Balkanization of the Web?

In today's MediaPost Search Insider blog, search engine marketing professional Steve Baldwin wrote about what he foresees as the "Balkanization of the Web."

He says that, in order for suppliers of premium web content to stay alive, they will begin to release their information only to those search engines that cut them the best deals. This will result in information being divided among the various search engines, such that certain content is exclusive to specific search engines. Thus users will find themselves pushed to one engine or another, depending on the content they are seeking.

Baldwin thinks that this is the only real method by which search engines can distinguish themselves, since users care about the relevance of search results (which is now basically uniform across search engines), not the bells and whistles of a given search engine.

Now I'm no SEM expert as Mr. Baldwin is, but I must disagree with his prediction. I cannot see how such splitting up of web content is a good idea for any party involved. Nor would it ever begin to happen. Here's why.

One, the providers of premium content to whom Mr. Baldwin refers (i.e. The New York Times) are in no position to bargain for "better deals" from search engines. They are dying. Their readership is declining. They are trying to figure out how to renew their relevance and attract more readers. That is why they engage in SEO and SEM in the first place - so that any and every potential reader can find them in any and every pertinent search on any and every search engine. Creating an artificial scarcity, or threatening to, would be shooting themselves in the foot.

Two, search engines will not want to restrict themselves to only certain types of information. In other industries, concentrating all of one's resources in one product category enables a business to become truly and distinctively excellent in that category. This is not true for search engines. For search engines, there is no competitive advantage to ignoring some topics in order to focus on others. Nor will the search engines be forced to do so by the content providers, because, as noted in reason #1 above, the content providers have no bargaining power.

Three, users won't stand for it. Sharing and finding information on the Web should be free and easy. Users won't want to try several different search engines before they find the information they want - not when they can use Google to find virtually everything. And, as noted in reason #2 above, Google (and every other search engine) has no motive to limit the kinds of information it can find for users; therefore, users will continue to be able to find everything there.

The search engines and the dying providers of premium content will need to find another way to monetize their offerings. Sorry, Mr. Baldwin, but artificially limiting their products won't work. If they want to make money, they should try providing services that consumers perceive as worth paying money for.

Online Video Advertising that Works?

Here's a new approach to online video advertising.

VideoClix.tv is a video sharing site that seems to have found a workable solution to the monetization dilemma plaguing YouTube. While YouTube is experimenting with choose-your-own pre-roll, mid-roll, and post-roll "promoted video" ads, VideoClix steers away from the "tv commercial" approach altogether.

Instead, VideoClix uses its own Smartrack technology to add dynamic (moving) hotspots to the uploaded video. The hotspots function rather like "tags" on Facebook photos; as the viewer rolls the mouse over images in the streaming video, labels appear. The viewer can click on a labeled hotspot to see a relevant advertisement appear in a sidebar to the right of the video screen. If interested, the viewer can then click on the advertisement to open the advertiser's website in a new browser window.

For example, in a video of Maui honeymoon spots by The Knot wedding planning website, hotspots connect to ads for the Hawaii Visitors & Convention Bureau, The Four Seasons Resort Maui at Wailea, National Geographic, and The Knot.

Although VideoClix seems to be slow in gaining contributors (due in part, I suspect, to their business model - with their $5,000/year license fee, they are seeking corporate- and network-created content, not customer-created), I think this advertising model is a winner. Viewers are happy, because they see ads only if they are interested in the material, and the ads do not interrupt the video. Advertisers are happy, because their ads are reaching the customers who are actually interested in their products and services. It's a win-win (as any good business deal should be).

I hope that the VideoClix method catches on. Perhaps if waiting for more contributors isn't working, VideoClix should license their technology to YouTube instead.