Tagging a video properly is an art form and it’s also one
that can be abused by creators to generate search hits.
That’s why online video
search site OVGuide.com doesn’t put too much weight on the tags in videos, the
site’s VP of Sales and Marketing Chad Cooper told Beet.TV in an interview at
the National Association of Broadcaster’s Convention in Las Vegas last month.
Video creators can game the system by tagging their videos
with words and topics that have nothing to do with the content, he explained.
The OVGuide.com search engine places more weight on the human editorial team at
the company that reviews the videos and tags them on its site. “It doesn’t help
any user experience when they click on something expecting one thing and then
they get something totally different,” he told Beet.TV.
The strategy seems to be working because OVGuide.com turned
a profit earlier this year, has been consistently winning new advertisers for
its site that drew more than 16 million unique visitors, 140 million page views
and 36 million searches according to the company’s internal data from March.
OVGuide is also in an enviable position when it comes to its
business model. Because OVGuide does not carry videos (just pointing to them
instead), the site keeps 100% of its ad revenue. Most online video sites that
carry videos split ad dollars with the programmer, which reduces the overall
cut for the site itself.
Another reason to keep an eye on OVGuide.com is it’s been
mining its search data to produce interesting reports, including one comparing
the popularity of TV programs watched on the Web versus those watched on TV with “Lost” “Heroes” and “Gossip Girl” leading online, compared to “American
Idol,” “Dancing with the Stars” and “CSI” leading on-air.
Daisy Whitney, Senior Producer
