Grantastic Designs’ Blog

I will be attending and covering the upcoming Search Marketing Expo (SMX) Local & Mobile conference, being held in Denver this coming Monday and Tuesday, October 1st and 2nd. Some excellent preliminary information on the event and particular sessions is already available in podcast format by the event hosts. The following is an interview I recently conducted with Greg Sterling, founding principal of Sterling Market Intelligence, and co-host of the conference.

Why do local and mobile search lend themselves together?

Local and mobile are individually distinct categories, and we can speak about them both from the consumer side and the search marketing (advertising/organic) side, but there is also a high degree overlap between them. In mobile, the content categories that most people are interested in are local – maps and businesses, directory information, travel, etc. Local is a high use category in mobile; which make sense from the standpoint that people are on the go, they want to find out how to get from here to there, where a restaurant is, etc.

Local naturally lends itself very well to the SMBs (small-to-medium size businesses). But not so much for the mobile space. Has that changed?

I don’t think mobile is ready for small businesses yet. Mobile is not something that small businesses are every going to do on their own. The few exceptions are the small businesses that aggressively do search marketing may ultimately find acceptable ways to do mobile marketing. But what’s likely to happen in mobile is that the sales channel, the aggregators, the folks that currently work with small businesses on a large scale (e.g., IYPs and web hosting companies that offer marketing services) are going to push that data, those listings and ads, out into mobile. So you’ll have a distribution in mobile without even much awareness on the part of small businesses.

Here are two examples of that: one, is what Google is doing with AdWords, where mobile marketing is going to be an “opt out” starting November 19. They’re going to take most of the adwords which meet the criteria that they’ve laid out and push them into mobile search. So by buying into Adwords, you’re also going to get mobile distribution across Google Mobile Search. That may not be optimal for everyone and there are separate mobile SEO rules and things like that, but it’s really removing some of the friction that would be involved with setting up mobile as a separate product, queue or campaign.

On a specifically small business note: SuperPages.com is using the 1-800-[___]-3411 phone listing as one of its mobile distribution strategies for advertising clients. They have a pay-per-call product which they call “pay-for-call”, which they currently have about 5,000 advertisers which they’re sending into the 1-800-[___]-3411 system for mobile distribution. Again, that’s not a separate buy, nor is it something that the advertiser has to be involved with. They simply set up the campaign on SuperPages, and SuperPages takes care of that mobile distribution. I really think that’s going to be the model, or the means by which most small businesses get into mobile.

Also, you’ll see organic listings come up in mobile searches. Businesses adding their enhanced listings to Yahoo! Local, Google Maps, some of the IYP sites – those will all get mobile distribution as well.

Now, when talking specifically about the local desktop search space, that’s a more complicated matter. A lot of small businesses are now aware of the consumer behavior of audiences migrating online, and the Internet as the dominant tool for business hookups. But it’s still quite complicated for them to figure out what to do. They know the big search brands and some internet yellow pages (IYPs), but the majority of small businesses are still generally unaware of the “how” – how to get online distribution.

So what’s happing is small businesses are being sold Internet marketing by existing sales channels – web hosting companies, newspapers, yellow pages sites, etc. – are all pushing web marketing as part of a package of clicks, or clicks-to-calls, in a simplified way to the local small business. More and more small businesses are buying that, especially since most small businesses aren’t tech-savvy, and don’t have the time or personnel to really engage in that learning curve. So they’re relying on 3rd parties to make that simple – to buy search marketing, online marketing, search distribution – with simplified pricing and packaging – so they don’t have to do any of the campaign setup – keyword selection, distribution, etc. That’s all outsourced. Its usually sold on a flat-fee basis. Sometimes they’ll have packages with guaranteed clicks. The IYPs have been the single largest group of aggregating these advertisers. Over time you’ll have more and more self-provisioning that most of these small businesses, and the goal is to give these local businesses broader and broader distribution (on the desktop).

Mobile is a lot more complex for marketers to attempt to market and optimize to on their own, especially in comparison to desktop search. What are the variables that make this more complex?

There are different platforms in mobile, there’s voice search, there’s SMS or text messaging, there’s WAP (the mobile browser experience), and there’s rich clients that browsers are trying to push, because that often represents the best user experience. A good example of that would be Google Maps for mobile, or the Google mapping application on the iPhone. This immediately presents 4 different areas where you’ll find usage. Then, there’s the issue of all the devices, plus the various operating systems.

Right now, the bulk of mobile data usage is in text messaging, although there’s a substantial amount of people using WAP search to varying degrees. And there voice, which is the broadest segment of the market, because that’s how people have been accustomed to using mobile phones for directory listings.

You just need to have a very diversified strategy to reach the same user base that you might reach on the desktop. The desktop now has many more people, but over time, mobile will have a very high degree of usage. Especially when you consider the huge mobile phone penetration in the U.S. is much higher than computer penetration.

On your preview podcast, you alluded to the Community Local panel discussing some controversial topics. What will those be?

Paul Ryan, who is the CEO of a company called Done Right!, which is sort of a local-vertical site in home improvement space, has some contrary views about the local community in the local search experience. Obviously “community” is a well-established area online, but it can also get unwieldy. I think we’ll be getting into that paradox, where its very hard to get participation, but once you’ve got it, there can be a lot of noise and clutter that dimishes the user experience, in an ironic sort of way.

A good example of that would be TripAdvisor.com, which has a lot of great content, but can often be time-consuming and laborious to wade through. The debate could be over what if you’re TOO successful at getting outside participation and the negative effects. Does the excessive content compromise the user experience, and lead to diminishing returns at some point?

Another issue I can think of is “social exhaustion,” where there are already so many socio-local community sites to participate in and stay active in.

That’s another major issue. Just the clutter of all these sites sort of emulating each other, the functionality and labor of having to register and set up a profile on all of these different sites, does create a kind of fatigue.

Your podcast preview also mentions the Pay-Per-Call Ads session, where you said that mobile seems to be a much better model for this ad type than desktop search. Why do you think that’s the case?

There are two things responsible for this. One, there were high hopes for pay-per-call on the desktop Internet for distribution. But most of the high-traffic search sites, with the exception of AOL, have not chosen to adopt pay-per-call as a business model and make it an option for their advertisers. Most of the IYPs have also not done that, either. So you don’t have the distribution that might have been anticipated a couple of years ago.

However, in the mobile space, one of the primary ways people take action is by making a phone call. While that’s true on the desktop as well, on the desktop it’s a different behavior. With mobile, you’ve got a handset in your hand, literally. You’re looking for a local service and the primary way you’re going to achieve that is with a phone call. It’s a very natural fit between the pay-per-call business model and the user behavior there. You will see more penetration in the near-term of the pay-per-call model in mobile. In the long term, it may hold out the promise that was held initially on the desktop for more distribution.

You’re also having a debate panel. What are some of the debatable issues we can expect from that panel, or that you think are the biggest controversies today with local and mobile search?

I think one of the biggest controversies is, where’s the traffic going to be? Obviously on the Internet, search has been the starting point for so many different use cases, such as SEO and advertising for gaing traffic. Is that going to be true with local? Or, are Google, Yahoo!, MSN going to suck up all the traffic, and the other sites competing for organic search and SEM placements with local keywords, or will they be able to establish their own brands with strong destination traffic over time? That issue extends over into mobile, but mobile also includes the carriers. Are the carriers going to develop viable, widely used, consumer search tools? Or, are they simply going to become what had happened to most of the ISPs online – delivering connectivity but little else, and not really a bona fide search provider?

Craig Smith, who used to work at SuperPages, argued that IYPs are sort of waning in popularity, and will simply be SEO vehicles for local businesses over time, with not much consumer loyalty. That’s a debatable point, and people will have differing views on that.

One could also argue that because search has had such a profound impact with everyone on the Internet obviously, that search has become a brand-killer. Everybody just goes to search engines to find everything, and that dilutes the individual sites, loyalty and brand to some degree.

There also the issue with mobile, specifically, about the user experience. That’s something of a key factor that really has yet to be worked out. Most everyone is complaining that its still very hard to do search on a handset, that its awkward to use the keys or keyboard they provide with these phones. Questions arise, such as: where’s the usage going to be? Where’s the usage going to come from? What’s going to drive adoption, beyond the fact that there’s kind of a pent-up demand from consumers for mobile content on the go. Who is going to be able to innovate and create user experiences – perhaps like the iPhone or Google411 – that are going to be able to capture people’s imaginations in a way that desktop search has, and build audiences? That’s a story in-the-making, that has yet to be definitively determined.

Overall, mobile today is very much like the late 1990s of the Internet. There’s a lot of anticipation and hype, and you can see the usage starting to come, but many things are undetermined.

Outside of the U.S., mobile appears to be growing faster, or has already achieved some of these goals you described. What do you think will need to be the catalysts for the simpler-and-faster adoption rule for mobile search in the U.S.? Is it technology, legislation, consumer demand, all of the above, or other things?

There are layers of issues that you just suggested. Some of them are regulatory and legislative. For example, in the U.S., you really are at the mercy of carrier selection with the devices. The iPhone is the most acute example (with AT&T being the only carrier option). A lot of people want to get the iPhone, but don’t want to switch carriers. All the frenzy over a hacker unlocking the iPhone (and making it open to other carriers), indicates that consumers would like to have whatever phone they choose work with whatever carrier they have, but the structure of the U.S. market doesn’t permit that right now. Google is making a big push to do this, but we may not see any opening soon with the structure of the U.S. market in the way that I suggested.

But more important than that really, is with the audience of search, and the genius of search. Search involves a single box where you type in a query that represents an intention and get a response – either an advertiser or organic link – which in most cases, is going to give you more information or lead you to a transaction. Its just very, very simple and elegant (on the front end) in that regard. That’s what needs to happen with mobile. You have to be able to query the database in some form, either with voice, or text, or a desktop-like keyword entry of a term or terms, and get a response that essentially fulfills your need or expectation.

The situation is, you can’t exactly translate the desktop search into the mobile environment. We cover that issue in our Mobile Search: Beyond 10 Blue Links panel. The idea of simply presenting links to people in a mobile environment, given the small screen size on a mobile phone, the challenge of going back and forth between results data and an individual site, especially since most sites are not yet rendered for mobile display; it creates a lot of frustration and most people aren’t going to do it.

Yahoo! is trying to make the mobile search experience more suitable, by creating an application that’s much more intuitive and gives people answers, rather than links. Everybody is using that language now, to describe their own efforts in mobile. Its just has to be very, very simple.

There’s some other interesting applications out there, that are not out of left field exactly, but represent a different use-case or paradigm. There’s some local-mobile social networking efforts going on, where users in a distributed network text questions to each other for responses – kind of like putting “Yahoo! Answers” for Q&A discussion in a mobile environment. Questions like, what’s a good bar in midtown Denver, or a good place to stay. Or, general questions, such as outcomes of sporting events, or trivia, or whatever. The idea of tapping into the collective wisdom in some distributed user base in a mobile environment, is a very intriguing alternative to “pure search”, that may have some traction. But whatever the innovation, they have to conceal the complexity, make it very, very simple and intuitive for the end user, and they have to take into account the limitations of the device in ways that nobody has to content with on the desktop.

I also think that there’s going to be some interesting integration between mobile and desktop applications. You’re starting to see it with search engines and portals, such as the idea of setting up an account and personalized list of content, social bookmaking styles, or personalized home pages that then translate into mobile. We’re starting to see some personalization make its way into mobile. AOL’s WAP site is focusing pretty heavy on personalization. I think that will gain some traction in mobile that hasn’t really happened on the desktop. Not withstanding the popularity of social bookmarking, Most people don’t do much personalization actively. Some of that will lend itself to scenarios where people can manage their social bookmarks and have it transfer to their mobile device.

How about performance tracking for mobile? Do you see mobile eventually, or even on a small level right now, as a means of also capturing analytics and effectively measuring campaign performance?

I think what’s going to emerge is that some percentage of distribution from a campaign will be in mobile. Its like what Google is doing cross-media – audio, television, print, etc. – and include those data in a single integrated, campaign dashboard. I agree its still early for the advertiser, and certainly early for the small advertiser (aside from participating in existing programs with major providers I mentioned), but the consumer interest is very high. Again, it’s the same scenario with the computer desktop in the late 1990s. You gained larger consumer audiences, and they were monetized very effectively, and the advertisers followed. It took the Internet 10 years for it to become a serious medium for advertisers with widespread monetization. For the mobile space, It’s going to be half that time, or maybe even just a few years. There’s already a high level of interest and anticipation, a lot of competition, and a lot more interest being driven by that competition. Marketing agencies such as DoubleClick are feeling compelled to develop and promote mobile marketing strategies and work with mobile networks. It’s a much more integrated phenomenon than search engine marketing on the desktop was, or is today.

Another post in SearchDay covering a big legal issue for search marketers, copyright infringement. This comes from my interview coverage of several attorneys from the Search Engine Strategies San Jose conference in August, on the panel, “Copyrights and Trademarks – What SEMs should know.” Especially important is information on how to file a DMCA take down notice.

Also included are tips from the legal counsel of a couple major search engines, Live.com (from MSN) and Ask.

There’s one thing I still see on a lot of web sites created by design firms that’s a big usability “don’t”. Web development people: DON’T insert a link on the footer of the home page to your own company site.

There are three big reasons for why this is wrong to do:

• There’s no benefit to the client, period. Placing a link to another company is like an unpaid, unrelated advertisement. It distracts the audience from the site they’re already on.

• It cheapens the user’s experience. Visitors are not interested to know who the site’s designer is, any more than they would be interested to know who the copywriter is, or the search engine marketer, the hosting company, etc.

• It cheapens the designer. A link on the home page footer signifies to more and more people today that it’s a tired strategy by someone with an amateurish sense of enhancing their own link popularity at the client’s expense. While naïve or uncaring designers may think it might get their brand out there for prospective clients, the message really sent is that the designer is willing to put their own interests ahead of their clients when it comes to the web site’s performance.

I’ve been doing website designs professionally since 1997, and not once have I ever requested my company’s name on a client site. If they offer it, I tell them if they feel its truly relevant to their audience to be referred to what we offer, they should be make it particularly relevant by including it on a separate links and resources page, or even a testimonials page; but NEVER on the home page.

The best way web designers can use their client’s websites to promote themselves is to feature a client portfolio left on their own site, with simple screenshots and descriptions of the work performed. More web designers and developers need to better respect both their clients and their client’s audiences, and start with thinking only of what’s best for their client by preventing all unrelated links, including their own.

Today I have an article featured at SearchEngineWatch on online copyright issues online marketers, especially search engine marketers, need to know both their rights and responsibilities on. I wrote this as an introductory piece that clearly explains U.S. copyright law from the perspective of internet and search marketing, and includes some quotes from attorney at the Search Engine Strategies San Jose conference, on the panel titled “Copyrights and Trademarks: What SEMs (Search Engine Marketers) need to know.”

Now that there’s been enough sound legal precedents with online media distribution, the search engines have really been able to put together some helpful resources for copyright owners to protect their copyrighted content from unauthorized distrbution, even when outside of the U.S. Most important to achieving this has been the DMCA take down notice, which can be filed with any major search engine, which have legal departments to handle DMCA take down notices for both organic and paid search.

Throughout the years I’ve been in the web business, I’ve found all types of characters stealing my website content. Two particular amusing incidents: one company ripped off my entire design glossary, and it was a pastor out of Colorado offering to his customers “Christian-conscious web design.” Another stole one of my logos, and when I caught him, his response was “Well, it looked so good I just assumed you stole it from someone else.”

That’s just so copy-wrong.

In a recent I wrote for Search Engine Watch, I discussed how search marketers can better position themselves for the video search space by integrating traditional video marketing (e.g., television) in their video search strategy. One of those companies I covered was Spot Runner, which provides for its clients a prepackaged video in an online library on its website, along with video customization services and media buying for carrying the final piece over to targeted local television markets.

The following is an interview I conducted with the co-founder of Spot Runner, David Waxman, including on how search marketers can benefit from pairing off-line media strategies with their search campaigns.

Spot Runner uses an online interface (i.e., its website) to combine turnkey video planning and production with reaching local markets in the offline televsion ad space. With much being made about how online video marketing is being more affordable, you seem to have also found a pricing plan on the traditional side that’s more affordable as well.

Local businesses now have access to television, the most powerful marketing tool available – that, due to its traditional cost and complexity, was previously out of reach.

Spot Runner offers a complete solution for television advertising—commercial production, media planning and media buying—in a single turn-key, self-service system. The entire process, which traditionally takes months and hundreds of thousands of dollars, now takes just days at a fraction of the cost.

What’s a typical turnaround project time?

A typical first campaign is one spot. The typical time from actually starting to running on air is 2-4 weeks. The ad production time is typically much shorter, depending on the client’s own timetable for reviewing and approving the ad.

What is the typical length of your spots?

They’re typically 30 seconds in length, but we have done customized formats of 15 – 60 seconds. Our primary offering is 30 seconds, because that is what’s typical.

You have a service featured called “Personalization Plus.” Describe the custom features that come with this service over your standard features.

If you go to our ad library, you’ll see the scripts are pre-defined, except for certain areas that are customizable, such as company name and info. If you want to go further than that and really veer from the script, and have one of our professional writers handle that for you, that’s where we get into the “Personalization Plus.” That could include fully customized text for the voiceover or part of the voiceover being re-recorded; it could be a graphic change, such as letterboxing the ad, or having your URL appear for the entirety of the ad. (Some of our ads already come that way in the library.) Or if you want to include an animated graphic, such as a phone number, or submitting your own script and having it recorded with our own voiceover artists – that’s also what Personalization Plus allows for.

Do you ever have clients submitting their own multimedia clips, and wanting that included in the final piece?

People do request that. What we often have is a number of library ads set up to receive still photos, which can be rendered and moved around to fit in with the video. We less often get the request to take video footage, but we can accept and work with that as well.

Another scenario, some people will send us an ad in its entirety – an ad that’s already been made for them and we’ll integrate that ad into all of the other services that Spot Runner does, such as media planning and buying and placement.

Describe your “Express Launch service” – who is this typically for?

Anybody who wants help with their TV campaign strategy. It helps the client identify their campaign goals and their audience, helping them select their ad, and maximize their budget. Anyone who wants to actually talk to a person and get a little more guidance than our self-service website can provide.

Are you also able to help people out with where to publish their original television spots for online conversion and distribution, including video search (i.e., the search engines)?

Yes, on a case-by-case basis. We are very seriously looking into offering online video as a full product, but we haven’t yet released a date for that.

Let’s talk budget. Where does the budget range start off at, and what’s a typical budget spend for a package?

There are two very distinct pieces, and one of them varies a lot by market:

One of them is ad production. Our standard rate for that is $499. Personalization Plus is an additional $249. Express Launch is an additional $99. That’s the most typical an ad will cost without customization. Its almost always under a $1,000 for the ad in terms of production.

Media varies a lot by market. An ad running in one neighborhood can be a lot less expensive than an ad running in a larger area. Duration adds another variable. Typically we’ve had people who are very successful for as little as $2,000/month with their media.

I understand that along with providing a television media buying strategy for your clients, you can also plan a basic online strategy with the client of how their television ad can best bring traffic to their website.

Media buying for television is an integral part of our service. We will take the ad, and either via the website or by phone, help them figure out what they want to achieve – whether that is driving traffic to their website, or store, or just driving greater brand awareness. We will use our very powerful media planning engine to create an optimized media plan for them, and we’ll then deliver the ads for them (in the television market), and get the reporting back to them. It’s a very end-to-end service.

Would you ever run into the issue of having duplicate (pre-produced) video content running in the same television ad markets, between different clients?

No, we have an exclusivity provision, meaning that if you run one ad in a certain area [in the TV ad space], no competitor ad from us can be run in that same area (when you’re running your own ad).

Have you had any of your ads produced appear in the online video search space?

Search and television can be very complimentary, and we do offer search as a product to our customers. Not yet in the video space, but certainly in the keyword space. Our clients have told us that when they run television ads, their web traffic increases dramatically. When they promote their website correctly on television, they can really get a push from television. The “push” medium of television, and the “pull” medium of the Internet can really go hand in hand.

How would you recommend search engine marketers do an online campaign that can best integrate traditional video marketing (television) with online video marketing?

Most search marketers probably don’t realize how localizable and targetable their search marketing campaigns can be. You can locally target down to the neighborhood level with television, and you can also use your ad to target keywords on a site network basis. For instance if you know your keywords deal with sports, you can target your video for sports sites only, such as a host of sports-related televsion shows, such as ESPN or Fox Sports.

This article on cybersquatting comes from my own intellectual property attorney and former Search Engine Strategies speaker on legal issues, David M. Adler, Esq. and Associates P.C. While the recent Search Engine Strategies conference’s legal sessions were expanded to a record three sessions, they all primarily focused on the issues of clickfraud, copyrights and trademarks. Cybersquatting is also important for search marketers to understand, especially since it can also be a part of trademark infringement and potentially disrupt your own search results. 

What can you do when someone registers a domain name that is identical, incorporates or is confusingly similar to your trade name or trademark? You may be able to claim that the registrant is “cybersquatting.”

Definition of “cybersquatting.”

Cybersquatting must meet the following legal criteria:

1. Registration, trafficking in, or use of a domain name, with…
2. A bad faith intent to profit from that domain name, when…
3. The domain name consists of a mark that is distinctive at the time of registration of the domain name or is identical or confusingly similar to that mark, or …
4. In the case of a famous mark that is famous at the time of registration of the domain name, is identical or confusingly similar to or dilutive of that mark.  Marks composed of generic terms, descriptive terms or personal names will be much more difficult to protect. (There is actually a specific prohibition against using the “Red Cross” mark, however.)

Cybersquatting and “bad faith” intent. 

If the domain was registered by a competitor, this is a good indicator of the “bad faith” requirement, which is generally the real issue and can be harder to prove .

There are cases which hold that the following are evidence of bad faith:

1. Registration of the domain name in order to prevent the owner of the trademark or service mark from reflecting the mark in a corresponding domain name, provided that you have engaged in a pattern of such conduct;
2. Registration of the domain name primarily for the purpose of disrupting the business of a competitor; or…
3. Use of a domain name intentionally to attract, for commercial gain, Internet users to a web site or other on-line location, by creating a likelihood of confusion with the complainant’s mark as to the source, sponsorship, affiliation, or endorsement of a web site or location or of a product or service on a web site or location.

Notably, personal names are not, in-and-of-themselves, protected as trademarks, unless, they have acquired secondary meaning. Under §2(e)(4) of the Trademark Act, 15 U.S.C. 1052(e)(4), a mark that is primarily merely a surname is not registrable on the Principal Register absent a showing of “acquired distinctiveness” under §2(f), 15 U.S.C. 1052(f). However, whether a personal name is capable of protection as a trademark depends on whether it has acquired distinctiveness with respect to the goods or services. For instance, a famous actor or author may be able to protect his or her name primarily due to the fact that such person’s trade or craft is identified with that name.

Going after the cybersquatter– The Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act

The Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act of 1999 empowers a cybersquatting victim to file a federal lawsuit to regain a domain name and/or sue for financial compensation. Victims of cybersquatting can also use the provisions of the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy adopted by ICANN, an international tribunal administering domain names. However, this international policy results in arbitration of the dispute, not litigation.

With rapid advances in Internet technology, professional-quality web video is not longer the exclusive domain of creative ad agencies and big brand companies. Costs have gone way down, with both viewer and content quantity going way up.  The rapid growth of the online video and video search space has spawned some innovative companies on the technology, production, marketing and distribution sides. One of those companies whom I’ve covered in previous blog posts is the internet video production company TurnHere the self-proclaimed “full service Internet video solutions provider.”

The following is a recent interview I conducted with TurnHere’s Founder and CEO, Bradley Inman. Search marketers can benefit here from Bradley’s elaboration on the project management aspects of preparing online video content for search engine distribution.

A good part of an online video project’s success is the initial planning stage. Explain how TurnHere plans out a video production with the client.

We plan how it can be very entertaining, informing, and interesting for the user, but also that it will fit very much with the web. We use real people telling their story, no matter what that may be; and we use a mini-documentary style, such as the back story behind their story for whatever business or project they’re doing.

We don’t have scripts, therefore we don’t have long treatments; and we don’t have actors and actresses. That separates us from the old world of television advertising, which relies more on a brand-lifestyle and fictional narrative. Our pieces are non-fiction, but it is a narrative and there is a story.

Consequentially, TurnHere’s pre-production isn’t elaborate because you’re not faking it; you’re telling the truth of real people. Our filmmakers are videographers are also journalists or mini-documentarians, so they know how to interview people (for 2-3 hours), get the b-roll, get them commenting, and get them to be a real person talking about their passion, whatever that may be – a product, neighborhood, business, etc – and that’s edited into a 2-minute piece. Pre-production is really different in this world from the traditional television advertising room.

That also explains the differences in planning and preparation for online video advertisements, compared to the traditional commercial video – that being, television.

That’s our main message. We believe that people are inherently experts at what they do; they don’t need to be coached by a marketing team or a PR team; they don’t need scripts and they don’t need lines. They are inherently insightful into the neighborhood around them, and they know more about their business than any marketing person.

That’s where advertising is going – particularly, authentic believability on the Internet, rather than large media agencies trying to constantly “brand our brains.”

You’ve managed to lower much the production by finding videographers local to your clients. How did you manage to establish such a wide base of videographers?

We’ve hired a great team of producers who each had their own networks. Then we had a massive recruiting campaign around the country, and then its word-of-mouth from other filmmakers. We then turn to these local filmmakers who then produce on our behalf with the client. They know with TurnHere they’re getting a reliable source of income.

What makes your production people and work model successful? Do you give them  a certain degree of freedom or do certain formulas need to be followed?

We have a very talented group of filmmakers and producers, and they know how to tell stories. There’s a bottom-up creative enterprise here. They and our Marketing/PR have wonderful ideas.
The process is deciding what the formula is. We really let our filmmaker go. It’s really between the filmmaker and the client with how the video is produced. If too many people are involved it can negatively affect the final work.

A good example of that is the hundreds and hundreds of videos we’re now producing for CitySearch, where it’s a very hands-off thing. Our filmmakers really make it happen.

Do you make it an option for clients to review the portfolios of the videographer in advance?

Yes, but its not really part of the process of clients to review the resumes and portfolios of our videographers, because they’re really coming to TurnHere, and we’re putting our stamp and our brand behind it. We have producers who manage the process. Otherwise that company has to take on all other responsibilities, such as pre-production, managing post, communicating with the filmmaker, and that’s very inefficient. The whole idea is they can outsource that so they don’t need to worry about it.

In a few cases [clients] get obsessed with meeting the filmmaker and all of the background, and we relay that to them; but it isn’t that type of model where we would just refer you to any filmmaker and hope it will work out. We really take responsibility for the end-to-end.

What other quality controls do you have in place?

We control the quality, through training, systems, and back end password protected areas. We create a standard and formula for every partner.

Describe a typical crew for a TurnHere video shoot.

We do it in a lot of different ways. But the bottom line is, all that equipment and all that overhead– trucks, travel tickets and airplanes– and all that other stuff that went into television production – has been eliminated thanks to technology.

Here are two typical scenarios: A filmmaker shows up with a professional lighting kit and a semi-pro cam, lavalier mics, and a tripod. They can shoot high-quality video. (A good example of this setup is the video done for the Intercontinental Hotel, on the TurnHere site.) That’s a single filmmaker setup. In other cases there are teams (part of the business of the filmmaker) where they shoot and have an editor.

But in most cases, not only is the filmmaker using a semi-pro camera,,  but they’re also doing the editing, often in Final Cut Pro on a Mac (and sometimes right on the plane ride back). This gives them a very quick turnaround. But we leave that to the filmmaker. Some of them prefer to do solo, and some prefer to do combos; and that’s fine with us.

How do you establish an affordable budget and monetization model with your clients?

Its really important that we work closely with the partner. We’re working with big television networks, big travel agencies, big publishers; this is all about the economics of Internet video. How are you going to monetize it? Are you going to put ads on it? Then it’s a CPM. You got to get the cost of media to a price point that makes rational sense.

So with all of our partners we sit down and work out that with them strategically, and we have a lot of information to go over. If it’s a conversion tool, then what’s the conversion rate they need to get at in order to justify the cost? If you’re using it as a search marketing tool, how do you justify the content with its intended audience? And then there’s companies like CitySearch which are using it as a conversion tool for local merchants – that’s about converting with customers. For publishers, its about spending a certain amount on collateral to publish their books. So we start with the economics.

One of the economics that are going to drive your business with video is commerce in these cases. Then we come up with what’s your vision for the video. If they’re only going to produce one or two videos, we tell them to turn to a local production company [instead of us]. Our filmmaker network is best utilized when we leverage its breadth and depth. Therefore, we’re interested in clients and partners that want to produce lots of video. And when they produce volume, we can give them price discounts since we can produce it more inexpensively.

Our videos can go from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars, depending on: their needs, how they’re using it, how much volume, and how we can leverage our network to produce more. We believe in paying our filmmakers well, and at the same time creating a piece of media that makes sense for the client.
Now, we’re all Lewis-and-Clark in this world; there’s no book you can pull off the shelf on “How to Monetize Internet Video.” We’re all learning together, what works and what doesn’t, how to integrate the video, where to send the video; all these issues are still unresolved.

So you’re saying for TurnHere to be effective at what they do for the client, episodic video is highly preferential.

Yes. Its about price, its about experimentation.

What is a typical (recommended) length of a single Internet video ad piece?

2-3 minutes.

What digital file formats can you make it available in?

Being that its digital media, we can deliver it however people want it

Do your clients often use your (online) service distribution?

A big part of our business is the service distribution. A video is only as good as how well you can distribute it. We’ve had 2 years of Internet distribution experience working with Google; we’ve created branded places on YouTube, building presence and opportunity there. So yes, almost all of our customers want those services as well.

TurnHere offers promotion services through what you have listed as distribution partnerships with the search engines. Does that include video search optimization services?

Yes, that’s a core part of our business (with our distribution service).

What’s a usual expectation a client can have for video completion turnaround time, from start to finish?
2-3 weeks. We can do it faster; we’ve had something shot up on Friday and delivered on a Monday. We’re dealing with a network of independent contractors, so we get in their queue, so 2-3 weeks is a safe bet.

What are the best preparation tips you would offer for a client (and their agent) for a video production with TurnHere?

Work with us to establish the economics of your media. Help us establish a system to create the style and approach that you want. Then let go. Let go and let your people be who they are. It becomes a really great turnkey solution where you don’t have to worry about it.

In today’s article at the SearchEngineWatch blog, I posted on the video search engine blinkx’s new partnership with the UK online video advertising network Utarget, which will be featuring pre-roll ads for blinkx’s UK video inventory, including media partners ITN News and ITN Celebrity. (Apparently this will not include other UK media partners, such as BBC News.)

What I found interesting to learn is that the UK audience seems to be more receptive to pre-roll ads than over here in the U.S. According to a YouGov study (commissed by UTarget Networks), 93% of UK users are opn to pre-roll online video advertising, provided that the ads don’t extend past 15 seconds in length.

As someone who watches a great deal of video online, the majority of pre-roll ads I come across for U.S. sites tend to fall in the 30-second time frame. That tends to show that most ad agencies still are operating with the broadcast television mentality, rather than working with the internet medium of shorter spurts. This has actually been acknowledged by some creative media agencies I’ve spoken with in the Chicago area, who are trying to work with their clients on not just repackaging their television content for the web, but producing more stand-alone internet video content which falls in the shorter 15-second pre-roll time.

Following up from my post yesterday, TurnHere’s spokesperson was considerate to contact me back and offer a clarification on their distribution model. TurnHere “straightforward distribution deal” with the search engines was just intended to mean that submit a great deal of video content to the same channels available to all others, including search marketers.

I thank TurnHere for providing assurance to search marketers that they are just using the same submission process as other search marketers have available.

I recently did an interview with a spokesperson for “online video solutions firm” TurnHere on both their announcement today (new distribution partners including BookVideos.tv) and their new video widget for book publishers.

TurnHere’s “Deep partnership with Google?”

One of the more interesting notes that seemed to have been missed out in other media coverage is TurnHere’s distribution network having the implication that they might have some kind of special relationship with Google, not afforded to other online marketing firms. (TurnHere does both production and online distribution, and claims also to do actual video optimization.)

I would have thought that a company obtaining an implied special partnership with Google would be able to have their videos actually embedded in Google’s Universal Search, and not just relegated to their vertical (Google Video Search). Was this not part of their implied special. partnership with Google to include in their “distribution network plan?”

The answer I received from a TurnHere spokesperson was as follows:

TurnHere has a deep partnership with Google which spans Google Local, Google Earth, YouTube, etc. At this point in time, Google Universal Search doesn’t provide video, however, once this service launches, you’ll be able to find TurnHere videos there as well.

Google Universal Search not providing video? Actually, it already does, albeit in select cases. Just take my own video samples, for example. And I don’t even have a “deep partnership” with Google.

So upon my further inquiry, I was told that TurnHere’s just has a “straight distribution deal” and that nothing further could be disclosed at this time. Without any additional information, it would seem that what could be understood by the language as a special arrangement between Google and TurnHere, could be just elevated terminology without a specific business arrangement between these two. Now of course, TurnHere’s current “formal” video partnerships are certainly considerable themselves – CitySearch, TripAdvisor, BookVideos.tv, not to mention a host of others. But for a search markter like myself, I would have to wonder if all of those flashing logos of search engines on the TurnHere site are just to show that they simply sites where the videos are submitted, and not any actual submission advantage, as seems to be implied.