Marketing Pilgrim

The Google Video store is finally open and the Google Blog lists some of its content providers.

The list includes:

• CareTALK: A multimedia brand dedicated to consumer-directed health care offering programming and tools to help modern family caregivers; initially offering 10-20 hours of health and caregiving-related content (10-20 minutes in length).

• CBS: Includes prime time hits such as CSI, NCIS, Survivor: Guatemala, and The Amazing Race (available spring ’06), as well as classics like I Love Lucy, Twilight Zone, Brady Bunch, Have Gun Will Travel, MacGyver, Star Trek Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, and My Three Sons (coming soon).

• HDNet: Co-founded by Mark Cuban, HDNet has agreed to make select original programming from its library available for the launch of Google’s first commercial video offering.

Tristan Louis pings me to let me know that Yahoo has acquired WebJay, a site that allows for categorization, editing, listening, and sharing of playlists online.

He has a candid (and brief) interview with Lucas Gonze, WebJay’s creator.

New SEMPO study, via MarketingVOX, shows a 44% jump in search engine marketing spend with $5.75 billion spent in 2005.

The survey found that 83 percent of SEM spending, or $4.7 billion, was spent in 2005 on paid placement.

At first glance, you’d think the money was in PPC, but let’s take another look. $4.7b spent on PPC, at an average agency rate of 10%, results in $470 million in PPC management fees. Compare that to the more than $643 million collected for SEO fees.

SEMPO found that 62 percent of search marketers said branding was the primary objective of search campaigns, but nearly as many – 60 percent – said selling was a key objective.

Nathan points to Omgili a search engine for web-based discussion forums.

From the Omgili web site…

Omgili is a search engine designed specifically to analyze web-based discussion forums. While Google has a Usenet-based search engine, it neglects the tremendously popular and information rich web-based discussion forums.

Many individuals who use Google’s Usenet search engine understand there is a wealth of information contained in such discussions. Often times, this information is more valuable than information contained in ordinary web pages.

However, the growing popularity of web-based user forums has eclipsed that of Usenet-based discussion threads. Nevertheless, this web-based information remains either unobtainable or disorganized from Google searches. This is where Omgili comes into play.

Jeremy Mullman has images of Google “Adwords” running in the Chicago Sun-Times.

The deal, terms of which were not disclosed, allows Google to fill what’s known as “remnant space” in the Sun-Times — unsold space where the paper would normally run in-house ads. Google fills those spots with its own ads. The Google connection is hardly trumpeted: “Ads by Google” appears at the top of each box of ads in very small type.

Interesting and cunning approach by Google. Could certainly grease the wheels for bringing offline classifieds to Google Base.

Via G-man.

We’re still growing. If you’re interested, read our corporate blog, if not, “delete, delete, delete”.

Interesting news from Rubel. Google is offering a Dell branded homepage on browsers shipped with Dell computers.

$100 says this page offers a “Download Google Pack” option within three months. Another $100 says Google Pack is pre-installed on new Dells before the end of the year.

If I’m wrong, I’ll donate the money to charity.