By leveraging blink’s unique AdHoc platform, the companies will put relevant advertising with videos and share in the combined additional revenue. Founded by highly respected broadcast journalists (the core team has been awarded a plethora of industry awards including more than 40 Emmys) Zazoom produces video for multiple digital platforms (internet, tablets, smartphones, taxis and television).

Buzz60 is Zazoom’s first branded network. The brand has developed a style for short-form video content (60-second reports) covering a broad range of subjects, that are smart, edgy, entertaining and informed by viewers’ demand. Channels on Buzz60 include Buzz Politics which is hosted by Jay DaDapper, a Cronkite award winner and Buzz Sports which is hosted by legendary sports anchor Len Berman of Sports Time Out.

Founder and CEO of blinkx, Suranga Chandratillake said, “Zazoom and its channel Buzz60 are creating digital video for the way we live now–on the go. We are committed to adding video content that meets the needs of our users and are therefore delighted to offer this informative and growing library of video content.”
A pioneer in video search technology, blinks has an excellent reputation as the smartest way to find rich media on the Web. So far, the company has indexed over 35 million hours of video and audio content.

Zazoom Ceo Tim Minton adds, “Our business continues to expand and therefore we are focused on adding exciting new distribution paths to further reach viewers with reports that inform, entertain and most importantly engage. Through our partnership with blinks we’re now able to reach an even larger audience of users across the globe.”

The combination of the two companies will bring Blink’x 35 million hours of online video and TV to Burst’s audience of over 130 million unique users.

Blinkx said it will create video channels for specific audiences that will be matched to Burst’s network of publisher sites. The move will build an online video audience for Burst’s advertisers.

“In just a few years, we have seen online video advertising become the fastest growing segment of online advertising. Up until now, the primary barrier to further television advertising budgets moving online has been online video’s inability to match the sheer scale of audience that television can deliver,” said Suranga Chandratillake, chief Executive of Blinkx.

“By fusing blinkx’s unique patented technology and large video index with Burst’s massive reach, we will have the potential to create personalised, online television that is watched by hundreds of millions of users.”

The majority of Burst’s senior management team will continue with the combined group, with Jarvis Coffin, Co-Founder and CEO of Burst and David Stein, Co-Founder and CTO of Burst remaining in temporary roles to assist transition.

“By combining with blinkx and its enormous video index, we will be able to substantially enhance our users’ experience with high quality, relevant video, and also improve monetisation for our publishers through high value video advertising,” said Jarvis Coffin, Chief Executive of Burst.

"Together or separately, these four add-ons will change the way users interact with blinkx.com, their Internet Explorer 8 browser and video on the Web," said Suranga Chandratillake, founder and CEO, blinkx.

"As the Web moves increasingly towards video, our goal is to make finding that video as simple, seamless and integrated a process as possible."

blinkx Visual Search add-on makes videos searchable from the Internet Explorer 8 search bar, without having to leave the page. The Visual Search feature displays matching video previews in a drop-down menu as term is typed into the browser search bar.

blinkx Accelerator displays the video results most closely related to a piece of highlighted text, without having to search for a specific video.

blinkx Remote TV Search Slice is a drop-down remote that allows users to search for TV shows or movies directly from their Internet Explorer 8 Favorites Bar.

blinkx Remote TV Episode Slice is a real-time add-on that displays every episode of a series that is available to watch.
 

Heather Dougherty writes, "Traffic to Blinkx has increased steadily over the past year – the market share of visits for the week ending May 10, 2008 is 10x higher than the same week in 2007.  Much of this growth is being driven by new users, since 62% of the traffic to Blinkx during the same timeframe had not visited the website in the past 30 days."

 Hitwise Data On Blinkx

Of course, Blinkx still can’t compare to YouTube, and its name didn’t even show up on comScore’s list of the top ten video properties in March.  Blinkx has made some important friends, though.

"Of the websites that received traffic from Blinkx . . . . [w]ebsites for News Corp. (Photobucket and MySpace), Google (Google, YouTube and Blogger), and Yahoo! (mail, search, and video) are all well represented in the top 10 downstream," notes Hopkins, "highlighting why they make logical potential bidders."

Finally, although investors backed away Friday afternoon, they’re once again embracing Blinkx’s stock.  It’s up 15.25 percent this morning, and the company’s market cap is nearing $100 million.  If anyone’s going to buy Blinkx, they’d do well to step in before it gets more expensive.

Shares of Blinkx, which trades on the London Stock Exchange, went as high as 38.25 pence after opening at 25.00 pence.  The ghost bid could have, according to Peter Garnham and Neil Hume, been as high as 60 pence.

 Blinkx Rises, Falls On Acquisition Rumors

This doesn’t seem too unreasonable.  Blinkx is a very active company, issuing at least two or three press releases per week about new partnerships.  Also, although the quality of these partners often leaves something to be desired, The Poker Channel, Hearst Digital, and the Guardian have been among the names most recently mentioned.

Don’t count on an acquisition taking place, though; The Financial Mites reports that Blinkx has issued about as firm a corporate-speak denial as you’re likely to hear.  The company’s claim: "The Board of blinkx plc notes the recent increase in the Company’s share price and confirms that it is not aware of any external bids or bid-related reason for the movement."

And Blinkx’s stock is heading back down, so it looks as if investors now believe that no buyout is imminent.

“How-to videos are in high demand right now. Most adults are strong visual learners, making this type of programming extremely useful when tackling something new,” Blinkx founder and CEO Suranga Chandratillake said in a statement.

Viewers will have a few choices from the Blinkx How-to videos. We have to note in the Blinkx announcement they placed potty training and fighting a bear next to each other in the list of typical videos.

Which would the typical guy rather do, wipe a dirty butt or accidentally step between a grizzly and her cub? Toss-up, isn’t it? Good thing Blinkx has how-tos for both.

New partnerships with sites like ExpertVillage.com, Growing Wisdom and HowTo.tv will give Blinkx more content for this how-to index. Ad revenue generated by placements alongside content monetizes the deal for Blinkx and these partners.

If you’re not a soccer fan, you may not have heard of Goal.com.  But the site’s big, boasting of versions for 16 different languages.  Goal.com also claims to reach over 210 countries, and since some experts say there are just 194 countries on earth, that’s really quite an achievement.

Blinkx is quite large, as well – by its own count, the video search engine has around 14 million hours of content in its index.  Together, I suspect the two companies will do all right, and Mashable’s Adam Ostrow might agree.

“Blinkx appears to be doing a good job of building their distribution network, with many content partnerships already under their belt,” he noted.  “With the company now also offering a way to monetize video through their AdHoc program, Blinkx should be poised for revenue growth as well.”

Indeed, perhaps it’s just out of politeness, but there wasn’t a word about money in the midst of all the usual corporate back-patting.

Advertising is key, of course.  Blinkx’s AdHoc program promises to place “unobtrusive, highly-relevant text advertisements against embedded video,” and the revenue that these ads generate will be shared.  In this respect, Blinkx appears to be acting in a rather surprising manner – although the videos’ creators won’t get anything, there will be a 50/50 split between publishers and Blinkx.

The timing of Blinkx’s announcement is also interesting – it falls just one day behind the release of AdSense’s new video units program.  At first glance, trailing the search giant doesn’t sound like the best way to attack it, yet Blinkx probably got more media and blog attention by launching at another time.

Furthermore, The Motley Fool’s Rick Aristotle Munarriz writes, “There’s also a real possibility that AdHoc ads may be better matches to the content than what Google coughs up.  Yes, Google spiders websites efficiently, but blinkx is the one with the video search advantage.”

Lastly, remember that, as Google’s market cap approaches $200 billion, successfully competing with the search giant in even the smallest way could be considered “great.”

CelebTV is exactly what its name would lead you to expect: “real-time entertainment video news.”  There’s an added “e-focus,” however, since CelebTV is “distributed exclusively on broadband and mobile channels,” and that may explain why its video quality is surprisingly good.

As for the results of the new arrangement, Blinkx intends to index CelebTV’s content.  And Dana Golden, CelebTV.com’s general manager, stated, “We’re pleased to be working with blinkx to make CelebTV.com’s content available to audiences around the world.  blinkx’s technology enables users to search video much more easily, whether it’s for breaking news, the top entertainment stories of the day, or the latest video of their favorite stars in the Hollywood scene.”

This development continues Blinkx’s roll of accomplishments; in the last month, we’ve seen it partner with both Utarget and TurnHere.  This also continues the expansion of Blinkx’s video index; the company now claims to have over 14 million hours of content “fully searchable and available on demand.”

The Blinkx-CelebTV deal may not be of groundbreaking importance – hard news should take precedent over the lives of Paris Hilton and her friends.  But once you’ve caught up with world events, it won’t hurt to have another entertainment outlet on tap.

"blinkx is leading the way in developing options for content owners to monetize and manage their output," explained Suranga Chandratillake, founder and CEO of blinkx.

"Working with Utarget offers our partners the simplest way of getting in touch with the right advertisers."

Utarget will focus on monetizing blinkx’s video inventory including ITN News and ITN Celebrity.

Utarget launched the UK’s first video advertising network in June 2006. Since its launch it has grown the network to more than 125 sites and delivered 9.6 million video ads.

"blinkx is easily the most advanced search engine for users to access video. Partnering with blinkx will offer our advertisers quality video inventory and a large, well-informed audience," said Phil Cooper, Utarget CEO.