SundaySky in the News

Back in March this year Microsoft launched its first ever “direct” startup accelerator, based out of Tel Aviv, Israel. That meant it would, for the first time, be an accelerator owner/operator. Dubbed the Windows Azure Accelerator (WAA) it looked, at least on first inspection, to be designed to push its Azure cloud computing platform. Perhaps this was some paper-thin marketing initiative? “Look everyone, startups are choosing to use Azure!” seemed to be the initial message.

Today's consumers respond to engaging online experiences -- the more personal, the better -- at every stage of their relationship with an online brand. As a result, today's marketing leaders differentiate themselves by offering compelling online experiences that balance information and entertainment, consumer empowerment and satisfaction.

Online video is the fastest growing advertising medium with more than 8.3 billion video ads in March, according to comScore’s latest online video rankings. As inventory grows and online video advertising strategies mature, this trend should not only continue, but accelerate.

Smart videos help AT&T to eliminate customers’ confusion with complex bills—reducing calls to the contact center as a result.

With all that e-retailers do to drive brand awareness and traffic to their web stores, nearly 98 out of every 100 consumers who visit an e-retail site leave without making a purchase. That represents a lot of unmade sales, and plenty of wasted marketing spending.

Seeking to improve those results, e-retailers are honing their skills at reaching out to consumers who visit but leave without buying. Some are using newer online advertising systems to show ads, sometimes with videos, on other web sites as visitors to their sites move around the web. Others put site visitors' data to work in other ways, in some cases months later, using that information to present a relevant offer to a shopper.

Viewers continue spending the most time with online video in the actual content - clips, movies and streaming programs - that with video advertising. However, about 15% of the time spent with video is now in the form of ad content. Too much advertising can lead to viewer fatigue, but as one expert notes, the key to video - as with other ad formats - is relevance.

Video is growing by leaps and bounds - 38 billion clips in March, according to ComScore and other metrics firms find consumers are watching for longer stretches of time.

Today’s digitally-savvy consumers are empowered to product search via a plethora of devices, applications and word-of-mouth technologies. With the emergence of new tools such as the iPad, exploring product information, as well as other customers’ opinions and experiences, has become native to most consumers.

When you think of online video, chances are you’re probably still stuck in the land of web 2.0. Videos, no matter how entertaining, are still static. And though we dream that every video we post has the power to go “viral,” the truth is that, within minutes after posting, excitement slowly wanes, along with pageviews. However, SundaySky is putting the engagement back into online videos — literally

AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc., the two biggest U.S. telephone companies, are taking a page from Silicon Valley’s handbook as they try to ward off new wireless competitors. The two companies are cozying up to startups in California, Israel, Europe and India, seeking to cultivate mobile hardware and software for their networks. AT&T met with 508 startups in “speed-dating” sessions last year to pick new suppliers, and Verizon has stepped up investments in promising new companies by about 50 percent over the past two years.

Here's a great example of how online video advertising is opening up a new world of opportunities for savvy marketers: office supply giant Office Depot is dynamically creating customized video ads that are retargeted to visitors of OfficeDepot.com for specific products they browsed or purchased. Office Depot is leveraging SundaySky's "SmartVideo" and other technologies in order to re-engage visitors and drive new purchasing. Office Depot's Nicole Fraley explains how this works in the video interview embedded below, and SundaySky's president and CRO Jim Dicso recently provided me with some additional details.

Chris Rick's interview with SundaySky's president and chief revenue officer Jim Dicso about SmartVideo.

1to1 Media's Tom Hoffman speaks with SundaySky President and Chief Revenue Officer Jim Dicso about ways that companies can use online video to engage customers and form tighter relationships.

In 2012, marketers will turn to online personalized video to stand out among their competitors and provide each consumer with a unique, interactive online shopping experience. As marketers explore the opportunities with video personalization, it’s important to understand the basics.

Online video is now a virtual requirement and one of the best practices for businesses to gain an advantage competitively. Video boosts search engine results, increases stickiness, and improves conversion rates. Smart online video lets businesses reach consumers in real time with what they need to know in the most engaging, informative, and entertaining way possible...

Customers are bombarded with irrelevant messaging online. Here are 5 ways to use online video to increase customer engagement...

US consumers are spending, on average, 19 hours each month watching clips, trailers and full episodes of their favorite programming, and yet video ads account for less than 15% of the total time spend within the video space. That is an indicator that there is still room for video advertising to grow.

When it comes to technological innovation, AT&T these days is often thought of as a laggard at best, or an obstacle at worst.

But that wasn't always the case. In the heyday of its Bell Labs during the mid-20th century, AT&T was a hotbed for new technologies. Bell Labs scientists invented the laser, the transistor and the Unix operating system...

With millions of video clips served each month, it is obvious that consumers are highly engaged with this type of content. Offering personalized video experiences is a relatively new concept in the video space but one which could push even higher engagement...

Online marketing efforts have long incorporated a consumer’s previous site visits and other data to display personalized messages. Now SundaySky Ltd. wants to personalize the videos a consumer sees when he visits a web site...

A partnership announced yesterday between SundaySky and StudioNow is another great example of how video is being used to innovate traditional ways of doing business. For those not familiar with either company, SundaySky's technology platform, which I last wrote about here, creates real-time, personalized videos at scale using templates and data feeds, and StudioNow (which is part of AOL's Advertising.com division) offers distributed video production and syndication services...

AOL's StudioNow, the unit that makes large numbers of informational videos for businesses, will expand its operations in an alliance with SundaySky.

SundaySky has created a software solution which allows companies to create videos somewhat automatically, using templates which integrate various media elements into a short video.

We reported on the company earlier the year and interviewed the founder and CTO Yaniv Axen. He told us then that the company creates 1.4 million new video clips a month. We have republished our interview today...

Today StudioNow announced a new partnership with SundaySky that will offer our clients yet another innovative way to streamline their video production and distribution.
SundaySky provides clients with a scalable, personalized and effective way of using video to communicate with prospects and customers by taking existing website content and automatically turning it into dynamic video in real time. The SaaS-based platform makes it easy for any brand to plan, generate and seamlessly integrate video into their website so they have consistently refreshed content to attract and engage consumers and ultimately drive their business...

The building that houses AT&T Inc's (NYSE:T) new Foundry Collaboration Center in Silicon Valley was once the site for the largest French Laundry facility in the area. The French Laundry, as you can imagine, provided laundry services to the community. It was also a godsend to a community ravaged by the depression as it provided much needed jobs to many unskilled people.

But the French Laundry was also used as a code for preventing the Chinese and Japanese people of that region from ever obtaining employment at the facility. By the time the French Laundry closed in the late eighties it became a symbol of discrimination...

With nearly all e-bookers using a different agent every time, providing excellent customer experience can be the key differentiator for travel e-tailers. In particular, video can be a valuable tool for these websites.

The impact that rich media can have on travel sites was accepted a long time ago. Online travel retailers were among the first to take advantage of this dynamic tool, by adding images, 360-degrees tours and live-footage videos of hotels and destinations to enhance their customers’ experience and increase sales. However, since the initial adoption newer technologies have been introduced and yet travel websites have largely not kept up with these developments...

The State of Video in E-Commerce Report is a quarterly research report compiled by SundaySky, which focuses on the state of online video in e-commerce websites.

The latest report for Q1, 2011, highlights statistics and emerging trends in the implementation and usage of online videos in e-commerce by reviewing video presence in top retailers websites, video indexing by search engines, SEO impact of using online retail videos and revenue potential of an effective online video strategy...

Video is among the fastest growing media sectors in digital, and for good reason. Sight, sound, and motion all rolled into one.

The downsides of video, of course, have always been the amount of time and money it costs to produce a high quality execution. While the development process has been greatly democratized over the past several years, most brands still view video as a “major production” (pun intended.) Additionally, videos have always been a lot harder to update than, say, text. And when you do those updates, you go back to the time and money challenges...

A comprehensive study of the state of video in e-commerce during the first quarter of 2011 shows several key takeaways for brands looking to capitalize on internet traffic. While there are several specific lessons marketers can take from the study's results, the overall message for e-business is this: Video is an increasingly important asset in attracting and retaining customers online.

In the first three months of the year, 32 percent of retailers scaled to more than 1,000 videos on their websites, compared to only 22 percent in the previous quarter. During the first part of the year, the threshold for making the top-10 list of video-using retailers soared from 2,500 to 3,600 videos per site. Why are so many e-tailers adding digital assets to their online properties? We found several compelling reasons...

For large retailers, last year was a year of experimentation with online video. The industry now moves into the future with many valuable lessons learned. There's a new focus on ROI, personalization, optimizing video for the user's specific platform, reaching mobile devices and turning online video ads into an effective tool for brand-lifting.

2010 saw many large retailers experiment with online video. According to eMarketer, nearly three quarters of all U.S. retailers featured video on their sites in Q4 of 2010, which is up 55 percent from a year earlier...

Stats abound; video's growth in e-commerce is undeniable. According to eMarketer's "Video for Ecommerce" report, 73% of US retailers featured video on product pages during Q4 2010, up from 55% during the same quarter in 2009. Last month, SundaySky shared in its Q1 2011 "State of Video in E-Commerce" report that the number of retailers who surpassed 1,000 videos on their websites increased by 10% from Q4 2010 to Q1 2011. Today, video commerce provider Liveclicker reported a 37% year-over-year growth in video views for retail sites running video for at least a year.

Yet despite the traction, major hurdles face the growth of video in this unfolding segment. Among them: lack of leadership or willingness to find and exploit a defining video commerce format...

The impact that rich media can have on websites was accepted a long time ago. Online businesses, while keen to take advantage of this dynamic tool to enhance their customers' experience and increase sales, have, for the most part,not kept up with developments and newer, cost-effective technologies.

We look at seven key reasons why online businesses should embrace scalable, automatic video technology to gain a competitive advantage...

Many of today’s e-businesses find that gaining market share has more to do with winning customers from competitors than with expanding the size of the industry.

With so many spaces saturated, e-tailers need to use every weapon in their arsenals to fend off competing businesses...

Sunday Sky, an e-commerce video solutions provider recently released a report called "The State Of Video In E-Commerce - Q1 2011", which attempts to summarize and provide an update for the latest trends in online retailers' use of video. The company found that e-retailers are adopting video in huge numbers, with Zappos serving as a featured "case study" for the report.

You can view our review of previous versions of the SundaySky report here...

It's an entirely new way to get your phone bill: a video that details and explains all your charges for the bill; and its developers claim it will reduce the number of queries to telco call centres from confused customers.

Each video bill is generated in real-time as the customer watches it by 'populating' a video template with real customer data from the telco's billing system...

This year's Internet Retailer Conference (IRCE) did not disappoint. Over 7,000 retailers, marketplaces and vendors gathered in San Diego just over a week ago. Attendance was up 14% from last year's Chicago show, and the exhibit hall was packed with over 500 companies enticing attendees with their ecommerce offerings.

Social commerce was everywhere, including part of the keynote address given by eBay's Christopher Payne, who said eBay was bringing social conversation back to shopping as he gave a sneak peek at a new Facebook feature. Social commerce also had a big presence among the vendors in the exhibit hall, and booths advertised social shopping features or promised to help retailers set up stores on Facebook...

Since we last reported on the state of video in e-Commerce, there have been quite a few developments that have influenced video use in the enterprise. In its quarterly report, SundaySky focused on the state of video in e-commerce websites in Q1 2011 and revealed that more retailers are embracing video as more customers are subscribing to online retailers’ YouTube channels...

Our first-ever contest, the VIP contest, began months ago, and today we’re pleased to announce the winners.
“VIP” stands for “video in practice,” and the contest was designed to reward not only exceptional online videos created by businesses or organizations, but also the effective use of those videos on websites.

The readers of OnlineVideo.net voted in phase one and helped us come up with our finalists. Then, in phase two our judges (Mark Douglas of Key of Awesome; Troy Dreier of OnlineVideo.net; Jan Ozer, author or Video Compression for Flash, Apple Devices and HTML5; and Mark Robertson of ReelSEO.com) took over and chose the winners. The judges rated each video and site on five categories (storytelling and messaging, technical quality, use of social media, search optimization, and overall site integration). Their scores were then totaled...

AT&T Foundry in Ra’anana is the second permanent location in its growing developer collaboration network

Dallas, Texas - AT&T* today opened its latest AT&T Foundry innovation center in Ra’anana, Israel, together with Amdocs (NYSE: DOX). The facility is a collaborative environment where AT&T and technology providers work with start-ups and developers to get the latest innovations and services into the hands of AT&T customers more quickly than ever before...

Enhances Shopping Experience with Addition of Automatically Generated Videos to Website

London, 19th May 2011 - SundaySky, a leading provider of automated video production, today announced that T-Mobile Austria has adopted its technology to enhance online customer experience and increase web-based sales. Thanks to SundaySky, the leading communications company can now automatically and quickly generate large numbers of studio-quality videos without human intervention and at no extra cost beyond set up...

Video is one of the fastest-growing content types on the Internet. More than 172 million individual Americans watched an average of 14.9 hours of web video in April, the most recent month for which publicly available statistics have been published.

The data comes from Internet tracking firm comScore, which also said that Americans collectively engaged in 5.1 billion "viewing sessions" in April...

The biggest takeaway from the State of Video in E-Commerce that we published several months ago, citing conclusions from SundaySky’s Q4 2010 report, was that the large majority of online merchants have thus far underutilized or altogether neglected this simple yet potentially very valuable medium.

The latest release from SundaySky includes new data from the first quarter of 2011, and while relatively little has changed in terms of retailers’ widespread adoption, it appears that consumers’ appetite for e-commerce video continues to grow...

The truth about doing business online today is that for many companies, increasing market share requires winning customers from competitors. Using online video to build business is one tactic that has been rapidly gaining popularity in the past few years. It delivers benefits that include personalization, competitive advantage and cost-effectiveness.

Below are seven ways video outperforms static web content in the ruthless competition for market share...

Video is growing in popularity as a means for retailers to engage consumers and reignite the shopping experience. Through YouTube, more companies are using video to increase brand awareness, site click-through rates and most importantly, revenue.

Zappos has been named a leader in the use of this new marketing technique by SundaySky, a provider of automated product video production for retailers, in its State of Video In e-Commerce Quarterly Research Report Q1 2011. Zappos is not a SundaySky customer...

SundaySky, a provider of dynamically generated videos for e-businesses, today announced that the use of mass-scaled videos among retailers is on the rise and that consumers continue to embrace e-commerce videos in increasing numbers. The findings are among many others in SundaySky’s first-quarter industry research report, “The State of Video In E-Commerce,” which highlights emerging trends in the use of online video.

Today’s release represents the fourth report from SundaySky, which has researched and tracked the implementation and use of online videos among top U.S. retailers since 2010. “The State of Video In E-Commerce” offers the industry the most comprehensive look at the ways in which consumers use video and how retailers can learn from that to increase conversions...

When you're trying to attract new customers, you can't count on them finding you. You have to go where they're going online, says Jamie Grove, ThinkGeek's marketing chief, whose official title is director of evil schemes and nefarious plans.

That's why the online gadget retailer posts its annual April Fools' Day joke video on YouTube, the fourth most-trafficked web site in the United States, according to web tracking firm Alexa, in addition to on its own site...

Each month the number of video views and video viewers seems to increase. Along with consumer traffic is more video advertising and sponsorships, but one recent report indicates the real campaign ROI might be in deploying actual video content not just advertisements.

According to the SundaySky Q1 State of Video in Ecommerce report implementing an online video SEO strategy could spell success for online brands...

SundaySky, which specializes in automated video production at scale for retailers, suggests in its latest research that many e-commerce outfits are ignoring a key SEO tactic. By optimizing branded videos on their websites, consumers can be sent directly from search results to product pages.

Testing 34,000 keywords garnered from Shopping.com’s top searches within 17 categories, 18% featured video results. In particular, about half of the keywords for video games generated video results...

For retail sites with thousands or tens of thousands of products, creating online videos to promote those offerings can be a challenge. Often sites will “mass-scale” videos, hiring a service to automate the process. One such site, SundaySky, has released a quarterly research report finding that it’s a good time to be in the mass-scale video business.

The number of e-tailers who mass-scaled their videos increased by nearly 50 percent in the first quarter of 2011, says the report. It also notes that 68 percent of online vendors haven’t yet discovered mass-scaling...

This is a guest blog post written by James Dicso, President and Chief Revenue Officer at SundaySky. In this entry, Dicso talks about why travel websites should embrace video.

The impact that rich media can have on travel websites was accepted a long time ago. Online travel retailers were among the first to take advantage of this dynamic tool, by adding images, 360-degrees tours and live-footage videos of hotels and destinations to enhance their customers' experience and increase sales. However, since the initial adoption newer technologies have been introduced and yet travel websites have largely not kept up with these developments. We look at five key reasons why these businesses should embrace video to 'upgrade' their websites...

The use of mobile devices is rising, just as the demand for video is moving upward. The two are about to converge, as businesses work to capture customer attention whenever and wherever possible. Video's multi-platform possibilities will let enterprises reach visitors on any screen they use, driving the importance of video-enabled catalogs to consumers who, for example, might use their mobile devices to aid comparison shopping as they browse in brick-and-mortar shops.

Online video has come a long way in a short period of time. In the last year alone, the use of video on websites has moved from an interesting anomaly to a critical feature that boosts search engine result standings, increases stickiness and improves conversion rates...

Ecommerce video has been a fast-growing feature on online retail sites over the past year. Retailers are quickly finding that adding product video to their sites increases conversions, but ecommerce video is still maturing as they continue to discover best practices.

“Merchants that have invested in video do not seem to be turning back,” said Paul Verna, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, “Video in Ecommerce: Success Strategies Come into Focus.” “Customers demand it and stores are moving to meet the challenge.”...

The BizSpark startup of the day is SundaySky, based in Israel/US. Below you will find an interview with Yaniv Axen, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of SundaySky. All the best to them and congratulations for being the startup of the day!...

The past year offered some solid showings in terms of online video. While the percentage of companies that delivered blockbuster online video performance was modest, the number that began production on their video initiatives was substantial. These e-businesses – who spent 2010 learning, evaluating and adopting online video – are poised to release effective multimedia catalogues that will attract online visitors, boost conversions and directly impact their bottom lines in 2011.

Among the many trends we expect to see in video this year are...

Online video solutions provider SundaySky recently released a telling report about how the Web’s biggest retailers utilize the power of video. Or, more to the point, how they are failing to do so.

According to SundaySky’s The State of Video in E-Commerce, released last month and citing data from the fourth quarter of 2010, nearly half of the world’s top 50 online merchants have no significant video presence. While many of them may have begun to add video on their websites – which the study concludes was the focus for many retailers in 2010 – few of them are taking proper advantage of the opportunities the medium affords them, which should be a primary focus of 2011...

As many as 40% of the top retail web sites have no significant video presence, according to a Q4 report released by SundaySky titled State of Video In E-Commerce. Retailers could be missing an opportunity with e-commerce video, considering that the number of views on YouTube for the top 50 online retailers more than doubled in the last six months of 2010 to 369 million total views, SundaySky reported.

Amazon.com is the largest user of online video, within Internet Retailer’s list of top 500 online retailers, with more than 185,000 videos available on its site. Overstock.com, Home Shopping Network (HSN.com), QVC.com and Buy.com round out the top 5 retailers for number of available videos. But more traditional companies also are using video. Target, Walmart, Nike, Systemax and Cabela’s are retail leaders taking advantage of video as a marketing tool...

Adding online video to ecommerce sites is a way for retailers to provide a better look at products, an explanation of how they work and other information that helps online shoppers make a better purchase decision. Research shows video increases conversion on retail sites, and even decreases the number of items returned. And it’s one of the fastest-growing content types for online merchants.

According to the etailing group’s “13th Annual Mystery Shopping Study,” usage of online video on product pages among the 100 leading retailers studied increased by 18 percentage points between Q4 2009 and Q4 2010...

Sunday Sky released their Q4 2010 research about video in eCommerce. I just managed to get into it and process the info so I could tell you about it. Their research looks at the top 50 online retailers and their use of video marketing in terms of overall usage, YouTube presence and website video seo. We already know that 75% of Super Bowl advertisers this year have YouTube channels, so let's see what the top 50 eCommerce leaders are doing with it.

Before you read on, if interested, we recommend that you read our write-ups of their previous "State of Video in E-Commerce" reports for Q2 2010 (E-Commerce Video SEO Snapshot Spells Huge Opportunity For Internet Retailers & Ecommerce Retailers Split On YouTube Usage = Opportunity) and Q3 2010 (E-Commerce Retailers – Active In Social Media But Lacking Mobile Video And HTML5.)...

Customers are a fickle bunch. Their likes and interests change rapidly, particularly in the technical space. That's why creating sustainable online user engagement is not a one-and-done effort. Companies understand that they need to offer a destination that customers and prospects want to visit for information, education, customer service, e-commerce, and more.

It's not just the latest bells and whistles that drive user engagement. It's valuable information and resources presented in an engaging way. Here we highlight two firms leveraging the value of their websites by driving engagement in unique ways...

SundaySky released an interesting report looking at online video use in e-commerce during the 4th quarter. Despite online video being one of the major web trends of the last couple years, it is clear that a lot of work remains for retailers to capitalize on the medium’s potential.

Adoption isn’t as high as you might think, and among the adopters, many appear to be missing the boat on getting as much out of their efforts as they could be. Among the key findings of the study...

SXSW nominations; Super Bowl ad controversies; Twitter or Facebook?; fast forwarding digital ads and this is all about computers, right?

SXSW Interactive Awards finalists announced
The prestigious South by Southwest (SXSW) confab, the annual get-together for media and music types, has announced the finalists for its Interactive Awards. These include “sites or projects that were launched or completely redesigned in 2010.” Did your project make the cut?...

Last year provided some solid showings in terms of online video as many brands began to understand and adopt online video on their websites. In 2011, these online businesses will continue to find ways to attract online visitors in order to boost conversion rates and directly impact their bottom lines through online video.

Online businesses understood the value of video in 2010. They created homepage videos, how-to videos and select product videos. They made progress in video adoption, but it’s evident now that they have just gotten started...

SundaySky, Tel Aviv/New York-based start-up with 50 employees, using no video camera or production staff, will produce 1.4 million video clips this month for a range of big retail and real estate corporate customers including Overstock.com and the History Channel.

The company pulls customer data into a customized template which creates videos with movement, music, narration and graphics and video. This is all done automatically....

Despite the fact that most online retailers today understand that video increases the stickiness of their websites, improves their search engine rankings and helps close more deals, only a small number employ the best practices necessary to take full advantage of video's search engine optimization promise. This was a key finding in the State of Video in E-Commerce Report from my firm, SundaySky, a provider of dynamically generated video for e-commerce sites. The report, which was published late last year, examined how 50 top online retailers use video...

For many Web marketers, video is a two-edged sword. They know that visitors are more highly engaged by a website that contains sound and motion, but creating video carries a lot of costs both in terms of budget and human resources.

This dilemma has implications beyond user engagement, because videos indexed by Google or syndicated out from a website to YouTube or social networks can help drive highly targeted traffic to a site. Big retailers know this. Recent research by dynamic video platform SundaySky found that in Q3 2010, top retailer Amazon.com had 224,000 videos indexed by Google, while Overstock.com had 56,069 and HSN.com had 29,620. But that count tails off drastically: Among the 200 top retailers, some 54% had no video indexed by Google, the study found...

In a rapidly evolving industry such as ecommerce, it is not unusual for a feature that starts off as a frill to quickly morph into an essential element. That is certainly what has happened with video.

Last year, Forrester Research released a report noting that 68 percent of retailers use videos in their online efforts. Clearly, the market has gotten the message that video matters...

Now that Halloween is over, online retailers will be focused on their holiday sales until the end of the year, which means there is not much time for them to adopt any new ecommerce trends. However there are a number of ecommerce trends for 2011, which merchants can consider after the holiday shopping season is over. Consumers are also gaining increased confidence to start spending money again, compared to the last two years when economic conditions were much worse. Over the course of 2010, there have been a number of advancements and improvements within the world of ecommerce, mobile commerce, and social commerce. Although 2011 looks to be the year when merchants will be able to better utilize some of the new technology and tools in the marketplace, which could help them increase their online sales. 2011 could also be an important year in the ecommerce industry, as more and more merchants are realizing the power of an online store, and therefore want to do everything possible to make their business a success. Additionally there is a lot of speculation about what could happen in the ecommerce industry in 2011, as competition is increasing, and companies not in the ecommerce niche are jumping in to diversify their revenue streams...

Video content on ecommerce sites has helped many retailers improve their conversion rates, reduce returns, improve customer satisfaction and loyalty. Video can also attract more search engine traffic, thanks to Google’s Universal Search, which mixes video, image, Google Shopping and news results for certain queries.

While we’ve all seen Youtube results appearing in Universal Search, but some online retailers are winning top slots in search pages with well optimized video – showing their own URL for a branding boost...

Sometimes a picture can't tell a thousand words.

Take, for instance, an airgun. A picture shows what an airgun looks like, but not what it does. This is a problem retailer Airgun Depot has tackled with a technology that conveys much more than a thousand words—online video.

Airgun Depot has 20 videos online and uses the video services of technology provider Buystream.tv to shoot, host and stream the videos. They have proven their worth, the merchant says. Today the retailer routinely experiences a 10% to 12% lift in conversion for shoppers who watch videos...

With the 2010 holiday shopping season starting in earnest, retailers are seeking new ways to embolden their e-commerce sites and improve the way customers engage.

One promising technique is online video — short, simple, snappy clips that provide additional product information. In the world of e-commerce, where photos, descriptions, customer reviews and product specs help sell products, video can do what the others can’t — bring the item alive and create urgency for the sale...

Some retailers are more active in social media than you might imagine. A full 12% of them have more than one million fans. Brands in that category include Victoria's Secret, Kohl's, Nike, Target, Walmart and Best Buy). Over 50% have over 100,000 fans. I wish I knew how they were doing it.

It seems like video is certainly helping them along. When a video is posted to one of their walls hundreds and even thousands of people comment and like the video. That in turn expands,socially to tens of thousands of impressions. In the graphs below, the left is uploaded by the Brand while on the right is uploaded by their fans. SundaySky stated that Target and Nike are leading in fan-uploaded videos with 58 and 57 but that most were spam...

SAN FRANCISCO (Venture Capital Journal) - If Cisco's push into the consumer market earlier this month with its in-home telepresence system proved one thing, it's that video technology is becoming a more immersive part of everyday life.

As such, SundaySky (www.sundaysky.com) might be aptly poised. The New York-based company, which provides video advertising services for online retailers, has raised a $9 million Series B round led by Norwest Venture Partners and including Carmel Ventures and Globespan Capital Partners...

In January 2009, SundaySky announced that they had completed an $8 million Series A round of funding led by Carmel Ventures and Globespan Capital Partners. Now the innovative dynamically generated video company is getting buzz in the news again as they announced that they have raised even more money via a $9 million second round of funding led by Norwest Venture Partners, with additional investments from Carmel Ventures and Globespan Capital Partners. There are other companies in the space fighting to become the dominant player among e-businesses looking for an automated video solution, but few are funded as well as SundaySky. Animoto has raised around $5 million, but with SundaySky now at $17 million in total funding, it looks like they will be the company that others will be chasing. Sites like Overstock.com are already utilizing the technology from SundaySky for a variety of products on their ecommerce site, and more ecommerce companies are starting to realize the potential and test these types of automated videos out...

In August we profiled the ways that online e-commerce video can engage users. To further study the impact and benefits of online video in e-commerce, SundaySky recently published the second in a series of research reports focused on the State of Video in e-commerce. The report covers the state of video in e-commerce websites, disclosing facts about the usage of video by top U.S. online retailers, including mobile and social strategies...

Its official, DeNA acquired ngmoco. The deal, which has been rumored for some time, is that the company will spend $300 million in cash and securities. If the company meets certain performance milestones by Dec. 31, 2011, they will also be entitled to up to an additional $100 million.

SearchIgnite, released its paid search marketing report. The report covers only the United States. According to the company, spend on paid search ads increased close to 6% year-over-year, and Google has 80.2% of all U.S. PPC ad spend in the third quarter...

SundaySky, an Israeli startup which provides e-commerce businesses a platform for dynamic videos), has raised a $9 million round led by Norwest Venture Partners (NVP) joined by previous investors Globespan Capital Partners and Carmel Ventures. The company was originally funded by Yossi Vardi, and this round brings the total investment in SundaySky to $17 million. Dror Nahumi, partner and NVP and the fund’s rep in Israel, will join SundaySky’s board of directors. The company said it will use the proceeds of this round to strengthen its sales and marketing efforts...

SundaySky, a company that has developed technology capable of extracting content from any website and molding it into videos created on-the-fly, has raised $9 million in Series B financing. The round was led by Norwest Venture Partners with follow-on investments from Carmel Ventures and Globespan Capital Partners.

Founded in 2006, SundaySky provides e-businesses with a solution that distributes dynamically generated, template-based videos across entire websites, marketing channels and mobile and social platforms...

SundaySky, a company that generates sales videos for e-commerce, real estate and travel sites, announced today it has raised $9 million in its second round of funding led by Norwest Venture Partners.

SundaySky produces interactive videos for various e-commerce products on sites like Overstock.com, as well as a number of other sites, to help provide another form of interaction for consumers. The idea is that consumers are always interested in seeing videos, so adding a product-specific video to go along with a sale will give shoppers more incentive to buy something, said Mitch Praver, President of SundaySky...

SundaySky Raises $9M to Create Videos for Online Retailers; the New York-based company has raised a $9 million Series B round led by Norwest Venture Partners and including Carmel Ventures and Globespan Capital Partners...

Remember those old choose-your-own-adventure books? They were great. You got at least two choices for how the story would end, and if you finished the book and didn’t like the outcome, well, you could just go back, re-read it, follow a different path and reach a different conclusion.

Here’s a choose-your-own-adventure tale for the e-commerce set. The protagonists are two respected e-businesses that deployed video on their websites. One did it with SEO in mind and reaped the rewards in Google rankings and resulting page visits and sales. The other took an enormous cache of video content, uploaded it onto a website and left it there – unoptimized, untagged and unprofitable...

We interview Deborah Lewis, Director of Creative and Rich Media for Overstock.com, and one of the panelists of “Lessons Learned and Best Practices in Automating Video Production” at the 2010 Video Commerce Summit in Seattle. Deborah talks about Overstock’s online production techniques and production process, how they went about choosing an automated video technology provider, and some tips on how you can be successful with your own automated video production...

So, you’re thinking about adding product videos to your ecommerce site. Once you’ve made your decision you’ll quickly realize there are a fair deal of things you need to consider in terms of the implementation of your video solution. In order to help you figure out what you should be looking for, I’ve compiled the following list of points you should address in order to ensure that your video solution works for you...

Not so long ago, videos were nice to have on a website. They were a frill. They were something fancy to attract a visitor, not an integral part of an e-business’ plan for effective SEO and increased conversions. Today, video is a necessity, and e-businesses that fail to implement multimedia and to do it well will soon find themselves falling far behind competitors.

We can trace this new reality back to a decision Google made in 2007. That was the year when the search engine giant integrated video into its universal search offering. Since then, websites featuring video have gained a significant SEO advantage. When a company integrates relevant videos that match the content of its website, search engines find and index the video within the site’s context. This improves overall website and video search ranking as it relates to a business’ keywords, and also allows search results to be presented with matching videos, making them more appealing, thereby increasing search-based traffic...

A study of the top 50 online retailers by SundaySky Ltd., a provider of technology and services for deploying and managing online videos, shows that, while more than 65% of the e-retailers have many videos on their site, only 12% get more than 100 videos indexed by Google.

The study, “State of Video in E-Commerce,” is based on second quarter research by SundaySky of the largest 50 online retailers as listed in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide. It notes that among the top 200 retailers, only 4% get more than 100 videos indexed by Google and that fewer than 10% get more than 10 videos indexed...

Digital Asset Management (DAM) and Web Engagement Management (WEM) are interlinked. Online video can be one of the most powerful tools (if used wisely), and online retailers have no good reason not to incorporate online video to help engage and persuade customers.

Plus, the research says that visitors who view product videos are more likely to buy than visitors who do not. Recent studies have shown that growing numbers of retailers are adding video capabilities to their sites...

We've seen a lot of research pointing to how effectively video helps increase conversion, sales and revenue for online retailers. But just how well are the online retailers doing from a search engine optimization viewpoint for that same video? Not well according to some recent research and that spells opportunity...

IP Telephony needs a hero: Hosted IP continues to face challenges, particularly in gaining the loyalty of the masses. A recent Research and Markets report points out that "Despite the promises of lower capital expenditures, ease of use, and flexibility, hosted IP telephony has failed to gain mass adoption so far." News release...

Video used to be a nice add-on for an e-commerce site, a frill that companies could feature or not without obvious repercussions. That is no longer the case. Today, video is a must-have for e-businesses concerned with SEO [search-engine optimization], conversion rates, and brand identification—essentially any company with an online presence and intent to succeed.

Placing video on your website is a smart business practice. Here’s why...

The e-commerce industry is absorbing the concept of online video as an important value-add for any online shopping site. In fact, more than 65 percent of top 50 retailers have more than one video on their websites, according to a recently published report by SundaySky, an e-commerce video solutions provider.

However, those that do have video often don't maximize the potential impact those videos can have on search engine results, according to the State of Video in E-commerce report...

This is the story of two respected e-businesses who deployed video on their websites. One did it with SEO in mind and reaped the rewards in Google rankings and resulting page visits and sales. The other took an enormous cache of video content, uploaded it onto a website and left it there – unoptimized, untagged and unprofitable.

Almost any business moving to the web understands at some level that search engines drive traffic. The 100 best companies in Internet Retailer’s Top Retailers Guide report an average of 30 percent of their traffic is search-engine delivered. And by now, most e-businesses realize the importance of deploying video as a means to increase website visits. It is with this knowledge in mind that retailers such as Zappos, Overstock.com and Newegg have deployed thousands of videos across their websites...

Eight Israeli start-ups have been named to the Red Herring Europe 100 list for 2010.

The list names privately held technology companies, arranged by region, that are judged most promising and exciting by Red Herring editors. Israeli companies are generally included in the Europe region list...

A new startup has emerged to make it easier for e-commerce and other online sites to add videos to their websites, in an effort to increase consumer engagement and purchase conversion. With its dynamically created video service, Sunday Sky provides those sites with videos that highlight product features but are always up to date.

Sunday Sky takes existing web assets, such as photos and product descriptions, and transforms those assets into a limitless number of web videos. Because the video is created dynamically by relying on product information, the videos are always up-to-date with the latest information from the website. So if a product’s price is reduced or its ratings change, the video will automatically adjust to the new information that is available to it. (You can watch demos of the Sunday Sky videos here.)...

Getting started with online video can be tricky, especially if you have hundreds or thousands of products on your site. You know that online video can help you increase traffic by giving shoppers a better look at what they’re buying, but turning out that many videos would be incredibly expensive. That’s where SundaySky comes in.

This company has automated video creation, while still providing videos that feel personal. The secret is that it combines studio-recorded vocal tracks of all the needed words and phrases with your own product specs and photos. Combine those elements in a template that you create with SundaySky and you get videos that feel individually made...

To win over customers, Overseas Adventure Travel likes to romance visitors to OATTravel.com with electronic brochures that appear like scrapbooks embedded with multiple videos. Conversions rates are running as high as 10%, says Mark Frevert, executive vice president and chief architect at parent company Grand Circle Corp./Overseas Adventure Travel.

OAT Travel has developed its video-enhanced brochures with software-as-a-service video technology from SundaySky, which has enabled it to produce dozens of 8- to 10-minute videos within a few weeks, Frevert says. “We couldn’t have done this in three times the amount of time in-house,” he says...