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This is a summary of Robert Moorman’s presentation at Search Marketing Expo / Online Marketer Conference held in Sydney 1-2 May 2012.

Robert Moorman is a Video Strategist at Hunting With Pixels, a company that specializes in strategic social video campaigns. Robert has over 20 years of experience working as a video producer for media organisations like Fremantle Media and MTV in the UK, Australia and Europe.

Content is king but distribution is queen, says Robert. Content is now about ideas, not tech. For example, 8 year olds who use iPads don’t need to know interface design in order to use it. Video content must be engaging, authentic, simple and memorable.

Robert kicked off showing a corporate video that emphasizes the relationships formed by a business rather than the product they sell.

Video Content Optimization

There are a couple of major things to remember when optimizing your video content, says Robert:

• Highlight your branding early so people associate it with the visual message.
• Include your call to action early, in case people don’t view the entire video.
• Don’t forget audio quality. Poor audio will automatically reflect poorly on your brand. TEST it!
• Short videos generally perform better. If possible, keep your videos to 2-3 minutes.
• Use graphics and captions in your videos to highlight key points.
• Be engaging and relevant.

Robert then showed a Nintendo 3DS promotional video that acknowledges the audience is smart. Clever approach, it worked well with the target market and had a viral impact because it was funny.

Video Distribution Channels

There are quite a few video distribution channels available – YouTube is not everything. So here are the options:

• YouTube – the obvious choice.
• Vimeo Pro – is an excellent HD quality hosting option.
• Vid.ly - is great for video transcoding and checking if your video is viewable on multiple platforms.

Video Content Syndication Tips

• Get your videos embedded by others. If you haven’t already read it, read The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. It will give you some ideas for how to make your videos memorable and sharable.
• Make sure your videos are fully searchable. Fill out all the fields when uploading them to YouTube and other content placeholders. Put the http URL in the video title and/or video description so it becomes a clickable link.
• Use playlists to your advantage.
• When viewing YouTube, choose the right thumbnail, do keyword research to find popular related keywords.
• Turn on transcription / subtitles when uploading your videos to create an automatic text version of your content.
• Context matters – be wary of where your vid appears.
• Use seeding and video advertising platforms – eg. TubeMogul or YouTube advertising to auto distribute your video content via similar content.

Video Marketing Tips

• Be sharable – use video plugins that make it easy.
• Be easy to use.
• Make your video content easily navigable.
• Don’t use shortcuts – quality is key with video content.
• Use YouTube analytics to keep up with viewer statistics and tweak your videos based on viewer activity.
• If you need to create a video-based site, try Vidcaster – instant micro websites made for videos.
• For tips on how to SEO your videos, read Reelseo.com regularly.

Robert then talked about a new marketing trend – interactive video content. He showed the Choose a Different Ending video that paused and gave viewers two storyline options to choose from eg. “take the knife”, or “don’t take the knife”, like the alternative ending books you used to read as a kid. Ultimately, you choose whether to live or die. The video was created by DropTheWeapons.org as an awareness tool to break the circle of youth violence and weapons crime.

Robert then showed a video that was a Flash video that entirely mimicked a YouTube page – A Hunter Shoots a Bear – with the word *shoots* able to be replaced by user chosen via keyboard [fun tip - type in *dances with*]. It was a clever ad for Tipp-Ex correction fluid. Apparently they shot over 100 different keyword scenarios. Robert showed another where the company had created an entire website just using video.

In summary, video marketing doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive. Just give it a go. Look into buying a mid range video camera, a cheapish background screen and a spotlight in order to DIY videos for your site. You can get an entire package for under $1,200.

What, exactly, is YouTube selling?

That’s the question on every buyer’s mind in the wake of the company’s “brandcast” presentation in New York a few weeks ago. It wants advertisers to commit to yearlong, all-inclusive sponsorships of its fledgling channels for prices in the $5 million range, as well as a high $20 cost per thousand viewers for pre-roll. But it’s using proprietary numbers from parent company Google to guarantee audiences, and some buyers are balking.

The entire proposition behind the digital NewFronts was that ad buyers could confidently move TV dollars to digital, where they would find similar or greater penetration for less money while associating with top-tier content. There are even rumors that YouTube has a subscription-based service like Hulu in the works. But measurement is a sticking point. Imperfect as Nielsen is (and complaining about measurement is a team sport in the TV world), it provides a universal currency in a way that isn’t yet duplicated in the online world.

ComScore and Nielsen’s Online Campaign Ratings (OCR) and Cross-Platform Campaign Ratings (XCR) are still duking it out for supremacy in that marketplace, and while buyers have expressed reservations about those systems, they’re even less enthusiastic about buying YouTube audience guarantees measured by the company selling the ads. “It’s too early to tell the quality of that offering,” said one digital buyer at a large agency who asked not to be named. “The guarantee products from Nielsen and comScore are the ones we’re putting more weight and priority in, given that they are third parties, and Google is a proprietary source.” There’s also YouTube’s pledge of $200 million in promotion and marketing for its new 100-channel lineup. “There is a question about how YouTube will promote the programming beyond Google Network. And how do they determine certain programming to be ‘winners’ or ‘hits’?” the source asked. “That is still not clear as well.”

These frustrations may in part be a function of the ad industry running up against Google’s rule-the-world ambitions; the tech company, much like Apple, wants to be in command no matter where it is. In advertising—particularly TV advertising, where networks provide solid guarantees—third-party measurements are essential proof of your business model’s viability.

Buyers also worried that YouTube could spread itself too thin with 100 channels. The mantra at the NewFronts has been “If you build it, they will come,” said GroupM’s Tom Dempsey. “But will they return?”

YouTube contends that spread across 100 channels its 25 hours per day of new programming should satisfy anyone. “We have plenty of content for advertisers to buy across demos,” said a spokeswoman. “We’ve been conservative in our forecasting, and we’re completely comfortable that we can deliver the inventory that we have sold to advertisers.” Sources close to the company point out that comScore measures the same data Google is selling. The real test will come if there’s a discrepancy between the two.

More generally, there’s a feeling among digital advertisers that the NewFronts may be barking up the wrong tree by going after TV. “There’s this assumption that all this online advertising is going to be paid with television advertising dollars,” said Jason Krebs of Tremor Video. “Television has continued to grow. Would it have grown more if there hadn’t been that increase in digital? Well, who knows? We don’t just speak to television advertisers. We don’t care where the money comes from. If newspapers aren’t effective, we go to the newspaper budgets.”

This is a summary of Stephan Spencer’s presentation at Search Marketing Expo / Online Marketer Conference held in Sydney 1-2 May 2012.

Stephan Spencer is the author of two books: Google Power Search and The Art of SEO. He is also the founder of search marketing firm Netconcepts.

Stephan starts by talking about Google’s Penguin algorithm update released on 24 April. A lot of people were hurt by the algo change which impacts 3.1% of searches. Stephan says, if you haven’t already done so, remove any dodgy SEO tactics NOW. Google is keeping a rap sheet on you – too many infractions and you could get hit.

The algorithm is basically about killing old dodgy SEO – nothing new. Lots of customers are receiving warnings in their Webmaster Tools console about spam signals such as link networks. Google Search + Your World is becoming more important now and they are trying to clean up the SERPs to display more of this social content and improve user experience.

Stephan says to give your content a better chance of being shown in SERPs, make sure your content is above the fold. Google is now distinguishing pages that have ads above the fold and filtering them out. Google is also giving more relevance weight to fresh content, so make sure you blog, post or update regularly.

A leaked copy of the Google’s Quality Raters Handbook 2011 edition shows that user intent, malware, oudated or shallow content can impact your site ranking. Sites with lots of ads can be impacted. Keyword stuffed URLs can signal spam. Google’s Panda update was about low quality pages, but Penguin is about spam. Keep in mind that Panda impacts whole sites rather than individual pages.

You should also look at the number of clicks it takes to reach each page on your site. Make quality content easier to find. Something not widely realized is that Google Instant can interfere with your URLs if you use URL parameters. One tip, says Stephan, is to use position tracking in the SERPs to determine your site’s *actual* position and then find vulnerable ranking pages above you that wouldn’t take much SEO in order to overtake them.

Keep in mind that you need to be logged in to Adwords to see historical keyword trending. You won’t see historical data if you use the Google Keywords tool without logging in, says Stephan. Also – very important – make sure you only ever research your search terms using [exact match] in the Google keywords tool, otherwise data will be skewed and inaccurate.

When it comes to SEO for videos, track your YouTube rankings using the Online Video Optimization Tracker Voot.net. It’s currently in BETA but you can request an invitation. Another tip for video optimization is to optimize your YouTube video thumbnail rather than SERP position.

You can follow Stephan on Twitter via @sspencer.

Internet Week, a slate of showcases, conferences and workshops around New York City spanning the depth and breadth of the tech industry, kicks off May 14.

The annual gathering this year will include keynotes from such industry notables as Mitchell Baker, chairman of the Mozilla Foundation; Tumblr founder and CEO David Karp; and The New York Times journalist Brian Stelter. Additional speakers include Anomaly creative director Suzana Apelbaum; Hayley Barna, founder and co-CEO of Birchbox; Federated Media executive chairman John Battelle; Mashable founder and CEO Pete Cashmore; Jessica Coen, editor in chief of Jezebel;  Machinima CEO and chairman Allen DeBevoise; Jane Hu, head of programming strategy at YouTube Next Lab; Andrew Madden, Google's head of magazines and news partnerships; and Jonah Peretti, CEO of BuzzFeed.

Beyond the headliners, there are a number of shorter- and longer-term programming options at this year's Internet Week. There's the OMMA Mobile Conference, which will be held all day May 14 at the Internet Week Theater on Mercer Street, the Streaming Media East summit will be held concurrently at the Hilton New York and The Digiday Conference will take place the same day at the W New York. 

Other sessions of note include "the newsstand 2.0," online dating, game design, customer acquisition in emerging markets like China, the digital music industry, business blogging, mobile apps and women in tech.

Internet Week is also home to the CLIO Awards, which will be held from 6:30 to 10:30 p.m. May 15 at the American Museum of Natural History.

Instagram—a company whose acquisition by Facebook made major headlines recently—is partnering with Times Square for Internet Week to spotlight photographers in a first-ever Instagram photo exhibition.

For the full list of sessions and locations, check out the Internet Week calendar. 

Rashida Jones was worried that becoming active on Twitter might make her seem like she was “on caffeine and cocaine.” Meanwhile, CSI creator Anthony Zuicker definitely appeared to be—at least on lots of caffiene.

Jones, Zuicker and Tom Hanks (via satellite) were some of the boldface names turning up at Digitas’ fifth annual Newfront in New York. That show has become the centerpiece of a 10-day series of events dubbed the Digital Content Newfronts, which so far have featured upfrontish presentations from Hulu, Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo. Unlike last year, none of the celebrity NewFront attendees outwardly begged for marketers to support their projects. Instead, this year the focus was on the quality of the content flowing online, and the confidence that Web video is poised to change the media business at large.

Here are some of the highlights:

• A charged up Zuiker presented a clip for Cybergedon, a computer-virus-gone-bad movie set to stream on Yahoo across the globe starting this September in 10-minute weekly chunks. The movie, tagged “This is the way the world ends … there is no esc,” is being sponsored by Norton Antivirus.

• Zuiker showed some slick images of his “diginovel,” an interactive full-length novel designed for tablets that combines elements of traditional books, graphic novels and touch screen games. He also gushed about Black Box TV, his new YouTube project featuring self-described “Hitchcockian” shorts. “I’m sick of the suits and the mularky,” he said of the pleasure of working outside the network TV world’s confines. “YouTube is an artist’s forum.”

• Speaking of YouTube, in spite of high-profile projects like Zuiker’s channel, YouTube isn’t aiming for mass hits. According to Jamie Byrne, YouTube’s global head of content strategy, the company is going for “mostly niche, small, underserved audiences.” For example, “we’re making a big bet on the Latino space,” Byrne said.

• While YouTube may not be swinging for the fences, Yahoo is. The company showed clips of the Tom Hanks collaboration Electric City, a 90-minute animated show which will be carved up into Webisodes on Yahoo later this year. “We’re looking for the first digital blockbuster,” said Yahoo video head Erin McPherson. “We’re looking for that Michael Bay or Jerry Bruckheimer of the Web."

• Regarding the criticism leveled at DCNF that a lack of digital ad scarcity makes them irrelevant, McPherson disagreed. “We’re not bound by time or space,” she said. “But scarcity is created by creating something big … a unique content experience.”

• One show featured at the event stood out for being unlike traditional TV. Rob Bennett, gm, executive producer, MSN, showed footage from Kid’s Kitchen, which incorporates video and gesture-driven functionality from Xbox Kinect. Kids watching the show can choose ingredients, and then virutally prepare dishes (like chopping tomatoes on screen using hand gestures) all while watching clips of celebrity chefs like Giada De Laurentiis prepping actual recipes.

• Bravo’s development head and on-air host Andy Cohen, along with Mashable founder Pete Cashmore and Vanity Fair senior writer Krista Smith, led an intervention, trying to persuade Rashida Jones (Parks and Recreation) to join Twitter. At first hesitant, for fear of her ego going wild or mean fan attacks, Jones eventually gave in. By the end of her session Jones had over 100 followers. "Oh snap, I just joined Twitter! Got convinced by my friends here at #NewFront,” Jones tweeted.

By 9:30 p.m. on Thursday, Jones had over 20,000 followers. Oh Snap is right.

Just because you add a YouTube video to a playlist doesn’t mean you’ll be able to watch it in the future. Many YouTube videos are removed because of copyright infringement, but some of them are deleted by the uploaders.

YouTube now shows a warning at the top of the page when some of the videos from a playlist have been deleted from YouTube. The warning is only displayed when you open the playlist and there’s also a button that lets you remove the videos that are no longer available.

Unfortunately, YouTube no longer shows the title of a video after it’s been deleted. This was useful because you could find similar videos and add them to the playlist. Now that YouTube replaces the title with “deleted video” and the video page only shows an error message, YouTube could automatically remove the missing videos.

{ Thanks, Sterling. }

When YouTube launched the feature that shows a filmstrip of thumbnails when you mouse over a video, it only worked in the Flash player. Now it’s also available in the HTML5 player. Unfortunately, the HTML5 player doesn’t support yet the second seek bar for videos that are longer than 90 minutes.

It’s nice to see that YouTube’s HTML5 player supports almost all the features of the Flash player and looks just like the Flash player. If you uninstall or disable the Flash player, YouTube automatically switches to the HTML5 player, assuming that you have a browser that supports the video tag. Obviously, you can still manually switch to the HTML5 player.

{ Thanks, Zachary. }

Back in 2010, YouTube started to test a feature that associated videos with topics. At that time, the experiment tried to improve search results pages by allowing you to find related videos.

YouTube Topics is still available as a separate page that lists the most popular topics and lets you find topic channels like this one.

There’s also an experiment that shows the topic of a video next to the channel’s name and lets you subscribe to the topic. The topic is an automatically generated channel. “We use many different sources to find these topics, including frequently used uploader keywords, common search queries, playlist names, and even sources outside of YouTube such as Wikipedia articles,” explains YouTube’s blog.

Here’s how you can enable this experiment. If you use Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera or Internet Explorer 8+, open youtube.com in a new tab, load:

* Chrome’s JavaScript console (Ctrl+Shift+J)
* Firefox’s Web Console (Ctrl+Shift+K)
* Safari’s Web Inspector (how to do that?)
* Opera Dragonfly (press Ctrl+Shift+I and select the “console” tab)
or
* IE’s Developer Tools (press F12 and select the “console” tab)

and paste the following code:

document.cookie="VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=4sBbSJYiyUE; path=/; domain=.youtube.com";window.location.reload();

Then press Enter and close the console.

When an email message includes includes links to YouTube videos, Gmail shows a gadget that lets you watch the videos inside Gmail. The YouTube preview feature graduated from Gmail Labs two years ago.

Gmail now tests another interface for previewing YouTube videos, but it only works for YouTube’s email digests. When you click one of the thumbnails from the newsletter, Gmail shows the YouTube player in a “lightbox”. For some reason, this only works when the “Apps Search” lab feature is enabled.

{ Thanks, Emanuele. }