Online Travel Guide – Interactive Videos Gives Travelers Breakthrough Experience

How many times when you as a traveler watch a video clip of your vacation destination like Paris and you want to have more information about Eiffel Tower? And for an advertiser, I would like to deliver advertisement of restaurants on the sidebar when the video is describing food, or hotels when talking about accommodation. Now this dream could finally come true with latest technology like Asterpix, which provides hyperlinks/hotspots in video. Here’s one of the videos I found from their website:

from asterpix.com posted with vodpod

If you don’t know what Asterpix is and how it works, I strongly recommend you to read their learn more page. It’s a free web-based service which allows you to create hotspots and associate notes/hyperlinks/tags. Using their javascript based API, you could create your web page with a tour video and displays extra information of each hotspots when mouse over. Of course you could also display direct targeted advertisement related to the objects it’s showing. Comparing with YouTube’s overlay ads or other time-based ads, Asterpix provides more control on “object” level and improves the user experience with the video content.

Since wordpress doesn’t allow me to play around javascript, I couldn’t get a demo here. However, here’s a picture from Asterpix Pro and could give you an idea how it will look like.

Top 50 Advertisers by Media Value in November, 2007

Here are the top 50 internet advertisers in Nov. 2007. What do you think how “interactive videos” or “hypervideos” could apply to them and provide a totally new user experience interacting with advertisement?

The top Internet advertisers by media value. The data are provided by TNS Media Intelligence.

Top 50 Internet Advertisers by Media Value, November 2007
Position	Advertiser	Media Value ($000)	Sector
1	E-Trade Financial	16,421	Fin
2	LendingTre	13,659	Fin
3	Fidelity Brokerage Services: consumer service	13,522	Fin
4	Verizon ISP	9,424	Tech
5	University of Phoenix Online	8,664	Edu
6	Verizon Wireless	8,233	Tech
7	LowerMyBills.com	7,722	Fin
8	Scottrade: consumer services	6,800	Fin
9	Morningstar.net	6,200	Fin
10	Bank of America: consumer services	5,999	Fin
11	Privacy Matters Services	5,866	Fin
12	Classmates Online	5,770	Misc
13	State Farm Auto Insurance	5,621	Fin
14	ING Direct	5,399	Fin
15	BestBuy	5,148	Ret
16	Charles Schwab: consumer services	4,941	Fin
17	Target: disc electronics	4,937	Ret
18	Dice	4,897	Class
19	Chevrolet Autos: Malibu	4,635	Auto
20	University of Phoenix	4,378	Edu
21	Ebay	3,993	Auto
22	LasikPlus Laser Center	3,898	H/F
23	Pogo.com	3,756	M/E
24	Target: disc misc	3,755	Ret
25	LasikPlus Vision Center	3,646	H/F
26	Delta Airlines	3,571	T/H
27	True	3,560	Date
28	Monster.ca	3,486	Class
29	Infiniti Autos: M Series	3,367	Auto
30	Progressive Car Insurance	3,296	Fin
31	Progressive Direct	3,281	Fin
32	Dell: Inspiron computer	3,187	Tech
33	AT&T Wireless	3,186	Tech
34	BlackBerry Handheld Computer	3,160	Tech
35	Philips TV	3,120	Tech
36	Chevrolet: autos and trucks	3,114	Auto
37	MyCokeRewards	2,903	Misc
38	Wal-Mart: disc electronics	2,892	Ret
39	Holiday Inn Express	2,815	T/H
40	Freecreditreport.com	2,771	Fin
41	Saturn: Astra	2,763	Auto
42	Scottrade Online	2,729	Fin
43	Circuit City	2,696	Ret
44	E-Trade Financial: consumer services	2,694	Fin
45	McDonald’s	2,619	Misc
46	American Express	2,602	Fin
47	T-Mobile Wireless	2,565	Tech
48	Capital One: VAR credit cards	2,555	Fin
49	Sears: misc	2,537	Ret
50	The Wall Street Journal	2,516	M/E
	GRAND TOTAL	$241,262
Sectors: Auto – Automotive; Class – Classifieds; CPG – Consumer Package Goods; Date – Online Dating; Edu – Education; Fin – Financial Services; H/F – Health & Fitness; M/E – Media & Entertainment; Misc – Miscellaneous; Ret – Retail; Tech – Technology; T/H – Travel/Hospitality
View: Top 50 Internet Advertisers in October 2007

Original post from here

Watch Out Hyperlink, Here Comes Hypervideo

Original from RedHerring article:

The digital world is moving to video, and anyone who can enrich the experience is bound to make a buck. One startup with its eyes on the prize is San Jose, California-based Asterpix, which on Monday launched the latest version of its web-based tool that promises to do to video what hyperlinks did to text.

Asterpix’s technology lets creators place links, or “hot spots,” in their videos on any object, such as a dog or the jersey of an athlete. Viewers click on these links to get more information directly on the screen or to connect to other videos or sites.

A video showing a sports car speeding down the highway might have a hotspot on the car’s tires, for example, which once clicked could give brand and pricing details and a close-up picture.

Here’s an example of a hot-spotted surfer riding a 64-foot wave in Maui.

Much like text-based hyperlinks, hot spots also let users bounce from point to point throughout the web as if—in the words of Asterpix CEO Nat Kausik—you’re “video surfing.”

The larger goal, said Mr. Kausik, is to help bloggers and web publishers build more customized, interactive videos. And if hypervideo technology—from Asterpix or elsewhere—were to become pervasive, one could imagine a world of layer upon layer of interconnected video.

But for the time being, Asterpix is still fine-tuning its service. It already has a free consumer version online, and with Monday’s launch of the “Pro” version, the company has its first moneymaking offering. For the latter, video owners—who host their own content—will pay Asterpix a few cents whenever a customer views videos or clicks on certain hotspots.

While there are hypervideo desktop products on the market, such as one by VideoClix that starts at $249, Asterpix is betting that its simple interface and web-based approach will attract users.

But there is big money to be made for anyone who can help make money from online video, said Gartner analyst Van Baker, and that means more direct competitors shouldn’t be far behind.

Overlay.tv is one of them. The Ottawa, Canada-based startup, which completed a $4.6 million first round of venture funding this January, launches next month.

Founded in 2006, Asterpix is backed by New Enterprise Associates.

If you haven’t seen my earlier post about Asterpix Pro, you could click here.

Tip for Making a Powerful Online Video About Your Product – Asterpix Pro

So you have a great product and decided to advertise it in an online video, too? This post Top Ten Tips for Making a Powerful Online Video About Your Product describes 10 tips to make a online video about your product. Here’s the first tip:

1, Put yourself in an online mindset

Forget the TV lore and treat your video as an experiment (yes, as a constant beta): you can have multiple versions with slight or major differences, you can put up your video on loads of video sharing sites, you can make instant changes – so, yes this is a test and will always be a test version that can get better and better. Don’t forget that your video can be downloaded (even if you didn’t plan with it), can be commented (expect a mixture of nice and nasty comments – there is no single video on the web that has no nasty comments!) and can be remade – giving it totally different interpretation and emphasis. Can you accept it? Great, let’s go on. Make your videos interactive by themselves – have hypervideo links.

And over the weekend Asterpix has announced Asterpix Pro, which fits perfectly for this purpose. With their existing object tracking capability, Asterpix has already become a popular site for end-users to create hypervideo links on any popular video sites like youtube, dailymotion, myspace, etc. Now the Asterpix Pro allows content owners/advertisers to create hypervideo links on hotspots. Here are couple screenshots from their demo:

As you could see, users could highlight and click on the hotspots, and will drive the side panel to display detail information or related buying info. Do I need a consultant companies or team to get this working? No. Asterpix’s easy to use (point-and-shoot) interface and their Asterpix API make the life much simpler.

There are couple blogs talking about Asterpix Pro too.
Asterpix Pro Offers Hyperlinked Video with Stats
Nat’s Blog talking about Asterpix Pro

Online Video: 2007 Year In Review

According this post, YouTube.com continued to lead the field of video contenders in December, commanding 52.3% market share with 238M Visits on 59M Unique Visitors, up 6.1% from November and 40% since December, 2006. The overall online video market, which consists of Compete’s classification of over 50 sites and subdomains serving video to US-based visitors, grew 7.4% for the month.

I assume 2008 will have more new competitors, especially from all those interactive videos providers like Asterpix, VideoClix, Viddler, Overlay.tv, Ooyala, etc. (Although some of those are not in the end-user online video space)

Original post here

Asterpix Interactive Video – Unbelievable Aerobatics!

Unbelievable aerobatics video! Especially the second hotspot “watch the cup of iced tea on the dashboard!”. Also, clicking on those hotspots will load another video clip too.

from asterpix.com posted with vodpod

Original Asterpix link here

Globally, Baidu Beats Microsoft in Search; Yandex Creeping Up On Ask

Here’s Dec 2007 search engine statistics provided by comScore.

· In December 2007, 66.2 billion search queries were conducted worldwide.

· In December 2007, Baidu.com Inc. was the third ranked search property worldwide with 3.4 billion searches, capturing 5.2 percent of worldwide search share.

Worldwide Search Top 10 December 2007 Total World Age 15+, Home and Work Locations* Source: comScore qSearch 2.0
	Searches (MM)	Share of Searches
Total Internet	66,221	100.0
Google Sites	41,345	62.4
Yahoo! Sites	8,505	12.8
Baidu.com Inc.	3,428	5.2
Microsoft Sites	1,940	2.9
NHN Corporation	1,572	2.4
eBay	1,428	2.2
Time Warner Network	1,062	1.6
Ask Network	728	1.1
Yandex	566	0.9
Alibaba.com Corporation	531	0.8

*Excludes traffic from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs.

Original press here

Overlay.tv Gets $4.6M to Add Links, Images to Your Videos

Original post here from Mashable:

Overlay.tv is an upcoming video network that lets you add hyperlinks and image overlays to video content in order to monetize the clips. The Overlay technology and network won’t be launched until Valentine’s Day, but the service is getting some early press thanks to its funding news. $4.6 million in Series A financing has been provided by Celtic House Venture Partners, EdgeStone Capital Partners and Tech Capital Partners.

From overlay.tv, you could see their demos for:
1) See how Overlay is used for FUN.
2) See how Overlay is used by SMALL BUSINESS.
3) See how Overlay is used by BIG BUSINESS.

They are scheduled to launch on Valentine’s Day 2008.

Ooyala raises $8.5M for new way to advertise in video

Ooyala, a platform for video delivery and advertising, has raised $8.5 million in second-round funding led by Sierra Ventures, the company announced on its blog this week. That brings Ooyala’s total funding to $10 million, according to founder Bismarck Lepe.

More profoundly, though, Ooyala analyzes the video for recognizable objects – famous actors, for example, or sports players, or things as banal as a chair or a piece of fruit. Ooyala can then offer up to the viewer other clips or information about the objects — such as other movies the actor may have played in, or the game statistics of an athlete. Similarly, targeted advertisements can be shown, embedded directly within the video. Ooyala can detect what parts of a video are fast-forwarded through by a viewer or which parts are rewound and watched again. This behavioral data can also help direct advertising to viewers based on their interests and habits. More of Ooyala’s features can be found in this article from BusinessWeek.

Ooyala charges eight cents per hour of video it processes for viewing. Backlot was launched last November.

In an interview with VentureBeat today, Ooyala co-founder Bismarck Lepe claimed that Backlot has more than 4,000 customers and about 200 active users that make daily posts. This includes sites like Comedy.com and VOIG.com. Lepe also stated that Ooyala will soon be announcing major deals with several studios and “a couple of networks.”

(quoted from VentueBeat and newteevee)

2008 President Election Videos

This probably will be the most discussed topic on the web or blogs this year 2008. Can you imagine how many videos on the web about Clinton, Obama, Giuliani, McCain, etc? How many times when you search Hillary Clinton on viddler or youtube and you end up seeing an unrelated video or Clinton only shows up in the middle of the video for just couple secs?

I have just noticed that Asterpix could help on this issue. Browse the search results of Hillary Clinton on Asterpix, and you could quickly scan through all different hotspots and videos about Clinton.

Also, with Asterpix API, for example now I could post a video of debates from the candidates, and could change my google ads or other web widgets based on which hotspots you are watching. That definitely adds a totally new dimension for online video marketing and provides more fine-grain direct control to advertisement, not just based on video tags like “debate clinton obama” and you have no clue where Clinton will show up.

from asterpix.com posted with vodpod