Search Marketing Insights (Emerging Search Trends)
Video Search: How is it different and will it stay that way?
By: Jamie Keaney, Senior Search Strategist
The number of Video Search Engines has grown exponentially over the past 3 years. On one panel at SES San Jose, two of the four speakers had run their own Video Search Engines. How people are using video has been a common theme here, and an interesting one.
According to one panelist, most Video Searchers only refine their Search about 1/3 of the time, opting instead to browse “related” videos that appear on the Search Results Page. For example, a search for “Pepsi and Mentos” may bring up 25 videos, and if the user doesn’t find the video they’re searching for, they may get distracted by another video on the page and play that one instead. The tendency to Search and browse rather than Search and refine is very different from what we see occurring on Google, Yahoo and MSN.
It’s literally changing the ad model associated with video search, making it more efficient to use pre-rolls or interlays.
If Search and browse sounds familiar to you, it should. What is happening now with video is exactly the metamorphosis search has gone through over the past several years. Early on, using a Search Engine would mean typing in your phrase and surfing through the Search results on page 1, 2 and 3 until you found the result you were looking for. Over time, users began searching and refining, opting to try another Search term if the results were irrelevant. This is proven by the fact that less than 15% of people are even making to page 3 anymore. This trend has created longer Search queries and more of them (something the Search Engines should be happy about).
Video is still largely in its infancy, something that we should all remember. The fact that people tend to Search and browse in Video Search Engines shouldn’t come as a surprise, as its exactly what users used to do on text based Search Engines. In time, Video Search will go the way of text based Search, and users who don’t find what they need in initial results won’t waste their time clicking through 2 minute videos that have 30 second ads; it’s simply inefficient and time consuming.
I’m channeling Nostradamus now. Within the next few years, I predict that pre-roll ad viewing will decrease as users opt to refine their Searches instead of browsing around. Remember, in this example the videos on the page are irrelevant to the search query; it’s why the user is browsing other videos. Imagine clicking on a text based Search Result and being served an interstitial ad prior to reaching the destination page. More likely than not, you’d start refining your Searches too.
