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The majority (82%) of parents and children (75%) who play video games are familiar with the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) ratings system, according to a new survey by The Harrison Group conducted on behalf of Activision.

Additionally, 63% of parents with children who play games consider themselves gamers with the number increasing to 83% for parents ages 35 and younger, and 70% of parents pay close attention to the ratings when purchasing a game for themselves or their families.

"Parents rely on and value the ESRB ratings in helping them decide which games to allow their children to play," said Mike Griffith, President and CEO of Activision Publishing.

"Our ‘Ratings Are Not A Game’ education initiative underscores our commitment to helping parents better understand and utilize the ratings system as they select age appropriate games and determine the best way for the entire family to enjoy the gaming experience."

Other key survey findings include:

• Gamers devote 32% of their leisure time to entertainment with video games accounting for the largest share – approximately 19%.
• 76% of parents agree that video games are a part of their family’s life, and are something they’re very comfortable with.
• Among parent gamers, 52% of their video gaming playing time is spent with their children.
• Approximately 62% of parents conduct research before purchasing a video game that their child wants.

Online video is an increasingly populur medium from both users’ standpoints and business’ alike. When done right, it can be a great way to increase engagement and spread brand awareness. It can also be used for search engine optimization purposes. I’m sure you’ve noticed videos come up in the blended search results for many queries.

WebProNews fired a few questions at Benjamin Wayne, CEO of Fliqz, a Video hosting firm to see if he had some good tips to offer our readers. The following is the product of our Q&A.

Do you have tips for online video promotion? Share them here.

WebProNews: Have you noticed any difference in possible ranking factors for videos among Google, Yahoo, and Bing as far as blended search results go?

Benjamin Wayne: Google tends to be the site that drives the biggest portion of SEO traffic, and they seem to currently ignore all video-level meta-data with the exception of title. Matching the title tag to the video title also appears to have beneficial effects for search ranking. Yahoo tends to dislike video submission from non-partner third parties, and often rejects feeds without providing specifics as to why. Bing seems the most sophisticated in terms of information it considers, but also employs human editors to curate results that appear within Bing Video results.

WPN: Other than the obvious YouTube, which video sites are the most important to have a presence in?

BW: This really depends on the goal, which typically bifurcates into either driving branding by piggy-backing on the audience of a third-party site like YouTube, or driving traffic through submitting videos in such a way that they appear in blended search results and drive traffic back to the publisher. In the former scenario, YouTube really has the lion’s share of online video audience, and for most video producers, is the only site they need to care about. If driving traffic is the goal – and for most publishers, this should be their primary agenda – Google’s blended search results account for an overwhelming majority of search traffic. Beyond Google, Bing and AOL are both good targets.

WPN: How important are YouTube’s new enhanced caption features for video SEO?

BW: They’re not currently a factor in how Google ranks results. If this changes, they may become more important.

WPN: How would you convince a skeptical business about the benefits of online video?

BW: As marketers, we typically care about two things: driving traffic, and converting visitors. On the former, it’s hard to ignore the extraordinary efficacy of video from an SEO perspective. According to Forrester, video more than times more likely to result in a first-page Google result than traditional SEO. That’s an incredibly persuasive number. When it comes to conversion, just look at Zappos recent presentation at the recent Streaming Media West, where Zappos revealed that videos result in a 6-30% greater conversion in sales. That’s driving Zappos to strive for 50,000 videos produced next year. Those are numbers you can take to the bank!

WPN: Where are some good places to promote your videos, beyond the video sites themselves?

BW: If the goal is branding (which is tough in practicality to make work in online video) Google is your obvious target. Beyond that, you need to target specific vertical niches that are a solid fit with your brand, product, or service.

WPN: If there is any other video SEO advice you’d like to share, please feel free to do so.

BW: Getting video results to appear in Google is a science, so go to an expert who can help ensure that videos are indexed correctly. Google relies on title above all other meta-data to match results against searches, so make sure that you tune your title against the keywords you want to match. Matching page title tags to the video title is a good way to increase your score. To ensure that Google displays your preferred thumbnail, submit a single, rather than multiple thumbnails, in your feed. And lastly, make sure you submit both the web pages, and the videos themselves, to maximize your search results.

WebProNews would like to thank Mr. Wayne for answering our questions and sharing his insight with our readers.
 
On a related note, Topher Kohan, the SEO manager for CNN had some interesting things to say in a recent interview with WebPronews:

 Would you ask Wayne additional questions? Tell us what those would be.

Related Articles:

> Online Video Viewing Continues To Boom

> 35 Ways to Improve Your Online Video Performance

> Facebook Catapults Into Third Place Among Video Sites

DVR and online video continue to show considerable growth in the U.S., up 21.1% and 34.9 percent respectively, in time spent in the third quarter of 2009, according Nielsen’s latest Three Screen Report.

In Q3, the average American watched 31 hours of TV per week, with 31 minutes spending playback mode with their DVR.

In addition, each week the average consumer spent 4 hours on the Internet and 22 minutes watching online video.

The average consumer spent 3 minutes watching mobile video each week.

"Americans today have an insatiable appetite for not only content, but also choice," says Nic Covey, director of cross-platform insights at Nielsen.

"Across all age groups, we see consumers adding the Internet and mobile devices to their media diet – consuming media anytime and anywhere possible."

Online video viewing is also on the rise, with Internet users watching 53 more minutes of video online in Q3 compared to the previous year.

Time spent among overall mobile video viewers remains consistent, with teens reporting the most time spent on average watching mobile, at just over 7 hours per month. Older mobile video users age 45-54 reported viewing 3 hours on their mobile phones each month.

Social networks are becoming a popular source for online video. Time spent viewing video on social networking sites increased 98 percent from October 2008 to October 2009. Older demographics are also helping to drive the growth in video consumption with in social media. The 35 to 49 year old segment increased their viewership time by 37 percent and those over 65 increased their viewership 47 percent year-over-year.

Mobile video viewing continues to grow, with 15.7 million Americans viewing video on their mobile phone in Q3, an increase of 53 percent over last year.
 

Related Articles:

> YouTube Gets Well Over A Billion Views Per Day

> Online Video Viewing Sees New High In August

> MTV Offering…Music Videos?

Online video ads perform better in content sites such as news, finance, sports, and music than in social networks or gaming sites, according to a new study by ad firm Eyeblaster.

The study found that video advertising increases engagement, doubling Dwell Time (the amount of time users engage with an ad) and increases Dwell Rate (the number of ad impressions leading to users engaging with an ad), by 20 percent.

In the last four years, the growth of video impressions has outpaced rich media growth by 60 percent. Eyeblaster’s data indicates that since the beginning of 2006 to Q2 2009, video impressions have increased more than seven times in the U.S. and tenfold globally.

Highlights from the report include:
   

• In-Stream video ads have the highest proportion of ads fully played compared to any other format.
• Creative decisions play a significant role in ad performance: Rollover user-initiated video performs best followed by auto-initiated video; click user-initiated performs worst.
• Weekdays from 9 am to 5 pm is users’ preferred time to watch In-Banner and Floating video ads.
• Relatively few users un-mute video ads; auto-initiated video has the highest un-mute rate.
• An increase of video length by five seconds reduces Video Fully Played rate by 2.8%, on average.

"When it comes to online advertising, savvy marketers are using video to work both ends of the consumer funnel to drive results," said Gal Trifon, CEO and Co-founder at Eyeblaster.

"Online video advertising provokes engagement and Eyeblaster’s data demonstrates that users are more compelled to play with an ad that contains video. A blend of In-Stream, In-Banner and Floating ads allows advertisers to engage their target audience regardless of where they spend their time online."
Related Articles:

> Google To Get More Interactive With Mobile Video Ads

> IAB Releases Ad Unit Guidelines Updates

> YouTube Videos In Adsense Could Drive Clicks

TurnHere has shared the results of an interesting survey on current and future trends in online video among brands and marketing agencies. The survey found that online video has and will continue to have a prominent place in the arsenal of marketers. It should be noted that TurnHere is an online video company.

"This survey clearly demonstrates that businesses of all sizes consider online video to be an integral part of their marketing mix," said Bud Rosenthal, CEO of TurnHere. "Online video is the number one priority among all online marketing tools for 2010, and that finding directly ties into the high satisfaction levels for video implementation and its return on investment (ROI)."

Noteworthy findings include:

- Online video is the top marketing priority for 2010, edging out both email and search marketing

- Companies are experimenting across a wide range of video marketing: 57% have created branded video; 40% have used video for product or service demos, and 37% for customer or employee testimonials

- Branded content is the preferred online video type with the highest use among all video formats, the highest overall satisfaction levels and the highest likelihood of future use

- The top reasons for video include: branding (60%), exposure on sites like YouTube (54.7%), and viral content (48%)

- Professionally produced content was overwhelmingly favored over user generated

- 83.5% of respondents are already using online video in their marketing efforts in one form or another

- 90.7% of respondents are likely or highly likely to use online video in their marketing efforts in the next 12 months

The survey was conducted throughout the third quarter of 2009, and included respondents from Fortune 500 companies, as well as regional brands, PR and traditional agencies. Surveyed companies had annual marketing budgets ranging from $100,000 to $5 million.TurnHere’s report is available here.

Nielsen released its latest findings on online video usage in the United States today. The firm found that time spent viewing online video is up 25% per viewer, year-over-year. In addition, they found that total streams were also up 25%.

The Nielsen Company reported overall online video usage and top online brands ranked by video streams for the month of September. Here are a couple of charts documenting their findings:

To get this information, Nielsen Online’s VideoCensus combines panel and census research methodologies to provide what it perceives to be an accurate count of viewing activity and engagement. Online video viewing is tracked according to video player, which can be used on site or embedded elsewhere on the web.

Unique viewers are classified as people who viewed full episodes, parts of an episode, or a program clip during the month. VideoCensus measurement does not include video advertising.

Nielsen has made some changes to its VideoCensus service in the last few months. This includes a panel that is 8 times larger, and what it says is more granular reporting and improved accuracy and “representativeness”.

There was an interesting session on online video at Search Marketing Expo (SMX) East, which WebProNews attended. The session was called "Video Search Marketing Beyond YouTube". The following tips come from a combination of presentations from that session from speakers: William Leake of Apogee Search, John McWeeny of TurnHere, and Eric Papczun of Performics.

Do you have trouble getting the performance you want out of your video efforts? Discuss here.

The tips are all aimed at making your online video efforts more successful by optimizing them for search engine performance and ultimately driving more views and traffic back to your site. So, here they are in no particular order:

1. Encode video files with good metadata like titles, dates, authors, descriptions and keywords.

2. Offer multiple formats (e.g. mov, mpeg, mp4, flv).

3.  Include keywords (and the word "video") in the filename.

4. On the page, follow general SEO principles for optimizing (title, meta, H1, etc. tags and URLs).

5. Include contextually related links to articles and other videos on the page.

6. Post captions and/or abstracts as additional relevant on-page content.

7. Use Unique URLs.

8. Use one video per URL.

9. Use embedded players rather than pop-ups or links to files.

10. Create nav links to the video content.

11. Place video files in one central directory called "videos" off the root of your folder structure.

12. Enable comments.

13. Include social bookmarking tools.

14. Allow visitors to subscribe to your videos.

15. Let viewers grab your embed code – easily (with a link).

16. Remember internal linking (consider site-wide links in your page footer).

17. Distribute your video to the top video search sharing sites.

18. Include titles, descriptions & keywords on YouTube, etc.

19. Create a video site map with a mRSS feed.

20. Control associated page text to optimize for search engines.

21. Control the player (which may drive future video SEO).

22. Shorter videos are better.

23. Don’t spend a fortune.

24. Include end slates with URLs.

25. Drive people back to your site.

26. Thumbnail images matter.

27. Look for new opportunities for video placement (think about things like Google’s product search).

28. Figure out what keyword phrase is most relevant (and winnable) for your video.

29. Look into including videos in Google Place Pages.

30. Set up a Google video XML sitemap.

31. Use tools like Tubemogul’s to optimize metadata across the major video sharing sites.

32. Track viewership.

33. Advertise with video via rich search ads with Google/Yahoo and YouTube promoted videos.

34. Make sure your videos live on your domain and use 3rd parties for distribution purposes.

35. Stay on top of technology changes and new standards.

Do you have additional tips for increasing your online video success? Share them with WebProNews readers.

Google wants webmasters who offer video content to be able to get their videos displayed in search results more easily. The company has announced that that it now supports Facebook Share and Yahoo SearchMonkey RDFa, which are both markup formats that allow webmasters to specify information that is important to video indexing.

"While we’ve become smarter at discovering this information on our own, we’d certainly appreciate some hints directly from webmasters," says Google’s Michael Cohen, Product Manager for the Video Search Team.

The formats cater to simple things like titles and descriptions within the HTML of a video page. Google by the way also suggests that webmasters make their markup on video pages appear in the HTML without the execution of JavaScript or Flash.

On top of supporting the aforementioned formats, Google has also kicked off a series of Webmaster Central Blog posts, which are aimed at giving tips to get your videos indexed. One subject they have already discussed is the submission of video sitemaps.

Webmasters can submit their video sitemaps to Google via Webmaster Tools. The video sitemap uses the Sitemap protocol, but it also has additional video-specific tags. The details on how to create a video sitemap are explained here.

Keep an eye the Webmaster Central Blog for further tips in the near future. You can see what Facebook Share and Yahoo SearchMonkey RDFa look like here.

Of course everyone knows that Americans watch a lot of video. Why not, right? We spend a lot of time online and we like to make excuses to not exercise. It’s the perfect storm for YouTube and Hulu and the rest of the video distribution sites of the world. It is somewhat amazing though to see the numbers attached to it, though. comScore reports, in fact, that in July US Internet users watched a staggering 21.4 billion videos. That’s a new record, by the way. I feel like Frank Barone from the Everybody Loves Raymond show because all I can say to that is – “Holy crap!”

In July, Google Sites continued to rank as the top U.S. video property with a record 8.9 billion videos viewed, making up 42 percent of all videos viewed online. YouTube.com accounted for more than 99 percent of all videos viewed at the property. Viacom Digital ranked second with 812 million (3.8 percent) followed by Microsoft Sites with 631 million videos viewed (3.0 percent).

So Google leads the pack (yawn!) but Hulu reached an all time high with 454 million video views. Not bad. As for number of viewers Google logged 121 million viewers who averaged 74 videos a month.

Other notable findings from July 2009 include:

• The top video ad networks in terms of their actual delivered reach were: Tremor Video Network (20.1 percent viewer penetration), Brightroll Video Network (17.4 percent), and BroadbandEnterprises.com (14.4 percent).
• 81.0 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
• The average online video viewer watched 500 minutes of video, or 8.3 hours.
• 120.3 million viewers watched 8.9 billion videos on YouTube.com (74.1 videos per viewer).
• 48.2 million viewers watched 518.6 million videos on MySpace.com (10.8 videos per viewer).
• The average Hulu viewer watched 12.0 videos, totaling 1 hour and 13 minutes of videos per viewer.
• The duration of the average online video was 3.7 minutes.

I still marvel at the amount of video content consumed. My question is what percentage of it is stupid human tricks and the online version of the last words of every redneck, “Hey y’all watch this!”?

Comments

Google now has a video chat application that can be used from your iGoogle home page. This is just the latest feature Google has added to its ever-growing list of products/features that make it more like a giant social network.

"We have had video chat in Gmail for a little while now, but the nice thing about video chat in iGoogle is that you can video chat with friends who don’t have gmail accounts, all you need is a Google account," says Google software engineer Robin Schriebman. "One less thing to worry about when you want to stay in touch."

iGoogle users who wish to video chat with friends, need simply: 

- Download the voice and video chat plug-in, quit all open browser windows, and install the plug-in.

- Sign in to chat.

- Select the contact you want to call. If they have a camera icon next to their name, you can make a voice or video call; just click ‘Actions’ and ‘Start video chat.’

If they don’t have a camera icon, it means they don’t have the app installed, but you can send them an invitation to download it. Cameraless friends can still participate in voice chat through the app and have a conversation where only one side is in video.

"Since sometimes reading ‘lol’ doesn’t deliver the same punch as actually hearing your friend laugh at your jokes, you can now use voice and video capabilities in chat," says Google. "You can have an actual conversation with someone (seriously, out loud), or even chat face to face over video."

System requirements for the app are Windows XP or later or Intel Mac OS X 10.4 or later.