One of my colleagues recently shared with me a news article from the WSJ that puts into perspective how the internet, once again, creates a level-playing field for advertisers that want to reach the much desired Super Bowl viewer demographic without the need to take a second mortgage on your home to pay for the ad.

Which Super Bowl Ad do you think is the funniest?
Online web destinations like AOL, iFilm, USAtoday.com and Yahoo have taken Super Bowl commercials and created mini-websites that let online users view the Super Bowl ads, and vote for the one they think is the funniest or most memorable. If you stop to think for a moment, the likelihood that a person who watched the Super Bowl and missed an ad either because the hamburgers on the grill were catching on fire, or because the Pizza delivery guy arrived just at the moment the ad was about to be played, is actually pretty high. Thanks to the Web, these individuals will have a second chance to view the Super Bowl ads, and in the process, generate millions of online ad impressions that are ready to be filled with ads. As an advertiser who wants to reach the Super Bowl audience, but does not have the cash to dish out $2.6 million dollars for a 30 second spot (that’s what CBS is charging on Super Bowl XLI,) you can tap into the aftermarket. This is the golden opportunity you’ve been waiting for!

On the Web, the Super Bowls ads undergo a transformation, a virtual one at least, in that they go from being a 30 second spot and transform into online content that can be viewed and shared with millions of people online. So to think that you’ll be advertising on an advertisement is the wrong way to look at it. It is an opportunity that only comes once a year, and the best time to get into it is right after the big game has taken place, and a new team has been crowned as the champ of America’s newest and greatest past-time.

Those in the Facebook generation are well accustomed to receiving invitations to the site’s virtual “groups.” These groups unite users with common interests or causes ranging from the highly random–such as the “Abolish Green Apple” anti-green apple flavored Jolly Rancher group–to groups meant to bring people together based on common beliefs, geographic pride, or the love of a musician or television show.

Facebook groups provide a virtual soap box for any user who wants to create one, join one, comment on one or even create a counter-group to oppose a pre-existing one.

As the 2008 Presidential Race begins, many more politically themed groups are cropping up on Facebook. One of particular interest due to the large number of members is the Barack Obama (One Million Strong for Barack) group. With a goal of amassing one million members by February 5th, the group’s creator also encourages people to watch, rate, and spread Barack Obama’s video on YouTube.

There were over 162,000 members at the time of this post, creating a lively discussion board where users argue, debate and attempt to educate one another on political issues related to the 2008 Presidential Race. Some high school aged members pointed out in their discussion posts that though they will be too young to vote in the 2008 elections, they want to make their voices heard by joining online groups, debating, and spreading the word about Obama. Internet-savvy youth promoting viral video and politics through social networking websites: this is certainly an intriguing combination to watch!

PodZInger’s own Jeff Baer, attended and was a presenter at this event held February 24th. Jeff is manager of co-brand and advertising solutions for PodZinger and an MIT alum.

This from Jeff:

“Last nights’ event, ‘Video Podcasting, Is it For You?’, at MIT was a lot fun…great group of folks in that are members of the “Software and Advanced Computing” group of the MIT Enterprise forum of Cambridge.

Steve Garfield (Rocketboom and http://stevegarfield.com), Peter Marx (audio and video production consultant to legal and education industries), and yours truly each presented our businesses with respect to the topic of the night “Video Podcasting: Is it for you?”

Steve talked about blogging as a pre-cursor to VLog’s, and demonstrated just how easy it is to do this live for the group. Using his digital camera, Mac, and a network connection, he added a video clip of the event to his Vlog.

Some very good questions were raised with lively discussions, including:

What is the difference between YouTube and Video Podcasting

Digital rights…how can I protect content that I create to share?

Does anyone offer “video search” based on image recognition?

Who pays for the hosting (in the case of blip.tv, not the content creator!)

And an interesting one.. Isn’t the name “PodZinger” denote podcasting, when in reality you work with all multimedia?

Discussion revolved around new information technology as liberating for the human race e.g. printing press, radio, tv, internet, etc. The rapid rate of current technological change ultimately enables the masses to create and consume media. That in turn drives more “freely available” information to the consumer that is in fact paid for through advertising. Much of the debate came from the type of advertising - pre-roll, sponsorship, prodcut placement, combinations of these, etc. and what will be the most effective for the consumer and the advertiser. One thing I think we can agree on is that these are early days for online video and ways to monetize it. Hang on! It’s going to be one heck of a ride!”

The January 22 Business Week article, “John Edwards, the e-Candidate” highlights two relatively new aspects of political campaigning as candidates gear up for the 2008 Presidential election. Edwards announced his plans to run in the 2008 Presidential race via e-mail and video broadcast on YouTube, at once thrusting viral video into the political limelight and establishing himself as “the e-Candidate.” Broadly, we can compare Edwards to other presidential hopefuls and note the different levels to which the candidates rely on the Internet in their campaigns. Secondly, and more specifically, Edwards’ announcement seems to have taken Peter Csathy’s advice about video campaigning, utilizing viral video to tell the world he would make a bid for the Presidency.

Edwards’ Internet-savvy campaign style raises a number of questions. Will other politicians follow suit? What financial impact could broader Internet campaigning and the use viral video have on Presidential campaigns? Could creating such a prominent web-presence backfire for candidates as negative video clips slip out along-side the positive?

In any case, this should prove an interesting phenomenon to watch as candidates search for greater and broader means to edge into the political spotlight.

A few weeks ago I announced the ability to search YouTube material on PodZinger. Now I’m very happy to announce the creation of a new Poker channel within our Youtube content, joining the existing sports, anime, and entertainment channels. Now all of you poker fans out there can search all relevant poker material within our YouTube content.

Many of you may be wondering why we are grouping content into channels when tags already exist? The answer is simple really. Using our speech recognition and natural language technologies , PodZinger can actually take into account what was said and its context when determining a category to which it belongs. This often proves to be more specific and reliable than simply relying on a few creator submitted tags for classification (whom may be tempted to add erroneous tags to show up in more results). Full text search opens up a world of content like never before, and now we can offer more specific search results within channels that appeal to certain enthusiasts.

Stay tuned for more channels to come!

What did people Zing most in 2006? The list below shows PodZinger’s top queries this past year:

Top Search Terms of 2006

1) George Bush
2) Music Videos
3) Google
4) Red Sox
5) Leo Laporte
6) Iraq
7) Paris Hilton
8) iPod
9) Fantasy Football
10) American Idol

While the politically-minded searched for video of George Bush’s speeches and news coverage of the Iraq war, sports fans looked for news of the much talked about Daisuke Matsuzaka deal. In 2006 people used PodZinger to search a broad array of topics. So, whether you are an American Idol devotee or an Apple fan looking for video clips of Steve Job’s newest products, PodZinger proves a highly valuable search tool. Try searching these top terms on www.podzinger.com to see what others are so eager to watch and listen to. Now you can also use the new YouTube search box with channels to further narrow your query. See the entire list here.

A lot of exciting news has come out of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this week in Vegas, including news on the iphone, ehome, and the 102 inch plasma TV. However, equally interesting are the advancements we’re seeing as big media companies partner with technology partners in an attempt to deliver their content to an audience that is becoming as or more comfortable in front of their computer as they are in front of their tv.

One company making good headway in this regard is CBS. In his keynote address at CES, CBS President Les Moonves highlighted such technology partners as YouTube and Sling Media. YouTube currently hosts some CBS content and is using the relationship to attract more of the highly coveted 18-34yo market. Sling Media is developing technology that will allow CBS online visitors to share snippets of video with other users instead of sending an entire file. And not to toot our horn, but PodZinger was also mentioned alongside these companies.

To wrap up his address, Moonves had this to say about the merging of big media and technology companies,

“Anything is possible,” Moonves said. “Audiences know that, content people know that, and innovators in the digital space know that. In the weeks and months to come, we’ll have a lot more news on how we’ll be working with the interactive community in ways both big and small,”

Pretty exciting stuff!

As we begin 2007 we can at once look back on the progression of PodZinger thus far and project forwards, speculating as to where that progression will take PodZinger in the New Year. In the spirit of looking back, I want to take a moment to highlight PodZinger’s Top 10 Most Played Audio/Video Podcasts of 2006:

1) WMMR’s Preston and Steve

2) Radio Leo

3) KitKast

4) ABC World News

5) Keith and The Girl

6) X-Play

7) CNN The Gryst

8) Rumor Girls

9) The Geoff Show: Virgin Radio

10) ESApod

As the most played podcasts, these are definitely worth checking out. They also beg the question, what will PodZinger’s Top 10 list look like in the coming year? How will new genres of audio and video content impact what users play on PodZinger and our partner’s websites?
And PodZinger certainly has an exciting new year ahead as partnerships new and old continue to broaden the amount of searchable audio and video content online. As Joe touched on in his last post, the implementation of the YouTube search box on www.podzinger.com brings the PodZinger technology together with the much talked-about user generated content of www.youtube.com. Many intriguing possibilities surface for consumers, content creators and advertisers as PodZinger’s technology brings Internet users greater specificity in their search of online audio and video.

Yesterday, we softly launched our YouTube search feature by announcing it on our blog. Marshall Kirkpatrick picked it up and blogged about it on SplashCast and the story is one of digg’s top stories for today. At this moment when I am writing the post, there have been 616 people who have “dugg” the story!!

We are still trying out this new feature and are very surprised to get such an overwhelming response to this. (And happy that someone is reading our blog! Marshall: Thanks!!! If you would like to chat on this some more, we are happy to have a conversation.)

Many people have contributed to the comments section of digg with questions on the technology we are using and how we are indexing the YouTube videos. We will review those comments on digg and provide answers where we can over the next few days. Please feel free to post any other questions here or send us an email at feedback@podzinger.com and we will be happy to answer them.

PodZinger already makes content from creators like CNN, The New York Times, and CBS Radio searchable; however in 2007 you can expect to see a great deal more. For example, we recently worked with the Associated Press to make all of their podcast material searchable on PodZinger! In other exciting news, we have leveraged the huge amount of user generated content on YouTube by making it searchable on PodZinger right from our home page .

YouTube has garnered a huge amount of press and interest over the past year. Its reputation as a grass roots online forum for sharing is cemented by it being the driving force behind Time Magazine’s choice to name the online generated content user/owner as their “Person of The Year”. Now with this new PodZinger feature, you can access and search YouTube material allowing for more specific search of their user generated content. Now besides simply searching on the metadata of the video files, you can search for terms that are actually mentioned inside the audio, allowing for a greater likelihood you will find relevant material. We’re also automatically organizing the videos into channels based on the actual content of the video. Today you can narrow your search within entertainment, sports, and anime. And we’ll continue to add more.

So give it a try and let us know what you think!