Truth in Tagging Works: Hot OVGuide.com Hits 16 Million Uniqu...

Wednesday, May 06, 2009

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