Grantastic Designs’ Blog

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.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 10th, 2007 at 2:39 pm and is filed under online video - technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.