New Media Marketing

The buoy in this economic storm is Search Marketing

April 10, 2009 by Tom Townsend

In a new research report from E Marketer Inc, Web retailers and other online marketers will be spending much more time and effort beefing up their search engine optimization efforts over the next several years.

In yet another report, this one from the Internet Retailers new search engine marketing survey, some rather interesting survey results revealed that more retailers are investing in search engine optimization as the economy worsens.

Moving forward through the severe recession, 55.3% plan to increase spending on search engine optimization to achieve better natural search results.

These numbers clearly show that retailers are turning their attention more to optimization to improve natural search results than focusing on getting the best keyword mix in paid search.

eMarketer’s report also indicates that 2009 spend will likely hit $14.7 billion and by 2013, total U.S. search marketing advertising will reach an estimated $23.38 BILLION, with marketers spending more on search engine optimization … [Read more...]

Filed Under: New Media Marketing, VISIN NEWS Tagged With: internet video, Natural Search, Organic listings, Organic Search, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, social media management

YouTube redesign outs User Generated Content

April 5, 2009 by Tom Townsend

Is UGC (user generated content) headed for the digital dustbins on YouTube ?

If you’re a small or medium business and have been running the do it yourself approach on Video promotions, your ROI (return on Investment) which at present may be equal to the time you have invested in producing your clips and uploading them to YouTube, is fast approaching its end.

YouTube has been a great way for those without the skills or tools to get their content noticed, as well as some premium content too. However, there is still a ton of plain old garbage that is uploaded to the site in mass quantities every day. As a result YouTube is continuing to lose bucketfuls of money on the increasing bandwidth that it forks out every month. Since it’s owned by Google, the share holder and investment community won’t stand for it to continue to bleed without some way turning down the spigot and eventually getting to a model that earns a profit. Enter the new deals with corporate clients with the likes of Disney, CBS etc and now add to that the ubiquitous larger banner ads that are running on most of the USG content these days.

It appears that YouTube in many ways may want emulate Hulu that offers premium content that is professionally produced.

So what’s a small business owner to do? Well I can say that adding video as one part of a Social Media Management Campaign can have a beneficial and lasting impact with recurring benefits to your bottom line. For about the cost of a Yellow pages add we at Virtual Interactive Systems can pick up where a YouTube video leaves off. Now is the time to give professionals a serious look and discover what you’re missing. Oh, you can call the folks that run the outdated and out modeled phone book. They even do video ads that can only be observed on their site. We know because we have done a few projects for them before we found out just how bad a business proposition it turned out to be for their clients.

If you want to get your business and or products noticed with a lasting and recurring theme that promotes you across the entire Social Media Spectrum then do it right and call us today for a FREE CONSULTATION.

Filed Under: New Media Marketing, VISIN NEWS Tagged With: social media management, social network videos, UGC, Video Ads

DIVX Exit’s Stage 6 and Disney Enters Stage 9

March 4, 2008 by Tom Townsend

Another month and another change in the video landscape. Last week I received an email from the folks over at the video sharing site Stage 6 (that was run by DIVX) informing me that they were shutting down operations the end of February. With the flood of new video sharing sites on the ever expanding landscape for User Generated Content (USG) it was inevitable that DIVX would shut this service down, as it was not a money maker at all. So no surprise here. Effective March 1^st former users of the DIVX site are now redirected via a link to VEOH who who has assumed most of the clients from DIVX, that is the ones that did not move their content some where else.

In a totally coincidental event with interesting timing was ABC’s DISNEY company making the formal announcement of their foray into the online video scene with the advent of STAGE 9. Where DIVX and DISNEY differ is that DISNEY is going after full on BROADBAND content vs. the USG format that DIVX embarked on. Disney is also developing projects for full series created specifically for the broadband video markets. In this respect they can achieve monetization via add revenue just because of who they are and what they will bring to the table. (The team over at NewsOXY has a good article on Disney.)

I think this year we will see a lot more firms move away from the basic garage made, USG ,YouTube type of video entry, and will see the filed morph into more professionally done video projects. The cutesy stuff on the USG sites is just that. It has not made much money for those users or for those that have created the content. If the companies that host the content are to become profitable they will all need to adopt some form of add revenue policy. This means that in order to attract advertising dollars, the quality of the content will have to increase. That is were firms like Virtual Interactive Systems based in Tampa Florida, come into play. We are working with Small to Medium Business to add video advertising content to get their products and services discovered in their local markets and beyond to even international exposure.

Video Sharing Landscape changes as LiveUniverse buys Revver

Filed Under: New Media Marketing, VISIN NEWS Tagged With: Digital Media, internet video, Tampa Video Production, Video Production, Video Services, Web Video

Video Sharing Landscape changes as LiveUniverse buys Revver

February 20, 2008 by Tom Townsend

Back in January I wrote about the perennial favorite (REVVER) of many web Video enthusiast, and mentioned that they were going through some tough times that indicated a change was in the wind. Well the wind has now settled and as of Thursday the 14^th of February REVVER is now part of Brad Greenspan’s LIVE UNIVERSE family. It also appears that the final numbers were quite a bit higher than originally speculated. Numbers being mentioned were closer to $5 Million dollars, and all though the final purchase price is still a closely guarded secret it appears that both sides were happy with the outcome. The folks over at NewTeVee covered the Revver story rather well and today they released a follow-up article discussing the options of continuing with Revvers business model. It will be interesting to see how the landscape evolves for us content creators in addition to what happens to the add base home front, now that Brad has three horses in the stable with: Revver Video, LiveUniverse and LiveVideo to contemplate?

Video Sharing sites and your business

Filed Under: New Media Marketing, VISIN NEWS Tagged With: Video for business, Video Sites, Viral Video Production, Viral Video Seeding, WbVideo Sharing Sites, web 2.0 video

Video Sharing sites and your business

January 18, 2008 by Tom Townsend

So you know about You Tube and Google Video and maybe three or four other sites that will let you post your videos for free?. Now let’s ad to the mix with the Social Networking sites like MySpace and Facebook to name a few and soon the numbers start to swell to over a hundred. These sites are often categorized into different arenas based on usage of the content and the services they provide such as user generated, video sharing web sites, video sharing platform / white label providers and web based video editing.

The landscape on these sites continues to ebb and flow like the tides and as the New Media Generation continues to evolve, new names will pop up and some businesses will be swallowed by the larger video fishes of the media ocean. Some will survive, as You Tube was purchased by Google last year and thrives. Some will die and some will morph into other businesses or be bought and merged into existing service providers.

Last year’s big buzz of course was You Tube…..right now all the talk is centered on another shake-up in the developing video sharing sites. One of the originators of the user generated content form Revver Video may be going through some changes.

It appears the Revver had an executive shake-up in December 2006 that resulted in two of its three co-founders, Ian Clarke and Oliver Luckett, along with some of the support staff, leaving. There is speculation now regarding the site’s well being and it is being fueled by the rumored departure of their CEO Steven Starr. This could very well signal trouble for the video-sharing site. Some have even speculated that Revver would be taken over by Live Universe. “Los Angeles-based LiveUniverse is run by MySpace founder Brad Greenspan. Though its flagship site is the somewhat obscure LiveVideo, the company would add Revver to its network of video sites.”

Revver has had problems with attracting the kind of traffic that You Tube enjoys. It is one of the first sites that took on the revenue-sharing model. Will it be able to continue in its current model if it continues to lack in traffic or if its CEO departs?

With the recent inclusion of ad-sharing revenue models, this year will prove even more difficult for video-sharing sites to compete with the like of You Tube. Guba is another video-sharing site that has seen some execs leave, in this case to start their own video-sharing site and .

Whatever the outcome, you can be sure that Virtual Interactive will be right in the thick of things. When it comes to promoting your business or products, Video Sharing Sites can add real buzz to your business with very little impact on your bottom line. The key here is keeping track of who does what and when in the over all landscape of the Web 2.0 , Social Networks and New Media world. You can rest assured that when it comes to any thing Video related we are on top of it. This is the marketing edge that separates us from our competitors and that our customers have come to expect and where we will consistently deliver on.