Amazon killed its Video Widget this morning. Sunsetting fully-working affiliate tools simply due to low usage cannot be a high priority for Amazon at this flush time. I would guess that it was closed down due to reasons other than low participant uptake. Sometimes, low-level tools are shut down because the number of complaints aren’t worth the fixes. When I wrote about the Video Widget in the Spring, a concern was the conflict between uploading a ‘review’ video and then making affiliate fees off it. It would have been possible to trash competitive products to promote your own. Alternatively, possibly people were taking advantage of a free hosting platform and uploading personal videos. Since you have to associate one product to each video, perhaps manufacturers objected to having their products associated with unscreened, irrelevant videos. Here’s one by me:
Another reason to sunset a working product would be if an improved, or conflicting product is due for launch. This might be the case since they’re allowing you to leave up your old Video Widgets. If I find other discussions about the closure, I’ll update this post.
I see Google’s new filter, Search Options, as a very specific attempt by Google to own consumer word of mouth — that untethered sea of millions of voices speaking about products, experiences, brands. The Search Options that Google launched: Video, Forums, Review…are all currently the strongest forms of consumer expression. In evidence of their interest in commerce, the example in theirvideo demonstration of Google Search Options is a product search: “Powershot SD 750”.Based on the selection of filters available in “Show Options”, Google isobviously hoping to capture a larger share of product researchers by optimizing their search results. Let’s break down the first few critical Search Options that Google chose to launch.
Video: Well, there’s expotv.com, the largest and only video site dedicated to word of mouth video for consumers. Great content to surface in Search Options! And then there’s youtube, which could be characterized as the largest video platform dedicated to word of mouth video for anything. Unfortunately for users, youtube’s page rank of 9 will render this Search Option less helpful. Youtube’s product-tagged video will surface often, but the results will have a number of weaknesses for consumers looking for helpful product information. The two that we often point out are:
(i)the horrifically uneven quality, type and quantity of information that is presented from video to video
(ii)the inability to search effectively no matter how specific your search terms due to poor tagging by great videos, and great tagging by poor videos
However, if you’re Google and you own Youtube, then helping youtube surface even potentially relevant consumer video is a great way to monetize the content.
Forums: Why search forums? Aren’t they the sources that you most avoid when doing a search? Sorting through a bunch of moms talking about swine flu is not going to give you much serious information about the disease. But if the search is on products – forums become an authentic source of consumer enthusiast information. Unlike on Web 1.0, corporate poseursare now often outed immediately on forums. Hard-core enthusiasts take legendary status on forums as moderators, contributors, and consumer experts. The information on the best and biggest forums offer sincere,personal and authentic discussion by enthusiasts. Go to a Disney boardif you want to know the best rooms on the Disney Cruise ship, not Disney.com.
Reviews: I assume I don’t have to cover how reviews are relevant if Google wants to own word of mouth consumer search. The proliferation of text reviews (and even the proliferation of tools that allow sites to implement text reviews) make Google’s search of the resulting vast expanse of content invaluable. Amazon does a great job of sorting through its user reviews in order to spur conversion to sale. Why shouldn’t Google apply that same logic to ALL user reviews.
From Expo’s point of view, Google’s optimization of consumer word of mouth is a boon for content sites like ours. Expo will benefit from the care and attention Google is putting to format, content, and source of user generated product information. We think product researchers will undoubtedly benefit as well.
What’s next for Google Commerce:
Google’s already reached perfection taking both irrelevant and relevant content and attaching a commerce component via Google Adsense. What’s left? Price comparison is dominated by the engines like shopping.com and now it’s commoditized with APIs. Product selection search is dominated by Amazon and its vast marketplace of products. Google then tried inter-Amazon search through its “site search box“. While a smart move by Google, it’s a terrible user experience since Amazon does a much better job of searching its own site and tailoring it for the non-anonymous user.
My bet is on Local Commerce. Local commerce is one area that has yet to unlocked by online tools. My bet is Google will win that game against the brilliant start-ups out there trying to attack local dollars. Local cannot be attacked on a national scale (thus the different names), but GPS is allowing hyper targeting to become relevant to geo-targeting. By vectoring GPS, maps, and local search, Google has the winning combination of national services to synthesize local advertising. Remember, they don’t need to create the local content, just find the right person to deliver it to.
Woefully behind on tricking out our Youtube page with new utilities. Today, Youtube SEM.
1) You can now set up a text ad much like an adsense ad, and then buy keywords for placement of a link to promote a specific youtube video or video channel. The example on the right shows how I purchased the word “consumer reviews” and you can see my bid earned me first placement among…one bidder. The layout is integrated, with a video thumbnail and my text descriptor.
2) Obviously, the key is finding the right keywords that work for you. There are similar tools to adsense that will suggest related keywords to the ones you are targeting. I assume those are based on popular youtube search queries.
3) Youtube allows you to set a maximum bid price and a daily maximum budget. The interface allows you to see the average slot placement you earned based on your bid. You can change each keyword individually. Youtube serves google adsense results when there is no youtube bidder. In my small tests, it seems if there is at least 1 youtube bidder on a word,
youtube seems to displace the adsense module for the youtube bidder. My bids were very high, so it’s possible the unit is already be optimized to serve adsense or the youtube bidder based on which yields the most revenue. However, for strategic reasons, I would think they would favor heavily the youtube bidder. Such a weighting keeps the visitor within youtube, since the paid link goes to a youtube video or channel. That allows youtube to show effectiveness of the ad unit, and the ability to keep the user to monetize further.
The Youtube Promoted Videos is an interesting ability to get distribution for your video. The trouble for youtube will be finding users who have the ability to monetize their video or channel, or have rationalized some other reason to pay for viewers. The rates are relatively high…I’d heard the average is $1.00 CPC, although we have been experiencing significantly lower CPC than that for first slot placement on our keywords. (Obviously, it all depends on what words you’re going for.) I’ll update that range as we expand our buys.
More on the impact of these changes to commercial applications after I post about the Youtube Insights module next.
Clickz broke a great story about changes to youtube. Basically, youtube seems to be throwing in the towel on monetizing their brand of UGC. They’re creating a tabbed ‘ghetto’ for not only amateur videos like “Charlie Bit My Finger“, but also for semi-pro content as well (sorry semi-pro, you’re more semi than pro).
Between closing down the Google Adsense/Youtube units and now creating a monetizable player specifically for professional content, I think Youtube is taking a business plan stand. Their UGC, with billions of eyeballs, is pretty much unmonetizable. UGC (and copywrite infringements…and porn…), with its $470 million of loss for hosting and serving, may be the french fries that bring the search audience to youtube. But it’s the professional content where youtube is now betting to make its money.
Some changes I would expect? Search results will begin to favor professional content in the results. UGC, which is next to impossible to search productively anyway, will become subordinated to the professional results. If you search for “how to bake a cake” chances are you wouldn’t mind finding a Food TV segment, or Martha Stewart or anyone you know. Of course, you actually get “lfritz73″. And as charming as she is, I have no idea if she makes a good cake. Segregating the two will allow you to find all the copywrited clips you want…all legally if Youtube can get their syndication deals done with the majors.
Copywrite infringing materials will get taken down faster, or through a better process. With revenue at stake now, both youtube and copywrite holders (NBC, ESPN) will want to have their results found on the monetizable, “good” player, not the UGC ghetto tab. Previously, there was no economic incentive to takedown infringing content (and actually incentive to leave it up for the audience those clips attracted). Which leads to….
Professional publishers will be more liberal with what they put up online. If youtube is monetizing the content, and they are counting the eyeballs, and there’s a pretty player….well, voila, that’s kind of TV.
More and more eyeballs to broadband…less and less to the TV box. Watch out Comcast. The repeats and archives are now moving online. You know what’s next.
Most of you won’t be affected by this, since it seems very few people were using it. Google Adsense discontinued offering Youtube Video Units as part of their never-ending-search for youtube’s revenue model. As part of the program, Adsense users were able to find a youtube video, attach it to their Google Adsense account, and embed the ad-enabled video into their site. Then, they could sit back and let the Adsense for Video overlay money roll in while they slept. From an email they sent to Adsense account holders last week:
“After reviewing our AdSense video units feature, which allows you to show YouTube content and ads on your pages, we’ve found that it hasn’t had the impact we had hoped for. As a result, we’ve decided to retire this feature at the end of April so we can focus our resources on other opportunities to help publishers earn from their sites. “
What were the problems? We don’t really know, but let’s assume that Adsense publishers really did embed adsense-enabled youtube videos into their destinations. Here are some guesses as to why Youtube still might not have found success:
1) The ads were unable to correctly discern the context of the video in order to match relevant advertisers. Adsense works because of its unparalleled ability to contextually match an advertiser to related text content. Adsense for Video, however, is dependent on Google’s ability to read the tags and metadata attached to the video. The metadata for Youtube videos are created by the uploaders, which include things like “27309 1/9“. In that specific case, the video has no other metadata other than being in the “People and Blogs” category. Hard to create advertising relevancy with that level of information — even for Google. Therefore, not only could the viewer be negatively affected by irrelevant ads, but that leads to poor performance for the ad units.
2) The videos that people wanted to post don’t lend themselves to advertising. Many viral videos, as we know, are extreme, funny, or extremely funny. Most don’t lead the viewer to think, “Hmm…I would like to know more about a cheap plane ticket to Florida right now.” Even if Google was able to discern the context of the video through proper user-selected titling, tags and metadata, finding a relevant ad on the skateboarding cat is hard to do.
3) The age old problem: Branded advertisers want to know where their ad is showing up — not just on which embedded video, but on which embedding site. Advertisers on youtube video overlays often turn a blind eye to whether the video itself is appropriate content for their brand. If you pay by the click, sometimes you just care about the people who clicked, not the people who didn’t. However, in this program, the advertiser must also extend their ‘blind eye’ to include whether the embedding site is appropriate. If Youtube tries to sell CPM video deals with branded advertisers as opposed to applying only CPC affiliates, then the importance of knowing where the video is being played rises. Branded sponsors have too much at risk to tie themselves to unknown destinations, once they get over being tied to unknown video content.
We like the Google Adsense for Video service that places relevant Adsense overlays on video. For informational video content attached to rich metadata, there is no reason that GAFV shouldn’t be as successful for Google Adsense in generating revenue for video publishers. At Expo, we experience very rich RPM from GAFV and high CTR due to the relevance of the ads to our video content. A Krups coffeemaker video review will display a “Krups at Macys” overlay every time. We wouldn’t be able to do that without Google Adsense, but the bar for user gen video is as high as any other content to properly leverage Adsense’s strengths…metadata, quality and relevance of the content still matter.
UPDATE: If you’re confused about all these monetization attempts on the part of Youtube, here is a clarifying page Adsense put up to help discern them all
If you upload a video on amazon, there’s an insteresting app that will let you make referral money off it. Gets into a murky area if the video you’re uploading is a product review or claims to be unbiased, but it’s a cool tool regardless.
A friend of mine uploaded a product review to Amazon under my associates account, and I added a bunch of products to it. Some were irrelevant, but fun to add. Very simple. I like it. Lots of possibilities if Amazon can hone in on what video they’re looking for people to upload, and what behavior they want to reward.
We have a 19 year old intern from UCLA in our company this summer. He is pretty interesting because he’s got some great film making skills already under his belt. In discussing how to get us some great consumer video, he thought up the idea (the night before) to go to the iPhone opening in NYC. He got some great footage, edited it and put it up on the same day. Because he was in a self-professed “good mood” he left out the two “criticisms” that he heard that day about the iPhone (the whole thing about not being able to connect because of the problems Apple was having with their system). He even put together his own music.
His presence in the company is a fun reminder that fearlessness will always be a big part of entrepreneurialism. I hope you enjoy his creativeness to real consumer reviewing the iPhone!
Co-founder and CEO of Expo, video commerce solution based in New York City. Former CFO of Oxygen Media and member of founding team. Entrepreneur, wife, mom.
Most of you won’t be affected by this, since it seems very few people were using it. Google Adsense discontinued offering Youtube Video Units as part of their never-ending-search for youtube’s revenue model. As part of the program, Adsense users were able to find a youtube video, attach it to their Google Adsense account, and embed the ad-enabled video into their site. Then, they could sit back and let the Adsense for Video overlay money roll in while they slept. From an email they sent to Adsense account holders last week: