“We’re watching the tipping point occur right now and sweeping industry upheaval may come sooner and more dramatically than many imagine.” – Paul Sagan, CEO of Akamai
Retailers take note: Video sells
According to comScore, the number of online shoppers who watched retail videos grew 40% in a single year. Granted, the numbers come from a small base and most retailers have only just begun experimenting with online product videos, but early indications point to product videos becoming a powerful sales tool.
“Among the benefits of videos touted by Web retailers are a lower number of abandoned shopping carts, reduced return rates and higher sales,” says Jeffrey Grau, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, Video Usage in E-Commerce: The Best Is Yet to Come. “And those are just some of the benefits.
“Once retailers build up the video content on their sites, they will focus on turning their video assets into customer acquisition tools by pushing video to other sites, such as affiliates, social networks and video-sharing destinations,” says Mr. Grau.
“Retailers will also place community elements around their videos to make it easy for consumers to upload them to social networks, blogs, bookmarking services or e-mails.”
BeetTV (YouTube)
“Exposure to online video advertising can lead to a 20-40 percent increase in buying a product or service.” – Gian Fulgoni, comScore Co-Founder and Chairman
Why you need to create video for the web
Advertising revenue is down, newspapers are struggling and as the economy takes a downturn production costs are up, at the same time online readership and revenue continue to rise. So what’s the answer? Go where the eyes are – video is now a medium of conversation.
TV advertising is fleeting and expensive; after the cost of creating your media, you pay for your slot and when it’s gone it’s gone. Online video on the other hand, can be made at a fraction of the cost, and if you spread it intelligently it’s viewable forever.
Online video is also instantly global, searchable, on demand and with viewing stats that are easily measured.
Whether you want content for your website, to launch a brand or product, produce video news releases, or just show the human side of your organisation, you need to have a presence in the digital world and use online video.
BeetTV (YouTube)
While Google, Yahoo! and AOL are focused on advertising-based business models around online video, Microsoft is advancing into the area it knows the best; software and services.
Q&A on the opportunities offered by online video
To get some front-line opinion of the marketplace, Econsultancy spoke to Nick Bell, co-founder of the up-and-coming interactive video platform, Quick.tv, about this complex and often overlooked marketing medium.
To cut straight to the chase: what’s happening in the online video marketplace?
Over the past few years, online video has seen huge growth in terms of both deployment and views, but also revenue generated. Publishers and retailers have realised that video is the most effective communication method, as demonstrated by the long dwell times and recollection statistics… but the cost of production is still high and the accountability of standard play/pause/stop video is still low.
However, the cost of content delivery continues to drop, making professional playout more affordable and new production technologies allow content to be created more affordably. But despite this, most professional online video is originally produced for offline distribution, which continues to hinder the market, as this content is then ‘re-versioned’ to be displayed in a smaller online window. This non interactive, linear content is completely at odds with the ethos of the internet.
Video is currently quite a difficult medium to engage users, do you think this will shift at all in the near future
I think video is THE most engaging medium, I think the problem is measuring engagement and creating accountable content with strong calls to actions embedded within video. The one problem at the moment is that in most cases, there is no way to directly link viewings to sales or any other consequential action, something which will change with interactive video and how it’s adopted as a marketing and sales channel.
What advice would you give to those considering video advertising?
Don’t just take an offline video and stick it on the internet. Until recently, there was a TV ad running on the homepage of a major financial institution, in which the call to action was to visit their homepage.
My advice is also to be clear about your objectives, whether advertising or otherwise: consider what footage you already have and whether a re-edit or more is needed. Then, make the clip web-ready to optimise engagement, response rates and accountability, through the interactive and dynamic features that are currently available. Finally, publish wisely and try not to become too complacent when you see the great results start coming through…
How to make online video grow
“We’re seeing right now for 2009 a growth of USD 699 million over USD 530 million last year. So that’s 32% growth this year. That’s good, all things considered. For 2010, it will reach USD 864 million, up 23.5%.” – Brian Wieser, Senior Vice President, Global Director of Forecasting at MAGNA, a division of Interpublic Group’s Mediabrands.
Related: Emirates Business 24|7
Internet TV gains ground in region
MBC Group and etisalat announced that more than 8 million videos have been viewed through internet TV platform on MBC’s Shahed Online by June 2009. The service was launched during Ramadan 2008.
MBC officials also conveyed that such a large hit in a short period of three quarters delivers a cost-affective medium for potential advertisers. The website hosted more than five million, five-second, pre-roll ads and hundreds of thousands of post-roll ads.
“Internet TV is a next-generation distribution channel, which has the capability to provide a global reach. Our Shahed Online service is a success story, which we can share with our advertising partners and provide a new and efficient way to implement their media strategies. These results show internet TV is a channel that has the power and ability to attract customers and build brand value.” said Dr. Ammar Bakkar, Group Director of New Media at MBC group.
Filed under: Research, Summaries , BeetTV, comScore, Econsultancy, eMarketer, Google Business, MAGNA, Microsoft, Online video, Quick.tv
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