Right up at the top this week, well at no 2, is a video that at first glance is not commercial. It’s for ideablob.com, a place “where entrepreneurs and small business owners can share and grow their business ideas”. The people behind it are Avanta, a credit card and small business loan company, not your usual YouTube content provider. The video is not your normal video either, being an exploration about ideas and what they are, but at 1.2 million views, it looks like it caught the imagination somewhere.

Rudy Gay is busy promoting the Sprite Slam Dunk competition, or at least his entry in it. Load up a video of you doing a Slam Dunk and the favourite one gets performed by the player in the competition. Not strictly speaking a commercial video, but the promoter gets enough plugs.

Next up from Sunsilk, at 54, a promotional ad for a new competition they are are running - it’ll also show during the Superbowl, making this the first big game ad I’ve seen on the chart. Tied into Life Can’t Wait, they are looking for you to tell your story, but only from Feb 1 on MySpace. The video is not a version loaded up by Sunsilk, but from Spanish music blog, Only Pop, who have reported on the stars, Shakira and Madonna (plus Marilyn Monroe) who are in the video .

Finally, the front page promotional spot is taken up by a Vauxhall Corsa supported ad from the Cmons. The competition has been running for the last 2 months so it looks like they are looking for a last minute boost to the numbers.

Ron Belanger - Future of Search Marketing - Understanding the consumer 2.0 (Yahoo)

We think a lot about the tech…we should think about the people doing the search

We think about web2.0 as collaborate and share. We think a lot about the consumer. So what do we know? they are overworked and overwhelmed. Compared to 72, the average US worker works 20% more. But they are addicted to leisure. Spend 8% of earnings on leisure (compared to saving 1%). they are information junkies, which has helped drive search business. 7 years ago I predicted that search usage would decline as people would know where to go…that was one of the worst predictions I made; as people use the web more they use search more. People are hypertaskers, doing multiple things. When people are watching TV, 52% of people online (36% are asleep!). People are into community, participate in a community - and the community is online. They are creators - they blog, video, photo. Companies now have the consumer as a competitor for search etc. But remember, most consumers who blog about you are positive! So participation marketing is growing.

Participation Marketing - identify best customers, listen to them, collaborate with them, give them tools to share.

So Flip the Funnel. Listen to them, don’t shout at them.

Look at Shakira. Over Yahoo we have over 70 fan groups, over 100 fan stations. We reached out to hear from them, to appear in the video Hops don;t lie. (from IAB on Monday, this was as a result of the record sales not being good and having to redo the campaign, reaching out to fans to find out what to do and leverage the fans). We were trying to reach new audiences but focusing on those already there. We had 10k submissions. It was the No1 video across Yahoo..and the no1 song round the world.

So implications for Search. Consumers have limited recall….Only 1% remember URLS, 20% never do, 27% sometimes do, 52% rarely do. 75% have used search as do not remember URL.

Search allows people to discover brands - 79% said search introduced them to brands they did not know about. 61% expected top brands to be in top results.

Looked at search in branding. Looked at effect of paid search results on those who don;t even click on ad. 100% life in favourability to brand, 38% exceptional quality…overall huge lifts from exposure (remember, you don;t pay for the exposure, just clicks!) When they clicked, brand perceptions really increased all over the place, huge lifts.

People who use search are more engaged than other consumers. A higher quality audience. Searchers are looking to be influenced….they are open to new brands, to consider more brands. This can be a good thing..or a bad thing depends on where you are against the competitive set.