Google Place Search - finding local businesses

A couple of months ago, Google launched Place Search, a complete overhaul of the way in which they display local business search results. The listings 7-pack has gone, and each result has a much more substantial quantity of information, including images, and where applicable... video! Each listing has results from the major directories, so video-rich directories will vastly increase the visibility and ranking of their listed businesses.

Take a look at the video about Place Search:

A great blog post to learn about how it all works -

http://blog.getreachcast.com/32274/2010/12/08/keeping-up-with-google-part-1--the-rapidly-changing-world-of-search-discovery-for-small-businesses.html

Corporate video conquers the internet

From the BBC News Blog:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11899824?OCID=spttb

This Too Shall Pass

One of the best music videos ever made.

44 Percent Of comScore Top 50 Web Properties Have Major Video Presence

ComScore data from October 2010, crunched by Christophor Rick from ReelSEO:

http://www.reelseo.com/top-50-web-video-properties/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

42 ways to use video to grow your business

Article from One Market Media:

http://onemarketmedia.com/blog/2009/12/42-ways-to-use-video-to-grow-your-business/

Skateistan (Short Video)

SKATEISTAN: TO LIVE AND SKATE KABUL from Diesel New Voices on Vimeo.

Skateistan (Short Video)

A beautifully shot video that follows a group of skaters in Kabul:

http://vimeo.com/15841377

Online Video Types

Choosing which kind of video you want to produce may depend on how you measure the return on your marketing spend. There are risks and rewards for each kind of video, but there is no denying the potential impact of the medium.

This is a great article by Daniel Sevitt from Eyeview, in which he explains 3 different types of online video, and how to use them: Viral, Conversion, and Educational. They're all very different things...

Have a read:

http://www.reelseo.com/types-online-video-business/

Youtube hits a billion

"When your website first reaches a million visitors, it’s a great milestone. However, one billion views per day can only be attained by the selected few, and YouTube is now one of them.. YouTube is now serving over one billion views per day as it celebrates the third anniversary of being acquired by Google." (Allaboutyoutube.blogspot.com)

According to the official blog, YouTube is serving “well over a billion views a day”. That’s at least 11,574 views per second, 694,444 views per minute, and 41,666,667 views per hour.

Impressive, eh?

http://www.nextshoot.com

HTML5 Video

A Quick Guide

You'll have probably heard someone mention HTML5 and maybe even nodded sagely in agreement, but the chances are they understood about as much about it as you do. Or did at least - because here in one entertaining, decisive, informative and - most-importantly of all - short piece, I'm going to tell you everything you need to know to sound informed, possibly even be informed and, hopefully, make the right decision about it. Which, as you'll discover, is to do absolutely nothing.

Background

HTML is the primary language used to produce most web sites. HTML5 is the latest iteration of HTML to be introduced by the World Wide Web Consortium (WC3).

HTML5 contains a video tag that enables browsers (Firefox, Chrome et al and sometime soon Explorer) to natively play back video within the page. This means no more plug-ins like Flash, QuickTime and Silverlight.

It wasn't until Apple dropped the Flash free iPad onto the marketplace that anyone noticed HTML5. Cue the inevitable Flash vs. HTML5 arguments with ranks of geeks taking sides with either Apple or Adobe. It's the biggest argument in geekdom since Captain Kirk v Jean-Luc Picard.

HTML5 sounds great - it's easier to embed, offers universal support and is open source. However... only around 50 percent of available browsers support HTML5. That's available browsers. Not those in actual use.

Consider this...

You're building a nice new website. You commission us to make some video for you.
Normally we'd provide you a) a Flash embed code streaming an encoded mp4 h.264 file and b) a direct path to that file for iPhone/iPad etc.

However, you've been listening to Steve Jobs and someone in the office who claimed HTML5 was the future. You've dropped your current plug-in-based technology, and produced your website in an HTML5-compatible format that played on the iPad.

The Problem Being...

Then you browse to your website on your computer- chances are you won't see the video.

Only Apple Safari and Google Chrome – both with around 5 percent market penetration – can play HTML5 video in H.264 format. If you're using Firefox it can’t play H.264-encoded video in HTML5 (it will via the Flash plugin though!).

Firefox – at 23 percent market share – is by far the most popular HTML5-compatible browser so this is a bit of a problem.

To play in Firefox we'd need to encode your video into the beautifully named 'Ogg Theora' format, which is much lower quality than H.264 and isn’t supported in any of the more popular encoding programs like Adobe Media Encoder, Apple Compressor or Sorenson Squeeze so you'll need to come back to us for any other encoding of the file.

So that's fixed it?

No. Armed with your H.264 and Ogg format you'll be reaching 40 percent or so of potential viewers.
To satisfy the rest, you still have to make your video available using your plug-in based technology (Flash) that we provide you with regardless.

It also results in some quite complex code on the web page. Is it this broswer? Is it this version of this browser? Can it do this? What's your mother's maiden name?

So riding to the rescue is Google and their eagerly anticipated WebM technology! Or not as it happens...

It'll work with Opera though Apple won’t support it, and Internet Explorer 9 will only support it if already installed on the system.

So you’ll still have to encode in H.264 for Safari, Chrome, and Internet Explorer 9; Ogg for older versions of Firefox and Opera; WebM for newer versions of Firefox, Opera and Chrome; and possibly VP6 or VP8 for Flash (or Windows Media for Silverlight).

Coming Soon...

At some point, HTML5 (or later) will become so established that major video distribution sites and user-generated video sites will drop Flash playback.

Flash will become less important to viewers so fewer will install the plug-ins. At that point, sites that don’t support HTML5 will have to start doing so.

Right now the headache of supporting HTML5 far outweighs any benefits. General support for HTML5 on your primary website doesn’t need to be a priority.

And what about video production?

For the time being NextShoot give you everything you need to ensure your file is available across all platforms and devices.

So the question really is as we all gear up towards an increasingly mobile world does the nature of video communication change? The answer is yes. Video formats are becoming punchier and shorter. We've made 8000 videos of under 30 seconds so far this year.

It's also useful to be able to navigate a video. We've built a system to allow you to 'chapterise' video and for users to seek to a specific point within a video in both HTML5 (on the iPad) and in Flash (on a desktop or laptop).

If you’re keen for your video to be seen on iPad I'll show you a bit of code that'll do it in two minutes - or you can visit www.nextshoot.com/iphone and lift it off the page.

If you have any questions please email mike@nextshoot.com

comScore Online Video results - September

A few weeks ago, comScore relased data from the comScore Video Metrix service. It showed that 175 million U.S. Internet users watched online video content in September for an average of 14.4 hours per viewer. The total U.S. Internet audience engaged in more than 5.2 billion viewing sessions during the course of the month.

Top 10 Video Content Properties by Unique Viewers

• Google Sites, driven primarily by video viewing at YouTube.com, ranked as the top online video content property with 144.2 million unique viewers.
• Yahoo! Sites captured the #2 spot with 54.4 million viewers
• Then came Facebook.com with 52.2 million viewers.
• Microsoft Sites jumped 3 positions in September, securing fourth place with 45.5 million viewers.

Google Sites had the highest number of overall viewing sessions with 1.9 billion and average time spent per viewer at 260 minutes, or 4.3 hours.

Other notable findings

• 83.9 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
• The duration of the average online content video was 4.9 minutes, while the average online video ad was 0.4 minutes.
• Video ads accounted for 12.3 percent of all videos viewed and 1.2 percent of all minutes spent viewing video online.

Some interesting figures on online video and mobile delivery

Last week in New York, Limelight Networks were talking numbers and showing off some new products. If you’ve got a NextShoot video on your website or you’ve ever watched one of our business videos online, on your ipad or your iphone, you’ll be using Limelight’s technology. We’ve worked with them from day one to ensure smooth 24/7 delivery of streaming flash and http video.
While we were stuck in London and not able to attend in-person, we caught the webcast. It made really interesting viewing – you can view it here along with the slides.

There’s some good data on market trends, the growth rate of certain verticals as well as details of video consumption on mobile devices – the sort of stuff anyone in our business should have a grasp on.

Our favourite infograph from Wired reared its head again (see August 24^th blog) – a breakdown of traffic on the Internet and the total percentage of volume it accounts for. I’m finding it a little odd that these numbers are being taken for granted- surely 51% video and 23% web gives a false impression. After all – where is this video coming from? The web. YouTube primarily one imagines.

Anyway, it makes the point about the massive and growing increase in online video.

Limelight's presentation also includes details on the mobile video market. Some of the data won’t be new to industry insiders, but they did a good job of pulling together a lot of key facts and making them easy to understand.

As we move increasingly towards mobile delivery it’s great to be able to get such a clear picture of what the benefits are and to be in a position to judge it against the potential costs

Apps vs Wide Open Web

Interesting piece that makes a distinction between the wide open web and applications on the web (Skpe, Facebook et al). Is a post-html world dawning?

www.wired.com/magazine/2010/08/ff_webrip/all/1

An interesting mapping of social media sites

www.stumbleupon.com/su/2Iz4mn/www.flickr.com/photos/wasabibratwurst/3128711125/sizes/l//r:t

Viral videos

Two great online videos that have gone viral:

This painted animation must have taken a lot of time to create:
http://www.vimeo.com/13085676

Love this video featuring Yoda, clearly with the backing of Lucasfilm:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdcJVuylmsM

The Google Algorithm

An interesting article - a little one-sided maybe -on perhaps the most important formula on the planet

www.wired.com/magazine/2010/02/ff_google_algorithm/all/1

Google VP says Online Video is Nearing Tipping Point for advertisers

Interesting stats on how much video content is now being viewed online.

With computers now being treated like a tv, advertisers will be shifting their strategy.

All good news for online video producers of every sort.

http://www.nma.co.uk/news/google-vp-says-online-video-is-nearing-tipping-point-for-advertisers/3015069.article

Online retailers embracing video

The top 50 US online retailers that offer video on their sites increased from 18% in 2008 to 68% in 2009.

'With the economy poised to turn around and start climbing everyone is making ready to reap the benefits. That generally means bolstering online presences and expanding offerings.'

http://www.reelseo.com/retailers-find-online-video/

The World Cup is here. Among the multitude of football related videos is this gem from Nike:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idLG6jh23yE&feature=player_embedded

As a video production company it seemed fitting to present ourselves on our website with video. So we have added a number of clips to the site about Video Search Engine Optimisation, Hosting & Distribution and one featuring the filmmakers/ videographers from our national network. These videos were shot, lit and edited by members of the NextShoot network. Thank you to all of you who came along for the filming.

http://www.vimeo.com/12078597

Swagger Wagon – ‘this one goes out to all you mini-van families out there.’

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ql-N3F1FhW4

A brilliantly conceived video that’s perfect for online. Smart and funny, it delivers the message that aspirational parents will feel cool in this van that has plenty of hip-hop swagger.

We are working with The Kitchen Directory to offer their subscribers video packages. Here’s one we shot that includes a business owner interview. It’s of Bulthaup in Winchester.

http://www.nextshoot.com/reel.php?filepath=NS910135_SO23_9BE_21090_640.mp4

It’s easier to make videos for retailers, but it’s also possible to make a great video for a service provider - like a plumber, electrician or a beautician. Here’s one we produced for a builder, shot and edited by filmmaker Ian Martin.

http://www.nextshoot.com/reel.php?filepath=douglas_40s_vo.mp4

For those who like the stats. Google generates the ‘highest volume of referral traffic’ to online video.

http://www.ditii.com/2010/05/06/google-generates-highest-volume-of-referral-traffic-to-online-video-content-brightcove-and-tubemogul-finding/

Social media is not far behind.

5 Tips for Using Online Video to Market Your Business.

http://www.reelseo.com/video-market-small-business/

Tip One - Be authentic. Be personal..highlight your strengths and show what really makes you different. Keep the video short and the less scripted, the better.

Exactly! We embrace the idea that business videos – especially for retailers and service providers – should shoot from the heart. Viewers want to hear about why owners and managers are passionate about their business.

Here’s a link to an example of one of our own business videos that we feel embraces these tips.

http://www.nextshoot.com/reel.php?filepath=cooks_60s_int.mp4

Given that we are making thousands of videos for businesses in the UK, we thought we’d start the New Year as we mean to go on and blog about our own work, other online videos we find creative and any interesting industry related articles.

Here’s a property video we made to get us started http://www.nextshoot.com/packages/property.php