It’s becoming clear that if you want to play in the video search space, you must have your own media player to provide an enjoyable user experience, and hopefully get users to come back to your site. At least that’s what Yahoo and many other players are banking on to tap the fast-growing video advertising market.
If you have ever visited Yahoo’s Video Site, you will know why they’re so eager to improve the viewing experience. If you click on any result to watch a video, it resolves to whatever player you have selected as default on your PC (Microsoft’s Media Player, Real Networks or iTunes). For those of us who are accustomed to viewing video content on a streamlined media player like YouTube, Metacafe or PodZinger’s, Yahoo’s video search experience is very 1990’s and not quite appealing.
It should be interesting to watch if Yahoo’s gamble to improve their media player will erode market share from YouTube both in the minds of users and advertisers.
