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Searching for video online - March 25, 2008

"The killer video app," according to Veoh CEO Steve Mitgang, "will be an intelligent piece of software that creates a mode-sensitive, personalized [electronics program guide]," so that people can find content they're interested in amid the flood of video moving online. Speaking at Digital Media Wire's Future of Television conference in LA Monday, Mitgang and other panelists focused on the problem of search and discovery of video online and across platforms.

"At Veoh, we're working on solving some fundamental problems, or opportunities, depending on how you want to look at it," Mitgang said. "Everyone is looking for interesting content to watch, whether its long form, short form, mash-ups or whatever. We're looking for ways to make that easily discoverable and personalized."

According to Ben Huang, director of product management at Microsoft TV, the challenge is to make the discovery process portable across multiple platforms.

"You have all these different devices in your life, but it's the same person on all those devices. There’s a core experience that has to thread through all of those devices," he said. "From the consumers' point of view, they shouldn't have to think about whether it's IPTV, or online video, or cable or whatever. The experience needs to be the same.

"There's a lot of work to be done around discovery, to help people break away from the linear, EPG model," he added.

The discovery process is also critical for marketers looking to target consumers according to their interests and behaviors, the panelists said.

"The key [to online video advertising] is relevance to the audience, not the ad format," Mitgang said. "You need to have the technology to be able to match the ad to the audience as much as possible, because consumers' tolerance for ads is directly related to how relevant they are."

According to imeem chief marketing officer Steve Jang, current online video platforms fall short of that goal.

"Of all the things that YouTube is good at, the one thing they're least good at is the social piece, where users create their own community around a shared interest," Jang said. "YouTube is just so big and so general it's really hard to do that."

In time, he said, "I think you'll see a lot more vertical [online video] plays trying to fill that space."




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