Michael Rucker of YouTube recently joined us at the TNS Media Digital CMO Summit and shared some of his views on online video in the Digital 180 interview series. Michael discuss how the differences between broadcast and online video change how marketers should approach each and other trends he sees in online video. Check back next week for more insights from the Digital 180 series.

With Google’s announcement last week that it would begin showing sponsored results for video searches on YouTube, a lot of advertisers and producers have begun to consider a new opportunity to tap into the web’s largest pool of online videos and viewers.

YouTube has long been acknowledged as the far-and-away frontrunner in online video, with close to 63 million US-based visitors in October 2008, according to Compete. Less well-known has been YouTube’s status as a top-ranking search engine.

Last month, YouTube served nearly 770 million search queries, making it the third largest search engine, according to Compete’s October Search Market Share.

The graph above shows the twelve month trend for video search queries on YouTube. Some key points:

• Queries at YouTube have grown 35% since October 2007
• The average unique visitor to YouTube conducted 12 searches in October 2008 (770M queries/63M UV)
• By comparison, video search specialists Blinkx.com and Truveo.com each had less than 2 million unique visitors last month

With that kind of query volume, there is clearly an opportunity for advertisers to tap into the search intent of millions of YouTube searchers. Advertisers can target their videos to searchers who are expressly interested in their brand, product or category.

For instance, a YouTube search for “James Bond” returned sponsored results for the new “Quantum of Solace” game from Activision. It also returned a sponsored video for a rival game from Electronic Arts, showing the need for advertisers to play defensively.

Until now, YouTube advertisers have chosen from a variety of banner, rich media and in-video advertising formats, priced on a CPM-basis. Now they may benefit from the pay-per-click system where, like Google AdWords, keyword prices will be set by auction and advertisers will only pay when a sponsored video gets clicked.

There’s also the opportunity for advertisers to target segments on YouTube that aren’t specifically searching for an advertiser’s offering. To continue with the Bond example, a potential ticket buyer may also be searching for the Aston Martin DBS, the official Bond car, or Alicia Keyes, who performed the movie’s theme song.

So what exactly are YouTube’s visitors looking for? Compete’s monthly compilation of the top searches made on YouTube provides unparalleled access into consumer search patterns on the site and offers advertisers a tool for aligning their messaging with user intent. From the list below of the Top 40 YouTube search terms in October, it’s clear that music videos are highly searched for on the site.

Are 40 terms not enough for you? Please contact us if you’re interested in acquiring a much broader list of thousands of the top monthly YouTube search terms.

Growth at Google’s YouTube slowed dramatically in August, coming in essentially flat after months of consecutive gains of 3 – 5%. Despite the slowdown, Google still overwhelming led the field with 55.4% share of video viewing visits.

As the gap between YouTube and everybody else continued to widen, two players debuted in the top ranks in August, thanks to major news events. The Democratic National Convention gave a big boost to CNN.com, part of the Time Warner Network, which altogether took a 4.0% share of video viewing visits.

Meanwhile the Olympic Summer Games drove major traffic to NBCOlympics.com, part of the NBC-Universal Peacock, which shot up to 3rd place with 3.9% of visits. That marked the first time TWN and NBCU have been in the Top 5.

The newcomers, both complements to larger TV networks, displaced Fox Interactive Media (parent to MySpace) and Microsoft. FIM and Microsoft have consistently lost share over the past 12 months, but usually their loss has been YouTube’s gain.

Meanwhile, some familiar faces are climbing steadily up the mid-ranks. Facebook’s video application claimed 11th place in August with 1.5% share of visits in August, up from 17th place in January.

And Hulu took 14th place in August, with 1.2% of viewing visits. The NBCU-Fox joint venture debuted in the Top 20 in January, making it the fastest rising competitor to date.

July is named for Julius Ceaser, and like that Roman Emperor, YouTube “saw and conquered” the world of online video again a month ago. The undisputed leader of online video claimed 49% share of video viewing visits, up 1.3 percentage points versus June and 8.1 versus a year earlier.

July was also the second time that YouTube overtook MySpace in terms of US-based unique visitors at the domain level. The previous occasion was April, 2008.

Over the past two years, YouTube steadily approached MySpace, building enormous momentum from a base of 20 million UV’s. Since it caught up with MySpace in February, 2008, YouTube’s surge has leveled around 60 million UV’s.

At the other end of the Top 20 ranking, Blinkx and Crackle made some incredible jumps, although minor in the grand scheme of online video. Blinkx was up 1,036% versus a year ago, claiming 16th place in July.

Crackle was up 839%, at the 17th spot, helped along by the popularity of its “Minisodes Network,” which features old network TV shows like “I Dream of Jeannie” and the original “Charlie’s Angels”, repurposed into fast-paced, 5-minute shorts for the web.

YouTube continued its inexorable drive upward and onward in June, propelling Google to new heights of a 47.8% market share of all video viewing visits on the web. That’s up 2.3 share points versus May and nearly 14 points compared to a year ago.

Meanwhile the best of the rest gave up share to GooTube, with Yahoo! in particular taking a big hit of .7 share points in June and FIM/MySpace sliding 5.3 points over the prior 12 months.

Also hurting on the leaderboard was ABC, which took at 1.1 point hit with the end of the primetime season and fresh episodes of shows like Lost and Grey’s Anatomy. Somehow NBC managed to buck the trend and add .2 points in June.

Hulu and Veoh, which aggregates content network, also made incremental share gains of .1 and .2, respectively.

At the other end of the Top 20, the off-again/on-again time-waster’s favorite, Jokeroo.com, also posted nice gains in June, cracking up 1.1% share of all video visits.

Things haven’t been so amusing over at Funnyordie.com, the Will Ferrel comedy site, which cancelled the “Kung Fu Todd” series and has been on a slow decline since it roiled internet video pundits and plebs alike with The Landlord.

Vimeo.com has been making steady gains over the past few months, with Unique Video Viewers up 27% in June and 332% for the year.

While smaller than Jokeroo and Funny or Die, Vimeo apparently has some very engaging content. The IAC-backed site stacked up greater attention in June than either of its peers.

My new favorite television show is Dexter, which tells the story of a serial killer who only preys on the bad guys. After marathon viewings of season one on video, and waiting impatiently for season two to be released, I stumbled on links on Hulu to episodes on Showtime’s site.

Branding is important for cable networks, as it helps attract advertisers and cable subscribers. Online video is new, and I’m probably a lead user, but this whole experience made me wonder: how are these rival cable sites doing when it comes to attracting audiences online?

In terms of traffic, as shown in the chart below, Showtime has been gaining on HBO in the last year. The unique visitors are, perhaps not surprisingly, lower than NBC.comw and CBS.com, but similar to the professional content aggregator sites like Hulu or Comcast’s Fancast.

However, if we look at time spent, which matters when watching video, Showtime and HBO’s sites don’t fare as well. As we can see in the chart below: the average HBO visitor is on the site for about five minutes, the average Showtime visitor for only about 20% of that. Even though their traffic is similar in terms of volume to HBO’s, Hulu has been drawing in users that stay longer, on average, since the end of last year.

These cable network sites offer features that Hulu and Fancast don’t. But, if a cable network wants to capture more attention of an online audience, how could it start?

Part of the answer might be in online video promotion through search. People like me who are on Hulu often might just look for one of these titles there, but search is used much more universally. And when using search, networks aren’t always the most obvious choice as a viewing destination.

I tried an experiment with search analytics on the titles of four shows from these networks: Dexter (Showtime), Weeds (Showtime), Entourage (HBO), and The Wire (HBO). As shown in the chart below:

• When the search term was the title, networks were always the #1 destination site
• When the search term was the word “watch” and the title, none of the #1 destination sites was the show’s network, and 3 were video aggregation sites
• When “watch” and the title was the search term, the network was a top 10 destination site for only one show: Weeds

Of course, online viewing is not the only way to build a brand and a loyal audience on the web, or the only role for cable network sites. However, as more people begin to watch TV online, the question of how much to invest in bringing that audience to a specific site and encourage them to spend time there will be an important one.

In the meantime, I’ll be watching some Dexter online.

*** UPDATE*** Since this blog was originally posted, we got some feedback from Showtime that the average time visitors spent on their site seemed low. After re-running the numbers for all four sites, I found that the average time spent per person on Showtime’s site was indeed greater than originally stated, averaging about 6.3 minutes between June 2007 and June 2008. A revised chart on average time spent on each of the four sites during this period is shown below.

We appreciate all feedback on our blog and additional perspectives on the online video space.