Singingfish Revamps To Reel In Users

America Online's audio/visual search unit Singingfish Inc. launched a revamped version of its search engine Wednesday, along with a new online marketing campaign to promote the service.

Karen Howe, Singingfish vice president and general manager, said the upgrade is centered around the company's new focus on developing its search engine as an ad-supported, stand-alone destination on the Web.

The Singingfish search engine delivers links to streaming audio or video from an index of 20 million pieces of streaming content. When users click on results, two windows pop up--one for the media format that streams the content, and another for the content provider's home page.

The revised Singingfish.com site sports a new user interface with more advanced search criteria, allowing users to search by media format, category, and time length. Users can also save and send their searches.

Currently, said Howe, the ad model involves advertisers paying for inclusion in the search results, generally on a per-stream basis. Singingfish guarantees advertisers inclusion in the index, but doesn't guarantee placement on any search query; paid inclusion results are not highlighted in the natural search results.

Howe said the main advantage of paid inclusion for advertisers is the option of customized landing pages, such as pages highlighting promotional offers, or ones where users can make purchases.

She added that the model is still evolving and that in the future, Singingfish might offer rich media and display advertising. The company is also considering custom home page takeovers and other brand sponsorship opportunities, Howe said.

To drive traffic, Singingfish has enlisted Omnicom Group's AtmosphereBBDO to create a rich media banner campaign--Singingfish's first ad initiative--promoting the upgraded search engine. Howe said Singingfish plans to advertise with Claria, WhenU, Gorilla Nation, Atom Films, ArtistDirect, and BlogAds, and will make cost-per-click text ad buys on Google and IndustryBrains.

So far, word of mouth has been the key driver of traffic to the site, said Howe. Since AOL acquired it in November 2003, traffic on Singingfish.com has grown from a few thousand to over 700,000, according to the company.

To date, most of Singingfish's business has come from licensing its technology to major Web portals and online media companies. Singingfish multimedia search results currently appear on WindowsMedia.com, RealNetworks, InfoSpace, and AOL. There are approximately 7 million queries per day across all of Singingfish's search properties, according to Howe.

The median age of the company's users is young: 19 to 20 years old. Most users (both in the United States and internationally) fall between the ages of 16 and 24, split 50-50 male-female.

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