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On Friday, the YouTube Blog announced that the video sharing site was starting to test full-length programming. Apparently, YouTubers have been asking “to be beamed up with Scotty, to devise a world-saving weapon using only gum and paperclips, and to get your grub on at ‘The Peach Pit’.”

Hey, I’m not making this up. Go to the YouTube Blog and read it yourself.

Through a deal with CBS, YouTube is now offering “Star Trek,” “MacGyver,” and “Beverly Hills, 90210” to the 91 million viewers in the U.S. who watch 5 billion videos a month (54.8 videos per viewer). Yes, yes, comScore Video Metrix reports there are another 19.7 million viewers in the U.K who watch 1.4 billion videos a month on YouTube.com (72.4 videos per viewer). But, I’m sorry, I can’t find out how many there are in Canada.

Nevertheless, the YouTube Blog says, “These shows will be available in the new Theater View style we rolled out earlier this week, which provides optimal experience for watching full-length programming on your computer.”

Yes, yes, but what does this mean to search engine marketers?

The YouTube Blog adds, “As we test this new format, we also want to ensure that our partners have more options when it comes to advertising on their full-length TV shows. You may see in-stream video ads (including pre-, mid- and post-rolls) embedded in some of these episodes; this advertising format will only appear on premium content where you are most comfortable seeing such ads.”

Ah, ha! You knew there was a catch!

Still, in order to make it clear to viewers, YouTube has labeled all full-length videos with a Film Strip symbol so they’ll know what kind of content they’re choosing to watch and what type of ads they might see.

I can’t wait to share this news with Matt Bailey, the founder of SiteLogic. My business partner, Jamie O’Donnell, talked with Matt about Trekkie lore and web analytics at SES San Jose 2008. Matt was the first to analyze “the Red Shirt Phenomenon.” (As any die-hard Trekkie knows, if you are wearing a red shirt and beam down to the planet with Captain Kirk, you’re gonna die.) But, check out the YouTube video below to hear Matt’s analysis for yourself.

Measuring Web 2.0 with Star Trek - & SiteLogic’s Matt Bailey

By the way, Matt Baily will be teaching one of the Search Engine Marketing Training Workshops at SES Chicago 2008. It’s the Search & Analytics Workshop: Using Analytics to Increase Search Effectiveness, which will be held on Friday, Dec. 12, 2008.

To prepare you for Matt’s workshop, here are some basic stats:
The Enterprise had a crew of 430 during its five-year mission (although, the show was only on the air for 3 years). In the 80 episodes that were produced, 59 crewmembers were killed, which represents 13.7% of the crew. So, that’s what Matt uses as the overall “conversion rate.”

Heck, I can’t explain it as well as he does. So, watch the video interview above — read his article over on the ClickTracks site — or prepare to be amazed during his workshop at SES Chicago.

Hindsight is always 20/20, and that Microsoft acquisition offer for Yahoo earlier this year is looking sweeter by the moment looking in the rear view mirror. Too bad Yahoo rejected the $31 per share offer, because their stock has plummeted to $13 a share this week.

To be fair, some of the drop is due to the greater markets. Even Google is down to the mid-$300s after being up around $580 earlier this year. Another major factor is that Google and Yahoo have delayed the implementation of their search advertising deal.

Yesterday, Brian Sullivan at Fox Business was asking “Where’s the shareholder outrage?” While the markets are offering plenty of outlets for a variety of shareholder outrage, at least one Yahoo investor, Mithras Capital, is proposing a new Microsoft-Yahoo deal.

The deal would have Microsoft buying Yahoo for $22 a share. We know why the investor wants this: They want to recoup some of their losses.

But at this point, what’s in it for Microsoft? Yahoo continues to lose search market share and seems to be more concerned with securing the proving grounds of executives than building a business model based on users.

We know by now that banks, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were structuring their businesses to benefit executive bonuses. We also know that Yahoo did the same thing to throw a wrench into the Microsoft deal.

Is their really any faith left that Yahoo is on the mend? The Google advertising partnership only works if Yahoo starts regaining market share. But without innovation in search, that’s not going to happen.

I firmly believe that there are plenty of bright minds at Yahoo, but like far too many companies, management gets in the way.

A merger with AOL still might be a good idea though. Yahoo has strong portal properties, including Sports and Finance. AOL’s Platform-A consistently performs as the top ad network. AOL has also been making tiny gains in search. If you put their strengths together, you just might have something worth saving.

For the time being, though, it looks like investors should have sold their stock long ago. Microsoft has to be prepared for tough economic times, and I’m not sure throwing billions away on Yahoo’s flailing search product is a wise investment at this point.

ChunkIt is a new search toolbar that bills itself as an x-ray for search. What it does is search your choice of the “big five” search engines, and then displays results on the right and the textual content of the results on the left.

Once the results are loaded, users can click on a paragraph in the left hand side, and it will highlight the paragraph - and then load the full page in the right side.

Highlighted paragraph

Page loaded in the right hand side

I personally find this to be a great tool for search. But one issue for ChunkIt might be copyright. Google has come under fire from newspapers for the issue of copyright when it comes to indexing their pages. Their argument, which has won over some in Europe, is a poor one since Google primarily provides just links to articles.

So, I contacted Brian Cheek at TigerLogic Corporation, the company behind ChunkIt, and here’s what he had to say:

“ChunkIt! is a user-driven device that resides on the client-computer and is not a web service. All processing is handled by and all logic resides on the user’s local computer. ChunkIt! does not persist, store or cache information and does not use a back-end server to perform any of its functionality.”

Smart companies will see the value in ChunkIt’s search tool and not make a fuss over copyright. But expect a few to ignore a good thing when they see it and challenge ChunkIt, but only if and when the tool gets wildly popular.

YouTube has begun placing click-to-buy links beneath videos. This is the beginning of a greater plan to offer YouTube as an e-commerce platform to interested companies.

Amazon, iTunes, EMI Music and Electronic Arts are among the first to get a crack at the new feature, which is currently only available in the United States.

Memo to Viacom: Instead of suing Google and YouTube, which is costing you undoubtedly large sums of money in legal fees, you might try advertising on the wildly popular online video network instead.

Q3 earnings season is on its way and along with it are announcements about earnings calls and webcasts. Google will hold its call next Thursday, October 16, 2008 at 1:30 p.m. Pacific Time.

You can access the live webcast here.

Of course, with the economy in the state it is, investors and marketers alike will be watching earnings calls very closely for any indication of where things might be headed.

Q2 earnings disappointed the easily-disappointed Wall Street despite gains quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year.

What do you expect from Google’s third quarter? Give your predictions in the comments.

Recently, Google and T-mobile teamed up to unveil the new G1, the first Android-powered phone to be made commercially available. There was a lot of hype about the device and how it compared to the iPhone, but how does Google’s baby, search, fit into the mix?

Marc Vanlerberghe, Google’s Product Marketing Director, took to the Official Google Mobile blog to address that very issue.

It turns out search pops up in a bunch of places on Android, as you might expect.

The search feature on Maps sounds pretty cool. Just start typing, and the search interface pops up.

Other applications have your typical search button, and then there’s a good ol’ fashioned search widget on the home screen.

Query suggestions will be seen throughout, some using Google Suggest and some using query histories.

Google put together a video to show more of how search will work on Android. Check it out:

Yahoo President Sue Decker took to the Yahoo Anecdotal blog to defend the search advertising deal her company struck with Google a few months ago.

Google has been doing the heavy lifting when it comes to defending the deal to the critics. So, it was about time we heard from Yahoo again on the deal.

But Decker started off with a sarcastic tone. Her first paragraph ended with:

Since the critics clearly don’t understand the deal and what it means for Yahoo!, Google, advertisers, and users, it’s time for some myth-busting.

Sue, if you want to win friends to your side, you shouldn’t alienate these critics. Many of them are AdWords customers!

But Decker devolves even further by saying making her two points about what the deal does for Yahoo instead of making it about the customer:

• Yahoo! will use this agreement to help us become a stronger competitor in all aspects of online advertising; and
• Yahoo! is not exiting the sponsored search business. We plan to remain a strong player in sponsored search.

I know that Decker has probably been consumed with trying to save a flailing Yahoo. But the fact that she’s going after this argument by defending the business aspirations of Yahoo might show why this company is struggling in the first place.

Companies succeed when they focus on the customer. But Yahoo is focused on stock prices and board preservation. This is not the way to win the hearts of search advertisers or investors.

Otherwise, Decker made points that Google has made. She says there will not be price setting between Yahoo and Google because advertisers set the prices through the bidding process. The price is related to the value which is based on demand.

Decker even played on Google’s unofficial motto “Do no evil” by saying the partnership would be implemented through respect for the Hippocratic Oath “first, do no harm.”

To be fair, Yahoo probably needs this deal in order to bring in some extra income. What they need to do what that income is invest in innovation that brings a better search experience to users. That’s what the search industry needs right now. And it’s the only way to truly compete with Google.

Related Reading:
To Fear or Not to Fear: That is the Question (About the Google-Yahoo Ad Deal)

If you like using Google a lot (who doesn’t, really?), then you must know that there are various commands that you can use aside from simply entering keywords in the search box. These commands can help in narrowing down searches and getting more relevant results immediately. What might not be commonly known, however, [...]

I guess Yahoo possibly talking with AOL again and launching a brand new advertising platform were not enough to ease opinions on the current state of Yahoo. Collins Stewart analyst Sandeep Agrawal does not have a lot of faith in Yahoo right now. He maintains his hold status on the stock, and places the value at $21. That’s quite a bit less than the $31 Microsoft was offering to acquire Yahoo earlier this year.

Agrawal writes, “We believe that the fundamentals at YHOO are deteriorating. On the one hand, economic headwinds and turmoil in the financial markets are causing weaker display ad revenues. On the other hand changes with the minimum bid with search and a possible GOOG/YHOO deal are causing an outcry among many advertisers. To further complicate the situation is an ongoing loss of talent which might accelerate with renewed restructuring efforts. We don’t see any near-term upside in the shares of YHOO on a fundamental basis.”

Sounds like deal or no deal, Yahoo is screwed at the moment. What do you think?

via Barron’s h/t AllThingsD

Related Reading:
Google Launches Facts Site About Yahoo Search Ad Partnership

The real Emmy story last night came near the end, when Tina Fey arrived on the stage for last time and received the 30 Rock team award. She reeled off all the places where the critical hit could be seen online, including Hulu and NBC, and then said something like “and occasionally on TV” as well.

Perhaps Fey sounded a bit promotional but it seemed, well, normal. We definitely live in a video-on-demand world and TV shows are viewed when they are convenient for viewers. In her acceptance speech, Tina was shining the light on all the online access points.

However, we’re not searching with a video mindset yet. When googling “30 Rock,” you first see an NBC paid ad that directs searchers to their network portal. In the organic results, the program’s homepage comes up first. There’s no Hulu or other video access points in the results, only information about the award-winning program.

We’re still in that 500-channel universe, without an easy or standard searching mechanism. In this 30 Rock example, visitors are directed to channels containing their programs or else to the program homepage, rather than to specific episodes they might really want to see.

The TV shows aren’t directly accessible unless you are consciously refining results for videos or deciding to use a video search engine. When all the results are videos, at least you can save a few clicks. Still there tends to be duplication based on the different outlets and, even then, you may not land on the exact episode that interests you most.

On the video destinations, the searching mechanisms are somewhat lacking as well. For videos, the assumption is that you will know which episodes you have missed and browse what’s available until you find the right date and description.

At this point, people are trained to navigate through menus and directories, and don’t really know what they are missing. With search, they would be able to find what’s interesting within an episode or discover moments they want to see again. If there’s social inputs, then visitors would also benefit from what others have found interesting too.

In the search world, we know there are some real opportunities ahead. Now that viewers know their programs are available online, consumption can be increased with better searching and discovery mechanisms.