FuseMedia: Video for Business

2011-01-24T10:23:00.000-08:00

How Online Video Can Reach the Business Audience

JANUARY 24, 2011

Even busy executives want to do more than just read on the web

Executives with no time for fun and games do have time for the sound and motion of video, according to findings from Forbes Insights. In some cases, they may actually prefer it to text for learning about products and services.

A majority of businesspeople surveyed by Forbes in October 2010 said they watched more online video than a year earlier. Nearly 60% of all respondents said they would watch video before reading text on the same webpage, and 22% said they generally liked watching video more than reading text for reviewing business information. Three-quarters of all executives said they watched work-related videos on business websites at least once a week, and more than half did the same on YouTube.

Video can be highly effective for merchants. The executives surveyed reported taking a wide variety of actions after watching online videos, with about two-thirds visiting vendor websites subsequent to viewing and more than half searching for more information. Especially among younger executives, likelihood of making a purchase was high.

Generational differences ran throughout the Forbes research, with a split in behavior at age 50. While the youngest executives were most interested in video across the board, baby boomers in their 40s had comparable participation levels. It was older executives who had not yet gotten on board with video, and business-to-business marketers must continue to reach them through other means.

But video has only become more important for the younger set, and marketers can depend on them to watch, pass along, recommend—and often, enter the purchase funnel.

Video = Fastest Growing Website Feature

2010-04-03T13:48:00.000-07:00

By Mark Robertson, RealSEO
Small businesses have been racing to get their websites video-capable over the past year - and those same small businesses are spending more on paid search advertising. According to a new report, small business advertisers spent more than twice as much on paid search and nearly 4 times as many of them reported having video on their website vs. a year ago.

Local online advertising firm WebVisible just released the second installment of their study, “State of Small Business Online Advertising,” which examines trends among their nearly 12000 small business advertisers and represents around $22M in Q4 2009 U.S. small business advertiser spending.

While there are a lot of nuggets of data about where SMBs are headed with online advertising, I thought I would take some time to highlight the aspects of the data that most apply to our readers: video, search, and conversion.

Video Continues to be Both the Present and the Future

In fact, “video capability” was the single fastest growing feature that small businesses added to their website. In the same quarter of the previous year, only 5% of small business websites had video. In Q4 of 2009, that number climbed to 19%–four times as many. That’s rapid growth for just one year.
I expect this number to jump significantly again in the coming year. It’s one of the best ways to engage your audience, and is rapidly becoming one of the best ways to position your company in front of those that are seeking out your product or service via search.

Speaking of Search Engines…

There are many findings in the report that might pique your interest. For example, small businesses seem to be leading the charge on embracing Google’s competitors (Bing, Ask, and Yahoo) for advertising purposes. The click through rates from 2008 to 2009 may point to one reason why these companies are moving some spend to Bing and Yahoo. In 2009, the click through rates for Google improved over 2008 by about 32%. However, for Yahoo, the jump was 123% and Bing went up 109%. Google still trounces them both on cost-per-click, which can matter greatly assuming similar conversions.

Overall, spending by small businesses on search advertising rose to an average of $2,149—that’s an increase of 111% over Q4 2008 and a jump of 30% over Q3 2009. No one should be surprised by these numbers, and you can certainly expect to see them climbing again in the next WebVisible report.

Here’s a quote from Kirsten Mangers, the CEO of WebVisible, that is both a statement of the obvious and the most important thing that you (as well as webvisible customers, partners, etc..) can glean from this article:

“These numbers show increased confidence by small businesses in using search to gain leads – and increased ability to turn those leads into sales.”

Conversion Rates are Rising?

Any form of advertising that captures the imagination of cost-conscious local merchants has to be effective. And by that measure, online video is hot. It would be tough for the small business to stay in online advertising if they couldn’t see conversions going up as a result. Small companies rarely have the luxury of throwing money at campaigns for brand awareness.

Which is why these increases in spending are exciting—it shows that online advertising is working for many small businesses. In my experience, these small business owners rarely make marketing decisions based on gut feelings. Even when they do, their focus quickly changes away from the novelty of the medium onto measured effectiveness. In the end, it’s usually something quantifiable on the bottom line that informs and guides their spending decisions.

The conversion stats are pretty impressive, with 35.5% of clicks resulting in conversion actions (versus 32% for the previous quarter and 26.6% for the same quarter of the previous year).

As a side note, keep in mind that it is also true that small business advertisers are becoming more and more sophisticated over time when it comes to tracking and measuring online advertising effectiveness. This may just be an indication of that welcome trend.

Glance back over the stats I shared above… are you seeing a pattern? More small businesses are spending their ad dollars online, implementing online video and targeting search… which is leading to better click through rates and higher conversion rates.

Summary & Takeaways for Small Businesses:

1) Get video on your website. There’s not a single business I’ve met that can’t find a way to use video to improve customer relations, branding, or profits. When small businesses are racing to get their websites video-capable, you know it has officially moved from gimmicky entertainment to a legitimate business tool.

2) Remove the blinders and consider going beyond Google for some of your search ad spend. The click-through-rates may be rising faster on these engines, and there is certainly evidence to suggest that conversions for certain types of small businesses are higher on the secondary engines than on Google. But at the very least: try advertising on search engines!

3) Finally, don’t let your advertising efforts and your new found passion for video blind you from the most important conversion piece in the entire chain: your own website. Make it video capable, make it pretty, and make it useful. While video and search can be huge wranglers of traffic to your site, they are only part of the conversion process. You haven’t really helped your business until the conversion action takes place.

Search and video will definitely work to help market your business online. But they are only pieces of the puzzle. As most small business owners know all too well, at the end of the day you still have to have an attractive, useful product or service. If you skip that step… all the fancy web marketing in the world won’t

FuseMedia reccomends reading the following article:

2010-02-24T12:56:00.000-08:00

The 'Cadillac' Of Online Video Advertising
by Alex Rowland, Media Post Publications

Most online video advertising today sucks. It essentially comes in two main flavors: annoying (pre-rolls) and distracting (auto-play banners and overlays). And if you look at where money is being spent in online video advertising today, it is weighted heavily toward the annoying end of the spectrum.

The good news is that brands are evolving their approach to online video and experimenting more aggressively with longer-form videos that can stand on their own. In response, a new standard is taking shape that prescribes best practices to both the creation and distribution of these videos. You could call this standard the "Cadillac" of online video advertising.

How did we get here?

Most online video ads can trace their roots to television ads, which come in the same basic flavors described above. They are designed to interrupt the stuff you want to watch with stuff you might want to watch (but probably didn't). These ads don't warrant their own attention; they leech attention away from what you elected to watch because they cannot stand on their own.

The problem with this model is that a growing majority of online video consumers are more likely to click away or simply ignore these types of ads. According to YouTube, 70% of its users responded that they would rather not watch a video at all if it carried pre-roll. Online viewers' attention span is shorter -- and, even more important, their patience for unwanted interruptions is growing thin.

Interruptive messaging is anathema online, where every piece of content is effectively on-demand. The path away from these forms of interruptive advertising will be a long one, given the scale of television advertising and the endemic attitudes of advertisers toward these types of traditional advertising approaches. Still, this shift is slowly beginning to take place.

We are seeing this shift materialize in the form of integrated branding in content. Over the past 24 months, more and more advertisers have begun to work to integrate their brands and messages more directly into serialized Web shows, viral videos, educational videos, and other forms of entertainment. These campaigns have moved from untested experiments to real projects with production and distribution budgets that often top seven figures.

This is a great start, demonstrating an evolving relationship between brand and consumer that will continue to play out over the coming decade. What has not changed significantly, however, is the distribution mechanism associated with these new efforts. While brands are beginning to pour critical investments into production, they are still distributing the resulting content as if it were nothing more than a banner ad.

This has been understandable. In-banner placement of branded video does give the advertiser access to the reach, targeting, and measurability which they have grown accustomed to in display. And the length of these shows typically precludes pre-roll or other in-stream placements.

Unfortunately, in-banner placement defeats much of the purpose of branded entertainment as a consumer engagement tool. A video placed this way may momentarily grab the viewer's attention, but rarely will it result in a full viewing of the video or a positive impression of the brand's messaging. In-banner, the viewer expects to see a commercial, not a piece of content. Instead, the goal should be to draw the viewer into the narrative of a show to take full advantage of the content investment. A better solution to distribution is emerging.

This leads us to one of the first practices of a 'Cadillac' video advertising effort: editorial placement of the videos. Editorial placement involves working with publishers to position the videos as compelling content and setting the expectation of the consumer in the right place. Now, building a large engaged audience through in-page or editorial placement is difficult, but the resulting engagement with the consumer is far more meaningful. Rather than enduring your message to reach the content, the message is the content. Consumers who elect to watch these videos are far more likely to watch a significant portion of the video and come away with a positive attitude towards the brand sponsor.

The leads us to the second practice: guaranteed user engagement. User engagement can be viewed as an extension of placement, but great placement does not always guarantee engagement across every publisher. The only way to ensure engagement is to set financial incentives around authentic engagement rather than impressions. Viewers can be directed to watch these videos via thumbnails, RSS feeds and placement within relevant articles, but distribution partners should be compensated based upon the number of user-initiated (or Click2Play) views they deliver as defined by the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

The third practice, without which the first two are rendered irrelevant: seamless brand integration. Falling under the qualifier "you know it when you see it," brand integrations into long-form video should add to the value of the content (or at least not detract from it). When brands, agencies or their production companies don't execute effectively on the integration, publishers will be less inclined to carry the content, and consumers less inclined to watch it. Overbearing messaging, poor product placement and poor creative execution can all result in negative brand impressions and an implosion of value for the message and the audience.

What many brands might find most surprising is that online video campaigns that have been organized around these "Cadillac" principles are not only more impactful, but also less expensive than the same campaigns delivered in-banner and optimized around CTRs and eCPMs. Much like the emergence of social media and branded app campaigns, branded entertainment represents another movement from "paid media" to what Fred Wilson has termed "earned media," and its implementation should reflect this migration.

Here's where the "Cadillac" analogy can move beyond the cliché of simply being the "best" to being the "most valuable." So, rather than making the traditional media buy through a network, it might be time to begin evaluating new syndication models that appropriately value the content, deliver interested audiences, and charge based upon performance rather than impressions.

It's time to test-drive the Cadillac.

Winterskol

2010-02-04T14:46:00.001-08:00

Tourism Video

Fiberforge

2010-02-04T14:44:00.001-08:00

Corporate Video

Internet Users Embrace TV - eMarketer

2009-12-22T09:07:00.000-08:00

Internet Users Embrace TV - eMarketer

Using Social Media Strategically - eMarketer

2009-12-21T08:13:00.000-08:00

Using Social Media Strategically - eMarketer

What Is the Outlook for Paid Video Content? - eMarketer

2009-12-21T08:02:00.000-08:00

What Is the Outlook for Paid Video Content? - eMarketer

Video Viewing, in Context - eMarketer

2009-12-17T11:05:00.000-08:00

Video Viewing, in Context - eMarketer

How Engaging Is Online Video? - eMarketer

2009-11-25T13:48:00.000-08:00

How Engaging Is Online Video? - eMarketer

FuseMedia Owl Creek Chase Video

2009-11-12T12:48:00.000-08:00

Online TV

2009-11-03T09:44:00.000-08:00

Survey: “TV Everywhere” Interest High, Studios Can Skip Middlemen To Maximize Profits

Study of 1300 Online Video Viewers Indicates Robust Market For Premium Digital Content

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:
Beck Media & Marketing

Research Triangle Park, NC - September 30, 2009

Digitalsmiths, the innovative multi-screen media analysis, operations and publishing technology provider announced today the results of a survey authored by The Diffusion Group (TDG) that examines premium video viewing habits.

Among other insights, the survey of 1300 regular viewers of digital video revealed:

Consumers want “TV Everywhere”- style content access, and many of them are already accessing video content on a wide variety of devices. Users will pay an additional monthly fee for seamless access to a TV Everywhere-type service that can be viewed on PCs and mobile devices.
Consumers are willing to pay to rent premium content on-demand from studio-branded rental sites. Such sites would eliminate the middlemen found in the EST (Electronic Sell-Through) and VOD (Video On Demand) models.

The TDG whitepaper, analyzing the premium studio-branded rental site model, will be made available courtesy of Digitalsmiths in mid-October.

“I think what you see with this data is a continued upward trend in premium video viewing, combined with a clear endorsement of two profit models, namely premium studio-branded content sites and ‘TV Everywhere’,” said Andy Tarczon, founding partner, The Diffusion Group.

The results showed that nearly 25 percent would be willing to pay $10-15 a month for a premium “TV Everywhere” service allowing them to view premium content on their television, computer or mobile device and that a third of consumers are willing to pay studios a direct rental fee of $2-3 for the option to view a movie or television series on those same devices.

“We found these survey results to be extremely insightful and wanted to publish them as soon as possible,” said Ben Weinberger, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Digitalsmiths. “This data shows that consumers would like to access and interact with content everywhere, anytime, on every device – and that they are willing to pay to do so.”

The survey also asked consumers about their viewing habits and what would make them more likely to use a video site. 41 percent of respondents say that in the last month have watched video on several devices other than a computer or laptop, including mobile phones, portable video players, televisions and portable gaming players.

Nearly 60 percent of those surveyed said if they have the opportunity to use advanced “Google-like” search capabilities in video to locate specific scenes, segments, dialogue, characters, actors, or locations within an online movie or television series then they will be more likely to use a particular video site. Over 41 percent also said they will be more likely to visit a video site if they have the ability to create customized clips from online films and television programs to share with friends, post to video sharing sites or create mobile ringtones – demonstrating that consumers want the ability to interact with and customize their favorite content.

About Digitalsmiths
Digitalsmiths provides the industry’s only studio grade digital media analysis, operations and publishing solution with an advanced, time-based metadata framework that empowers digital media companies to distribute premium video content across multiple platforms, open up new revenue streams for film and TV assets, and build audience.

The company’s flagship product, VideoSense®, powers the digital media operations, publishing and analytics for today’s leading Hollywood studios, broadcasters, distributors and publishers including Warner Bros., Telepictures and TMZ.com. Digitalsmiths was named one of the "Top 45 Companies to Watch" by Dow Jones, one of the “OnHollywood Top 100” and “OnGlobal 250” by AlwaysOn, "Technology of the Year" by North Carolina's Council for Entrepreneurial Development (CED), and winner of the "Streaming Media Readers' Choice Awards."

About TDG
The Diffusion Group is a consumer technology research and strategic marketing firm built by a team of seasoned consumer technology analysts. They have quickly grown to become one of the largest research firms dedicated to the Digital Home and connected consumer.

The Diffusion Group's mission is simple: to provide timely, actionable intelligence designed to best position new new consumer technologies for rapid diffusion. They go beyond offering simple ACCESS to numbers and forecasts and assist in the APPLICATION of this market knowledge directly to the clients' needs.

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Behavioral Targeting Moves Into Video Ads

2009-09-09T13:02:00.000-07:00

Article from: Media Post's Behavioral Insider
by Laurie Sullivan , Wednesday, September 9, 2009

BrightRoll just unveiled a program to target consumers with banner and streaming ads based on their behavior across the Web.

The video network ranks No. 3 with 51,250 total unique viewers, taking 34.1% of the market, according to comScore's Metrix Key Measures Report Top 100 Video Properties for May 2009.

Tod Sacerdoti, BrightRoll's cofounder and CEO, provided some insight on the benefits and the challenges for BT in video today and down the road. Could BT become an accelerator for a variety of video ads? If you look at the growth rate of BT and video, separately, you realize they are about the same size and growing approximately at the same rate, Sacerdoti says.

In August, comScore released July 2009 data showing 158 million U.S. Internet users watched online video during the month, the largest audience ever recorded -- who viewed a record total of 21.4 billion videos.

Advertisers get the model and how it works, but have traditionally felt online video didn't give them enough control to target specific consumers. Sacerdoti estimates BT for video ads won't exceed more than 25% of the business any time soon, but it will grow to that within the next year or two. The data from the technology providers will spur the uptick.

Historically, data ownership has been presented as a competitive advantage. Ad networks didn't own the inventory, but owned the data. Since eXelate has opened the data to many companies, networks now have a new responsibility to find advertisers the best data, too. Once access to data becomes open in an exchange format, what does it do to display networks that viewed their data as a competitive advantage? It opens interesting doors to the change of power from traditionally large networks into a new video BT category.

The industry will go through challenges as more BT video ad targeting comes online -- for starters, finding ways to effectively package and sell data in a market that buyers can understand. Sacerdoti says BrightRoll gets requests continually to target specific audiences, such as age 18 to 22 males who watch HBO and own a scooter. On the flip side, he gets targets that are way off the mark -- in which case, the account manager must set the client straight.

Sacerdoti says there's no BT data to pull and store in servers. The data is stored in computer cookies that map to segments on BrightRoll servers. The data is leveraged on the fly or in bunches based on campaigns. BrightRoll only needs to store the data in the segments that have been served, so they can go back and refer to the sucess or failure of the campaign.

BrightRoll has been testing the service for a few months, but it's a little early to say how "much it will move the needle for the business," Sacerdoti says. "In the next month or two we will have a little better feeling, particularly for the in-market category, as auto comes back."

Laurie Sullivan can be reached at sullivan@mediapost.com.

Why Not Merge TV And Internet?

2009-09-02T11:23:00.000-07:00

by Michael Kokernak , Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Internet video distribution today seems like the inevitable path media companies are going to take in order to ensure their content gets to consumers. But big media needs to figure out a way to operate (for at least the next five to seven years) with one foot firmly planted in today's TV distribution platform, while incubating their Internet audiences.

Decades were spent getting the digital standard ready for prime time. During the process the industry communicated to vendors how to make digital television sets and how new transmission equipment needed to work. This expensive digital TV rebuild brought about a flurry of industry PR by networks on why cable companies should be paying more for HDTV content. Broadcasters have also been trying to play catch-up; they want to see their compensation someday match the cable networks' subscriber fees.

Cable Holding Tight onto Content

As the cablers (like Comcast and Cablevision) renew content agreements, they are also spending to rebuild their cable systems with next-generation transmission equipment like switched digital video and network DVR technologies. These rebuilds put pressure on the cablers to try to manage content costs. In addition, they are simultaneously trying to fend off competitors, like Verizon's FIOS, by increasing available HDTV channels and launching new services (like TV Caller ID). Hence as programmers try to find their own Internet audience, the cable guys want to keep the revenue behind their walled garden, or at least position themselves to share in some of the upside of Internet distribution.

Impossible Could Be Possible

Once the digital transition fog lifts and the industry looks at the current distribution ecosystem, we might find that TV Everywhere and Hulu (to just name two) should technically be integrated with the digital spectrum and cable distribution. We, for instance, should probably be concentrating our efforts on how to combine the Internet and the digital television experience so consumers get content delivered through one seamless "platform."

Cross-platform technologies could satisfy everyone, including the consumer, while also building revenue streams that are integrated across both TV and the Internet. After all, wouldn't you like to be able to click your TV remote control and move the TV show you are watching to the Internet without missing a punch line?

Web Video Marketing 101

2009-07-20T15:17:00.000-07:00

Whether you’re trying to drive B2B sales, interact with consumers, or create visibility for your non-profit, there is no denying the utility of web video marketing. But many executives are faced with a litany of questions and concerns about the process of using web video to reach their clients: How do I go about implementing web video into my marketing efforts? What kind of expertise do I need to create web video content? Isn’t web video marketing expensive? Is it effective? How do I track ROI for video marketing campaigns? To get you started on the path to video marketing greatness, the Web Video Marketing Council offers answers to these questions and many more.

Is Web Video Marketing Effective?

In short, yes. Web video marketing is one of the most effective methods of generating authentic interaction between your company and your clients, prospective customers, and/or potential donors. Research done by DoubleClick reveals that web users are four to seven times more likely to respond to online video content than to static images and text. Biologically speaking, the human brain is able to compile and interpret video data faster than it can interpret text, which means less effort on the part of your audience to absorb your message. According to the most recent Neilsen A2/M2 three-screen report, Americans are watching more video on the Internet and on mobile devices than ever before. “The American fascination with television and other video content is not easing up,” said Susan Whiting, Nielsen’s Vice Chair. “Online and mobile platforms are an increasingly important complement to live home-based television.”

Web video marketing taps into exactly this burgeoning trend in contemporary media consumption. Using web-based video, your company can inject itself directly into the mainline of online advertising, reaching an almost unlimited set of potential buyers who will experience your company’s message in alluring rich media. With such upside, it would be imprudent for any company to ignore web video marketing as a solution to their marketing needs.
Do I Need to Have a Special Set of Skills to Create and Distribute Web Video Content?

It used to be the case that creating and distributing web video required a lot of expensive equipment and fancy programming. Today that is hardly the case.

How Can I Implement Web Video into my Marketing Strategy?

There are many ways that companies like yours are implementing web video into their marketing processes.

Interactive Advertising

Rich-media advertising got its start as an interactive banner when Hewlett-Packard released a Pong banner ad in the mid-nineties. Today, effective rich media advertising in the form of expanding ads, overlays and rollovers, represents a significant percentage of all online advertising. While it is true that many ads use Flash as merely an attention-grabber, the most effective examples of interactive advertising to date, such as the popular Esurance banner ads, incorporate video.

Pre-Roll, Mid-Roll, and Post-Roll Advertising

If you’ve done your research, you know exactly which videos and video sites your prospective customer, client, or donor visits on a regular basis. Imagine one of your potential buyers being exposed to a fifteen second video ad for your company before he watches a related video. That’s the power of pre-roll advertising. Mid-roll works similar to a TV commercial, interrupting an online video to show your ad. Post-Rolls show up at the end of a video, and are particularly effective if the ad and the video match closely in content, tone or theme.

Direct Email Marketing

The most targeted approach to web video marketing is through direct email campaigns. Emails are sent to existing or prospective buyers, who are asked to take a moment to view the video that you have published. Now, most email clients don’t support viewing videos, so the safe bet is to include a video still in the email which links to the video itself. That actually works to your advantage: if you have to link to an outside site, you can customize that site with links to product descriptions, pricing guides, white papers, or any other portal into the sales cycle.

What are the Advantages of Web Video Marketing?

What can you do better with web video marketing than with more traditional static media? Lots of stuff!

Engage Your Customer

As we’ve discussed, and as you’ve probably observed yourself, video is more engaging than static images or texts could ever be. Web video is sleek and stylish, and if done right it can resonate deeply with your audience. So how do you do it right? As with all marketing messages, keep the audience in mind. Use you-centric language; discuss how your company’s product is a solution to their problem. And if you can do that in a creative and meaningful way, you’ve just created the most influential kind of marketing tool there is: inspired web video.

Increase Lead Generation

The trick to using video to create leads is to leave the message incomplete in some way, and then to include a call to action for the audience to find out more. Yellowbook effectively drove traffic to its website this way, using TV ads that only told part of a story and directed users to visit the website to see the conclusion. For a more subtle approach, try suggesting how your product might help a customer, and then asking the customer to visit your website for more information.

Tell a Story

Sometimes nothing sells a product better than an intriguing story. It could be the story of how your company was founded, or the passion with which your product is made, or the money your company has raised over the years for a particular charity. Whatever it is, if you have a story to tell, web video can help you put real people front-and-center in a way that text just can’t.
Rally the Troops

Maybe your goal isn’t to try and sell something to a customer, but to gain support for a cause or business initiative. What better rallying cry is there than an inspired bit of video distributed via email to remind partners, investors and employees exactly what you’re doing and why you’re doing it? Few things are more inspiring that someone speaking passionately about a goal they want to achieve. This sentiment is best conveyed through video.

We hope that this article answered any question you might have about starting up your own web video marketing campaign. Thanks for reading, and check back soon for more great articles!

Article Extracted From: Video Marketing Council