EXCLUSIVE: Coming To A Screen Near You: Veveo Beefs Up Mobile Video Search With Personalization, Recommendation & The Wisdom Of Crowds; Gears Up For Handset & Operator Deals
In-Brief: An in-depth analysis of Veveo’s vtap mobile video search offer and product roadmap.
Regular readers will recall that MSG has tracked the rise of exciting mobile vertical search engines from the start. Why? Because the mobile screen real estate is limited and so is users’ patience. Combine these factors and we have the perfect Petri dish conditions for vertical mobile search. In my view, there’s no need to “out google” Google (and Google is so good at what it does that any efforts in this direction waste resources.) Instead, carve out a niche, develop some clever algorithms and maintain a sharp focus on the customer, and you’ll have much of what it takes to play in this space.
Many companies are rising up to embrace this model, which is one reason I so look forward to cross-posting my pick of super-cool search engines and services at MSG and AltSearchEngines come June. BTW: If you are a vertical search engine active in mobile - or have ambitions in the mobile space soon, then I encourage you to contact my PA, Andrea Henninge (andrea@msearchgroove.com) for a briefing.
One vertical search engine that I have placed high up on my must-watch list from day one is Veveo. This recent article in BusinessWeek is a good primer but it only scratches the surface of why we’re sure to see much more of this mobile video search engine over the next months. I know from my briefing with Daren Gill, Veveo VP/GM responsible for the company’s flagship mobile search offer vtap, that the company is set to offer paid search results soon. It’s also going to announce a tie-up with a major European mobile operator “as early as this summer.” Search advertising is also on the roadmap.
Thanks again to Daren for walking me through a demo, being forthcoming with answers to ALL of my questions and helping me create a personalized mobile channel/feed that alerts me to all things related to Into the Wild (my current fav movie). I should add that creating the channel was a piece of cake - so high marks for usability in my book.
By way of background Veveo - with HQs in Andover, MA and Bangalore, India — was founded in 2004 by Murali Aravamudan and Ajit Rejasekharan. The company is VC-funded and, in May 2007, reported that Promod Haque, managing partner, Norwest Venture Partners, invested another $7.8 million in the company. (This post from Unwired India picks up on the investment and puts it into perspective into perspective.) That brings total investment to $28 million.
Speaking of assets, the company has a strong IP position with 33+ patents and patent filings. Indeed, Veveo’s vtap mobile search service is built from the ground up using the company’s own search and recommendation engine technology - so there is no need to partner with a search engine provider. If anything, we may see mobile search giants tie-up with Veveo to plug holes in their own video search capabilities. In fact, Veveo is actively exploring options to have its search box “syndicated to as many sites as are interested in using it.”
To date, Veveo has indexed a whopping 160 million videos - and counting…
Veveo purposely mines the lucrative long tail of the millions of freely available videos on the Internet to offer users more choice and create an association in users’ minds between Veveo and mobile video content. “There is no dominant player in mobile video. YouTube has a great brand in the Internet but this hasn’t carried over into mobile. People’s mindset is not that YouTube is mobile, they aren’t one in the same, so there is a huge opportunity for a company to claim that position.” Veveo aims to be that player.
As Daren puts it: “Today, most video offerings are coming through the mobile operators. These offers are limited - usually under 1,000 titles - and involve a licensing agreement between the operator and the content owner. They [these offers] can’t possibly meet users’ expectations [for the service] because the choice is limited.”
What does Veveo do & how does it do it?
NUTS & BOLTS: Veveo regularly crawls over 100,000 Internet sites to index video content - between 7,000 to 10,000 sites are crawled daily. This exposes fresh content, but it also lets Veveo detect shifts in how users are interacting with the content. By tapping this so-called social graph, Veveo not only picks up on all the usual metadata that describes the content; it gains a deeper understanding into just how users think of the content. (It’s smart to make room for human judgment and several mobile search companies, including Taptu, abphone and ChaCha, have tweaked their algorithms to accept some form of user input…)
What’s the benefit? Improved accuracy, relevancy and breadth of search results. As Daren put it: “We want our index to mirror how people think about the content. This has allowed us to build up to over 3 million global content topics. In a way, we follow their (users’) lead and let them categorize the content for us.”
Put another way, Veveo sees how users categorize content - and what content they say falls under each category. It then compares these keywords, tags and associations with the wealth of content available on the wider Web, looking for matches and similarities. “We can go beyond a static index to create content channels on the fly.” The result: Relevant content genres and groups on-demand and devoid of an over-reliance on popularity. Milestone research from Kartik Hosanagar, Wharton professor of operations and information management, proves an over-reliance on popularity is self-perpetuating and self-limiting because it tends to plug popular content - allowing it to become even more popular - and force less popular content into obscurity. Not a great approach if you are serious about cashing in on the legendary Long Tail of niche content…
RECOMMENDATION: Tapping the social graph also allows Veveo to create content associations and deliver relevant content recommendations. Want to find out what artists are related to, say Eddie Vedder? Follow the bread trail of users who checked out Eddie Vedder videos and see what else they liked enough to view, recommend, share etc… (It also helps that vtap has its own “share” feature within the search service that encourages users to pass on search results and provide vtap yet another view into how users think about the content.) The service also displays why a video was chosen (it is relevant to what category/interest) and the nearest and freshest related content. My search for Eddie Vedder, for example, bubbles up a LastFM-like list of similar artists and tracks. It’s a virtuous cycle that Daren says allows Veveo to improve its own offer. “We’re experimenting with recommendation and this will be a big focus in our service. We started by recommending recent and similar videos [from the same artists] but have found that users like recommendations that draw their attention to related content that they might have missed.”
PRESENTATION: Veveo’s vtap is a WAP site, but it is also a client that can be pre-loaded on a handset to let users search, browse, discover, keep and share Web videos from any source on the Internet, as well as create, personalize and update content feeds on the fly. To date Veveo has sealed deals with Motorola and Sony Ericsson. In the case of Motorola, it’s pre-installed on the MOTO Z10 and for SonyEricsson it’s in the Fun & Downloads store on Java Platform 8 (JP8) enabled handsets models: Z770i, K850i, W910i, K660i, W890i, Z750i and Sony Ericsson’s JP7 models: W880i, K810i, T650i, K530i, W580i, K770i, W660i. Daren tells me another deal with a major handset is in the works, so watch this space.
PERSONALIZATION: This is a big part of vtap, which lets users create and personalize their content channels/feeds. The technology also picks up on (implicit) clues users leave to fine-tune the personalization and deliver relevant content. “In video it has to be personal because users will literally turn off if they must tune in to a one-size-fits-all offer.” In the demo Daren and I played around with a beta feature of vtap search that can fine-tune its suggestions/results over time to match individual tastes. In my case, I like SNL’s Amy Poehler and I also like Amy Winehouse. These two Amys are the ones that will automatically complete my search query and top my list of results. (I know of other search services that incorporate similar features and functionality to make inputting queries easy and intuitive. Look for it to become a source of competitive advantage moving forward. After all even power search is powerless if users have to go through hoops to tell it what they want…)
USER EXPERIENCE: A word about content adaptation. Daren says there are no issues or hiccups because Veveo does its own transcoding. “Users either load the vtap client on their phones or it comes pre-installed. When a user selects a video to play, we connect to the sites, hit the web servers with the video and transcode it on the fly so that the media player can play it on the phone.” In a WAP scenario, the experience is similar.
MONETIZATION: For the moment the videos are chosen from what is freely available on the Web and Veveo is “faithful to the advertising that is a part of the video stream.” Put another way, Veveo “hits the content servers and gives the content owners impressions for their ads.” The service is free, but ads will be a part of the WAP experience “as early as next month.” Translated: Look for banners and text ads to show up with the search results. Veveo isn’t interested in pre-and post-roll ads because it doesn’t want to weigh down or slow down the user experience in any way. The end-game is about delivering relevant mobile advertising, but that will have to wait until the ad networks can handle this. “Everybody agrees the ads have to be targeted, but no one has the capabilities and customer data to do robust targeting at this time.” In the meantime, Veveo is in talks with mobile operators and expects to “announce a deal in Europe as early as late summer.” The operators “get” the mobile search value prop; the challenge is mobile advertising. “We are showing the ads that are in the original Web videos, but mobile operators want their ads. Recently, we’ve seen movement toward a more open system and greater interest [by operators] in trying to figure out a way to make it work for all parties.”
CONVERGENCE: Veveo isn’t talking about it much, but it can also provide its search technology to power IPTV services, laying the groundwork for search and content retrieval schemes that will literally allow users to access their vtap feeds and search results across devices and platforms. But it’s more than a vision; Veveo already supplies its know-how to a top North American IPTV provider for use in its IPTV offer, which has been implemented across some 2 million set-top boxes.
May 28th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
I just checked out the vtap service, first on their wap site and then using their “Instant Search” client. I find the company to be incredibly naive to think “there are no issues or hiccups” with content adaptation. Whatever issues have been discussed in the mobile community about Novarra with respect to content adaptation without content owner’s permission, multiply that by 100 and you get the issues faced by Veveo. They seem to just pluck videos out of web pages, reformat them and monetize the service, and think the content owners wont have any issues. The thinking seems to be “we know whats best for content owners”. Take the case of YouTube itself. YouTube has a wonderful application on the iPhone and for Java phones. How could one argue that videos taken from the YouTube PC web site and transcoded into a poorer quality video and served without any of the accompanying services of YouTube (such as login etc) is better than YouTube’s own mobile service which serves out high quality videos. How can it be said that this is not damaging the content host YouTube? To say that vtap gives “content owners impressions for their ads” is strange. Content owners sorround their video content on the PC web sites with ads which Veveo doesnt display at all. Plus content owners’ advertising audit systems may throw out the impressions coming out of Veveo’s transcoding servers as being bogus hits since they dont come from genuine end user devices, same as Google would filter out click fraud. Content owners may be able to get higher ad rates if they serve it themselves on mobiles (by User Agent detection etc). What is also annoying is how tiny companies such as this tend to belittle YouTube by saying things such as “YouTube’s brand hasnt carried over to mobile”. Well, YouTube has the biggest web video brand out there and I can bet that YouTube mobile has 100 times more subscribers than vtap. This is even more ridiculous considering the fact that most videos served by vtap are from YouTube. In searches that I conducted on vtap 80-90% of the video results are from YouTube.
May 28th, 2008 at 10:38 pm
[...] In-Brief: An in-depth analysis of Veveo’s vtap mobile video search offer and product roadmap. [...]
May 29th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
This is Daren from vtap responding to the points raised by John G. With respect to content adaptation, I did not mean to be blasé by saying “no issues or hiccups” — my statement was focused on the user experience and undertaking the transcoding effort to enable most web videos to play on a variety of handsets. However, the content rights are extremely important and there are always “issues” raised by technology innovation moving the content to new platforms and new experiences. We take these issues very seriously and we are actively in discussion with the large media companies and providers of web video content. With respect to YouTube, they have made APIs available for mobile services such as vtap (or any other service) to connect directly to their mobile content repository and access the URL which contains the RTSP stream of a specific video. The YouTube APIs do not require the services to land on a browser page before going to the video; the APIs provide the ability to launch the phones media player and connect directly to YouTube’s RTSP stream for the video. We are in the process of coding to these APIs, as it will significantly reduce our costs as no transcoding will be needed. We currently use this paradigm in our iPhone application where there is a native YouTube client on the phones.
With respect to the advertising issue related to the ads on a typical web page, mobile is an interesting paradigm due to the small form factor and the browser capabilities. The variety of advertising surrounding the video on a typical web page will not render in a standard mobile browser, nor will the inline video player (I am excited about the prospect of Flashlite 3 and whether it will change the playing field). The iPhone has made significant improvements with the capabilities of its safari browser, but it is still limited with respect to inline video players and certain forms of interactivity. The video itself, which is the content that the users are seeking and vtap has helped them to find, can be played on most mobile phones through the phone’s media player with the appropriate stream. There is quite a bit of advertising in web videos that will be faithfully rendered when streamed to a mobile (pre-rolls, post-rolls and interstitials). However, there are still many issues to be worked out such as dynamic ad insertion, targeting, etc. We are in discussions with many web video providers to explore various ways we can accommodate their advertising needs.
To be perfectly clear, we are not monetizing the service today. We are still working on the advertising model and gathering more information about the vtap audience.
May 31st, 2008 at 1:02 am
Daren G: It is interesting to hear you say you are in discussions with large media companies. By that you are also acknowledging you don’t have any content agreements now and yet you are licensing to Motorola, Sony Ericsson and an IPTV operator according to the article. There is the problem. To distribute content (which is what you are doing when you are reformatting content and resending) you need proper rights, either via explicit agreements or via Terms of Use of wherever you are taking the content from. Take the case of YouTube itself. YouTube Terms of Use specifically allows only “streaming”. They also define what is streaming very clearly. “Streaming” means a contemporaneous digital transmission of an audiovisual work via the Internet from the YouTube Service to a user’s device in such a manner that the data is intended for real-time viewing and not intended to be copied, stored, permanently downloaded, or redistributed by the user. Accessing User Videos for any purpose or in any manner other than Streaming is expressly prohibited.” (see http://youtube.com/t/terms). You are obviously violating the above by interjecting your servers in the stream, doing a stream grabbing, reformatting and retransmitting to the end user. You are allowing users to download the videos with your “Play from Memory” option, again prohibited by YouTube. YouTube also prohibits circumventing geo-based IP filtering which gets totally circumvented by you since your transcoding servers are most likely in the US and hide the real place of origin of the requesting end device. You mention YouTube mobile APIs. The privilege to use these APIs also come with terms of use that expect “Powered by YouTube” branding, no mixing of YouTube results with other sources etc, none of which you seem to be following in your iPhone application which you claim follows YouTube APIs. You cannot selectively use the services provided by content rights holders and ignore the responsibilities that come with it. So much for YouTube. What about the 99,999 other web sites? Thats why the central problem in the Novarra controversy and your system is the activity of intermediaries who act on other people’s content without their explicit or implicit permission for purposes never intended by the original content owner. “Technology innovation moving content to new platforms” etc is desperate handwaving which always get tossed by the courts. That’s why smart startups always abide by the law. YouTube for all its challenges was able to prevail only because it had a solid defense in the form of the Safe Harbor provisions in DMCA. In your case, I couldn’t see any coherent defense. Your system comes across as an interesting demo, but the problem comes when it is marketed as a finished product ready for prime time. By licensing what is essentially a demo, you are putting your licensees at a heavy risk. I also couldn’t understand why you say you are not monetizing the service today when you actually have licensing deals with two mobile companies and an IPTV operator.
May 31st, 2008 at 2:23 am
Another excellent mobile web video application that I have used is Avot MV. You can check out the comparsion of Avot MV with vtap @ http://avot.tv/corp/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=48
May 31st, 2008 at 2:29 am
Another excellent mobile web video application that I have used is Avot MV. You can check out the comparison of Avot MV with vtap @ http://avot.tv/corp/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=48
June 2nd, 2008 at 12:49 am
Veveo is a big advertiser in the network of WAP download sites that I am familiar with in AdMob’s publisher network. They have a decent mobile video service vtap and are aggressively advertising and promoting that FREE service. I wish them success.
June 2nd, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Veveo’s transcoding servers in the US defeat IP-based geo filtering of content hosts and put them in trouble with advertisers. For example, NeeTeeVee is reporting that Veoh is blocking access from a number of countries for commercial reasons. However, when a user uses Veveo’s vtap, what Veoh sees is only Veveo’s transcoding servers in the US even if the user is in one of the countries Veoh doesnt want to serve. Advertisers will pay for the high US rates when actually the ad impressions are served in places like Guyana. vtap comes across more as a demo than a well thought out business system.
June 2nd, 2008 at 9:23 pm
[...] about the possibility of producing a Mobile Blog in audio format at Mobscure. Peggy Anne Salz takes an in-depth look at Veveo, the Mobile Video Search tool, at MsearchGroove. And to finish things off Sachendra Yadav thinks [...]
June 2nd, 2008 at 9:37 pm
Very informative article. Myself and a colleague from one of the “AltSearchEngines top 100″ were intrigued by Veveo spokesman’s claim of having built up 3 million global content topics. By using the vtap web site we also found where those topics are coming from. If you go to http://vtap.com and search with any keyword, it gives a list of “Related Topics”. If you click on any of those, it gives videos on that topic and in addition gives information about that topic from Wikipedia, IMDB or last.fm. Now, Wikipedia has close to 2.4 million topics, the other two databases probably have another 600 thousand more unique topics, all put together 3 million topics! So, it appears Veveo’s 3 million content topics are coming from Wikipedia, IMDB or last.fm. These open source projects are an awesome source of information and nothing wrong in leveraging them, but it would have been better if Veveo had acknowledged the sources instead of appearing to claim to have built the content topics themselves.
June 21st, 2008 at 3:36 pm
Character by character search engine Boopsie is in my opinion the best such search engine in that category for mobiles. Check it out at http://boopsie.com
Their “smart prefix search” is really cool. To search for “Jacqueline Kennedy” all you need to type is “ja ken”, ie, only the first few characters from the search words. Boopsie has indexed a number of information sources such as Amazon, CitySearch, Wikipedia and many others.
July 29th, 2008 at 9:27 am
[...] then there is the rise of mobile search verticals, such as Veveo, whose vtap mobile search service (profiled here) is built from the ground up to let users browse and snack mobile video content from the Web. Veveo [...]
August 4th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
[...] then there is the rise of mobile search verticals, such as Veveo, whose vtap mobile search service (profiled here) is built from the ground up to let users browse and snack mobile video content from the Web. Veveo [...]