As SMBs learn the power of online video to reach their customers, video can also be powerful upstream in their value chain. That’s the idea behind a few video contests sprouting up this month from big corporations to give SMBs an opportunity to earn cash and marketing assistance. We’ll keep tracking SMB video contests going …

Business-to-business companies are catering to a growing crop of decision-makers who are turning to the Internet for purchase information according to data from Marin Software. The average cost per click in the B2B paid search space increased 29 percent from Q4 2010 to Q4 2011.
According to additional data from Compete and Google, we’ll continue to …

The focus for vertical sites is likely to shift in coming months. In addition to regular features, such as listings, many vertical sites will also begin to blend personalized or on-demand “maintenance” information with various social media features such as scheduling and reviews.
We’ve seen it with garden and health sites, and also, increasingly, …

While this news has been out for a little while, we thought it was interesting that a company with powerful TV assets would initiate a deal with a company that provides high-quality, affordable video commercial content for local advertisers. After all, isn’t this what TV has been doing since the ’40s. What gives?
Anyone who’s ever …

Internet display and text advertising are great. But nothing really matches video for engagement and open rates. A number of players are specializing in SMB video. A new company, Webshoz (pronounced “Web shows”) is focused on presenting an onscreen “bar” of several video choices that viewers can click “video previews” on demand.
The application, which …

Pixelfish, armed with $3.5 million round of new capital raised since October, is evolving its model from a white-label provider of affordable SMB video to a destination site for SMB offers. Today, it announced that it has acquired Steve Espinosa’s Backyard/CitySquares to act as its infrastructure.
Pixelfish was founded in 2006 and has recently settled …

One of the challenges presented by online video in the directory space is that the video content is often buried inside the IYP listing. This has always seemed like a suboptimal way to present valuable content in a format that converts well.
Webshoz, a new company, has developed a product called the Videobar that …

With cable subscriptions declining and a host of nonlinear, IP-connected devices emerging to offer new, incremental revenue possibilities, the time has come for local TV to get serious about an OTT strategy. To capitalize on this opportunity at a market level, local operators should be asking, “what does an effective OTT strategy entail?” and “what …

October U.S. online video rankings from comScore reaffirm an established trend: Watching video online is a social exercise. Fueled by YouTube’s stranglehold on unique viewers, viewing sessions and minutes per viewer, Google posted dominant numbers, besting its closest competitor — Yahoo sites — by almost 93 million UVs and 1.7 billion viewing sessions. In total, …

In July, BIA/Kelsey projected that OTT homes — or those services providing linear and nonlinear video services over third-party bandwidth to the TV — will exceed cable homes by 2013. A February IMS Research report on “Internet Video to the TV” pegged 78 percent global growth in OTT devices, with 25 percent of American households …

The small-business market is always attractive to vendors in terms of volume, but many give up in frustration because of its fragmentation, low margins and high-service needs (and churn). Many of these vendors typically seek to move up the value chain to medium- and large-sized businesses. With these, they get both larger contracts and more …

Two freshly released viewer surveys underscore the fragmentation of the TV marketplace, the surging demand for online video and time shifting, and the changing consumer attitudes toward traditional, live television. 
The most recent Morpace Omnibus study reveals that while 52 percent of viewing is live (linear broadcasting, whether prerecorded such as a TV series or movies, or actual live programming like …

Scanning the global Yellow Pages industry for noteworthy recent developments:
Yell wants its customers to share videos of the “amazing things” that they can do with its economized Yellow Pages directory. The U.K.-based company calls this reformatting of its traditional product “the most significant change” in more than 40 years. Yell is using YouTube and Facebook as contest …

AOL’s Patch gave a progress report today on its $50 million hyperlocal initiative. The site said it now has 100 hyperlocal sites, and will launch 400 more over the next six months. It also said it plans to hire at least one journalist in each community, adding 500 new journalists as part of its growth. …

Even though Hulu CEO Jason Kilar calls his service “incremental and complementary” to cable, the online video hub’s potential fall IPO is a testimony to the transition of TV across screens and the rapid growth of OTT (over-the-top) services.
OTT delivers IP video to end-users over third-party broadband using gaming consoles, set-top boxes, and other devices to connect the Internet …

Some speculation (and new details) about Apple’s pending and well-expected reboot of Apple TV found its way last week into The New York Times just before the holiday break. My guess is that the new and obvious name will be iTV and the functionality will mimic other Apple devices running its OS — iPod Touch, …

Catching up on notable items in the local space over the past week, you may have heard that Yelp has partnered with TurnHere to exclusively offer video to its SMB advertisers.
This will include a few different tiers of service that should appeal to the wide range of businesses Yelp works with. These include:

Standard Video: Advertisers …

DexOne has made online video a standard element of its Enhanced Pack online advertising bundle as a way to encourage wider adoption of online video, according a release issued today.
“Online video advertising has become an increasingly important tool for businesses to convey their services, location and personality,” said …

The Dutch-based online video player Spotzer has taken what is has learned about efficient process management in video product and is applying it to the high volume production of Web sites.
Spotzer, which is part owned by European Directories, is launching a Web site creation service in partnership with Websplanet that utilizes an inventory of category-specific …

Google VP of ad products Susan Wojcicki told IAB’s Leadership Meeting yesterday that “the display industry is one of the most innovative parts of the Web right now,” and “will be one of the largest ad markets, if not the largest. It has to be,” she added. “Everything is moving online.”
Video, social and mobile will …