British video search company Blinkx saw its stock spike briefly this morning, following an announcement that it will power AOL’s video search. AOL is one of the largest video destinations on the Web, with about 450 million video views per month according to comScore.
Blinkx will also incorporate AOL’s premium videos in its own search engine. (Presumably, that will include TCTV videos, since we are owned by AOL). Blinkx itself attracts 55 million U.S. video searchers a month. AOL’s video properties are watched by about 40 million unique viewers (comScore), so the deal could significantly expand blinkx’s reach.
But doesn’t AOL already have its own video search technology? Back in 2006 it acquired a video search engine called Truveo. Up until recently, Truveo was powering all of AOL’s video search. But it’s been on life support for months, and now with this deal the plug is being pulled on Truveo. (Update: To be clear, it is the Truveo video search platform that is being retired. The engineering team is being redeployed to work on content creation and distribution tools. Also, the blinkx deal is only for video search on AOL.com).
Failed acquisitions aside, AOL wants its videos to reach the broadest audience. An internal-only video search engine doesn’t do much to reach new audiences. Of course, most people search for videos on Google, not blinkx. And somehow YouTube always seems to turn up as the top video results on Google. If your videos aren’t on YouTube, they are sort of invisible. But if they are on YouTube, you have to cut them in on the ad revenues. So media companies are trying to push video viewers to their own sites through deals like the one AOL just did with blinkx.
blinkx is an Internet Media platform that connects online video viewers with content publishers and distributors, utilizing advertising to monetize those interactions. blinkx has an index of over 35 million hours of video and 800 media partnerships; 111 patents preserve the site’s proprietary search engine technology, which is known as CORE. Founded in 2004, blinkx went public on the London Stock Exchange (AIM) in May, 2007. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, CA and London, England. blinkx powers video search...
Truveo is a video search engine acquired by AOL in January 2006. Re-launched in August of the same year, it claims to have an edge over competitors in the field of online video websites. Founded by PhDs from MIT, Truveo tackles the very difficult problem of creating metadata from video; unlike text-based content, it is very difficult to determine context of video and audio content without a human to actually view it. Truveo says it has a sharper focus on professional...
AOL is a global advertising-supported Web company, with display advertising network in the U.S., a substantial worldwide audience, and a suite of popular Web brands and products. The company’s strategy focuses on increasing the scale and sophistication of its advertising platform and growing the size and engagement of its global online audience through leading products and programming. History of Aol: AOL was founded in the early 1980’s as Control Video Corp, with an online service, Gameline, for the Atari 2600 console. ...
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