Yahoo! Promotes Video Search with Yammy Awards
The video search contest will encourage users to seek out and watch Yahoo's video content.
The video search contest will encourage users to seek out and watch Yahoo's video content.
Yahoo is geared up for its first video search awards; the Yammys. The program will increase awareness of Yahoo’s video content, as well as boost awareness and help train users to find video online.
Promoting the Yammys profiles a popular category on the Web. “The online video space is hot,” said said Kathryn Kelly, senior public relations manager for Yahoo Search. “[Video is] one of the main drivers for search right now.” The video category includes any type of online video: news footage, movie trailers, TV clips, and content from mainstream providers and independent publishers alike. Amateur video is picked up by Yahoo’s proprietary smart crawl technology.
The awards will highlight user-submitted video.
Video search isn’t currently ad-supported. “We don’t monetize video search right now,” said Kelly. “We always look at ways to improve services before we monetize on them.”
Yahoo won’t provide a link to the Yammys’ microsite in the contest messaging. It will be linked through advertising, or will require a search for “The Yammys” on Yahoo. This reinforces using search to find information on the Web, said Kelly.
The awards will highlight the popularity of online video. “We are seeing that the proliferation of video on the Internet is getting attention lately due to broadband availability in the home,” said Kelly. “We thought it would be fun to seek new video submissions for our index, and recognize users submitting fun content that people love, and drive traffic to Yahoo Search.”
Entries will be accepted through August 17. Yahoo will select 25 finalists, then open voting to users from August 30 to September 12. Celebrity judges Jenny McCarthy, Kelly Monaco, and Pauly Shore will make the final call and announce winners for each of five categories on September 19.
The Yammys will include multiple events and viral promotions. Yahoo will send projection vans to New York and Los Angeles to project finalist entries on buildings during the voting stage. Viewers will be able to vote on the spot using tablets provided by Yahoo’s operators.
Casio will sponsor the event with giveaways of its Exilim EX-S500 camera to contest winners, voters, and participants in radio promotions that will take place over several stages of the contest.
Casio’branded ads will promote the Yammys on yahoo.com. There will be in-store promotions at Ritz Camera, Fry’s Electronics, and BestBuy. Additional ads and promotions will air on the radio, with Casio camera giveaways.
The grand prize winner gets a red-carpet hometown premier of all five winners, a plasma TV and a DVD player. All 25 semi-finalists receive prizes, and voters will be entered in a Casio camera sweepstakes.