Our focus is still very much on serving the SMB advertiser, but we are finding that the best way to serve them is through partners. We’ve also found that, although our advertising platform is very useful for helping SMBs optimize their search efforts with video, our technology is more complementary to the smart “blocking and tackling” things businesses should already be doing to optimize their basic search efforts.

As my final monthly column for Search Engine Land this year, I thought it would be both fun and interesting to take a look back at some of the items I’ve written about throughout 2008, to see if they are still holding true today. I will return to Search Engine Land from time to time, with occasional postings from the world of online video advertising, but for now let’s take a quick look back.

Early this year, I pondered the basic characteristics that make online video, with a focus on both SMBs and search, important:

The power of video

It’s obvious. Video is and always has been among the most powerful ways to advertise. Video can enable businesses to leverage sight, sound, and motion to create an emotive and more memorable connection with potential customers. Coupled with the fact that people are bombarded every day with emails, text-laden web sites, and oftentimes annoying flash banner ads, the early opportunity for small businesses here is that online video ads have the ability to break through the clutter and communicate meaningful information.

For example, if I’m a consumer searching on a major engine for a type of local small business, say a real estate agent or car dealer, chances are good I’ll naturally gravitate to a search result that has a video, where most others do not: In short, much of the power of online video lies in helping small businesses stand out.

IS THIS STILL TRUE? Absolutely.

Online video viewing is big

Another obvious but critical point is that video is just more accepted and accessible online now than ever before. According to a study by comScore, consumers viewed more than 11 billion videos online in July 2008 with roughly 75% of total internet users having watched video online. Consumers are finally getting used to accessing video online. The projections that US broadband penetration is expected to break 90% by mid-2008 adds fuel to the notion that the 11 billion figure will surely be surpassed year’s end.

STILL TRUE? Video is indeed more accepted and accessible now than before, but just not quite to the extent mentioned – Pew Research reported in mid-2008 that 15% of Internet users still only had dial-up access available to them. Back to the comScore July report that the average online viewer watched 235 minutes of video, and although there still are some internet households that don’t have broadband, those that can access online video are watching more and more.

Video creates a level playing field for small businesses

For years, when it comes to video, there’s been a series of unfair advantages in favor of big companies: Video creation was expensive. Buying media was even more expensive. Clients relied heavily on agencies to get the message right – because once you paid the hundreds of thousands for creative, it better be built to last.

Today, creating compelling videos is very accessible to small businesses at a fraction of the cost that big companies pay. And the definition of compelling is changing. No longer is good advertising narrowly defined as messaging crammed into high production 30 or 15 second spots We’ve seen SMB success with all forms of content: photos and/or video, customized stock video, testimonials and product demos – all with the common framework of wanting to inform rather than just entertaining viewers. Yes, repurposed commercials DO work but the meta-point is SMBs now have creative options that make online video affordable and thus more accessible to the long tail of advertisers.

But beyond just making video accessible, small businesses crave the ability to measure and alter the creative in order to maximize their return. It’s having the ability to get more out of their video online without huge “change order” costs that makes it accessible for small business.

STILL TRUE? Absolutely and time will showcase the many (effective) ways smaller advertisers tell their story.

Interactivity makes the difference

Sure, a computer monitor is smaller than most new flat screen televisions, but most people view a computer about a foot away from their screen, versus television watchers who are most likely sitting on a barcalounger across the room. Online video forces attention, and the Internet offers the capability for small businesses to directly leverage this.

In a recent Bits article in the NY Times entitled: Online Videos – and Our Attention Spans – Get Longer, some interesting observations where made about how viewers interact with online video vs. offline:

“This offers a bit of confirmation to a theory I’ve had for a while: that the Internet will reverse the dumbing down of news that was caused by television. One reason that TV reduces most news segments to two minutes is that everyone watching a newscast has to watch all of them, even the topics that bore them. Video on the Internet is more like reading a print publication. You decide how much you want to watch and when to switch to the next topic.”

In other words, attention brought by the “lean forward” mode of online video means viewers are more engaged but consequently demand more control and more choice. Web technology allows online video advertising to be more than a passive show, offers a more lasting impression (since it is not limited to a 15 or 30 second commercial), and is a way for viewers to interact and take action in ways they still cannot with television.

No other online marketing avenue is that more evident than in search where internet users make self-directed choices all along the way. Video can augment that discovery.

STILL TRUE? Check!

And finally, one more look at perhaps my favorite case study of 2008:

My friend and SEO guru Mark Robertson reported that research from the folks at FindLaw showed that video marketing, which in this case meant adding an online video to a law firm’s web site, can help increase, to a somewhat dramatic extent, conversions from prospective clients.

The research reported that consumers typically visit an average of nearly five Web sites (4.8 actually) before deciding which attorney to select. When lawyers added video to their respective Web sites, however, this number decreased fairly substantially, to 1.8. Studies like this are great. They show the promise of how video can help small and medium sized businesses and point to the importance of placing video strategically throughout the “buying funnel” with the right messaging at the right time—and in the legal case above, accelerate people down the buying funnel.

So, the bottom line equation in November 2008 is the same as I’ve been writing all year: Online video advertising plus search engines equals an opportunity for SMBs to tell their brand story.

Looking back provides some validation to the promise of online video as a ‘game changing’ medium by making video more affordable and more accessible for SMBs, but it is still early in the game. The current economic environment may have a ‘slowing’ effect on how quickly the long tail of advertisers adopt online video. However, the smart ones – the ones that want accountability for all their marketing spend – in tough times as well as good – will take advantage of video to move their brands and business forward when most others will retreat.

It has been a pleasure sharing my perspectives throughout 2008 and I wish everyone the best for a healthy and happy holiday season.

Glenn Pingul is VP of marketing for Mixpo, an online video advertising company dedicated to small- and medium-sized businesses. The Small Is Beautiful column appears weekly at Search Engine Land.

While online video advertising platforms provide the capabilities for SMBs to automatically syndicate video ads to the major video search engines, and automatically submit them to some of the major video sharing sites like YouTube, it is ultimately up to the SMB to define who they are, how they are different, and to think through the words and phrases they think prospective customers would use to find them. Here are some of the considerations that I have seen SMBs use effectively:

Understand your customers. This means both demographically and geographically. A lot has been written and said about SMBs being primarily locally focused. And I agree. However, there are situations in which highly specialized SMBs are offering goods and services that can attract prospective customers from all over the US and beyond. For example, a local winery in Washington state we have worked with has found that their prospective customers have viewed their video ad from all over the country. However, they initially had been running a video ad with a locally focused free wine tasting offer. Understanding the up-front is vital, as it will steer how you tailor your message, promotions, and any keywords to reach your prospective customers in the ways they most commonly search. As in the case of the winery, it will enable your SMB to develop content and search keywords that are more relevant and effective as it relates to your potential customer base.

Really define yourself and how customers may find you. Seems obvious enough, but when I evaluate some of the keywords SMBs associate with their videos, it seems more like a random shopping list rather than a thoughtful assessment of words and phrases that define how customers may find you. Would people find you based on your business category? Geography? Is your business name “top of mind” enough that you should secure it, or probably not something anyone would search for? Video technology is great, but there’s no substitute for taking this step seriously and doing it right.

Understand your competitive set. How do you leverage knowledge of your competitors for search? Where do you feel you are losing prospective customers? For example, a local photographer felt he was losing business to a big franchise photography studio chain. Included in his SEM efforts was to bid (high) on keywords that included that competitor’s name. His rationale, and a good one, was that the big business was being used generically by consumers looking for a photographer. This SMB also illustrates another lesson from the front very effectively.

Garbage in; bounce rates up. Really tied to the earlier point about defining business, also think about what your business is not and weed out negative keywords. Looking again at the local photographer, his core business is as a local studio photographer. When he first applied keywords to his videos, he used a broad list of keywords that included photographer, photography, art photography, studio photographer. Seems like a cohesive group of keywords, but what he found was that photography and art photography caused high bounce rates because people were looking for art photography (finished photos) not someone to shoot for them.

Relevance, relevance, relevance Video search offers nuances from text based search, such as the fact that it is the metadata around the video (not the video) that is indexed, so it is critical to stay clean and not include keywords that may be popular but have no relevance to the contents of the video. As I’ve mentioned in this column before, the video search engines are unkind to businesses that try to game the system just as they are to businesses submitting the same video content in a scattershot approach – thinking it will drive higher rankings.

These basics are well known by many of you but, for some reason, seem to be ignored by a lot of SMBs when they start using online video. My meta-point: don’t get caught up in technology, thinking it is the silver bullet that takes care of the basic blocking and tackling many businesses already do — and remember the basics when optimizing video for your search marketing efforts.

Glenn Pingul is VP of marketing for Mixpo an online video advertising company dedicated to serving the small- and medium-sized businesses market. The Small Is Beautiful column appears on Thursdays at Search Engine Land.

Can using online video adverting get your small business to quintuple traditional search engine marketing conversion rates? How about increase them sixteen-fold? While it would be irresponsible for anyone to promise results like these, there are some very interesting early indications in the marketplace about the benefits that integrating effective online video advertising can have on a search engine marketing campaign.

Our column last month generated a fair bit of buzz when we reported some stats from a recent FindLaw piece of research: That consumers typically visit an average of 4.8 web sites before deciding which attorney to select, but that when lawyers added video to their respective web sites, this number decreased fairly substantially, to 1.8.

In the weeks since that column ran we’ve been looking through various client cases to provide some more real-world snapshots of what using online video effectively is doing for businesses in the marketplace today. Coincidentally, a reporter from Inc. magazine contacted us not long ago after reading one of our articles here in Search Engine Land. She wanted to know if she could speak with a small business about their experience in using online video advertising, as she recognized correctly that a high percentage of people looking for a product or service today start with a major search engine. So what can online video advertising do to leverage this? Here’s a clip from her resulting article, including some stats from the front lines:

“What’s the best way to take advantage of this opportunity? Begin by creating ads that are low on glitz and high on content, offering real information about your product or your company rather than high production values.

That’s what Li Read did when she needed to use the Internet to reach potential customers who were mostly very far away. Read is managing broker of RE/MAX Salt Spring on Salt Spring Island near Vancouver, but 80 percent of the home buyers there come from outside Canada. “My buyers for the last seven or eight years have been 100 percent non-local,” she recently told Inc. magazine. Advertising in local papers and radio stations is obviously useless, so instead she uses online video ads both to create a slide show “walk-through” of homes for sale, and to help customers get to know her. Read also uses a video ad in which she talks about herself and her home-buying philosophy.

“It’s my signature to the world,” she explains. “Ninety percent of people start their property search on the Internet, but does that mean the old values of loyalty and connecting with customers have no value? If you’re displaying who you are, that you know the inventory and you love what you do, I do think that can make them see you’re trustworthy.”

The video ads are fairly new, and Read can’t say for sure whether they’ve led to any specific sales – in large part because on her property pages, prospects had other avenues for contacting her from information surrounding the video ad – but she has sold four properties since launching video ads on her property detail pages. These facts we do know:

• about 0.60 percent of people who see an ad for her properties click on it to play the video, and 1.70 percent of those who see the ad about herself do so. This compares with a traditional online advertising conversion rates of about 0.1 percent.
• her VideoAds are definitely driving engagement. With over 20 VideoAds on her site, viewers are watching, on average 60% to 90% of the VideoAd, some of which are over 6 minutes long.

It is interesting to note that Ms. Read indicated to Inc. that 100% of her buyers have been non-local. So many of us in the space focus on local, but with the ubiquity of the Internet today, even locally focused business segments such as real estate would be remiss to ignore the potential of making their inventory available to interested ‘outside’ buyers.

So what accounted for the performance of Ms. Read’s campaign? Doing a bit of Monday morning quarterbacking as we sometimes do, we think some of the factors may include:

• Stand out from other search results: Goes without saying and we’ve talked about this before. For now, as video is still relatively new for businesses, those that jump on using video early will take the lead.
• Video helps ‘directional’ intent: Also stating the obvious, but when people are searching vs. browsing they have intent (or focus) on gathering specific information. Video augments this by presenting more information in an easily digestible and more compelling way. For Read, she is selling a dream (a dream home in this case) and video helped her site become more authentic and informative.
• Improve interaction with the viewer: We’ve talked about how online video is a “lean forward” experience. Having direct response functionality like clickable overlays and lead generation built right into viewer experience helps performance, whether it be soliciting an email address or click to information about Salt Spring Island.
• Importance of telling it like it is: One recent purchaser of Read’s who was coming from Europe said that he doesn’t have time to waste and given the travel time to investigate a second home, it is important that what you see is what you get. He felt Read’s site presented information ‘the way it really is’ and that helped a great deal in the purchase process.

Li Read said it perfectly when she brought up the importance of loyalty and connecting with customers in driving business: Even in this day and age of quick searches, what matters is having the ability to present what you do and how you do it in a way that differentiates you and shows that you know your stuff. Of course, the primary focus of any potential buyer is having the listings presented to them in a highly informative way. Read is tops in her area and has the mother lode of listings but she also provides a high degree of customer service. In this case, video was a very effective way to showcase the strengths of her ‘brand” and drive performance.

Glenn Pingul is VP of marketing for Mixpo, an online video advertising company dedicated to small- and medium-sized businesses. The Small Is Beautiful column appears on Thursdays at Search Engine Land.

In looking at a bevy of recent writings, some very interesting research was noted by my friend and SEO guru Mark Robertson, who reported that research from the folks at FindLaw showed that video marketing, which in this case meant adding an online video to a law firm’s web site, can help increase, to a somewhat dramatic extent, conversions from prospective clients.

The research reported that consumers typically visit an average of nearly five Web sites (4.8 actually) before deciding which attorney to select. When lawyers added video to their respective Web sites, however, this number decreased fairly substantially, to 1.8. Studies like this are great. They show the promise of how video can help small and medium sized businesses and point to the importance of placing video strategically throughout the “buying funnel” with the right messaging at the right time—and in the legal case above, accelerate people down the buying funnel. Let’s explore some possible explanations, of which there are many.

Online video can = better landing pages and conversions vis-à-vis users who arrive from the major search engines and elsewhere. Working with a range of clients on search engine marketing tactics incorporating video ads into their landing pages, we’ve seen conversions (we define as people who are viewing the video and clicking on a direct response action such as email inquiry, clicking for more information, or clicking to provide contact information a.k.a. lead generation) as high as 50%!

On a crowded search results page, online video can make the choice seem more clear, limiting the need or desire by users to “shop around” though search results and elsewhere. It’s too early to tell conclusively, but one would surmise that at a time when the use of video is still comparatively limited, the companies who do use it have a chance to “stand out” from others, whether in search results or elsewhere. Over time, however, as more and more SMBs leverage video in their search marketing, that will change. Longer-term, what will help businesses engage prospects is having the right video presented at the right time. Having the ability to measure the effectiveness of video advertising is something more businesses are aggressively focusing on now – having moved way past the notion that just publishing video is good enough to stand out.

The wow factor: Related to the above, people are attracted to something new. As I’ve written in the past few months, the Wow Factor only goes so far, especially as more companies adopt online video: Quality and relevant content will ultimately win, boosted by effective technologies and presentation formats, like video. For SMBs, I cannot underscore enough the importance of what I mean by effective technologies. To be effective, it has to be utilized. Looking back at our own experience in launching a video platform earlier this year, we spent a ton of time striving to make the process as “Apple-like” as possible – i.e., as elegant and simple as possible for business use. This means taking the word technology out of the businesses’ mindset and letting them focus on creating informative video ads that they can adjust and optimize that helps them in search discovery—and more importantly, giving viewers a reason to engage.

If it’s done right, video can make sites more relevant and useful to consumers: This helps in the SEO world, of course, but it’s just plain good business, too. To really work over time, online video and video SEO require freshness, tweaking, and just plain updating, just like Web sites and blogs do. This is to not only be discovered through search engines, but to be more fully read or viewed by users.

It’s been said before, but bears reiterating: Online video can level the playing field for the small business people of the world, by providing an affordable and interesting way to showcase points of differentiation from bigger competitors. From an SEO standpoint, it’s the ability to easily adjust and update that will drive true value both for search optimization, user engagement, and ultimately faster conversions.

This may seem like a lot to extrapolate from one study of the legal category, but it’s important to remember that most lawyers operate as small businesses. Just like any other small business, they need to stand out from the pack in crowded marketplaces, ultimately for the benefit of driving closer to their goal: more business.

Glenn Pingul is VP of marketing for Mixpo, an online video advertising company dedicated to small- and medium-sized businesses. The Small Is Beautiful column appears on Thursdays at Search Engine Land.

Gleaned from our own experiences, as well as a substantial combination of news, discussion and hype surrounding the online video ad sector, we thought it would be useful to identify and dispel the most commonly held myths about online video and SMBs. So, in the spirit of late-night talk shows, and without further ado, here the list:

Myths about video

Video has to be expensive. Video ads don’t have to be expensive productions. We’ve deployed hundreds upon hundreds of video ads, syndicated them to the major video search engines, deployed them on SMBs’ web sites, and run them in ad networks. Across all these contexts, we’ve seen authentic, informative video ads outperform highly stylized (and much more expensive) corporate produced commercials. This is not to say repurposing high production value creative is bad, just that people find 30-second spots to be less relevant to what they are searching for: ultimately in-depth and relevant information, which search engines tend to prefer as well.

Good videos are always video. As opposed to simple rich media banner ads, video ads have a beginning, middle, and an end—and thus, intrinsic to the format, tell a story—but it does not have to be in a video format. Photos stitched together with music, captions, and call to actions can actually perform as well and, in some cases, better than video (think “Ken Burns effect”). For example, several clients who are exclusively repurposing existing photos in our VideoAd player are seeing view to impression ratios that average around 30% to 40% (some achieving ratios of 70%+) for just photos.

First impressions aren’t important with video. After tweaking hundreds of video ads, we’ve seen that the first frame can make the difference between viewers clicking on the video ad or not—to the tune of 30 to 40 basis points. Whether it’s the color of the play button, or the actual thumb, extend your thinking about relevance to that first impression. If your users are arriving from search engine referrals, this first impression is especially important.

Myths about SMBs

SMBs are not smart marketers. SMBs aren’t unsophisticated about marketing, they just lack time to do it all themselves. Many SMBs deploy agencies to help them market, knowing that they handle all the details and, in the case of interactive agencies, are driven by performance. Funny, come to think of it, a lot of the BIG brands do exactly the same thing!

SMBs are cheap. SMBs aren’t cheap; rather, SMBs are results-focused. We’ve worked with lots of businesses who saw the initial promise of video, but wanted to “dip” their big toe in first with trials. Now that they are getting positive results, they are shifting their budgets online from offline, and to video ads from display ads. They are also pushing video search engine optimization, both on their site and through landing pages, knowing that the time they invest in VSEO now will yield benefits over time (something we’ve talked about in prior columns).

SMBs have little to say. When it comes down to it, video is all about story-telling and we have found that SMBs have much more relevant and informative stories to tell about their brand than one might think. Product demos, tours, and testimonials involving owners, doctors, restaurateurs, and others talking about what makes them special are coming out in our clients’ video ads—and are increasingly showing up in search results, based on relevance. As the quality and relevance improves, viewers are increasingly finding these video ads and watching them all the way through and clicking for more information deep into the story.

Myths about search marketing with video

Freshness doesn’t count. Businesses change. Viewers come to web sites more frequently than you may think. Potential customers see your advertising at different stages of the buying process. All of the above statements speak to the fact that driving effective video SEO is more than just offering relevant content, but FRESH content. On several client campaigns we’ve run, we’ve seen drop-offs in performance for video ads that have not been updated over time. Now, the time frame of what is “fresh” depends on the business and web site traffic composition, but the meta point is “keep it fresh!”

Video SEO is a license to spam. We talked about this before, but we’ve seen declines in search rankings based on “over-submitting” to every sharing site known to humankind. Instead of plastering videos everywhere, we suggest focusing your energies on the front-end, that is, determining the communication and marketing objective of your video ad, then setting keywords that are tied to getting discovered against those specific objectives.

Once you have published your video online, you are done. Sure, on video sharing sites, there are some good stats on views. SMBs, however, want more than the cozy feeling of knowing someone saw their video ad—they want performance. Our clients are more interested in data that shows how many of those viewers took action (we’ve seen 50% actions to views, in some cases). Views are just a means to that end and SMBs have to be willing to adjust and update their videos for effectiveness, whether in being more attractive to search engines and users or in motivating action from the users once they’re on your video.

In conclusion, it bears repeating that video has the promise to not only alter the rules of search engine marketing but also online marketing in such a way that can tip things in the favor of SMBs

Like most things in life, it seems, there really aren’t shortcuts to getting what you want out of incorporating video into your SMB marketing mix. It takes focus, and maybe even just as importantly, knowing what action you want generated by video. From a search standpoint, remember that our friends at Google, Yahoo!, and elsewhere continuously update their algorithms to ensure that they are focused and relevant, and not overwhelmed by the sheer flash factor of emerging media, like video. While there are a ton of and exciting applications for online video advertising, it is also useful to keep some of these myths in mind as we move toward the second half of 2008 and beyond.

Glenn Pingul is VP of marketing for Mixpo, an online video advertising company dedicated to small- and medium-sized businesses. The Small Is Beautiful column appears on Thursdays at Search Engine Land.

Big picture search marketing that leverages video will be among the most effective ways to market, specifically when video gets decent placement in search results and can show that it drives action. Let’s take a look at a test case:

One agency we work with specializes in marketing and sales for large-scale condominium developments—and the individual SMBs who manage those properties. For several months, we’ve been testing video ads on the agency’s web site, in ad networks, and in both search engine marketing and organic video search.

For some property videos on the agency’s web site, we’ve seen views-to-impressions ratios as high as 70% (similar to the luxury broker we talked about last month) and conversions (actions-to-views ratios) of almost 40%. We believe these amazing ratios reflect the value of keeping video relevant to what viewers expect to see when they view it.

On Google video search, the agency videos have achieved six of the top ten video search returns on some pretty broad search terms related to condos in their market. Pretty impressive results, most people would say.

However, when you type the same broad search terms in Google universal search, the agency’s videos appear on the seventh search engine results page—as the 75th result. Results, on universal search, of course vary based on a number of factors, including the tags, keyword competitiveness, and in paid search, the bid.

What does it all mean to SMBs? We believe it signifies both the promise of online video and the still-early nature of video used in organic search.

Some video-related tips to keep in mind in 2008

Relevance is key. We’ve said it before—it’s all about relevance. The higher the relevance of the video to the information that surrounds it, the better the results.

Use focused keywords. The tighter, the better. For the condominium marketing agency, we can track what keywords people type to locate video ads. We’ve seen “long tail” terms like “old historic Seattle buildings with condos for sale” return property video ad landing pages toward the top of universal search results pages.

Create useful content. We are often asked, “How long should a video be?” We have deployed video ads for a number of clients and are finding that viewers watch an average of 70% of an ad, regardless of video length. If content is useful, people will watch it.

Optimize for performance. Unlike single .flv files that you upload to YouTube and leave alone, we change and optimize VideoAds for our clients wherever they are distributed. With some clients we’ve made tweaks to their VideoAds and seen views-to-impressions ratios increase by over 35% and true conversions (clicks-to-views ratios) increase by over 50%.

Some video-related things to avoid:

Redundant multiple postings. Posting to every video sharing site does not necessarily result in higher placement on search engine results pages. This makes sense, because video search sites don’t want a high duplication of results in their returns. Several months ago, we would see our client’s videos “stacked” on search engine results pages because of all the sites to which we’d submitted. We’re seeing less of that today.[CM1]

Irrelevant content. The more targeted the keywords, the more focused the video must be. We have seen that less relevant VideoAds tend to lose viewers in the early part of the video – often with high abandonment at the less than 10% of video mark.

Online video is still very new and its power in search is still based on the promise of both the discoverability of the video and what happens when someone sees the video. In the early stages of a medium that holds so much promise for marketers, it’s most important to test, test, test and learn, learn, learn. The search algorithms are constantly changing and, consequently, so is the game. But advertisers who stay true to consumers are bound to come out on top.

Glenn Pingul is VP of marketing for Mixpo, an online video advertising company dedicated to small- and medium-sized businesses. The Small Is Beautiful column appears on Thursdays at Search Engine Land.

I beg to differ. Why? From what we have seen, successful online video advertising involves more than glitzy, expensively-produced commercials. Successful video ads offer relevant, informative, and authentic content about a brand, product, and service: In short, the type of content that search engines love. Also, SMBs have the mobility, which larger competitors may lack, to optimize and adjust their videos for greater relevance, ultimately making them even better for search engines.

That’s an example why online video advertising gives SMBs the chance to compete with big brands; and the lower entry costs should give SMBs the confidence to try different video creatives to see what works and what doesn’t. Combine this with the discipline to make video ads that are truly relevant to a designated product, service, or topic, and the odds of the ads being picked up by search engines go up significantly.

We have been working with a number of local SMBs to define the most effective deployment of videos online, including search engine deployment.

One of those SMBs is a luxury real estate broker in Canada. This broker is one of the top real estate professionals in North America, with more than 100 listings and awards that mirror her achievements and reputation. In an example like this that involves video search, relevance is so important, especially as it relates to keyword selection. We recently launched a VideoAd keyword search campaign on Google for this real estate broker and our initial findings show that certain words and phrases that relate to the broker’s specific area of focus are driving more clicks. We’re also testing key phrases in the ad copy and finding that including the lines “See video” or “Meet me” pull much more favorably, implying that viewers are seeking out video.

By testing different creative executions (that is, a profile video of the agent against a property video), we’re also seeing a 15 percentage point lift in “more information” clicks from the property video.

Context and relevance matter regardless of where VideoAds are placed. Some of the dozen or so VideoAds on the same client’s site have achieved view–to-impression rates of more than 70%. In excess of 50% of viewers watched VideoAds of more than 4 minutes in length all the way through.

Granted, these VideoAds were on the client’s web site. The main driver of the VideoAds’ success, however, was highly focused and contextually relevant content for the topic, product, or service for which the viewers were searching, either on to the client’s site directly or discovering the site through search engines.

In summary, we’re finding that when VideoAds are presented in a relevant context, such as search results, people not only click on the VideoAd but also frequently interact with it either by watching it all the way through or clicking for more information or an email inquiry. For small businesses, this again underscores the importance of striving for relevance, as without relevance you can have the greatest video in the world, but the search engines simply will not care.

These VideoAds were not particularly expensive. In the case of the real estate, the video was produced for under well under $1000. In others, they were high-quality property photos stitched together into a video slideshow with music and captions.

Economics like this do indeed level the playing field, provided there’s a parallel commitment to relevance. If SMBs can combine this low cost-to-entry with the discipline to create videos that are topically focused and relevant to search engines, they have a great opportunity to succeed. In coming months, I will provide some tactical advice, based on feedback from the frontline that we are receiving and evaluating every day.

Glenn Pingul is VP of marketing for Mixpo, an online video advertising company dedicated to small- and medium-sized businesses. The Small Is Beautiful column appears on Thursdays at Search Engine Land.

But what are the repercussions for small businesses from online video advertising, and how will it impact their presence in search results?

In the coming months, I will take a look at this question from many angles, including case studies, as well as weaving in some other anecdotes from participating small businesses which are using online video ads today. For now, let’s set a general foundation for how small businesses can benefit from the integration of video ads into search results.

The power of video: It’s obvious. Video is and always has been among the most powerful ways to advertise. Video can enable businesses to leverage sight, sound, and motion to create an emotive and more memorable connection with potential customers. Coupled with the fact that people are bombarded every day with emails, text-laden web sites, and oftentimes annoying banner ads, the early opportunity for small businesses here is that online video ads have the ability to break through the clutter and communicate meaningful information.

For example, and jumping ahead a bit, if I’m a consumer searching on a major engine for a type of local small business, say a real estate agent or car dealer, chances are good I’ll naturally gravitate to a search result that has a video, where most others do not: I can just click on this, rather than sift through the layers of text-based results. It’s just a faster way to digest information.

In short, the power of online video is to help small businesses stand out. We’ll explore how small businesses are doing just that in future columns.

Online video viewing is big: Another obvious but critical point is that video is just more accepted and accessible online now than ever before. According to a study by comScore, consumers viewed more than 10 billion videos online in December of 2007. Consumers are finally getting used to accessing video online. The projections that US broadband penetration is expected to break 90% by mid-2008 adds fuel to the notion that the 10 billion figure will surely be surpassed this year.

Video creates a level playing field for small businesses: For years, when it comes to video, there’s been a series of unfair advantages in the favor of big companies: Video creation was expensive. Buying media was even more expensive. Clients relied heavily on agencies to get the message right – because once you paid the hundreds of thousands for creative, it better be built to last.

Today, creating compelling videos is very accessible to small businesses at a fraction of the cost that big companies pay. But beyond affordable creation, small businesses crave the ability to measure and alter the creative in order to maximize their return. It’s having the ability to get more out of their video online without huge “change order” costs that makes it accessible for small business. This is an area we’ll explore more deeply in future columns through case studies.

Interactivity makes the difference: Sure, a computer monitor is smaller than most new flat screen televisions, but most people view a computer about a foot away from their screen, versus television watchers who are most likely sitting on a barcalounger across the room. Online video forces attention, and the Internet offers the capability for small businesses to directly leverage this.

Web technology allows online video advertising to be more than a passive show, offers a more lasting impression (since it is not limited to a 15 or 30 second commercial), and is a way for viewers to interact and take action in ways they still cannot with television.

Relevance of the story still matters: Just as is the case with ‘traditional’ web sites, there are a series of considerations a small business needs to keep in mind to ensure that its video is good, and subsequently attractive and relevant to search engines. We will devote a future column to this subject as well, but the cliff-notes preview is that many of the same rules that apply to traditional SEO apply to video: You can deploy keywords throughout the presentation, but you also have to make sure that your VideoAd has a consistent and focused theme as well, all of which will make it more relevant to search engines…and ultimately consumers.

The bottom line? Online video advertising plus search engines equals an opportunity for small businesses to tell their brand story by integrating relevant content, testimonials, product demonstrations, promotions, and more.

This is an exciting time for everyone involved with online video: And small businesses stand to be among the biggest beneficiaries of this emerging medium. .

I look forward to checking in each month with some thoughts and updates for Search Engine Land from the front lines.

Glenn Pingul is VP of marketing for Mixpo, an online video advertising company dedicated to small- and medium-sized businesses. The Small Is Beautiful column appears on Thursdays at Search Engine Land.

Now that all of this has captured Google’s attention, the chatter around online video ads is likely to keep rising, as evidenced by this comment from a NY Times reader regarding Google’s tests: “People come to Google looking for information. If the ads are non-intrusive and informative, I think people will tolerate it. But if ads turn Google into a circus like they have for so many websites, it would be a shame.”

Before it gets any louder, the time seems right to weigh in on video ads and offer some perspective on their “goodness” or “badness” for both advertisers and consumers.

Are online video ads good or bad for Google?

The answer depends on whether you ask advertisers or consumers.

For advertisers, we see online video advertising as a good and natural progression from the offline world—or from more “traditional” forms of online advertising. Video, of course, leverages the benefits of sight, sound, and motion and (in almost all cases) delivers a richer experience than any other media.

But if deployed properly, online video can do much more, offering the ability for advertisers to generate immediate interaction with consumers, as well as give them insight into the effectiveness of their online video ads and, in some cases, the ability to adjust and optimize video ads over time. The key is for there to be affordable, turnkey online video solutions that help businesses, especially small and medium sized ones, create compelling and informative video ads. And as it relates to being placed on Google results, the ultimate success of the deployment rests with the videos being accurate, relevant, and useful to consumers as they search.

For consumers, the answer is more complex. Go back to the NY Times article and read through the comments and you’ll find a debate already stirring on the goodness of video ads. Some comments like: “The day Google launches this is the day I stop using Google” are counter-balanced with comments like: “Google provides a service vital to most people’s online lives, and viewing ads during this process is a small price to pay.”

What makes this complex is the limited reference point consumers have, based oftentimes on unrelated banner ads they’ve seen vis-a-vis the “clean” text-based ads they now see on Google. Consumers may fear that online video ads will be garish, annoying, and uninformative—much the way many rich media banner ads are today—and that they may lose the uncluttered text-based search results they get on Google.

What format makes for good online video advertising?

Much of the industry chatter thus far has defined and assumed the online video advertising units as pre- and post-roll ads or overlays. In reality, it is way too early to define the optimal ad unit, let alone set an ideal length for online video ads.

What we have seen from our own experience is that effective online video advertising is not limited to 15 or 30 second re-purposed commercials, but can include other forms of marketing like testimonials, video profiles, and product demonstrations. Working with clients, we’ve seen three- and four- minute video ads with real estate brokers talking about their areas of expertise, then showing a tour of a home, viewed all the way to the end countless times, while in comparison we have found 30-second re-purposed commercials rarely viewed to the end. What is an advertisement, anyway, but a way to inform potential customers and drive action (sales)? Where is it written that advertising should be obnoxious?

The point is that the promise of online video advertising ultimately relies on businesses taking advantage of the opportunity to not be bound by either the offline constraints for television commercials (think television pod) or the glut of garish, annoying, and obtrusive rich media banner ads, and to develop video ads that are both contextually relevant, highly informative, and still treat the consumer with respect.

Google has the opportunity to augment what they already do so well with text advertising and offer video ads that can actually complement and enhance the consumer experience.

Marissa Mayer from Google said it herself in the NY Times article:

“This allows Google to expand what it can offer advertisers that are focused on promoting their brands, rather than driving traffic to a Web site.” But Ms. Mayer said the company was not changing its idea that ads need to be directly relevant to what users are searching for.

For Google, the challenge and opportunity here lies in presenting the online video ads in search results in such a way that they are as relevant and useful as possible. If Google can pull this off, both advertisers and consumers can win.

Glenn Pingul is VP of marketing for Mixpo an online video advertising company dedicated to small- and medium-sized businesses. The Video Search column appears on Thursdays at Search Engine Land.