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Today Adobe announced Web Video in High Definition, IBM announces that audiences are shifting from TV to web video, WSJ reviews the top web video search engines, and Google announces a new video advertising tech for YouTube.

Today Adobe announced that it is integrating a standard format for high definition video into the newest version of its immensely popular Flash video player. Flash players currently sit on 98 percent of all desktop computers and hundreds of millions of portable and handheld devices. Sites like YouTube, ABC.com and NBC.com favor Flash over competing players like Apple’s QuickTime and Microsoft’s Windows Media, since Flash is relatively easy to develop for and videos play directly in the browser.

The high-def standard that Adobe is embracing is called H.264. It is the same video format used in Blu-Ray and HD-DVD video players and the latest cable and satellite set-top boxes. Adobe will integrate support for H.264, and for the high-performance AAC audio standard, into the newest version of Flash, available for download today.

IBM Releases Web Content Study Results

Watching video content on the Web is a popular activity these days. An average of 67% of consumers surveyed by IBM globally said they have watched or want to watch online video.

For video content online, the most popular destinations are user content-generated sites like YouTube, with 39% of respondents saying that’s where they go most frequently. TV network sites (33%), search engines (32%) and social-networking sites (28%) are the next most-popular locations for Web video offers, according to the IBM study. As far as mobile video is concerned, an average of 35% surveyed globally by IBM said they have or want to watch mobile video. Seven% report having a video-content subscription for their mobile phones.

These are among the findings of a new IBM survey of consumer behavior in the digital age, which suggests that studios, advertisers, ad agencies, content distributors and other industry players must continue to adjust their business strategies amid changes in media usage and consumers’ increased expectations for control and community.

Among key lessons for studios: Make your content available everywhere, but don’t expect to get paid for every platform. And keep an eye on key influencers on the Web to succeed in creating word-of-mouth.

Video Search Engines Evaluated 

The WSJ tested four video-search engines — Truveo.com (www.truveo.com), Google’s (www.google.com/video) and Yahoo’s (www.video.yahoo.com), as well as Blinkx.com (www.blinkx.com).

Findings:

• Truveo combines the browsing experience of a YouTube with the best Web-wide video-search engine I’ve seen.
• Google video almost always displays only content from Google and YouTube.
• Yahoo’s video-searching page looks clean and uncluttered, but the clips were less relevant and included more repeated clips.
• Blinkx uses speech recognition and analysis to understand what the video is about, and rarely got results that were completely off-base.  Blinkx also distinguishes itself with its “wall” interface — a visually stimulating grid of moving video thumbnails.

 Truveo apparently won the comparison hands down, the article concluded:
Truveo starts users out with enough relevant clips right away so that they can more easily find what they’re looking for. And its organizational buckets encourage browsing and, therefore, entertainment — one of the reasons for Web video’s popularity.  Truveo takes a refreshing look at video search, and as long as you have the patience to travel to sites where content originated, you’ll find it useful. It stands apart from other search engines in looks and functionality.

Google Puts Commercials in YouTube Videos

Google believes it finally has found the formula to cash in on YouTube’s potential as a magnet for online video advertising and keep its audience loyal at the same time.  The company said late Tuesday that after months of testing various video advertising models, it was ready to introduce a new type of video ad, which it said was unobtrusive and kept users in control of what they saw. 

The ads, which appear 15 seconds after a user begins watching a video clip, take the form of an overlay on the bottom fifth of the screen, not unlike the tickers that display headlines during television news programs.  A user can ignore the overlay, which will disappear after about 10 seconds, or close it. But if the user clicks on it, the video they were watching will stop and a video ad will begin playing. Once the ad is over, or if a user clicks on a box to close it, the original video will resume playing from the point where it was stopped.

YouTube has revenue-sharing deals with more than 50 partners. Advertisers can target their commercials to specific genres. Google will charge advertisers $20 for every 1,000 times the ads are played. Initial advertisers include Warner Music Group and Twentieth Century Fox film studio. Testing of the format began in June on 200 videos from 20 providers and found that 75% of viewers watched the entire ad. YouTube said they had five-to-10 times the click-through rate of standard ads that appear on Web sites.

Researcher ComScore said visitors to Google’s sites watched 1.8 billion clips in May, accounting for 22% of videos viewed in the U.S. Meanwhile, researcher EMarketer said spending on Web video advertising may almost double to $775M this year from $410M in 2006. Google bought YouTube last November for $1.65B.

Every week the technology around web video and the advertising that supports it gets stronger - what do you think are the areas that most need to be developed? 

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