The Kelsey Group predicts local online video ad revenues to hit $1.5 billion by 2012. Who will benefit the most from this revenue increase? Most likely Internet Yellow Pages with thier small-medium sized advertisers that are capitalizing on user demand for local online videos.
Google Maps has added a More tab to enhance a users expererience. If you click on the More tab on Google Maps, you now have access to geo-tagged videos, pictures and Wikipedia references. I had a chance to check it out for a few minutes and it is a pretty cool feature, however it was very slow when I used it. This got me thinking a little- if someone is using Google Maps, they are probably just looking for simple, fast directions; not clutterred, time-consuming directions. Knowing Google, I’m certain they will streamline to provide consumers with what they need quicker.
Google just announced that you can now embed local business videos into your business listing on Google Maps. These videos will be displayed under the “Photos and Videos” tab. Until now it seemed as though Internet Yellow Pages (IYP) had been the only ones looking to harness this potential. However, this recent partnership may give IYP publishers a run for their money, and hopefully make it more cost effective for businesses to implement this on IYP’s and local search sites such as SuperPages.com, YellowPages.com, or Citysearch.com.
Local search and advertising options continue to explode. Ad options include keywords, category or heading buys, and now online video. So how should local business and national advertisers selling locally think about incorporating video and video search into their ad arsenals? (more…)