabled set-top box, and the company offers boxes that include DVR functions in addition to carrying broadcast TV.

IP set-top boxes provide broadband access to content, so forming the relationships with web video companies to deliver MPEG video is an easy fit. Video upload site Revver already has a relationship with Verizon's FiOS IPTV service to do just that through an ad revenue sharing agreement.

IPTV can provide broadband and on demand channels with greater flexibility than cable or satellite, and adding web video gives them a decided advantage. Of course IPTV services are tiny by comparison today, but that may change soon.

Vertical search engines are becoming so popular that we'll soon need a vertical search engine to keep track of them all.

Just in the last week we have the addition of CarePilot, a home health industry search engine, Balihoo, for ad industry search, and Retrevo, which identifies the most relevant information related to consumer electronics.

These search engines are carving out a niche for underserved markets and seek to best the Googles and Yahoos of the world using unique algorithms and interface innovations.

For example, Retrevo produces four sets of search results -- one for shopping, one for manufacturer info, one for blogs and one for reviews. This enables consumers to quickly zoom in on the most relevant information to them. Searches for pricing, versus how-to, versus reviews are clearly different functions, and Retrevo smartly distinguishes the results.

The difficult part for consumers will be finding these search engines that can suit there needs. An index for vertical search is needed, and perhaps these smaller players will also need to do search marketing so that they can get their names out.

I recently started advertising on Superpages.com and was shocked to find that the company is charging more for its premium pay per click placement than for pay per call. I'm really having trouble understanding under what scenario a network might justify
charging more for a click than a call, and I'm coming up empty.

Superpages wants to charge $2.50 PER CLICK for ads that appear among the first 8 in a category. For the same placement, the company is charging $2 for calls made through a number that Superpages sets up for advertisers.

A call to a company is a commitment of time and shows a much higher level of interest than a click, which is often done to browse the competition and see if there is a match between supplier and consumer. If you are picking up the phone, the odds of making a purchase are a magnitude higher than a click.

$2.50 per click just seems outrageous for a small business to pay. We know what the click through rates are on ads, and the odds that a link to a company's website will lead to a conversion are very slim. Pay per call customers can't put their website link within their ad, but that is not enough of a detriment to push people to pay per click. What am I missing?

Yesterday Microsoft announced the end of their bCentral business directory product and said they'd shelve the product in order to preserve links for all of its existing customers. bCentral was a directory submission staple oldskool seo firms used for link building and directory submission campaigns and thankfully that era is coming to an end. Blogs are now all the rage when it comes to getting backlinks and whether we call it link baiting or link swapping or just plain ol publicity, it's all the same game, get your links on sites that can boost your pagerank. Here's what Microsoft had to say about the retirement.

On May 18th 2007 Microsoft will retire its Submit It! service... existing Submit It! customers are being offered a way to retain their Small Business Directory listings, for free, through 2008... Effective 3:00pm Pacific Daylight Time on May 18th 2007, you will no longer be able to log into and access the Submit It! service. The service’s site preparation and optimization tools, directory submittal, and reporting services will be decommissioned and any data associated with these service components will be permanently deleted from Microsoft servers. If you want to preserve any reporting information please log into the Member Center to do so before the service end date.

Here's where it gets funny though, they're going to keep the directory around so you can still reap the benefits of all those high quality links (snickering~).

the bCentral™ Small Business Directory will be retired. In its place, we are offering existing Submit It! customers and others who currently have bCentral Small Business Directory listings a free, grandfathered listing in the new Microsoft Small Business Directory. While we will be preserving the present directory’s link friendliness and search ranking value, slight changes will be made in the way the directory appears to the public and how you may alter your listing...On May 18th 2007 when the Submit It! service ends, the bCentral Small Business Directory will be converted to a read-only online business directory. This means that while the public will still be able to browse, search and view directory contents, you will not have access to the listings in order to edit your information.

Well there's not much more to say other than, R.I.P bCentral-iatch.

On Friday I brought up a couple of points regarding coupons on social news aggregators and used an example that was found on digg and del.icio.us. I also asked Jay Adelson for his thoughts on whether or not they plan on making a more prominent category focused on coupons and got his response. Consider this a mini Q & A and catchup all at the same time.

Q:) Have you ever considered creating a category just for coupons or deals?

A:) Our Tech Deals section is where most coupons live on Digg - we've had that area for a long time, almost the entire history of Digg. It goes fairly unnoticed by many newer readers but it's a very high traffic section for users seeking deals.

We've found that many eCommerce websites have tried to get dugg onto this section, and frankly we're fine with it. If it's a great deal, it will get dugg to the Newly Popular list.

We're always looking at new ways to direct traffic to the best places...the point at which user interest in coupons gets strong enough to warrant creating a new topic around it, we'd definitely consider that