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According to Abbey Klaassen of Advertising Age, YouTube plans to launch a new feature called HotSpots this week that will allow “video creators to monitor how viewings rise and fall within a video.”

Klaassen writes, “HotSpots plays a video alongside a graph that maps whether the audience is lower or higher than average for a particular length of video. When the graph goes up, the video is ‘hot,’ and more viewers are watching — because there’s either less attrition or some viewers are fast-forwarding or rewinding to isolate a particular point in the video. When the graph goes down, the video is ‘cold’ because viewers are leaving the video or skipping to another part of the content.”

Klaassen adds that YouTube plans to unveil another service, called Visible Measures, which measures audience engagement within a video.

I can’t find any additional information about YouTube’s HotSpots or Visible Measures, so it appears that Abbey has a scoop.

In her article, Klaassen also interviews Matt Williams, a senior at State University of New York-Brockport, who makes funny videos and with his friend Andrew Reynold under the YouTube channel name StanleyJenkins. Williams estimates that optimizing videos based on YouTube Insights data has doubled his traffic.

Williams also noted that most of his video traffic was referred from related videos. That’s something that I also highlighted during my presentation at SES San Jose last month.

Li Evans of KeyRelevance interviewed me following the Video Search Engine Optimization (VSEO) session about the importance of related videos — and the benefits of reaching out to influential bloggers to ask them to embed videos in their blogs. Check out Li’s interview below.

VSEO - Video Search Engine Optimization - with Greg Jarboe

Guess the wagon circling has begun over at Yahoo in preparation of the stockholders’ meeting August 1. They sent out a letter to stockholders outlining the various events of the past few months and promoted voted for the existing board of directors.

The letter attacks Carl Icahn.

“It is time for Yahoo! to turn its undivided attention to implementing its key strategies, and we therefore urge you to reject Mr. Icahn’s slate and his ill-defined agenda,” the letter from Yahoo CEO Roy Bostock states.

The letter - posted below - is very slanted towards the actions of the existing executives. Right now the Microsoft offer of $31 to $34 looks good given the stocks major slump to the low $20s.

The letter read:

Dear Fellow Stockholders:

We are writing to update you on the latest developments here at
Yahoo!, including our recently announced commercial agreement with
Google and the outcome of our discussions with Microsoft regarding a
potential transaction.

On June 12, we announced a non-exclusive agreement with Google that we
expect will generate approximately $250 to $450 million in
incremental operating cash flow for Yahoo! in the first twelve months
following implementation. This cash flow will enhance our
profitability as well as help support achievement of our key
strategic objectives. Combined with continuing advances in our own
search capability, the agreement is an important step in our efforts
to capitalize on the high-growth online advertising opportunities
where we are best positioned to compete successfully and create more
value.

Let us explain why we find this new agreement so exciting.

The Yahoo!-Google Agreement is Financially Attractive and Strikes the
Right Strategic Balance.

Under the agreement with Google, Yahoo! will continue to provide
algorithmic and sponsored search results, but now will also have the
ability to run sponsored search ads supplied by Google alongside
Yahoo!’s search results. Advertisers will pay Google directly for
each click on Google paid search results appearing on Yahoo!. Google
will then pay us a fee (in industry jargon, traffic acquisition cost)
based on revenue realized from click-throughs on ads supplied to
Yahoo! by Google.

This carefully structured agreement strikes the right strategic
balance, enhancing our financial results while advancing our
strategic objectives of being the “starting point” for the most users
on the Internet and offering such compelling value that advertisers
will see us as the “must buy” in online advertising.

One of our key strategies for achieving these objectives is to
capitalize on the increasing convergence of search and display
advertising, where we are especially well positioned to compete and
succeed. We have already accelerated our efforts to strengthen our
presence in display through a variety of initiatives and acquisitions
in recent months. Our new commercial agreement with Google enhances
our ability to pursue this strategy.

Another key strategy is to open our platform to other developers to
optimize monetization for our advertisers and publishers and provide
the best experience for our users. We see this agreement as a natural
extension of the efforts we have already made toward an open
marketplace.

The Google agreement is non-exclusive and provides strategic and
operational flexibility for Yahoo!. It allows Yahoo! to use Google’s
services in those areas where Google monetizes our inventory more
effectively but also permits us to continue to use our own search
technology in areas where we believe we are most competitive. The net
result is that the agreement helps us accelerate one of our strategic
aims–closing the monetization gap. At the same time, it allows
Yahoo! to continue to compete aggressively in search and display
advertising.

Importantly, the agreement does not prevent Yahoo! from pursuing other
alternatives that could increase stockholder value. Because the
agreement can be terminated by either party upon a change in control,
it would not preclude a transaction with Microsoft or any other
potential acquiror in the future.

The Yahoo!-Google Agreement Does More for Stockholder Value than
Microsoft’s Search-Only Hybrid Proposal.

We also want to update you on the conclusion to our discussions with
Microsoft regarding a potential transaction. As we explained in our
last letter, our board and management held numerous meetings and
conversations with Microsoft about its proposal to acquire Yahoo!,
both before and after Microsoft withdrew that proposal on May 3. On
June 8, our Chairman, Roy Bostock, other independent board members,
and members of Yahoo!’s management team again met in person with
Microsoft representatives. At that meeting, Microsoft stated
unequivocally that it has no interest in acquiring all of Yahoo!,
even at the price range Microsoft had previously suggested.

Microsoft did propose an alternative transaction. Rather than acquire
our whole company as it had been proposing for months, Microsoft now
proposed to acquire only our search business for $1 billion and a
share of future search advertising revenue. This proposal also
included an $8 billion investment in Yahoo! but required Yahoo! to
commit to a 10-year exclusive arrangement that would have made us
dependent on Microsoft for all of our search business. It would also
have given Microsoft veto rights on certain future Yahoo! actions,
including a sale of Yahoo!. Our board of directors and management
made a great effort–and conducted in depth negotiations–to elicit a
feasible proposal from Microsoft that made strategic and financial
sense for Yahoo!, but without success.

While Microsoft’s search-only hybrid proposal may have been helpful to
Microsoft, our board and management concluded it would have had a
significant adverse impact on Yahoo! strategically, leaving the
Company without the operational control of search assets and
technology we view as critical to our objective of becoming a leader
in the converging search and display advertising business. The board
and its advisers also carefully studied the financial impact of
Microsoft’s proposal and concluded that it would have provided no
meaningful improvement to our operating cash flow. In short, this
proposal would have generated substantially less value for Yahoo!
stockholders than Microsoft has suggested.

Based on all the key factors–strengthening our competitiveness,
protecting our strategic position, generating attractive financial
returns–the Google agreement is far better than Microsoft’s search-
only hybrid proposal. That’s why we moved forward with it.

Your Current Board of Directors Has the Knowledge, Experience and
Commitment to Best Represent Your Interests and Maximize Stockholder
Value.

The events of recent weeks underscore the fact that your board of
directors is far better qualified to represent your interests in the
effort to maximize stockholder value than the slate put forward by
Carl Icahn.

Based on Mr. Icahn’s narrow agenda, it seems highly unlikely that
either he or his slate would bring added value to Yahoo!. Consider
the following:

– Mr. Icahn put forward his slate so as to sell Yahoo! to Microsoft,
even though he had no knowledge of the sustained efforts made by your
current board and management to determine whether Microsoft was
willing to engage in a transaction that would provide appropriate
value and certainty of achieving that value. On June 8, Microsoft
once again made it perfectly clear that it is not currently
interested in acquiring Yahoo!.
— Mr. Icahn publicly opposed any alternative form of transaction
with Microsoft. Your board and management, after thorough and
deliberate negotiations and evaluation, separately concluded on its
own that the alternative hybrid deal proposed by Microsoft was,
indeed, not in the best interests of the Company or its
stockholders.
— Mr. Icahn urged, as an alternative to a Microsoft transaction,
that Yahoo! find a way to partner with Google that would not
preclude a transaction with Microsoft in the future. We have done
exactly that through the commercial agreement with Google we
announced on June 12.

Simply put, you can choose to vote for a slate of nominees with no
articulated plan for the future of Yahoo!–and who now have
essentially no alternative agenda to offer you–or you can choose to
vote for your existing board of directors which has the independence,
experience, knowledge and commitment to navigate the Company through
the rapidly-changing Internet environment, execute on our strategic
objectives and deliver value for Yahoo! and its stockholders.

It is time for Yahoo! to turn its undivided attention to implementing
its key strategies, and we therefore urge you to reject Mr. Icahn’s
slate and his ill-defined agenda.

We strongly urge you to vote your WHITE Proxy Card today for your
current board of directors.

We look forward to sharing our progress with you as we move forward
and we thank you for your support.

Sincerely,

Roy Bostock Jerry Yang
Chairman of the Board Chief Executive Officer

In what must be one of the seven signs of the apocalypse, Yahoo and Google have agreed to extend the advertising tests they participated in last month to a broader-scale distribution partnership.

Under the agreement, Yahoo would outsource a portion of its search ad inventory to Google, and potentially to other providers in the future. Yahoo now has the option to display Google ads alongside its own natural search results and other Web properties in the U.S. and Canada.

Yahoo will select the search term queries and the pages where Google AdSense for Search or AdSense for Content ads will be shown. The deal does not affect Yahoo’s algorithmic search.

Yahoo expects the deal to improve monetization of its pages, potentially adding $800 million in annual revenue. In the first 12 months following implementation, Yahoo expects the agreement to generate an estimated $250 million to $450 million in incremental operating cash flow.

The open bidding system will likely utilize the abilities of Yahoo’s Right Media Exchange software to deliver those third-party ads on Yahoo’s search results. Such a deal could still include spurned suitor Microsoft, which could also allay regulatory fears that Google is getting even bigger than it already is. To play nice with regulators, the two have agreed to delay implementation for up to three and a half months to give the U.S. Department of Justice time to review the arrangement.

The agreement has a term of up to ten years: a 4-year initial term and two 3-year renewals at Yahoo!’s option. Financial terms between the two companies were not disclosed. Either party will have the option of terminating the agreement in the event of a change in control of either party, but if Yahoo initiates it within the next 24 months, it will owe Google a termination fee is $250 million, subject to reduction by 50 percent of revenues earned by Google under the agreement.

The two-week test in April reportedly affected about 3 percent of Yahoo search queries, and only applied to search traffic from yahoo.com in the U.S. and did not include Yahoo’s publisher network or other partners.

As an additional token of newfound camaraderie, Yahoo and Google agreed to enable interoperability between their instant messaging services.

Microsoft on Tuesday took the wraps off a new application for webmasters: the AdCenter Desktop Beta.

The tool extends the capabilities of Microsoft online tools for adCenter, especially in the areas of bulk campaign management, research tools, and “Creation Wizard” functionality for creating new campaigns through a simple interface.

“From a platform standpoint, we’ve taken leaps in what we offer. A lot of what we’re doing on the ad platform side gets lost in the question of volume. But the platform is well poised to take advantage of the volume as it builds,” Brian Boland, director of adCenter for Microsoft, told SEW.

Microsoft will continue developing its Web-based tools alongside the offline application, although some functionality will only be added to one or the other, Boland said. For example, the wizard functionality and bulk management tools are only available in the desktop application. But many users will continue to prefer the simplicity and portability of the online tools, so they will not be abandoned, he said.

Microsoft began offering offline tools with its adCenter Add-in for Excel 2007, which launched in December.

The adCenter Desktop tool, which Kevin Johnson, president of Microsoft’s Platform & Services Division, first mentioned during his keynote at SMX Advanced, is currently in closed beta. To be considered for participation in the program, users can fill out an interest form at Microsoft’s site.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt has named legendary Bubble 1.0 i-banker Frank Quattrone as an adviser to help reverse engineer the Yahoo-AOL and MSN- MySpace entanglements, according to the NYT blog DealBook .

For eagle-eyed readers of press releases, the news should come as no surprise. As Dealbook noted, Eric Schmidt gave a testimonial for the recently launched financial services venture last month:

“The launch of Qatalyst is an important development for the technology industry,” said Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO of Google. “Frank and his team bring unparalleled industry knowledge, a unique 25-year market perspective and candid, insightful judgment that CEOs greatly value on important strategic initiatives. I look forward to working with him again and am very enthusiastic about Qatalyst’s prospects for success.”

Quattrone has advised tech companies globally since 1981 while building technology banking departments for Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse. He was also the superstar banker who faced 18 months in jail but won his appeal in a U.S. court in Manhattan.

Qatalyst Group is a technology-focused merchant banking boutique based in San Francisco. Qatalyst Partners, its investment banking business, will provide high-end M&A and corporate finance advice to technology companies globally.

Qatalyst Capital Partners, its investing business, will make selective principal
investments, typically alongside leading venture capital and private equity firms.

Yahoo announced today that it will “will begin a limited test of Google Inc.’s AdSense for Search service, which will deliver relevant Google ads alongside Yahoo’s own search results.”

The test will affect about 3 percent of Yahoo search queries, and will only apply to search traffic from yahoo.com in the U.S. and will not include Yahoo’s publisher network or other partners. The test is expected to last up to two weeks.

This can be seen as Yahoo thumbing its nose at Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who basically implied in his ultimatum letter last weekend that Yahoo had no other options than to take Microsoft’s offer. But this test is not really an indication of anything concrete, as Yahoo specifically says, “the testing does not necessarily mean that Yahoo will join the AdSense for Search program or that any further commercial relationship with Google will result.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, the test is “designed for the two sides to evaluate the revenue potential of a broader search ad outsourcing arrangement. They have been discussing such an arrangement as part of Yahoo’s pursuit of alternatives to Microsoft Corp.’s unsolicited acquisition offer, according to people familiar with the matter.”

Stay tuned to the ongoing saga of Microhoo. In our next episode, Yahoo will announce that it’s teaming up with Apple to put Yahoo ads on the iPhone. At least that’s what “people familiar with the matter” have told me.

If you look carefully in your next Google search, you might just see a video ad included in the sponsored listings along side your organic results. It’s not obvious at first. You have to look for a version of the PlusBox, used for things like local search results and video in the organic listings, in the ads column.

In February, word came that Google was testing video ads, and searchers began noticing the ads on live searches this morning.

I did a search today for [smart phone] (since [smartphone] didn’t return a video), and found an ad with an invitation to “Watch Commercial” under it:

When you click on the plus sign, the listing expands to display a video right there in the results. You also may need your grandmother’s magnifying glass as the video ads are tiny! They’re just 160×140 pixels, including the player navigation.

So far, it looks like only searches for “tech” terms like laptop or cell phone will trigger a video ad. Searches for cat food, personal finance, and luggage did not return any video ad results.

Andy Weatherwax, a Partner and the Director of Search Operations at Global Strategies Intl., spoke at the Big Site, Big Search session at SES London 2008, which looked at the problems and solutions unique to those running big sites or from big companies and brands.

I interviewed Andy about the session, which tackled tough questions like: “How do you cope with doing search engine optimization for a company with tens of divisions, hundreds of products, thousands of web pages and seemingly no way to bring order to the chaos?” and “Where do you begin with the SEO process?”

Andrew Weatherwax Global Strategies Intl. at SES London 2008

If you don’t know him yet, Andy Weatherwax is a founding partner of Global Strategies International (GSI) and has served as embedded search consultant on accounts including Nokia, BP, Cisco and Kodak. A specialist in the area of enterprise CMS configuration and Consumer Intent Modeling, he is currently working with clients and their agencies to leverage search in the marketing mix.

Prior to Global Strategies, Andy was owner of BrainBug Internet Marketing, an award winning digital marketing consultancy providing online marketing strategy for clients including MetLife, Konica Minolta, Pfizer, WebMD and Priceline. In 2003, he was contracted by Position Technologies to develop the user experience design for Yahoo/Overture Site Match and Site Match Exchange.

A frequent speaker at industry conferences, Andy has been involved in online marketing since 1995. He has been the recipient of many prestigious awards for digital design including the Codie Award.

When he is not working, Andy can be found off-shore sailing or playing music. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Jazz Studies from the Hartt School of Music.

You can view other video interviews from SES London 2008 at the Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo channel on YouTube.

Google News now slices and dices local news by zip code.

Before passing judgment on the new Google News feature — launched on the Google News blog under “All News Is Local” - Google asks users to provide feedback. As usual, Google calls the launch an experiment.

The results? As you can see from a news search for “90210″ the SERP (search engine results page) the Google News search algorithm ranks the zip code high. The deceased “90210″ TV show ranks first. The keyword 90210 is in the title tag. Plus,

The Google News experiment may present a challenge for search engine optimization professionals who specialize in SEO PR. It’s more likely, though, that Marketwire’s new Social Media 2.0 press release product will have more of an impact on the way corporations - including newspapers - disseminate news and information.

At this early stage, geotargeting news by typing in a city name Typing in “Beverly Hills” in Google News doesn’t deliver better results, favor local news sources, or aggregate local news.

This Google experiment? Google Local News search may not be canceled like the 90210 TV series but it’s not ready for primetime.

Social Media press releases have been the subject of many blog posts over the last year. IN November Greg Jarboe and Brian Solis held a mock trial for this format.

What can’t be denied is the fact that the web has changed the way we access information and people have discovered the power of voice. News is no longer a one-way, static inflow of information. We want to have our say. We want to comment and contribute. We want to shape and influence the news.

Should a press release be a part of this social web, you might ask. Google thinks we have the right to comment on news stories, albeit only if we are a participant in that story.

And now that press releases find their way into news search engines and blogs they’ve evolved from a corporate announcement intended only for reporters to information that reaches the public directly. So it makes sense that companies would want this information to be found on social sites and to encourage people to comment on this news, save it and share it.

I spent a few hours going through a demo of the new Marketwire product Social Media 2.0 for press releases today. I did like some of what I saw. And I, too, will trst, test anf test agsin before I make a judgement..

What I liked
1. In-release performance statistics on search engine cataloging.
2. They’re getting your content out to places other than the Marketwire site - they upload the video to YouTube, images to Photobucket. That’s a plus for non-techie PR folk..
3. The ability to comment. However, you can only have this feature if you also use their hosted newsroom. I’d advise my clients to have a newsroom on their own website. And to create an RSS Feed of their news content on their own domain name. It’s better branding and better for SEO.

Things I am not sure of:
1. Adding the content of press releases in a Twitter feed. All press releases in one feed into Twitter? That’s not why I go to Twitter. But Twitter does get good Google visbility, We’ll see what kind of response this gets from Twitter users.
2. The value of a podcast in iTunes of headlines from many press releases from diverse companies.

So the jury is still out. I am part of a research project for the Society for New Communication Research (SNCR) on the use of press releases in new media. We will be testing this new service along with other wire services and alternative methods of getting your release out into the social media sphere today.

I am also going to test it myself for a few clients who already use Marketwire.

Stay tuned.