The name change is a reflection of the company moving beyond Podcasts and into all forms of online multimedia content. EveryZing says that media companies will be able to enhance their online multimedia offerings and better merchandise their digital content across the Web.

EveryZing’s text indexing of multimedia content will aid in finding content within search engines across the Web.

"By unlocking the contents of multimedia files, EveryZing is powering a shift in how multimedia content will be organized, accessed, and monetized into the future," said Tom Wilde, CEO of EveryZing. "Search has become the Internet’s operating system, and EveryZing’s solution uniquely bridges the gap between multimedia and search to drive consumption."

"The popularity exhibited by sites like YouTube and MySpace has indicated consumers’ craving for digital content," said Josh Martin, analyst for Yankee Group. "Media companies are quickly jumping on the bandwagon, making more and more of their own content available for consumer consumption."

Control issues aren’t just something that city dwellers in the Big Apple or the Bay Area talk to their Dr. Melfi’s about in bi-weekly therapy sessions. Big media content companies have control issues that would put a couple of graduating classes full of therapists into the Forbes 500 list of wealthiest people.

The unlikely source of help for those companies might come out of Cambridge, Massachusetts, but not from Harvard or MIT. Multimedia search firm PodZinger has a therapeutic plan for Big Media, with new CEO Tom Wilde wearing the disarming smile while toting a substantial dose of control issue cure.

He chatted with WebProNews for a few minutes about taking PodZinger forward and building on what Laats has created. PodZinger’s technology can index audio and video content effectively and make it searchable. A content owner can then make that indexed content available in short snippets, in response to searches for it.

It’s just what Big Media needs, Wilde told us. PodZinger isn’t trying to find the philosopher’s stone by divining the alchemy of a business to consumer strategy. For every YouTube or MySpace that evolves, many more do not.

Being the solution for business to business to consumer has much more appeal. Big Media has the content, while the Internet audience has the demand. Why should a Viacom or a Time Warner settle for an all or nothing approach to putting content online, when they can make snippets of desirable content available through the familiar process of search?

Searchable content can be categorized, Wilde reasoned, and if it can be categorized it can be organized into channels. The Big Media company that does this suddenly has a medium that can be monetized too.

Wilde said this would lead to higher values per ad impression, as people will be able to find the content they want. PodZinger’s technology would also empower Big Media with the ability to whitelist or blacklist certain ads, based on content or just competitor status.

Consumers would feel in control, as they have come to expect from their online search and media consumption experience. Big Media would also enjoy knowing that they can make content available without dumping all of it completely online.

Wilde said PodZinger has been talking to several companies, and explaining how such a strategy with PodZinger’s technology as a centerpiece could benefit them. The time seems right for the content power brokers to give people this kind of access; we will see if they agree.

It’s pretty safe to say that 2006 was the year of the podcast.

From Jim Cramer’s financial tips to Soccergirl’s well documented exploits as the world’s foremost breast activist, 2006 marked a year where digital content aficionados could find a podcast covering just about any topic imaginable.

PodZinger is a podcasting search engine that indexes content from site like YouTube and Rocketboom, allowing users to find both video and audio podcasts relating to specific search terms.

Compiling all the data from last year’s searches, PodZinger has published its report of the most popular video and audio podcasts of last year.

Most watched video podcasts of 2006:

1) ABC World News
2) Keith and The Girl
3) X-Play
4) CNN The Grist
5) Rumor Girls
6) ESApod
7) ICONS
Democracy Now!
9) Diggnation
10) TED Talks

Most listened to audio podcasts of 2006:

1) WMMR’s Preston and Steve
2) Radio Leo
3) CNN News Update
4) World Soccer Daily
5) Radio Nostalgia Network
6) Cramer Radio
7) The Geoff Show: Virgin Radio
Daily Noise
9) Wall Street Journal This Morning
10) Computer America

“The phenomenon of online audio and video search and advertising is catching on like wildfire with everyone from major brands, to marketers and individuals,” said Barbara Loonam, vice president of marketing, PodZinger.

“PodZinger’s unique ability to categorize multimedia content ensures that all of our users find the most targeted, relevant news, information and entertainment. The more that video peaks users’ interest, the more the trend is going to continue to grow.”

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These results, in combination with aggregated consumer behavior statistics for online content, further emphasize the importance of streamlined, targeted, non-intrusive video advertisements.

The following is a detailed summary of the study’s findings gathered from the company’s blog as well as the report of findings:

PodZinger also examined behavior patterns of consumers on its site to set the baseline for consumer behavior, discovering that:

•   Consumers typically play only 15 percent of an entire online video or audio, which are 7.5 minutes and 22 minutes in length, respectively.
•   Consumer attention span for online video is much shorter than audio – one minute vs. three minutes on average.
•   Consumers are more likely to play content online than they are to download it by a factor of almost 6 to 1 (5.7 to1).
•   Of all the categories tracked by PodZinger, five of these, including entertainment, technology, news and politics, music and sports, represent approximately 85 percent of all online activity. Additionally, online activity does not track to the volume of content available, e.g. entertainment represents 36 percent of all online video play, but only 6 percent of available video.

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Highlights of the market research:
•   Not only do consumers tolerate advertisements that appear during their search for online audio and video content, they also willingly accept that short 10-15 seconds ads are “part of doing business” on the Web.
•   Consumers prefer 10-15 second ads in comparison to the typical 30-second television commercials. However, many expressed concern about frequency of video ads and were considered “annoying” if repeated often.
•   A high percentage of respondents viewed targeted advertisements that were relevant to their online search as positive and more personal.

Other notable patterns indicate that:
•   Consumers will listen to audio for almost 3 times longer as they will watch a video – an average of 3 min. versus 1 min.
•   Consumers are more likely to play content online than they are to download it by a factor of almost 6 to 1.

“With Internet video consumption surging, advertisers are clamoring for a best-in-class solution for delivering branded and relevant online messages.” said Alex Laats, CEO of PodZinger.

“To accomplish that, it is essential to develop a deeper understanding of what consumers are watching and listening. Our technology uniquely allows PodZinger to connect advertisers to consumers based on consumer intent, and the response in the marketplace has been overwhelming.”

If you think the significance of these statistics is overrated, consider for a moment that Google shelled out $1.65 billion reasons to consider the importance of online video advertising when it purchased YouTube, the popular online video storage site.

Most Internet users understand that “free” video actually comes with a price tag, and it manifests itself in the form of an advertising model. People gladly accept that commercials offset the cost of television product, and by the same respect online video watchers are willing to endure short advertisements if it means they get to watch the clip for free.

One of the key differences between television and online video, however, is that advertisers have the opportunity to gear their marketing campaigns in a completely contextual direction, applying direct, relevant advertising and product placement to video clips in which users have already exhibited an interest by clicking.

So with contextual relevance in mind, it will be important for marketers to keep an ever-watchful eye on these types of video trends in the days to come.

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For me, it was probably the first time I tried Podzinger; I was wowed by the fact that the folks at the BBN-owned company had figured out how to catalog words spoken in audio and make them searchable, then take you just to that part of the audio file where the word was said.

I had another “wow” moment today trying out the OWL music search, hosted on the Creative Commons search page, as well as on its own page. (The difference between the two: the Creative Commons search allows you to find Creative Commons-licensed work.) The search suggests you can “find music through music.” Click on the graphic that invites you to open an MP3 file, and the file you select appears as a waveform in a blue space that occupies the top of the page. Click the play button and you can listen to the song as a slider moves across the waveform. Stop the music from playing when you hit a spot you really like, then click the search button. OWL will find other songs like the one you were playing from a current database of more than 10,000 songs from independent music sites.

I picked “Missing Person” from the new Eric Clapton/J.J. Cale collaboration, “The Road to Escondido;” OWL found 55 songs by artists I’d never heard of, providing me with information but also the ability to play the song-and specifically, the part of the song that matched my original selection. You can also limit your search to genres like classical, new age, rock, jazz and blues.

I can’t get the OWL music discovery engine to work in Internet Explorer 7, so be sure you have Firefox or some other browser before giving it a try.

But…wow.

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Shel Holtz is principal of Holtz Communication + Technology which focuses on helping organizations apply online communication capabilities to their strategic organizational communications.

As a professional communicator, Shel also writes the blog a shel of my former self.

The company says the algorithms also analyze consumer intent, which is often indicated by clicks, to serve up online ads in conjunction with the content. Podzinger says the new service “goes far beyond” traditional text and click-through advertising services that advertisers have become dependent upon today.

Because podcasts are already highly-targeted, the company believes advertising on this medium will be extremely effective.

“As a podcast and radio host and producer, I believe PodZinger will be a tremendous service to my listeners, enabling them to browse archived shows to find specific information of interest,” said Leo Laporte, host and producer of TWiT.tv.

“With PodZinger’s new advertising platform I will be able to deliver effective, targeted advertising that is relevant to my content. This is a powerful tool and I expect PodZinger’s new platform to generate a robust, incremental revenue stream for my business.”

The company says this is the first time advertisers will be able to mine multimedia search data, and understand usage and topic filters to arrive at a better understanding of how consumers are interacting with content.

“Advertisers should not wander into the world of online audio and video with blind hope of finding their target audience,” said Alex Laats, CEO of PodZinger.

“With PodZinger, advertisers can craft their campaigns based on real information about consumer intent and usage, aggregated over a broad base of consumers.”

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Now, when content owners submit content to be indexed in PodZinger’s search engine, they can choose to join the advertising program and share in the revenue generated from ads. Ads will only be shown on content from its co-brand partners or from content owners that have opted in to the advertising program.

The ads will be between 10 and 15 seconds in length and will be shown prior to the start of the chosen video clip.

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Andy Beal is an internet marketing consultant and considered one of the world’s most respected and interactive search engine marketing experts. Andy has worked with many Fortune 1000 companies such as Motorola, CitiFinancial, Lowes, Alaska Air, DeWALT, NBC and Experian.

You can read his internet marketing blog at Marketing Pilgrim and reach him at andy.beal@gmail.com.

TED features notable speakers at its annual conference, and now those talks are more open to its website visitors. Through the use of the PodZinger video search engine, visitors can sift through the TEDTalks repository of speaker talks more effectively.

The usefulness of PodZinger’s search goes beyond text matching. Owned by BBN Technologies, a company with 30 years of speech recognition research, PodZinger has been honed over the past decade. PodZinger president Alex Laats asserted in an interview that BBN are the leader in speech recognition and natural language technology.

PodZinger moved out of beta in January 2006. The first incarnation focused on audio-only search. Video came later, in March, and a Spanish version followed in May. Laats said they have more languages planned for future releases.

Like many projects, PodZinger has been searching for monetization opportunities. They have a “white label” service planned for partnerships, where a licensee like a content creator pays for use of PodZinger behind the scenes.

Key to that will be quality search, according to Laats. This means crawling not just the content for speech recognition processing, but the metadata contained in the media enclosures.

Laats said that PodZinger crawls that content, processes it, and tags every word it finds with a confidence score. “PodZinger peers into ‘black space’ that other engines don’t see,” said Laats.

He provided an interesting insight into podcasting in general at this point. Laats said that PodZinger’s research showed a 20 to 1 ratio of people who play podcasts online as opposed to downloading them, presumably from there to a portable media player.

The work has just begun for PodZinger. Their initial big challenge was to craft PodZinger into having a high enough accuracy with its search, while simplifying the user experience.

Laats noted their next challenge would be to develop a monetization plan that will benefit content creators as well as advertisers. If it’s done well enough, maybe Laats will be one of TED’s future presenters.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

With Rocketboom enjoying an audience of 350,000 podcast subscribers following host Amanda Congdon and her daily tech topic coverage, Rocketboom has built up a sizable library of videos. New subscribers who wish to find older videos will be able to do so as part of its partnership with PodZinger.

Along with the improved search capabilities, where PodZinger can index each word of a video, it also adds to the revenue possibilities for video creators. PodZinger said it uses speech-to-text technology to create a text index of the audio, which enables users to find content anywhere within podcasts and jump directly to the point where their keyword is spoken.

The partnership will enable advertisers to place contextual ads in videos like the three-minute dailies Rocketboom and Congdon create. Then, PodZinger will help create additional inventory for advertising.

As an example of the attraction related to making more ad inventory, ATM and photocopy vendor TRM paid $40,000 for a spot on Rocketboom, and outbid companies like eBay to do so, PodZinger said.

“As television viewers increasingly turn off their sets in favor of watching videos on the Internet, advertisers must follow these viewers and adopt new methods for delivering their messages,” said Alex Laats, president, PodZinger. He feels the contextual opportunity presented by Rocketboom’s licensing of PodZinger helps “strengthen their own brand and user experience.”

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It claims to allow users to search each and every word of the audio segments of a video podcast. I am a bit dubious. From a quick check it seems like they rely on the text surrounding a show, just like everyone else.

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Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.

He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.