US Online Video Best Practice
Content
Market Data / Supplier Selection / Event Presentations / User Experience Benchmarking / Best Practice
Online Video
A Best Practice Guide
Online Video
A Best Practice Guide
Published
July 2011
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Contents
1. Introduction ..................................................................... 4 2. About Econsultancy ......................................................... 5
2.1. About the author ......................................................................... 5
3. Introduction: Online Video Strategy ............................... 6
3.1. 3.2. 3.3. 3.4. 3.5. Why now? .................................................................................... 7 Where online video fits in ........................................................... 8 Content is King ............................................................................ 9 Key factors to consider .............................................................. 10 How this guide is structured ...................................................... 11
4. Why Video Works: Strategic Benefits ........................... 12
4.1. 4.2. 4.3. 4.4. 4.5. Exposure ..................................................................................... 13 Delivering information in a different way .................................14 Increase sales conversions ......................................................... 15 Reduce abandonment and increase dwell-time ........................16 Brand engagement ..................................................................... 17
5. Your Strategy ................................................................. 19
5.1. Strategy setting tool ...................................................................19
5.1.1. 5.1.2. 5.1.3. 5.1.4. Defining your audience .......................................................... 19 Setting business objectives ....................................................20 Choosing your team ...............................................................20 Why strategy is important .....................................................20
6. Online Video Essentials ................................................. 21
6.1. 6.2. How video works on websites .................................................... 21 Video formats ............................................................................. 21
6.2.1. Flash video ............................................................................. 22 6.2.2. HTML5 ................................................................................... 22
6.3.
Online video platforms .............................................................. 23
6.3.1. Choosing your OVP ................................................................ 23 6.3.2. YouTube and Vimeo............................................................... 24
6.4.
Digital rights management (DRM) & video security ................ 25
6.4.1. RTMP ..................................................................................... 25 6.4.2. DRM ....................................................................................... 26
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6.4.3. IP Security .............................................................................. 26
6.5.
Social sharing ............................................................................ 26
6.5.1. 6.5.2. 6.5.3. 6.5.4. Comments .............................................................................. 27 Ratings ................................................................................... 27 Content re-posting ................................................................. 27 Viral video ..............................................................................28
7. Getting an Audience ...................................................... 29
7.1. 7.2. 7.3. 7.4. 7.5. Existing customers and channels ............................................. 29 Email distribution ..................................................................... 30 Seeding content ......................................................................... 30
7.3.1. Top US content destinations ................................................. 31
Pre-roll and advertising ............................................................ 32
7.4.1. Top US online video ad properties ........................................ 33
Video search engine optimisation (SEO).................................. 34
7.5.1. Video SEO tool ....................................................................... 34
8. Measurement ................................................................. 36
8.1. 8.2. 8.3. 8.4. 8.5. 8.6. What you can measure .............................................................. 36 Interpreting video analytics ...................................................... 38 Integrating video metrics into other tools ................................ 40 Informing other marketing channels ....................................... 40
8.4.1. Following the conversation....................................................40
A/B and multivariate testing (MVT) .........................................41 Improving performance ............................................................ 42
9. Producing Content ......................................................... 43
9.1. 9.2. 9.3. 9.4. 9.5. 9.6. 9.7. 9.8. 9.9. Writing briefs ............................................................................ 43
9.1.1. Video brief setting tool........................................................... 43
Selecting a supplier ................................................................... 44 Top tips for picking the perfect partner ................................... 45 What to expect ........................................................................... 45 Producing in-house ................................................................... 46 Choosing equipment ................................................................. 46 Basic production techniques ..................................................... 47 Planning and execution ............................................................. 48 User-generated content............................................................. 50
10. Legislation ...................................................................... 51
10.1. Accessibility controls .................................................................. 51 10.2. Other benefits of compliance ..................................................... 51
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11. The Future of Online Video ........................................... 52
11.1. 11.2. 11.3. 11.4. Trends ........................................................................................ 52 Monetisation.............................................................................. 53 Mobile video and Connected TV ............................................... 53 In conclusion ............................................................................. 54
12. Glossary .......................................................................... 55 13. Appendices ..................................................................... 57
13.1. Industry Experts‘ Biographies .................................................. 57
13.1.1. Chris Gorell Barnes ................................................................ 57 13.1.2. Will Grant............................................................................... 57 13.1.3. Mike Johnston ....................................................................... 57 13.1.4. Lee Kemp ............................................................................... 58 13.1.5. Bismarck Lepe........................................................................ 58 13.1.6. Stuart Maister ........................................................................ 58 13.1.7. Manley .................................................................................... 58 13.1.8. Joe Pélissier ........................................................................... 59 13.1.9. Sarah Wood ............................................................................ 59
13.2. Further and continued reading ................................................. 59
13.2.1. Sites ........................................................................................ 59 13.2.2. Charts .....................................................................................60
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1.
Introduction
Econsultancy‟s series of best practice guides have been created for internet professionals who typically work in marketing or e-commerce roles. The guides steer readers to ensure that projects and strategies are executed in the right way for optimal results. This guide to online video is specifically aimed at brand or marketing managers, content owners and digital marketers who are using video as a strategic tool. It aims to lay out everything that‘s happening in online video so you can choose the tools and techniques that will work for your project and achieve clear, measurable business objectives from online video. It‘s full of examples from some of the top people in online video to help you anticipate what will be relevant to your organisation in the future. We hope it proves useful to you.
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2.
About Econsultancy
Econsultancy is a digital publishing and training group used by more than 200,000 Internet professionals every month. The company publishes practical and time-saving research to help marketers make better decisions about the digital environment, build business cases, find the best suppliers, look smart in meetings and accelerate their careers. Econsultancy has offices in New York and London, and hosts more than 100 events every year in the US and UK. Many of the world‘s most famous brands use Econsultancy to educate and train their staff. Some of Econsultancy‘s members include: Google, Yahoo, Dell, BBC, BT, Shell, Vodafone, Virgin Atlantic, Barclays, Deloitte, T-Mobile and Estée Lauder. Join Econsultancy today to learn what‘s happening in digital marketing – and what works. Call us to find out more on +1 212 699 3626 (New York) or +44 (0)20 7269 1450 (London). You can also contact us online.
2.1.
About the author
Steffan Aquarone is a young entrepreneur who thrives on making things happen. At just 20 years of age, Steff was a founding director of a Top 50 corporate video production company. As Managing Director, he developed content for Land Rover, Vodafone and Massey Ferguson as well as leading the business through its first five years, managing 18 full-time staff. Steff is now a freelance digital entrepreneur working with early start-ups in the creative and digital sector as well as global brands like Tesco and Deloitte, helping them develop elements of their business strategy. He leads online video courses for Econsultancy and writes regularly on the future of video on the web. Still a producer active in the field, he is a director of the Producers‘ Forum, a member-led network for film & TV producers, a trustee of 100year-old Cadbury children‘s charity BAYC and co-owner of feature-film production company Immense Productions with best-selling comedy writer Guy Browning, which will release its first feature Tortoise in Love in 2011. Steff is an unflappable operator who can make things happen against the highest odds and speaks regularly to audiences about the highs and lows of business, young entrepreneurship and the power of digital marketing. He graduated from the University of Warwick with a BA (Hons) in 2006 and became a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2007.
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3.
Introduction: Online Video Strategy
Online video has exploded in the past five years. It‟s not simply here to stay: video is already an expected part of the user experience online and is fast becoming the most powerful way to reach new audiences. Your ability to use online video as a strategic tool for your brand or project relies on you having a thorough, up-to-date understanding of the creative as well as the technical aspects of online video. Although the barriers to entry are low, your online video will be competing for an audience with the world‘s best entertainment content in an environment where it‘s easier than ever for viewers to move on if they‘re not interested. Many brands have recognized the power of online video and have been investing heavily in it. One of the goals of this report is to share the success of some of these stories. But there are some basics that it‘s important to grasp too, such as how online video works, what social sharing means for online video, and what you can track to measure success.
Investing in online video
―Some brands get it, and some don‘t. Many see it as an extension of advertising, or a cheap alternative to it. Some even come to us saying know they‘ve got to do it but deliberate for months and don‘t ever commit to what they‘re going to do. ―In truth a lot of online teams are managing lots of different developments at once and one of our approaches is to use a strategic framework to help brands identify their priorities, then work out how they should organize and develop their content strategy and how best to leverage the content for maximum effectiveness.‖ Stuart Maister, Managing Director at BroadView Communications Online video is listed as one of the top ten strategic technology trends for 2011 (Gartner, 20101) and this year is expected to show the biggest growth in commercial use of online video yet. But in order to know how online video can help your organisation, you need to understand how it can help your customers. Knowing that content is king will help you avoid coming up with the next online video clanger. A strategic tool can‘t be deployed to solve all your problems at once and online video is no exception; you need clear, specific objectives to refer to in your thinking and your brief-setting. This report contains some tools to help you do that. It will also help you decide whether to commission from a production company, source from suppliers or produce your own video content in-house. Content may be king, but getting an audience to begin with is pretty important too. This report looks at the myriad of ways to reach audiences with your content and what you can expect by way of return on investment if you decide to commission services from third parties, whether in the new realm of content seeding or the more recognisable model of pre-roll advertising. As online audiences grow ever more discerning, it‘s vital to eject the relative security of traditional interruptive advertising from your mindset. Audiences no longer watch stuff because they have to, and it‘s important to understand that, in the long-term, your online video content has to be watchable and sharable if it‘s going to stand a chance of success. No report would be complete without a good deal of speculation about the future and we‘ve asked some of the top people in the field to give their opinions about what‘s in store for online video. As well as growth and innovation, this report also covers legislative considerations, such as the
1
http://www.gartner.com/it/content/1524600/1524620/february_9_top_10_strategic_tech_d cearley.pdf
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Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in the US. In the UK, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is taking a firmer stance on online activities. Whether it‘s tools, techniques, tips or tricks, this report should help you to progress your online video strategy with more confidence and the latest information at your fingertips.
3.1.
Why now?
Two key enablers led to the sudden rise of online video in 2006: TCP and broadband. TCP stands for ―Transmission Control Protocol‖ and was conceived back in the 1970s as part of the earlystage design of the language and function of the internet commonly referred to as ―TCP/IP‖. TCP is a way of allowing large chunks of data to be sent across the internet and it‘s the dominant method for most of the internet‘s most frequently used applications including the World Wide Web and email2. Although TCP has long been a reliable way of getting the right information to the right place, it prioritizes accuracy over timeliness. Videos are large files even when compressed, and it wasn‘t until the speed of connectivity within the internet itself rose that it was possible to deliver video online in anything like real-time. In the same year, YouTube‘s use grew from 30 million to 100 million views per day in a five-month period (Business Week, 20063) and the rest is, albeit incredibly recent, history.
Why this year?
―Video is rising in particular this year on the back of social media. It‘s been a bit of a second-class citizen until now, but it‘s an incredibly powerful thing. It started in retail and, by next year, I think most organisations will have a line for video in their marketing budgets.‖ Chris Gorell Barnes, Founder and CEO at Adjust Your Set One of the biggest and most obvious establishments to move into online video has been the stock of traditional media owners whose content, traditionally accessible via broadcast television, is now available online. The BBC iPlayer, which launched in beta in July 2007, is an obvious example. Traditional media owners also includes print and media organisations whose repertoire of media has extended into video. The rise of online video has been accompanied by all the norms and behaviours of traditional advertising in the form of ad breaks, advertorial and pre-roll. But the desire to watch video online has had more than infrastructural implications. Sites such as YouTube (launched in February 2005), Google Video, MSN Video and Yahoo Video allowed users to upload their own content. A generation of young people have become the first to see mobile phones and video cameras as virtually synonymous.
A user-generated future: a small selection of channels where users can upload their own video content
2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_Control_Protocol
3http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2006/07/youtube_100_mil.ht
ml
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The ability for anyone to upload a video they‘ve made has permeated technology in personal computers, smart phones, and video cameras. Even first generation ‗Connected TV‘ sets now provide YouTube and other online video access, as well as digital broadcast channels. Amateur producers are uploading everything from cats on skateboards and unsigned comedy routines to video blogs and citizen journalism. In fact, amateur clips gave the world the first images of the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami disaster. Probably the most significant thing about the rise in online video is that it‘s not a just a young person‘s game. The fact that more under 35s view online video than any other demographic is entirely attributable to their increased internet use generally (Comscore, 2010 4). But everyone seems to watch online video, regardless of age.
Online video in the UK
―Over 15 million people in the UK are going to watch 200 million videos today. ―Over 35 million people are going to watch an average of 17 hours of online video each this month‖ Marc Gosschalk, Senior Analyst, Comscore, ibid
3.2.
Where online video fits in
The fact that it‘s such an expected part of the online experience is probably why, here in 2011, online video is such an important consideration for brands. Traditional advertisers are seeing a lot of their ad spend being diverted towards advertising before, during and after content that is online rather than on TV. Newcomers who are investing in content for their brands for the first time are finding they can build audiences in new and powerful ways with some staggering success stories.
Case Study: Aussiebum
Video is a key part of Aussiebum‘s online offering, which founder Sean Ashby credits with increasing turnover by 40% from Au$16m to Au$23m in spite of a catastrophic climate for retail. ―When internet retail started they said that it would never overtake the experience of going into a store and shopping,‖ Sean told Fiona Graham of BBC news in December 2010. ―I think the same could be said online about video. Nothing can replace the experience of video compared to just an image. Video is the biggest competitor to shopping in a store itself.‖ As well as taking a high-profile place in the company‘s online offering, the content itself has been well thoughtout. Sean recognized the importance of keeping strong, branded content at the heart of the project: the videos are quirky and tongue-in-cheek in tone, and include an ‗on the street‘ experiment that asks men to test the claim (there and then) that the ‗Wonderjock‘ does for men what Wonderbra does for women. Aussiebum attributes the bottom-line benefit of their online video to the fact that customers find and enjoy the content, buy-in to the fun of the brand, and can then convert their interest into a sale. Jeremy Allaire, CEO of Brightcove, the online video platform that powers Aussiebum‘s online video, told BBC News:‖A video of a Thomas Pink shirt on YouTube doesn‘t do any good, but on their own website, as part of their brand experience, the brand context and the e-commerce experience - then it is very different.‖
4
http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Presentations_Whitepapers/2010/comScore_Data_ Passport_-_Second_Half_2010
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http://bit.ly/LZQF7 as told to BBC News, 2010 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11899824 Above all, millions of customers are using video as part of their daily lives: making it, watching it, and sharing it. Brands that want to be part of this activity need to understand it fully and manage it strategically. Discovering where it fits in best is a typical challenge for the content strategist. Organisations commission video from a variety of internal departments. To create an online video strategy for an entire organisation is a challenge but it‘s the sensible, practical way to ensure best practice. If you‘ve not already done so, create a map of the stakeholders in your organisation to whom your online video is important. You‘ll probably find people from different levels of most departments. If you‘re doing it right, your online video will be drawn from your brand‘s tone of voice, informed by your strategy, pitched at your defined market and driven by commercial objectives. This isn‘t going to happen if your online video is treated as a subset of e-commerce or online content management, or if it‘s left to the PR department.
3.3.
Content is King
People who are obsessed by using every new communications innovation are as bad as those who dismiss social media until it hits them in the face. Each brand or product is different and conversation will happen in different places online depending on the country or sector. But it will be happening, whether you like it or not. The first thing you need to do online is find out where the action is. In traditional advertising, there‘s a whole industry to tell you the value of each ad spot and who‘s likely to watch it. Online, your customers will choose where to be, and they‘ll move around freely and frequently. As marketers, you have to go and find them. If you create content that is written for your brand, saying the things you want to say, listing unsubstantiated reasons to buy the product, then however much effort you‘ve made and money you‘ve spent getting to the place where the conversation is happening, your customers will ignore you. Invest carefully, think about what you customers will want to see and hear, and you might find people will give you the time of day. Do it really well – create something so compelling, so interesting, funny or insightful that people genuinely enjoy your content, and you‘ll find that people might even recommend it around.
Content is King
―Content has to be interesting, entertaining or useful if it‘s going to work‖ Chris Gorell Barnes, founder and CEO at Adjust Your Set Just in case you‘re struggling with this, here‘s a clumsy analogy: the web is like a big nightlife area within a city. We all know by now that ―having a website‖ and ―being in a bar‖ are necessary but not sufficient conditions for success. You‘re not going to meet interesting people in a bar that‘s empty, or one that‘s full of the sorts of people you don‘t get on with. But finding the right bar is just part of the puzzle. You‘ve got to choose what to say. Wandering in without an introduction and talking loudly about how great you are isn‘t going to win you any friends. You can be bold, but if you‘re going to be loud you‘d better make sure you‘re funny. Try to listen and to have two-way conversations. Be interesting and people will want to listen to you. Be funny and they might laugh. Do some or both and they might like you and want to see you again.
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Next time someone hands you a corporate video brief, or a script, think about who it‘s been written for. Is it for the customer, who‘ll find it useful, interesting or entertaining? Or is it for the PR department, who want to ensure key messages are delivered? If the content isn‘t interesting, entertaining or useful, then these messages won‘t get through, simply because people will have moved on to something else long before they‘re even mentioned.
“Marketers forget they‟re talking to real people”
―So often I feel like the only guy in the room who‘s worried about the poor slobs who‘ve got to watch whatever thing is being talked about by everyone in the marketing and technical departments. ―You need to think about the lifestyle of the people who are in your target audience, not just about the product. Video might not be the tool to ask people for money to buy something – you might need to use another channel. But it can be the tool that creates the golden halo around your brand by providing content or solutions suited to their lifestyle.‖ Mike Johnston, Executive Producer at Boss Creative The simple fact is that online video doesn‘t involve someone being trapped into watching things in the way TV ads do, and this means that content producers have to work harder. It‘s easier for viewers to move away and not come back if they don‘t like what they see. The final thing to remember is that this doesn‘t just affect B2C or consumer marketing videos. All viewers are human beings. Rational, business decision-makers are time-poor so they will click-away if the content isn‘t valuable. But everyone prefers content that is engaging as well as informative.
3.4.
Key factors to consider
Before you launch into spending money on video or letting your brand be represented by someone from your office shrieking incoherently into a camcorder, take a step back to think about your strategy and what you‘re trying to achieve. Some of the most common mistakes are caused by spending too much too fast, and trying to adopt a new approach without due forethought.
“New uses for online video are constantly appearing but agencies are slow to respond”
―I really am surprised at how slow production companies and agencies have been at understanding, developing and mastering this. They‘re fixated with the direct response strategy. I try hard to convince people of the benefits true engagement can bring to their brand. Getting people to opt in and being able to help them can really make them love a brand more.‖ Mike Johnston, Executive Producer at Boss Creative Another factor to consider is where you spend your budget. This doesn‘t just mean the cost of production, because although content is king it‘s not going to get very far without distribution. The great thing about digital marketing is you get results quickly, meaning you can tweak and improve both your tactics and your budgets as you go.
“I‟m constantly surprised by the speed at which sharing has increased”
―Links are becoming a replacement for conversation - people will just share a link. It‘s a bit like ‗I tweet therefore I am‘. This might sound worrying to some, but the content that‘s coming out of all this is fantastic. There‘s a real chance that advertising might once again have the potential to drive both creativity and technology in the way that state funding doesn‘t have the ability to do right now. Brands have a big role to play in this future because they have the budgets - but they have to remember that online video is so democratic.‖
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Sarah Wood, COO at Unruly Media Having clear aims to direct your strategy is important and there are some tools to help you do this in the ‗Your Strategy‘ section.
3.5.
How this guide is structured
This guide has been assembled so you can dip in and out for information about key themes as you go, or indeed start from the place you think your current thinking has reached already. In this respect, the ‗basics‘ are laid out towards the front of the report, with sections like ―Online Video Essentials‖ and ―Your Strategy‖ before later sections where even the most advanced online video strategist should find some useful insights. Don‘t be fooled into thinking the ‗basics‘ are a given though. A great many brands are spending a lot of money doing ambitious, complicated things without coming to terms with some basic truths about what their customers actually want. There are quotes and tips from personal interviews with industry leaders throughout the report. Our experts have also contributed towards a broad range of case studies. Finally at the very end, after the Appendix, is an attempt to disambiguate a number of different words and phrases that have started to appear amongst the industry vocabulary with oftenunscrupulous purposes. The most sensible and therefore preferred terminology is referred to consistently in this report, but if you‘ve skimmed through the report and haven‘t spotted anything on ―in-stream ads‖ yet, check the appendix first.
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4.
Why Video Works: Strategic Benefits
Simply having it?
It‘s often said that web users nowadays expect video as part of their online experience. But simply having it is not enough. Five years ago, simply having a video would make a website stand out. But in 2011, expecting customers to want to watch your video, simply because it‘s there is tenuous, when what consumers now expect is relevant content that they can enjoy or find useful.
The biggest surprise
―The biggest surprise I‘ve experienced in online video so far is that most companies don‘t have a strategy, instead they‘re pursuing online video very tactically and are undoubtedly wasting money. Part of the reason for this might be the fact that no-one really owns online video within an organisation, but it doesn‘t have to be complicated; just plan your business strategy, organize your content, and leverage its value across your channels to reach your audience and drive the right calls to action.‖ Stuart Maister, Managing Director at BroadView Communications In spite of this apparent confusion about why they might be using online video in the first place, many projects have been successful for some key, definable reasons, which will be explored through case studies in this section.
“The reasons companies typically want to use video are often observations rather than objectives.”
―There‘s a realisation that they should be using it. And an observation that it‘s affordable and therefore accessible to them, perhaps for the first time. But we see a huge variance in terms of quality of material, and I put this down to companies having a lack of understanding about how to put it all together. ―The challenge is to get businesses to think like media publishers. There‘s nothing wrong with doing it all inhouse, but they need to learn how to plan, deliver and edit. Cheap and cheerful is fine, but you need to think about shelf-life.‖ Joe Pélissier, Marketing Consultant and Producer
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4.1.
Exposure
Whether through search (via blended search engine results pages) or social media, video has the potential to create exposure for a brand. If your core aim is to reach eyes and ears, the ‗Getting Your Audience‘ section will outline ways to pay for your content to be seen, whether through promoted YouTube appearances (http://www.youtube.com/t/advertising_overview) or traditional media buying online. Exposure for exposure‘s sake begs the question of what the true strategic objective is, and even the simplest exposure strategy should include tools to drive click-through, or at the very least be able to attribute the benefits of video views to bottom-line objectives.
Case Study: will.i.am‟s Yes We Can
―In the category of videos that shaped the game, the will.i.am Yes We Can video is one of my all-time favourites. In January 2008, will.i.am wrote a song, ―Yes We Can‖ in support of Barack Obama‘s campaign. The lyrics of the song are composed almost entirely of excerpts from Obama‘s speech on January 8, 2008. The music video attracted three million views within a week and over four million subsequently on YouTube and by June had won an Emmy for ‗New Approaches in Daytime Entertainment‘. It‘s a video that paints a picture of a world full of hope.‖ Sarah Wood, COO at Unruly Media http://bit.ly/4G34rg Turning completely away from purchased audiences or heavily invested-in brand awareness, online video offers a more meritocratic means of raising awareness than perhaps any other medium, so long as you can deliver something of value to your audience:
Case Study: Lauren Luke
Lauren Luke is a self-taught make-up artist who became a mother at 16 and decided to start recording make-up tips and tutorials from her home in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. People who watched her videos started asking her questions about how to achieve the looks she was demonstrating and her channel has since attracted over 111 million views, and is one of the most subscribed-to channels on YouTube in the UK. http://bit.ly/6pMi
“The key to honest communication is letting people speak”
―I‘ve been consistently amazed at how quickly brands – or people – can build a following using online video. ―The lesson here for brands is about passion, enthusiasm and honesty. The expert or front-person could come from anywhere in your organisation. Relationship marketing is about letting people speak – Jamie Oliver has a webmaster present his videos. But don‘t forget to teach them how to present and talk to camera too – something which Lauren Luke is clearly very good at naturally.‖ Joe Pélissier, Marketing Consultant and Producer
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4.2.
Delivering information in a different way
Video can make complex propositions really simple
―Salesforce.com had an early, simple video explaining how cloud computing worked. It explained it to me, and I bought.‖ http://bit.ly/DkIA5 Stuart Maister, Managing Director at BroadView Communications One of the great things about video is the sheer amount of information you can get across in a short space of time. If you‘re talking about a product that someone wants to explore, it‘s a step or two short of being able to put the object in their hand. Things that are hard to convey in photos, such as movement add a new dimension. For example, letting viewers see a video of what a set of clothing looks like on someone. Training and professional content has long made use of video as part of the media mix for delivering learning and development messages. But it‘s the shift towards video as the preferred communications medium for people to ingest information that calls for a strategic look at video across an organisation‘s training or internal communications function. Using video may stimulate greater uptake, or achieve higher reach, but unless it‘s relevant and engaging, you can expect dwindling update and poor information retention.
Case Study: Embrace Life
―Embrace Life‖ is Sussex Road Safety Partnership‘s award-winning seatbelt advocacy commercial, created by Writer/Director Daniel Cox and Producer Sarah Alexander. In the ten months since its launch in January 2010, the advert gathered over 11.8million views on YouTube alone. Created to raise awareness of the importance of wearing a seatbelt, Embrace Life was deliberately developed to provide a counter-point to the hard-hitting ‗shock and awe‘ advertising so common to road safety. The campaign has scooped a wide range of awards, including YouTube Ad of the Year, a Prince Michael International Road Safety Award, Gold World Medal at the New York International Advertising Awards, Bronze Lion at the Cannes International Advertising Awards and Highly Commended from the Chartered Institute of Highways and Transportation. A ‗traditional TV‘ ad, perhaps, but one whose reach and impact spread far wider online with the Partnership receiving hundreds of requests for the advert to be screened around the world from non-governmental organisations, government bodies, local TV stations and driving organisations all keen to raise awareness. ―This is my favourite online video of all time. As I understand it, the client put a brief out there, and the producers went back and said they had an idea, but it would cost considerably more than the stated budget. The client loved the idea and found the money. It‘s a great testimony to courageous commissioning, and to originality: they managed to present a positive message out of a very negative theme dominated by a certain genre.‖ Lee Kemp, MD at Fullrange. http://bit.ly/a8t5I2
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4.3.
Increase sales conversions
Across the web, the organisations that have so far invested the most in online video are retailers, perhaps in part due to the way its deployment can be attributed directly towards bottom-line objectives like higher sales. And yet many retailers who have invested in online video have done so without a complete strategy.
“It‟s staggering how few retailers are optimising their video content.”
―Only half of retailers have their video content properly listed in Google, for example. One of the things our system does is refresh brand-owners‘ video sitemaps on Google every day, so there‘s the greatest chance of their content being found.‖ Will Grant, Creator of Buto It‘s not just about metrics either – a successful product video strategy needs to think about context as well as content. The success rate of using video for different types of product might vary. If you‘re promoting your video micro-site as a destination within its own right, you need to make sure you‘re choosing your featured products wisely. Otherwise, you risk losing valuable site visitors into a TV Channel page that hasn‘t taken them through to either a purchase, part of the catalog or to a compelling reason to continue browsing. Flagship, high-margin items will be the most profitable areas to start with, and complex products that require demonstration might see the biggest uplift.
Case Study: M&S TV
Two years old in March 2011, M&S TV is continuing to deliver a new form of customer engagement, resulting in longer dwell times, repeat site visits and a significant uplift in conversions. M&S is known for its innovative online approach and with online predicted to plateau in growth over the coming years, the retailer was keen to find ways of growing its online business while retaining the customers already visiting the site. In addition to enhancing the experience, the channel had to ultimately drive sales. M&S TV was launched with a range of objectives including: Raise the level of customer engagement Illustrate the hidden stories beyond the shop floor Provide an elevated customer experience by raising the level of information available around key product ranges Allow deeper insight into the company‘s social and environmental responsibility programme, Plan A Streamline the shopping experience through sympathetic integration of e-commerce tools Increase sales The Solution, M&S TV, is a collection of over 500 films divided into 12 channels. Each channel focuses on a particular company theme or business vertical. To maintain brand consistency, the channels are managed by a central commissioning team with staff from both M&S and Adjust Your Set. This team also plans future content and measures consumer response. The films tend to be under two minutes long, in order to fit the consumption patterns associated with branded channels. In order to maximize engagement and conversions, links are weaved throughout the editorial, and displayed prominently next to the player. M&S TV has been a huge success. Just one year into the project more than three million minutes of content had been viewed, and delivered the following results: Three times as many product views when supported with video Up to twice as many repeat visits by customers who watched M&S TV versus those visiting the site alone
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Up to twice as long dwell time for customers who watch M&S TV as those who don‘t Average uplift in basket size: 23% http://bit.ly/lJf7Na But it‘s not just product conversions via video that let the viewer get a better sense of what they‘re buying. Video can put a face to the name of a brand or service to give the consumer a sense of what the experience of using it might actually be like.
Case Study: Virgin Holidays
Such has been its commercial success that BroadView has won three awards for this project for Virgin Holidays, which has increased sales of Upper Class tickets by 30% and given Virgin Holidays a 50:1 return on investment within three months. A simple video of a presenter suggests that customers consider upgrading their flight. If they click through to the Upper Class page the presenter, dressed as a Virgin Concierge, takes them through the benefits in a warm and friendly way. ―This has proven the value of humanizing the online buying experience using video. Instead of being faced with simply a form to complete, or an option to click, our customers are instead able to interact with the Virgin Holidays brand in a more engaging way.‖ Chris Roe, Virgin Holidays Sales & Distribution Director. http://bit.ly/lIG7cP
4.4.
Reduce abandonment and increase dwell-time
The product page isn‘t the only point where a customer makes a decision about what to buy. There are stages beyond the product selection where users can drop out due to lack of trust in the brand, such as missing reassurance about quality or delivery. Shopping cart abandonment can be a painful affliction for online retailers, in part due to the perceived anonymity of online shopping. Video has a role to play in making the relationship with an online shopper more personal – whether it‘s a friendly welcome, a video that reassures the customer about the credibility of the business before they buy, or a way of saying sorry when something goes wrong.
Case Study: Groupon unsubscribe video
If you unsubscribe from the Groupon daily mailing list you‘re taken to a typical page that confirms your removal. But here you‘re also told ―We‘re sorry to see you go. How sorry? Well, we wanted to introduce you to Derrick; he‘s the guy who thought you‘d enjoy receiving the Daily Groupon email‖. Beneath this there is a photo with a button that says ―punish Derrick‖ which, when pressed, plays a video of a colleague entering and throwing a drink all over the poor chap. The call to action at the end of the video is a button to re-subscribe to the list after all – a last ditch attempt to retain a subscriber by offering some humor and personalisation to the otherwise anonymous experience of unsubscribing from a mailing list. http://bit.ly/8XtySn Putting the right content in the right place relies on having a clear understanding of the user journey, and being willing to test the impact that a video can have. There is more on this in the section on multivariate testing, later on.
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Video is a great way to virtualise real-world experiences
―Most of our clients come to us because they want to increase conversions or educate the marketplace. However, there are other measures, for example increased dwell time and therefore engagement with the brand. One client saw time spent on their industry blog increase from an average of three to 17 minutes per session.‖ Stuart Maister, Managing Director at BroadView Communications
4.5.
Brand engagement
Using video to increase overall site dwell time is about offering the right content at the right time. Offering a TV micro-site or ‗video‘ section to your website could provide a great opportunity for deeper engagement with the brand. But to take commercial advantage of this, you need to be able to offer relevant choices to people that enable them to buy. Video will, by its nature, increase page dwell-time, but only if it‘s visible. Make sure it‘s obvious and easily accessible, and consider highlighting video on your site or in product search results.
“Brands use online video because they want to leverage the value of the social web”
―Brands generally approach us with four goals: advocacy, action, awareness, and attention. ―Consumption of video and video sharing is on the up – and if brands can produce great content people will want to share that too. The ability to win advocates within a peer group like this is extremely powerful. Sarah Wood, COO at Unruly Media If your video strategy is aiming purely for brand engagement, then it‘s more likely the channel for your videos is going to be social media rather than your existing e-commerce site. Putting relevant, interesting or entertaining content out there for people to discover can help to reach new people or change opinions about your brand.
“Brands need to entertain their audiences if they want to survive”
―The ones that succeed are the ones that entertain. They think of people as audiences – and participating ones, not just ‗consumers‘. ―It‘s part of the advocate, friend, evangelist approach to marketing.‖ Sarah Wood, COO at Unruly Media Book-keeping software manufacturer Sage brought the Krypton Factor back to ITV1 as a branded entertainment campaign, with the aim of associating their brand with the discovery of qualities that make people successful in business. Your brand could do the same, for far less cost, by releasing genuinely entertaining content online. The strategic challenge is about knowing who you‘re targeting, finding out where online they‘re likely to be, and ensuring your content is the start of the conversation - not just a selling platform.
“Online video offers an opportunity for deeper engagement”
―Video offers much more in terms of interaction. Before, the conversation was happening in living rooms and by water coolers. Now brands have access to the very broadest swath of audiences online. ―You can test as much as you want too – but don‘t fear criticism. Engage with people who are giving it – you might really have a problem that they‘re telling you how to fix.‖ Mike Johnston, Executive Producer at Boss Creative
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Having difficulty convincing your bosses that this would work for your brand?
You don‘t have to be a popular consumer brand to make online video work for you. The Concrete Network in the US is a website that exists to educate professionals on popular concrete techniques and applications. They‘ve invested in video tutorials that explain everything from design ideas to specialist tools and techniques in a market that is one of the slowest to respond to digital media. http://bit.ly/3RntWn
How to get started
―If you‘re in a large, traditional organisation that‘s averse to digital marketing, take a step back and look at your communications strategy in general for where video might fit in best. Doing it in the right place at the right time and demonstrating results will help to educate stakeholders about the relationship between the web, social media and their bottom-line.” Joe Pélissier, Marketing Consultant and Producer
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5.
Your Strategy
Having a strategy makes common business sense, but it‘s surprising how many people want to just skip to the action. If you have a plan, you will know whether or not it‘s working. Tweaks are easier than ever to make if you know what metric you‘re trying to optimize. Getting the budget to do more next year will depend on you putting forward a rational cost analysis for why it was all money well spent. It doesn‘t need to be complicated; having an online video strategy simply means defining an overall aim, towards which you‘ll make your decisions about which tools to choose and how to deploy them. Here‘s a simple tool for starting your project with the important questions answered.
5.1.
Strategy setting tool
What are you going to do? Who is it for? How are you going to reach them? – What technology platform do you need? – What channels are you going to use? What are you trying to achieve? How much do you have to spend? How are you going to measure success? Who else needs to be involved? What does really good look like? What does really bad look like?
5.1.1.
Defining your audience
The question of ―who is your video for‖ needs to be considered in two stages if it‘s going to help inform your content creation. The first bit of this is to list specifically who the content is for. Bear in mind, there‘s nothing you can do to guarantee your content won‘t get out beyond its intended audience. Then, just as you would with new product innovation, think about what this target audience would like and what they might find entertaining, useful or interesting.
“Take it one step at a time”
―Before doing video, think about social. Get to know your audience first: listen, then try facilitating a conversation (whether online or real-world) then start participating but take it slowly.‖ Sarah Wood, COO at Unruly Media If you‘re a niche product in a specialized market then the size of your audience will play a big part in informing your strategy – five thousand views on the right blog might be better than several million on YouTube if they‘re the right five thousand people. Bear in mind, you can‘t easily control who your audience is, and even the biggest brands can get it massively wrong:
Case Study: PHD Worldwide
PHD Worldwide is a global media communications agency with over 2,000 staff in 59 offices. Critics of the agency‘s ‗We Are The Future‘ video said the use of teenagers talking in corporate marketing language was cynical
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and cringeworthy. Their website statement beneath the embed of the YouTube video they created says it all: ―‗We Are The Future‘ was originally created for an industry conference and as a promotional video to stimulate discussion within the marketing industry. It aimed to make projections on what the media landscape could be like in ten years based on what we are seeing now. ―It has since reached a much wider audience and created a mixed reaction which has largely been negative. ―In retrospect we would have approached this very differently and accept that we got it wrong on this occasion, particularly in getting young people to voice it. We apologise to anyone who did not like it. ―We believe people have the right to debate the video and its contents so will be leaving it on YouTube to allow that and we welcome comments. ―However any grossly obscene comments will not be tolerated and will be removed.‖ http://bit.ly/g2Wu5d
5.1.2.
Setting business objectives
Setting your business objectives for your online video might be a simple case of aiming for higher sales conversion on a range of product lines using product videos. Or it might be a simple ‗cost of engagement‘ comparison with other marketing activities. You need to choose clear, measurable objectives for your video, and then the right tools to measure performance with.
“Don‟t talk about viral anymore”
―Brands no longer need to hide behind the fact that they‘re behind a piece of content. Don‘t be afraid to have strong calls to action, or use in-player adverts.‖ Sarah Wood, COO at Unruly Media
5.1.3.
Choosing your team
On the question of who else needs to be involved, you might have to think broader than with other projects. Online video is a high-profile undertaking in many organisations and if you‘re keen on metrics, you‘re going to need some pretty heavy integration between your video, your website and your e-commerce or other end-goal measurement system. Might be time to buy your web master a coffee.
5.1.4.
Why strategy is important
„Strategy is key‟
―Brands are becoming media companies – they have to think about formats, programming and measurement just for starters. This can‘t be done ad hoc – it‘s no longer enough to have a good creative idea, or a wellproduced piece of video. A lot of the outcomes are from the second click – the next thing someone does after pressing play. You need to think about what your connected customer is doing during and after watching your video. All this has to be tied together in a strategy if the approach is going to mean anything. ―Our aim has been to tie together the creative, technology and strategy – a full service video agency. We were born out of an observation that no one was really doing this.‖ Chris Gorell Barnes, founder and CEO at Adjust Your Set
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6.
Online Video Essentials
Before we delve into the depths of case studies, advanced strategies and future innovation, it‘s important to get to grips with some of the basics in online video. This section will look at some of the technical aspects of online video and how it works on the web, as well as introducing and clarifying some of the key functions of online video including social sharing, comments, security and viral video.
6.1.
How video works on websites
The introduction to this report started with a short account of how important TCP is for enabling video on the web but this alone isn‘t enough to ensure the sort of quality of experience most users expect. Video is one of the largest types of file to be transmitted via the web. Most web pages are only ever stored on a single server, so when a user hits that page, their browser requests all the parts of the page from the server, which sends the data back to the user‘s web browser. If the video on a page is also coming from that server, the chances are it‘s going to get interrupted as it‘s sent across the web and this leads to frustrating delays like buffering or failure to serve the content altogether if too many people are trying to hit the same server at the same time.
Video traffic jams
―There are typically a lot of ‗hops‘ between your computer and the server the file is sitting on. Your video file likely has to move between ten or so servers before it reaches your screen. If any of these servers in the chain are overloaded, the whole thing slows down.‖ Will Grant, Creator of Buto To get around this problem and deliver video reliably and quickly into web browsers, most people use an online video platform. The web page in question is still served in the same way, but within the webpage is an embed code which tells the web browser to pull the video in from elsewhere. That ‗elsewhere‘ is typically somewhere nearer the viewer than the web server where the site is hosted and most video platforms use a Content Delivery Network (CDN). A CDN is a large, international network of computer servers that are virtual mirrors of each other, connected by large fibre-optic web links that exist between data centers beneath the layer of the internet that most of our web use exists on. These networks might have hundreds of ‗points of presence‘ (actual physical locations) and thousands of servers that host content. As well as ensuring the big, clunky video files can be delivered direct into your ISP from the nearest copy, CDNs also often control aspects of digital rights management too. And when the video player that‘s being used is smart enough to detect the type of device and connection speed someone‘s using, it can request the right version to be sent to that user‘s web browser.
6.2.
Video formats
You may have heard terms like H.264, or QuickTime, or Flash. There are a great many of these video formats, developed over the years to try and make video quality better and perform faster over the internet. The process of turning video into one of these formats and making it small enough to be delivered via the web is called encoding. A video format consists of two key parts: a codec and a container. A codec is the compression that makes the video file smaller, so it can travel over the internet. A container is the file format that the video (and audio) codec sits inside. There are lots of video formats to choose from and so
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many different devices, not all of which support all formats. The challenge is making sure your video content plays every time on each device. However, just like with standards in other places (remember Betamax?) there are commercial interests and technical opinions at stake amongst the big players in the industry. The biggest friction in online video currently is between Adobe and Apple.
Thoughts on open markets
―No company — no matter how big or how creative — should dictate what you can create, how you create it, or what you can experience on the web… We believe that Apple, by taking the opposite approach, has taken a step that could undermine this next chapter of the web — the chapter in which mobile devices outnumber computers, any individual can be a publisher, and content is accessed anywhere and at any time.‖ John Warnock and Chuck Geschke, Founders of Adobe, 2010 http://www.adobe.com/choice/openmarkets.html
Thoughts on Flash
―Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.‖ Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, 2010 http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/ It‘s unlikely that anyone has either the moral high ground or the commercial clout to resolve this debate any time soon. So as video producers we‘re stuck with at least two major different methodologies for delivering video.
6.2.1.
Flash video
Flash video is the most popular format on the web at the moment simply because most people have got the Flash plugin already installed on their browser5. It works well because decoding and displaying the content on the user‘s device is performed by Adobe Flash Player software, which can be updated without requiring any changes to the user‘s browser software. It also works in the same way on Windows, Mac and Linux (three totally different operating systems usually requiring separate development), allowing for rapid innovation. Using Flash player is also great for developing rich multimedia experiences because it gives developers a huge amount of flexibility to build functionality in and around the video, such as interactivity, gaming and customized players.
6.2.2.
HTML5
HTML5 is the latest version of HTML, the fundamental language used to build things on the web. Some of the key features of HTML5 are designed to meet the needs of web application developers who are building ever more complex interactive things online – including, of course, video. Instead of running within software like Flash that the user has to install on their machine as a browser plugin, HTML5 allows things like video to be done within the browser itself. This might seem like a subtle difference, but in the long term HTML5 may offer greater flexibility and standardisation across platforms and devices.
5
http://www.adobe.com/products/player-census/flashplayer/version_penetration.html
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For the time being this is what‘s relevant: Apple devices don‘t support Flash but do recognize HTML5 and can accept HTML5 instructions to display video. Conversely, within Apple devices HTML5 doesn‘t actually happen natively in the browser as it was built with the intention of doing, instead it loads the video in the Apple Video Player, which is a highly restrictive piece of software that allows for little or no customisation. With iPhones, this means full-screen and no exceptions (although since iOS 4, video actually plays in-line with the content but can be popped out if desired, for example on iPad). However, if you want any customisation in the way your video works on Apple devices, you‘ll have to build an app for the App Store. See where this is going? Video called into the browser with HTML5 has mistakenly become referred to as ―HTML5 video‖, whereas in fact the video being delivered could be any format. Although, it had better be H.264 format and not Flash video if you want it to work on Apple devices. However H.264 won‘t work with a large number of legacy browser versions and Google have dropped H.264 from the latest version of Chrome, pushing their open source WebM format instead. Likewise, Firefox only supports ‗Theora‘ and WebM – indeed so far ‗HTML5 video‘ is proving to be quite a mess. For this reason, and many others, it would be well worth considering choosing an online video platform to help you deliver your online video.
6.3.
Online video platforms
If the preceding few paragraphs fills you with a mixture of dread and boredom, you‘re definitely in the market for an online video platform (OVP). ―OVPs‖ typically help organisations upload video and publish it to their website – and much more besides. Established players like Brightcove have been around since the birth of YouTube, helping brands that want to manage their online video. They‘ve seen hosted, managed online video develop from something that was once only the concern of broadcasters, into a day-to-day commodity for brands.
Growing business
―We more than doubled the number of our customers in the first half of 2010, and the lion‘s share came from non-media customers… starting about two years ago, very organically, we got companies, non-governmental organisations, they were all looking for a platform for their video.‖ Jeremy Allaire, CEO at Brightcove as told to BBC News Online video is typical of many digital channels where marketers have to ensure their strategy is being enabled by new technology, not dictated by it. OVPs give marketers the ability to harness powerful features of online video and measure the progress and success of their online video strategies.
6.3.1.
Choosing your OVP
Vidcompare offers a near-comprehensive guide to the comparable features and benefits of OVPs on the market. Generally, though, the features offered by online video platforms break down as follows: Video ingest and encoding Content management and metadata Publishing, hosting and playback
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Most platforms charge upwards of £99+VAT ($158) per month, although UK-based Vzaar have a package priced in dollars, at just $49. Package prices across providers typically vary depending on a combination of the number of uploads, amount of storage, number of user accounts, data transfer (the total amount of data consumed when people view your content), and features (although there is clearly differentiation in features offered by the different OVPs). The main benefits to using an online video platform are around keeping control over your content, and access to data about its performance.
6.3.2.
YouTube and Vimeo
YouTube is a fantastic innovation in online video and has arguably been the single biggest driver in adoption rates. However, for most brands, the lack of control associated with simply uploading a clip to YouTube and embedding it in a website is inappropriate. YouTube is free to use, and to fund the enormous cost of 48 hours of video being uploaded every minute and 3 billion video views per day (YouTube, 20116), YouTube relies on third-party advertising revenues from parentcompany Google‘s AdWords network. This means that for brands who don‘t want to pay for ad-free YouTube channels or a deeper commercial relationship with YouTube, content could be overlaid with third party ads from any of Google‘s AdWords customers – even competitors. Similarly with YouTube‘s free model, there is no control over the player branding or choice of ‗recommended‘ content viewers are presented with at the end of each clip. And naturally, a good deal of the data that Google collects from viewing behaviour is not made available to content owners.
YouTube is a channel not a platform
―A platform stores, organizes and deploys your online video. A channel is an environment in which video is exposed to your key audience – this could be sales people in meetings, or a popular video channel like YouTube. ―YouTube is a great launch pad for your content and might be one of your key targets. Another key target is your website but you can have multiple targets including partners, resellers and the wider web.‖ Stuart Maister, Managing Director at BroadView Communications Essentially, YouTube is a channel through which brands can access audiences – not an online video platform for brands to upload video to their websites. It could be a great starting point though, and befriending influential YouTube users could be as powerful as getting a national news journalist out to lunch. Vimeo, meanwhile, is a popular content channel for creative media professionals. Like YouTube, it has a service where users can upload content and publish it to their sites, but unlike YouTube there is an ad-free, statistics-rich option for under $60 a year. However, the site is not for commercial content, as blogger Andy Beard points out:
Vimeo is not for commercial use
―Despite the number of high profile blogs that seem to be allowed to bend the Vimeo terms of service, Vimeo make it reasonably clear multiple times on their website that they are not for commercial use. Their terms of service mention it, the signup page mentions it clearly, you could also take a look at their community guidelines and it is just as clear within their FAQ.‖ Andy Beard, owner of Andybeard.eu http://andybeard.eu/2337/vimeo-commercial-use.html However, it‘s not just non-technical folk who are turning to third party providers to help them specifically with their online video delivery. Since it‘s such a crucial aspect of online marketing,
6
http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2011/05/thanks-youtube-community-for-two-big.html
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many IT departments prefer to outsource and save the time, effort and capital investment it takes to keep up to speed with developments in technology.
Putting online video in the hands of marketers
―When we built Buto our mission was to take video delivery off the hands of IT departments and put the power of online video into the hands of marketing and communications people. ―But it‘s not just for non-technical customers: a great testimony to our product is the fact that Rackspace, one of the world‘s leading web hosting companies, uses our platform to deliver their online video. They chose us because of the feature-set, which their marketing team loved, as well as the fact that their website engineers didn‘t have to worry about the data load caused by all the video traffic on their site.‖ Will Grant, Creator of Buto As online video evolves, so too do the features that OVPs offer their customers. This is a reason why marketing as well as technical people might want to form a relationship with an OVP. Ooyala, another big provider based in the US, has a raft of analytics features that are particularly impressive which will be covered in more detail in the ―Measurement‖ section. Always be careful to check what the options are for taking your content elsewhere, however, should you choose to change providers in the future. Each platform has its own flagship features and unique proposition and you could expect all of them to offer increased mobile support in the future. However, as a relative newcomer to the OVP market, UK-based Buto has innovated a number of engagement features, based on existing technology, which could be exciting for marketers.
Clickable video that anyone can build
―The technology to ‗track‘ regions within a video and turn them into hyperlinks has been around for several years but like most technologies, it‘s only once they become usable that they really take off. ―In line with our mission we wanted to make a clickable video system that anyone could use to make any object in a video they‘d uploaded clickable and the Buto hotspots editor is something we came up with to help do this. Instead of sending a video clip off for the objects to be traced around, frame-by-frame, we‘ve built a simple tool that lets people tag objects at key points in their motion journey, and the system does the rest. ―What this means is that viewers can click on any object in a video – for example clothing items on a fashion catwalk – and drop it into their basket.‖ Will Grant, Creator of Buto
6.4.
Digital rights management (DRM) & video security
For many businesses, nothing gets through IT procurement if it‘s not been security checked. Although the focus of this report is on using video for marketing, there are times when brands might want to restrict the audience for a piece of content. Happily, there are features around to help with this. The first thing to note, however, is that nothing is 100% secure. Content that can be seen can be copied, either via screen capture software or simply filming a good-quality screen with a digital camcorder. But there are some features, briefly detailed below, that can help brands protect their content especially if the content itself is the product that‘s for sale.
6.4.1.
RTMP
Another invention of Flash video creators, Macromedia (now owned by Adobe), RTMP stands for Real Time Messaging Protocol and is primarily used as an alternative way of delivering video to
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the more prevalent HTTP method. With HTTP video delivery, the video file itself is downloaded in the background while the video plays (which is why you can often see a ‗shadow‘ progress bar behind the playback cursor in online video players). Local caching makes it easier for people to rip content and republish it elsewhere even when content owners have disabled sharing features within the player. RTMP maintains a persistent connection between the media server and the user‘s browser and breaks the stream into fragments which delivers the video bit by bit, making it much harder to rip. This can even be done over a secure connection, which makes it impossible to intercept.
6.4.2.
DRM
DRM is a broader term used to describe access control technologies that are used by publishers and copyright holders to restrict and manage the use of content. iTunes is a famous example of successful DRM, although since 2009 the individual music files that you pay for and download from iTunes are no longer managed by DRM following a deal with record labels. TV and video content on iTunes remains encrypted however, and can only be played back from authorized accounts such as your account on your computer. Of course, even DRM doesn‘t stop people screen or audio-capturing content, but there can be serious criminal ramifications for those who go out with the aim of breaking encryption.
6.4.3.
IP Security
IP security is a feature offered by many online video platforms as a simpler way to protect content. At the point where a viewer‘s browser is requesting a video from the content delivery network, the CDN will look at the viewer‘s IP address (their unique identifier on the internet) and refer to a list of permitted or ‗white listed‘ IP addresses. For internal-only content, this list could be of all the company‘s office IP addresses, allowing access from anywhere within the corporate network. Without secure delivery or DRM, content could still be ripped (and of course screen captured) but this would be likely to involve an attributable breach of company policy i.e. you‘d have an internal culprit to go and chastise!
6.5.
Social sharing
In some ways, the whole idea of online video, and the location of the majority of its success, is in a space that is opposite to the protectionist, controlled intentions of DRM and video security. Video is a highly sharable commodity and a powerful currency on social networks. Videos that become ‗viral‘ reach more people than most marketers could dream of, for a fraction of the cost that even the most austere financial director would be pleased with. As if it hadn‘t been stated enough already, the single most important thing to remember here is to ask whether the content is shareable. Is it good, funny, interesting or useful enough for a viewer to send it to their friends, colleagues, partner or boss? This notwithstanding, the content has to be shareable (technically) if it‘s going to be shared. YouTube makes video sharing easy with plenty of buttons to push video into social networks and email links to friends. But you won‘t get much information on how often and where your content is being shared, which is where the online video platforms‘ social sharing features should be considered in detail. Particularly important is the OVP‘s ability to push the player itself right into a Facebook page or Twitter post, meaning you can still track and control the way the video is consumed and any call to actions you‘ve built will remain with the video.
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6.5.1.
Comments
Again, YouTube offers an excellent comments feature, but even the most open-minded brand might want to have the ability to remove comments that are inappropriate. YouTube‘s comments are part of the YouTube environment whereas OVPs, or your own customized comments feature, will allow you to keep the comments within your web presence or even let them travel around within the video player as the video is shared. The other benefit to comments that fall within your own website is the SEO benefit of having repeatedly-updating content and inter-linking. Video SEO will be covered in more detail in the next section too. Above all, it‘s important to remember how important comments are to online video. Video is a powerful currency in social media, mainly because it‘s a conversation starter. If you don‘t let people participate in the conversation, your content strategy might fail to reach its aims. Moderation might be important, but so too is being open, and responding to criticism in a transparent way.
6.5.2.
Ratings
‗Like‘ (or ‗dislike‘), as well as various star-rating and scoring scales, are a common part of the web, especially where a channel is offering viewers relevant content on the basis of its popularity with other people. You can build your own way of capturing this information, or make it a priority feature when you choose your OVP and use it to prioritize which content you present to new visitors as well as gain qualitative feedback. Or you can plug your content into an external ratings engine. For example, the Like button on Facebook lets users share your content with friends on Facebook. When the user clicks the Like button on your site, a story appears in the user‘s activity feed with a link back to your website. However, if you include Facebook‘s Open Graph tags on your Web page, your page becomes equivalent to a Facebook page. This means when a user clicks a Like button on your page, your page will appear in the ―Likes and Interests‖ section of the user‘s profile, and you have the ability to publish updates to the user.
6.5.3.
Content re-posting
Another way to get your content to spread beyond your website is through allowing other people to copy the embed code (the piece of code that puts the video into your page) and use it on their own sites or blogs. A good OVP will let you see whereabouts your content has been re-posted, and how many views, click-throughs and shares these additional versions have generated for you.
Case Study: Tortoise in Love
Drawn from the author‘s own experience, Tortoise in Love is an example of how enabling content re-posting can drive results from external sources. Tortoise in Love is a feature film that was made by (almost) the entire village of Kingston Bagpuize in Oxfordshire. Written and Directed by Guy Browning, it has a unique story to tell in its making: the Women‘s Institute did the catering, the entire cast and crew were put up by villagers, and the hair salon opened early every day for hair and make-up. When the film reached the Cannes film festival it attracted the attention of numerous news and media organisations including the Daily Telegraph, who were the first non-trade title to report on the film‘s progress there. Following the interview with the film‘s producer, the Telegraph reporter was able to access the film‘s website and copy the embed code for the trailer there. This embed code was inserted into the online version of the Telegraph article, meaning that readers could watch the movie trailer from within the Telegraph website. The producers could then see how many views the content had received at this specific location, and how many of those viewers
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had gone on to join the film‘s mailing list on the website. Without the ability to quickly and easily embed the online video from the film‘s website, it‘s unlikely the Telegraph would have featured the trailer online – and possibly even mentioned the film at all.
http://www.tortoiseinlove.com
6.5.4.
Viral video
Although shared video is arguably the single most powerful lever in online marketing, it‘s important not to dwell too much on the concept of ‗viral‘ film when you set out your online video strategy. ‗Viral‘ is not a type of content. It is a description of a phenomenon where content spreads quickly and exponentially beyond its initial audience through social sharing. ‗Viral video‘ has come to be synonymous with guerrilla production tactics and a ‗home made‘ look but it‘s vital you don‘t over-optimistically refer to your video as a viral video unless or until it is shown to have gone viral. Otherwise you and the people you‘re engaging to produce your content will fall into the trap of prioritising form over content. Some of the most successful viral videos have indeed been home-made. But some have had extraordinarily high production values and have had their success purely by virtue of the fact that it‘s been difficult to discern whether or not the featured brand was involved in the endorsement and creation of the video.
Case Study: VW Polo
The spot begins with a man leaving a modest townhouse and driving off in a VW Polo. After a short drive, the car pulls up in front of a busy cosmopolitan restaurant with al-fresco seating. The man pulls out a detonator, and depresses the button. The shot cuts to a wide where we see that, rather than causing widespread death and destruction, the blast is completely contained by the car. The end-card reads: ‗Polo. Small but tough.‘ It‘s quite clear that this video would never have been authorized for transmission on any traditional or broadcast media channels. It frequently disappears from YouTube and there is on-going debate on rumour blogs about whether VW was responsible for its commissioning (many of the theories are presented and scrutinized on Snopes - http://bit.ly/5fwzrU). The buzz around this controversial piece of content back in 2005 was significant and undoubtedly led to an increase in brand awareness. We can debate the potential motives and rewards, but it stands as a great example of a piece of content that reached its audience through viral (quick, exponential, sharing-enabled) distribution. http://bit.ly/F7HqE
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7.
Getting an Audience
Although much attention has been given so far to the importance of content, it‘s patently obvious that distribution is as vital a feature in your strategy as good content. If your video is going to flourish online in the social space, you need to understand where your audience goes and what they like to do when they get there.
“Content isn‟t everything anymore”
―You‘ve got to think about distribution. Even in the social sharing space you need to invest as much in distribution as production.‖ Sarah Wood, COO at Unruly Media A big watershed separates paid-for and shared content with some strong principles (as well as pragmatic arguments) on both sides. It‘s clear that online video, which earns rather than buys its audience, has a greater impact, much apart from the fact you don‘t need to spend the budget on buying visibility. But does it really cost nothing to seed videos and build momentum through social sharing of content?
7.1.
Existing customers and channels
At the level closest to home, a key audience for your content might well be your existing customers. Video has long been used for purchase reaffirmation and after-sales engagement, and even occasional cross-promotional messages could be delivered with video. It‘s important to think about where this video fits in within your overall contact strategy. If you‘re doing direct prospecting, at what point is it relevant to offer a piece of video in the conversation? For online retail, where does video add most value in the user journey? Just as video is intended to deliver the same information in a more powerful way, video could be used to improve success or customer satisfaction by replacing an existing communication method.
“My best advice is to understand the different ways you‟re going to use video across different channels”
―Customers want to converse on their terms – you can‘t just push something at them. If you‘re using video crosschannel, it needs to feel native to each channel. YouTube, for example, is good for some but only if it‘s the right brand. YouTube has its own brand associations for a start - Vimeo is seen as slightly more highbrow for example.‖ Mike Johnston, Executive Producer at Boss Creative The bottom line is: you might already be talking to the most important, if not entire audience for your content. Before you invest in social seeding strategies or paid-for advertising, see whether the people who really matter are already within your reach.
Glasses Direct
―A chap received his glasses and they were broken. He complained on Twitter, and within hours the team at the Glasses Direct office had shot a really simple video with all the people in the office saying ‗We‘re sorry Thomas‘ which they sent to him that day, and sorted it out the next. A great example of how you can get great return on investment instantly if you get it right‖ http://bit.ly/dP2AFl Manley, Director of Search at LBi
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7.2.
Email distribution
High up the list in terms of desirable applications for video comes video email. But in spite of a brief fling with the idea, most email client software doesn‘t support video directly embedded into emails. This is because of the proliferation of ‗Trojan Horse‘ viruses that found it easy to disguise themselves within large embedded video files attached to emails. The one exception to this is Google Mail, which detects YouTube links and integrates a small YouTube video player at the bottom of any emails in which they‘re contained. But by and large, video in email relies on pointing an image, which is embedded in the email, at a specific landing page. This image is typically a poster frame (the still image that appears before a video is played) with player controls superimposed to look like a video player and encourage click-through. The landing page to which the link is pointed then serves the video and directs the user deeper into an external website. If you‘re planning to use video as part of an outbound email campaign, be sure to think even harder about what‘s in it for the recipient. B2B email is likely to be given even less attention than B2C, and many professionals fight their inboxes down on a daily basis, so if you‘re relying on the entertainment aspect of a B2B piece think carefully about when you send it. Just before coffee time on a Thursday might be better than 9am on Monday or last thing on Friday.
7.3.
Seeding content
Seeding content is a bit like planting things in the garden. If you put it in the wrong place, it won‘t flourish. If the conditions aren‘t right, it might not germinate at all. Is your aim to go for wild, rapid growth or long-term and repeat exposure? Growing up around the evolution of content channels and destination blogs and websites are agencies and even platforms like Epicsocial, Visiblemeasures, and Goviral, which specialize in helping propagate content out to the right places. Sharethrough, the ‗social video distribution and marketing platform‘, lists these types of destination as including: Editorial outreach Sponsored tweets or featured video Facebook pages Promoted video on UGC (user-generated content) sites Featured video on curated sites Promoted story in social bookmarking In-banner video Vertical content sites Facebook apps In-game Among all these channels is the problem of compatibility and submission to multiple channels using their required formats. Several OVPs offer integration with content destinations such as YouTube or Dailymotion, and digital media-buying agency Tubemogul launched a service called ‗Destinations‘ in 2010 that requires you to upload your content only once and choose which destinations to publish it to.
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7.3.1.
Top US content destinations
In the US, 143.9M Americans watched video online during January 2011, according to Nielsen. During May 2011, US internet users engaged in more than 5.6B viewing sessions, with Google Sites ranking as the top video property with over 146M unique viewers, representing 83.5% of all unique viewers. [Source: Online Video Rankings, comScore, June 2011]
Top US Online Video Properties Ranked by Video Content Views, Ranked by Unique Video Viewers, May 2011 Total US – Home/Work/University Locations Source: comScore Video Metrix
Property
Total Internet : Total Audience
Google Sites VEVO Yahoo! Sites Facebook.com Viacom Digital Microsoft Sites AOL, Inc. Turner Digital NBC Universal Hulu
Total Unique Viewers (000)
176,337
147,158 60,369 55,482 48,189 46,535 46,502 42,271 35,185 30,622 28,543
Viewing Sessions (000)
5,662,369
2,173,422 360,205 272,255 176,076 241,026 251,799 246,592 126,760 67,251 195,897
Minutes per Viewer
951.3
311.2 105.1 39.1 19.3 74.2 42.8 45.7 36.3 21.1 217.8
Source: comScore Video Metrix (http://ecly.co/nLYtKW)
Case Study: T-Mobile Dance
T-Mobile‘s Dance is a spectacular 2½ minute film in which 350 choreographed dancers disrupted and confounded commuters at London‘s Liverpool Street station. In the words of Richard Huntingdon, the Saatchi planner behind T-Mobile‘s ambitious ‗Life‘s For Sharing‘ strategy, this campaign was ―depth-charged with bought media‖: TV, outdoor, digital outdoor, radio, online. But although the film was rushed out within hours of the disturbance, creative for most media channels was not available until the end of the following week due to production constraints. Consequently, MediaCom asked Unruly Media to compensate for this potentially quiet period by making the film ubiquitous online. Unruly Media quickly got the film out to flash mob fans, who had been carefully identified and qualified over the previous week. Hundreds of bloggers embedded the clip, which clocked up 1m views on YouTube over the first weekend. On Monday morning, Unruly Media took over popular video sharing applications within Facebook to make the video as easy as possible to re-discover and as frictionless as possible to forward on to friends and colleagues during the week-long hiatus before online creative became available. The results were a genuine word of mouth phenomenon: 18,572,973 plays, 20,649 comments, #1 on Viral Video
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Chart and, moreover, a 22% sales uplift for T-Mobile. The clip spread like wildfire: for every person viewing the video, it was forwarded to an average of 3.6 people, leading to 1.8m forwards within Facebook alone. More than 50 T-Mobile Dance groups formed on Facebook, often to organize similar events at UK rail stations. ―This new media strategy represented a brave move for us and was a resounding success. Not only did we capture the imagination of the nation but we also delivered for the business.‖ Lysa Hardy, Head of Brand and Communications, T-Mobile UK ―Dance demonstrates a nuanced and sophisticated appreciation of the types of content that people want to share and the motivations driving them. Eschewing overused viral triggers such as sex, shock, and humor, dance taps into people‘s propensity to feel touched, inspired and uplifted.‖ Sarah Wood, COO at Unruly Media http://bit.ly/15JUmt
7.4.
Pre-roll and advertising
Tubemogul‘s core business is in fact enabling real-time media buying across multiple channels for online video. They have some smart tools to enable targeting by context, audience and geography, and at the launch in April 2011 of their ‗Playtime‘ platform, offered options to buy video ad space in 90% of the top 1,000 global destinations for online video as ranked by Comscore. Although self-service media buying services such as Tubemogul have the potential to be more cost-effective and responsive than traditional broadcast media buying, there is still a big question mark over the effectiveness of online video advertising. When users have so many opportunities to click away and can typically find non-ad-surrounded versions of the same content easily, are online video ads really going to generate views let alone click-thorough? Whilst YouTube has been offering pre and post-roll video ad space to media buyers for two years, an interesting innovation came at the end of 2010 when they started offering skippable pre-roll ads. In these instances viewers can skip ads, quelling concerns of many customer advocates that people simply don‘t like to be interrupted in their consumption of content. YouTube is only charging brands when the ads are watched in full with reported success rates of 20-70% (New Media Age, 20107). Although it‘s hard to see how this will encourage brands to produce better, more relevant content, there are many different commercial deals to be done to get a higher launch pad for your content whether via paid-for channels or entire mast-head takeovers. A lot of traditional institutions including ad agencies and media buyers have a vested interest in transferring the mechanic of media buying to the digital world and it‘s hard to imagine that the rapid increase in paid-for video advertising online will ever reverse. But what is noticeable is the difference in conversion rates between earned and bought audience – a distinction Sharethrough refers to as ‗paid-for‘ and ‗shared‘ video (Sharethrough, 20118) According to them: Users are three times more likely to watch a shared video than a paid video Shared views are viewed three times longer than paid views They are strong advocates of the ‗entertainment‘ rather than ‗interruption‘ approach, which will be explored further in the final section, ―The Future of Online Video‖. And they‘re not the only ones.
http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/disciplines/digital/youtube-launches-skippable-pre-rollads/3021234.article 8 http://www.sharethrough.com/
7
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“Pre-roll shouldn‟t be necessary”
―If awareness is your only objective then pre-roll might be the thing. But it‘s lazy. The best brands know they can create content people want to watch.‖ Sarah Wood, COO at Unruly Media
7.4.1.
Top US online video ad properties
In May 2011, Americans viewed 4.6 billion video ads, with Hulu generating more than 1.3 billion video ad impressions at. Tremor Media Video Network ranked second overall (and highest among video ad networks) with 700.8 million ad views, followed by Adap.tv (642 million) and BrightRoll Video Network (565 million). Time spent watching videos ads totaled more than 2.0 billion minutes during the month, with Hulu delivering the highest duration of video ads at 560 million minutes. Video ads reached 45% of the total U.S. population, at an average of 34 times during the month. Hulu also delivered the highest frequency of video ads to its viewers with an average of 48 over the course of the month. [Source: Online Video Rankings, comScore, June 2011]
Top U.S. Online Video Properties by Video Ads* Viewed Ranked by Video Ads Viewed May 2011, Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations Source: comScore Video Metrix
Property Video Ads (000)
4,608,833
1,319,995 700,769 641,632 564,938 291,185 268,425 265,765 258,840 257,796
Total Ad Minutes (MM)
2,052
560 410 375 338 158 142 123 92 158
Frequency (Ads per Viewer)
33.7
47.6 10.8 10.9 7.1 10.8 9.8 11.7 11.3 7.7
% Reach Total U.S. Population
45.4%
9.2% 21.4% 19.5% 26.4% 8.9% 9.0% 7.6% 7.6% 11.2%
Total Internet : Total Audience
Hulu Tremor Media Video Network** Adap.tv† BrightRoll Video Network** Undertone** Microsoft Sites Viacom Digital CBS Interactive SpotXchange Video Ad Network** ABC Television
181,695
72
22.7
2.7%
*Video ads include streaming-video advertising only and do not include other types of video monetization, such as overlays, branded players, matching banner ads, homepage ads, etc. **Indicates video ad network †Indicates video ad exchange Source: comScore Video Metrix (http://ecly.co/nLYtKW)
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7.5.
Video search engine optimisation (SEO)
The Search Engine Results Page (SERP) is the obsession of the SEO expert and video has its part to play in improving the Page Score of the pages where it‘s embedded and offering a rich abundance of interactivity, updates and links for search engines to index. There are some wild statistics about exactly how much impact having a video on a page has on its search engine ranking - but undoubtedly it‘s significant.
“The main benefits of Video SEO are exposure and building link-backs”
―Most people think Video SEO is just another thing they should be doing. We do a plan, we look to try and identify their objectives and deploy video as a specific solution, or to fix an existing problem. ―People love to sit and look at videos, but the success of tapping into this depends on what the brand is trying to achieve. Exposure is often taken too literally – the Old Spice videos are prolific, but what are the sales results? ―When it comes to syndication, YouTube and Vimeo are the big players – you‘re always going to be giving traffic to a third party, but the link-backs you‘ll get will be very powerful. Video titles are hugely important for this.‖ Manley, Director of Search at LBi In and of itself however, video is also becoming a powerful factor in search. Google has a Video Search option and regularly delivers video search results into the SERP as does Yahoo, and in some segments YouTube is proving to be a popular alternative to Google for general search, even though all it trawls is a video index (New York Times, 20099).
Videos are 50 times more likely to rank on page 1 of Google
―‗Blended search‘, the practice in which search engines display videos, images, news stories, maps, and other types of results alongside their standard search results, has become increasingly common on major search engines. And optimizing video content to take advantage of blended search is by far the easiest way to get a firstpage organic ranking on Google.‖ 10 Nate Elliott, Forrester Research Video can appear in the SERP of indexes via Video Sitemaps. SERPS include the likes of Google, which can point viewers out to a variety of content platforms. Video sitemaps are small files that contain information about where videos outside YouTube (which populates Google automatically) are located. Typically, these files include a title, description, URL of the page where the video can be watched, the location of a thumbnail image of the poster frame, and the location of the video file itself. The great power of Video SEO is that when a user clicks a video in an SERP, they‘re directed straight to the page where the content is hosted, as opposed for example to YouTube, for example, where it‘s considerably harder to get them to take a related action. So a small amount of time invested in putting together your video sitemap or listing automated video sitemaps as a priority feature could pay dividends. Google instructions are here; http://bit.ly/bTlba; instructions for Yahoo and others are here: http://bit.ly/ES5AF
7.5.1.
Video SEO tool
As with SEO itself, there are several factors you can optimize that will determine where in the SERP your video will appear. These principles can be applied to YouTube as well. Metadata – video title and description tags
9
10
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/18/business/media/18ping.htm http://blogs.forrester.com/interactive_marketing/2009/01/the-easiest-way.html
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Number of comments and shares Backlinks Date added View count (and channel view count, number of subscribers and playlist adds for YouTube) Rating and flagging (where applicable) Incoming links (exposure on other sites, other embeds, RSS links) You will notice that most of these ranking considerations are down to actions that viewers take, not things you can control or manipulate. This places even greater importance on content and makes your video‘s rise to success in search dependent on it taking off from the word go.
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8.
Measurement
We‘ve already identified how strategy without measurement is pointless. This section will aim to explain what you can expect to measure when you put your online video strategy into practice. Although there are a variety of metrics you can use, we‘ll look at which questions to ask and how to interpret data so that relevant conclusions can be drawn. Cross-channel measurement is key to achieving overall business objectives from online video and we‘ll take a look at how video analytics can be integrated into other reporting structures, as well as how to test content and make on-going improvements to everything from position of ads and calls to action, to the creative cut of the content itself. Before you start, make sure you‘re going to collect enough data to say meaningful things about your online video. A sample size that‘s too small won‘t reveal enough, or could lead you off in the wrong direction. Also, make sure you keep your strategic aims in mind when you‘re putting together your measurement tools: focus on measuring those things that will enable you to determine the success of your strategy.
8.1.
What you can measure
The Analytics Overview screen from Ooyala‘s Backlot product
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Most marketers don‘t realize how much rich, detailed information is available about their online video. This is in part because people‘s knowledge is evolving, and in part because of the proprietary attitude free-to-use platforms like YouTube have towards data they collect. They‘ve shown us how great video can look on the web, but they‘ve not shown us how much fantastic information can be gleaned about viewers‘ behaviour.
„Consumers are in control‟
―We‘ve invested heavily in our analytics tools because actual data is the only way brands can understand what content their consumers find appealing in a world where the consumer is in control.‖ Bismarck Lepe, Founder of Ooyala Similarly, self-hosted content (i.e. where it‘s put on your web server and pointed to from your site with a free Flash player) will tell you how many times each video file has been accessed, if you‘re lucky. Even the most basic of online video platforms should be able to offer you the following data about how your videos are being consumed: View counts by day View counts by hour of the day Views per host site (the different places where the video is available) Duration monitoring for every view on every video (how far through the video people watch) Comments and when they were made Social media sharing per video and day In-player advert performance (appearance rate, click through rate, close rate) These ‗raw‘ metrics should be the very minimum set of data you look at to make simple assessments about things like click-through rates, or cost-per-engagement which you can compare to other elements of your marketing mix. If you‘re incorporating other elements into your online video, be they competition entries, vouchers, or free samples, make sure you have the appropriate tools to measure these things too.
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The geographic screen from Buto‘s analytics tool
8.2.
Interpreting video analytics
It‘s all very well sitting down at your review meeting and remarking at how great it is that 436 people watched your video yesterday – but what are you really trying to measure? Video is interactive, and when a viewer or customer does something around a video, it‘s likely to be a choice from several options rather than a simple ‗response‘ that we‘re used to from traditional media measurement. A click is incredibly useful of course, but on its own doesn‘t reveal the extent to which an ad is involving the customer with the brand. Rather than focusing on simplistic measurements like click through rates or video views, you need to look at aspects like engagement rates and duration monitoring too. If you‘re using online video for retail, look at which products and services viewers are interested in, not just the ‗click through rate‘ of each link. Ooyala‘s Backlot product has taken this insight several steps further with features like heat-mapping which show exactly how many views of each part of the video there have been.
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“Timeline heatmaps need to be real time (not aggregate) to give real insight”
―Because we built our database in Cassandra we can collect a lot more information about viewership, in real time, across 50 pivots for both live and VOD content. ―A client of ours who makes video games observed a 20-50% abandonment in the first two to three minutes of a particular video, followed by a big spike in viewership. Plotting this data against the video itself they were able to notice that the abandonment was taking place during computer-generated (CG) game-play, and furthermore that people were scrubbing back over the live game play sections and watching those bits repeatedly. This helped them to cut out the CG part and improve the overall popularity of the promo clip.‖ Bismarck Lepe, Founder of Ooyala This sort of in-depth analysis will help you better understand your customers and how they‘re engaging with your online video content. But video content itself can help to reveal other information about your audience. For example, the device that a piece of content is viewed on often reveals economic and demographic profiles, and geographic data can help tailor the message differently to different regions.
“Most marketers don‟t understand that video isn‟t just a one-way communications medium”
―Video is more than just a messaging and distribution channel. It‘s most interesting because it creates an immersive experience on brands‘ own sites, and at the same time pulls in people from other channels. ―Last year UK‘s Telegraph broadcasted the Chilcot inquiry on Iraq on their site. They had a ‗truth metre‘ that people could use to vote on when they thought Tony Blair was telling the truth. It‘s now easier than ever to have interactive elements live alongside video, which can all be tracked, to provide real behavioural insight into what consumers of online video care about.‖ Bismarck Lepe, Founder of Ooyala An analysis screen from Ooyala‘s Backlot product:
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8.3.
Integrating video metrics into other tools
Integrating your video analytics with overall online analytics systems such as Google Analytics, Coremetrics and Omniture will help you measure the quality of the click-throughs, and what they lead on to. This is the first step towards proper integration of video into overall performance metrics.
“There‟s a big gap in metrics at the moment”
―Metrics only go so far. They‘re just the data you see. The secrets are unlocked in the analysis. When a business or communications problem is being solved using video it isn‘t in terms of the length of the film that‘s watched or number of views it‘s had. Thoughtful analysis has to happen at a level above.‖ Lee Kemp, MD at Fullrange Being able to track the value of click-throughs from in-stream ads could be the single biggest indication of the commercial value of your content. But it‘s important not to forget that there are a number of factors within the video experience itself that could impact on the conversion rate that lies beyond. Comparing the timing of ads as well as their content is a wise place to start. The most valuable clicks come from offering the customer a relevant choice at the right time. Click through rates could be increased with more frequent or compelling ads, but the actual quality of the clicks is what matters. There is a wealth of insight available from professional research companies like Nielsen, comScore, Vizu and Dynamic Logic that can help you understand online behaviour in more detail and these are worth their cost if you want to draw conclusions about your audience from a large set of data based on what‘s already going on out there on the web.
8.4.
Informing other marketing channels
Time of day reports can show you not just when your content is being consumed the most, but by extension when your customers are in the right place and mindset to consume different types of content. Comparing different types of content will reveal more. For example: a retailer is offering product videos on product pages that are quick and to the point, as well as engagement content (behind the scenes at fashion show, for example) via its online video micro-site. Comparing the two types of content might show that very few people watch the engagement content on weekday afternoons, whereas from 6pm, it gets more views than the product page videos. This presents a behavioural insight into the different types of content people consume depending on whether they‘re at work or at home, and could inform the timing of an after-sales email containing an engagement video.
8.4.1.
Following the conversation
Looking at ‗views per host site‘ and social sharing stats in more detail will show you the places where your content has been shared and/or re-posted. Success in this area might be cause for celebration in and of itself, but the type of success could be used to inform your investment in time and effort elsewhere. For example, if you produce a piece of branded content that attempts to explain a feature of the specialist area your business operates in, it might be a great thing that it‘s shared on Facebook. But if you notice that in fact, more viewers are sharing it on Linkedin than anywhere else, you might choose to invest more time in your presence on Linkedin as your video has guided you to the fact that it‘s a fertile place for conversation among your customers about the area you work in.
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A blog you‘ve never heard of that posts your content and appears to have good engagement levels with your customers might be a great new place to consider contributing to, or even sponsoring. No matter how much effort you put in, your customers will always be better than you are at finding out where the conversation is – not least because there might be millions of them out looking for the best advice or the best price.
8.5.
A/B and multivariate testing (MVT)
Multivariate testing is a technique that web optimisation fanatics will have heard of already. Put simply, it‘s the practice of being able to test the performance of different versions of the same piece of content based on given criteria. Websites with online sign-up forms might use MVT to serve slightly different versions of their conversion page, at random, to different visitors, compare what the conversion rate is for each different layout, and then select the highest performing layout going forwards. For video, something as simple as A/B testing to see which version of a video performs best could be very powerful. This functionality is usually easiest to achieve within your content management system, which would let you build two separate versions of a page, and embed different videos in each. Some video platforms are starting to offer the facility too, where the video that is delivered into the page is chosen automatically by the platform based on criteria such as click-through, engagement levels, number of shares or comments. At the more advanced level, being able to deliver content that is specifically targeted at the individual visitor based on other data captured during their browsing session is an obvious evolution that we can expect to see in the near future. But not many brands seem to have evolved their use of video even to the simplest type of A/B testing.
“Multivariate testing will get more popular”
―The biggest surprise to me at the moment is the lack of multivariate testing that‘s going on – actual testing based on different creative cuts of the same piece. I think this is an evolutionary thing and it goes back to design issues. People don‘t want to be data-led because they‘ve already spent so much time getting the content ‗right‘ and this is a legacy from the old days of filmmaking. Today, you‘re missing a trick in thinking the piece is finished when it leaves the edit suite.‖ Lee Kemp, MD at Fullrange Aside from informing creative decisions with real-world performance data, A/B testing could be a simple way of choosing which pieces of content to put where.
Case Study: Game Group
Game Group is the UK‘s largest independent games retailer. They use the statistics from their online video platform to make content decisions based on which videos are the most popular, where they‘re being watched and how long they‘re being watched for. ―If a video is only being watched to 50% that‘s probably not a very good video, and if we can find a substitute video of the same product we‘ll replace it and then, hopefully, that video will get a higher view count and a longer view count as well‖, explains content manager Tom Daly. http://bit.ly/l3JaJX
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8.6.
Improving performance
But collecting this data is just the beginning of the journey. Collecting data is a start, but pointless if the data isn‘t used to optimize current campaigns and improve insight into what people want. Only when you understand the data can you hope to capitalize on successful elements, address any underperforming tactics and inform the contents of your next project.
Continuous Improvement within M&S TV
―Engagement levels are constantly measured, and regular refinements are made in order to improve the quality of the editorial and the rates of conversion. ―For example, if the channel manager sees that users are dropping off significantly within the first ten seconds, the content will be examined in order to understand why this may occur. Similarly if viewers are dropping off before the end, or certain links are not being clicked, then further changes are made.‖ Chris Gorell Barnes, Founder and CEO at Adjust Your Set
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9.
Producing Content
There are lots of routes to choose from when selecting your content, each with a different set of specific characteristics, benefits and disadvantages. The biggest factor determining your route is likely to be budget. Video production companies commonly complain that budgets are a ‗piece of string thing‘ but in reality most have a typical project size that they‘re most comfortable and most competent at operating within. If you‘re going to keep costs down, there are some tips to help you get best value from freelance suppliers, by being clear about what you‘re getting for your money.
“We help our clients choose their production companies”
―Assessing content is still more of an art than a science – sometimes an idea smells good but we need to be able to know why this is. ―We use a proprietary content evaluation framework so we can score content against triggers – when and whether it‘s funny or uplifting, or compelling‖ Sarah Wood, COO at Unruly Media
9.1.
Writing briefs
Any reputable commercial provider will offer top quality using high standard equipment. The absolute key to getting your content right is the brief that starts it all off. A good agency will be on hand before you‘ve even started writing the brief, so if you‘re heading down this route, take along the things you really want to get out of the project – the business objectives and relevant ideas around your strategy. Most production companies won‘t go beyond their comfort zone creatively unless you can scrutinize the ideas they‘re coming back with against a set of clear requirements for your video. Similarly, freelance videographers might give you the best price, but don‘t expect earth-shattering creative or much input into strategy. The following tool will help you to outline the most important factors about your video that a potential provider needs to know. Far and away, the most important one is the question ―why do they need it?‖ If you find yourself answering this along the lines of ―to find out information about our product or service‖, try asking your friends whether they‘d like to find out about your exciting widget innovation next time you‘re hanging out together. This question is designed to make you think about why your customer (or someone you hope will one day become a customer) needs what you‘re about to do. ―Because they enjoy a good laugh at the end of a long week‖ is a qualifying answer, as is ―because no-one out there seems to be able to explain how photovoltaic cells work in an easy-to-understand way.‖
9.1.1.
Video brief setting tool
What do you want? Who is it aimed at? Why do they need it? When do you want it for? What is the essential message being communicated? What change in thinking/motivation/behaviour do you want to achieve? What needs to be said?
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What doesn‘t need to be said? Measurement? Budget? Don‘t forget to reach internal consensus on this with your carefully chosen group of people (see the Your Strategy section earlier on in this report) before you progress.
9.2.
Selecting a supplier
When you‘re buying creative services you‘re typically buying three things: Time on the tools Creativity Strategy People‘s time is really the only direct cost for suppliers (aside from equipment hire). It has little to do with the length of a video and more to do with the cost of execution of whatever the creative idea is that you run with – often reflective of their own size and equipment assets. Most production companies will have a natural project size, so ask for honest insight into the cost of other recent productions to ascertain this. Creative input is a clear value-add that most one-man-bands can‘t offer, but which most agencies and the emerging ‗video agency‘ specialists market themselves on. You won‘t get much of this, or it won‘t be much good, if you‘re paying less than several thousand dollars unless you‘re lucky to know a really good one man band that really can think, advise, produce and deploy by themselves. Of course, a cost-saving alternative is to do the creative part yourselves in your team, but don‘t undervalue the benefit of hardened professionals when it comes to creating content people really want to watch. Strategic ability may well be priced on the reputation of the company and the track record they have in delivering real business objectives for other clients, but it‘s far and away the most important decision-making factor if your budget is stretching to the tens of thousands. But creativity doesn‘t have to mean a wacky idea – it‘s about coming up with creative solutions to problems:
Case Study: American Express “How We Won”
American Express wanted to reinforce its ―win‖ philosophy for its Global Corporate Services Conference in Cannes in February 2008. It wanted to capture ―live‖ the successes of its sales team as they occurred. The problem was how to do this in a cost-effective and efficient manner without disrupting the very sales effort that they were celebrating. Lee Kemp, Managing Director at Fullrange, said: ―We recognized that it wouldn‘t be feasible to send camera teams to 14 countries around Europe – not least because we couldn‘t predict when the ‗gem‘ stories would happen. Having consulted with American Express, we felt that high-value results could be achieved by supporting the production of user-generated content. Giving basic equipment to untrained operators was a potential risk but, by giving active support to American Express, the risk paid off!‖ American Express worked with Fullrange to develop a ―diary room‖ approach where team members could selfrecord entries as and when they had achieved success. The entries documented the sales approach, the key actions leading to the ―win‖, and the subsequent thoughts and feelings of the team. The footage was then sent
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back to Fullrange‘s facility in central Birmingham for a complete post-production process. The project demonstrated the huge potential for film professionals to add value to user-generated content. In this case – as with a great deal of internal communications work – the client was the one with the lively and engaging content; the production company was able to edit, process and output it as high-quality content. http://bit.ly/bGU1sD
9.3.
Top tips for picking the perfect partner
Communicate clearly about the brief and the process. Explain who‘s involved, who needs to sign off, and who is likely to get involved at the last minute. Be clear about what you want to see in order to make a decision. Have a clear brief: what are you looking to achieve? What problem are you trying to solve? How are you going to determine whether it‘s been a success? Hold two selection rounds - one via paper, maybe just credentials, one meeting/pitch, and be clear about what you want at each stage. Ask where the money is going, what you‘d get with more budget, what you‘d lose with less. Check who owns the rights and what the restrictions are on where and for how long you use the content. This might not just be about the production company‘s copyright – most performers including voiceover artists have different rates depending on the territories. Understand the whole process: budget overruns and who pays, missed deadlines and how this impacts the payment schedule, or whether there are penalties on either side. Get to meet the people and find out who has responsibility for which element of production. Often clients will attempt to do some of the work themselves to reduce costs, but this needs to be written down and understood. Let the production company be involved in deciding who does what as you might underestimate the disruption a film crew can cause.
9.4.
What to expect
With all this in mind, what can you expect from the different offerings in the market? There‘s no way various people won‘t object to some of what follows, but it‘s designed to be a very broad outline to help guide your decision-making.
―One Man Band‖ (just as likely to be a lady obviously)
< £5,000 ($8,000) Same person consults, designs, shoots and edits. One single relationship throughout. Capability assessed through show reel and experience in chosen type of content. Pros: one point of contact throughout, opportunity for immersion in your brand and team, likely to be excellent value. Cons: risk putting all your eggs in one basket; likely to be stronger on the practical production side and an advocate of the technology, less on the creative and strategy.
Production Company
£5,000 - 50,000+ ($8,000 - $80,000+) Team of different specialists
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Dedicated account management Capability assessed through client base and known brand testimonials Pros: everything you need in one place, start to finish management, often excellent value insight and creative compared to agencies Cons: expect to pay considerably more - especially insight and creative, and elaborate ideas with cash costs will add to the budget
Ad Agency
£50,000+ ($80,000+) Video just one component of service offering Sometimes have in-house capabilities Account management and creative at the center Pros: built into your broader communications strategy, brand, creative, strategy are core capabilities Cons: sometimes their inexperience in video shows and they‘ll just sub-contract to a production company. Of course you‘re still paying for all those friends‘ account managers.
What differentiates suppliers?
―There is a certain base level in terms of visual quality that‘s not difficult to achieve, but certainly marks a half decent company out from cowboys. But quality is more important than that: it‘s about understanding. We only do video, and in concentrating purely on video, we try to understand everything around it too: what each video is trying to achieve, as well as how it‘s consumed. Who‘s watching it, and why. Even at the lower end of the production company budget range you should expect all three: technical capability, creativity and strategy.‖ Lee Kemp, Managing Director at Fullrange
9.5.
Producing in-house
The cost of out-sourcing could be an issue for reasons of scale as well as project budget. At some point in the evolution of your business, it may make sense to create an entire business unit for the in-house production of content, or even just a workflow for managing content sourced from suppliers. But for most, producing in-house will mean a marketing manager with a camcorder, and there are some dangers as well as opportunities to be found in this approach. The biggest danger is not that of low quality or wasted time when someone forgets to plug the microphone in: even a few hundred dollars can purchase equipment that, in the right light, will be indistinguishable on the web from a professional outfit. Overreaching expectation is usually the troublemaker in this approach and there are some simple ways of avoiding trying to go too fast too soon.
9.6.
Choosing equipment
The market for ―pro-sumer‖ production equipment is fiercely competitive and you‘ll find close competition around features and price-points between the key brands. One thing this competitiveness means is that most manufacturers have products of increasing sophistication at different price points so you can generally expect to get what you pay for, whatever the budget. To set up a very basic in-house production capability you‘ll need:
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Camera – Sony, Canon, Panasonic, JVC pro-grade camcorders £2,000-5,000 ($3,000 - $8,000) Accessories – Tripod e.g. Pro6HDV – Tieclip mic e.g. ATR-3350 cabled, or EW112-P – Rifle mic e.g. Senneheiser 416 Total camera budget £5,000 - 7,000 ($8,000 - $11,000) Editing suite – Powerful computer - e.g. Apple Mac – Software – Final Cut (Pro) Total editing suite budget £2,000 - 4,000 ($3,000 - $6,500) This all said, for a simple diary-room entry done to-camera, a smart phone with a low-cost app to up and tail will suffice, and will probably help you get your clip uploaded to YouTube faster than any other medium. Another note on speed: if you‘re starting out buying kit for the first time, go tapeless. Cameras that record onto static media will help you get footage into your editing system quicker than tape. Check out DV user http://bit.ly/jXLXSd for consistently excellent advice and user-reviews of the latest kit. Don’t forget a bag! And what about headphones? Or lighting?
9.7.
Basic production techniques
The key to successful in-house production is not to go too far too fast, and to know the limitations of your equipment. Low cost, mobile phone- integrated video cameras have transformed the very bottom of the value chain in video production and doubtless caused some trouble for people making a living out of the fact they‘d invested in the kit it was too expensive or inconvenient for most brands to purchase themselves. But the production industry is very much in business still, so before you let your boss conclude that the Flip camera is the solution to all your online video needs, think about how visible and costly it‘s going to be when your ambitious story looks like it‘s been shot by a monkey with a camcorder. The tools themselves are a very small part of the picture. There are, however, some techniques that you can read today and deploy tomorrow to improve the quality of your end product. The first is to remember that everything else in this report counts still – content is king, giving the viewer what they want, working out what you‘re trying to achieve, and how you‘re going to reach your target audience. And bear these tips in mind: Keep it short but sweet. Only use music if: – You own the rights. – It‘s not a distraction. Tell the story in pictures as well as words. Start simple in the edit - cut and cross-fade only.
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Don‘t attempt graphics until you‘re further down the line. Review it with the team - and expect input. Test the message on someone who‘s not been involved.
9.8.
Planning and execution
Next there‘s where to start. Don‘t go too far away from the most basic approach to start off with: a camera in a fixed position, filming someone talking against a white background. Getting them to talk to an interviewer off-screen will work much better than trying to look down the barrel of the camera. Even moderately out-of-practice professional presenters can create an eerie feeling in their audience when they try to address the lens. You can always cut the interviewer‘s questions out later so make sure the subject conveys the contents of the question in their answer. There‘s a surprising amount that can go wrong even in this environment, so try following these tips:
Background
Free from distraction Check contents carefully Consider shooting against white Check the background and make sure there‘s nothing distracting from the person speaking. Often the worst visual distractions are subtle things the camera operator didn‘t notice during the shoot, for example an object that appears to be growing out of the subject‘s head, or a sign in the background with some letters obscured to make an unwanted new word. Try to have something in the background that suits or supports the message (e.g. a landmark, map, or brand identity).
Sound
Quiet room Ensure you‘re using an appropriate microphone Check which source is picking up before you start
Lighting
Diffuse and strong No strange shadows Only approach lighting if you‘re confident you‘re going to use it. A small kit is a wise investment once you‘ve tried and tested your approach (Dedolight do a set for around the $3,200 mark, but check out DV user as mentioned above for the latest advice). Three-point lighting is a standard method used in video and film. By using three separate positions, you can light a person clearly and control (or eliminate) the shadows produced by direct lighting.
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Three-point lighting of a plain background
Key - direct on subject, principal illuminator Fill - also on subject, but relative to key, often lower, to counteract shadows Back - rim of light, separates subject from background
Framing
Centerd face, don‘t chop the top of people‘s heads off Make sure you can see both eyes Get the subject to face slightly left or right of camera Make the framing a decisive choice, not just where you put the camera
Camera setup
There‘s nothing wrong with auto! White balance, which you might want to look up how to do for your particular camera Check the right thing‘s in focus, even on auto Check sound levels
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Shots ranging from wide shot to MCU (medium close up) are best for information delivery, i.e. when the subject is talking about factual information. Shots tighter than a MCU are appropriate for when the guest is talking about something personal or emotional — the shot pulls the viewer into the same emotional space as the viewer. Stick within these techniques at first and see how you get on. As you‘ll have noticed, there‘s plenty you can control even with a static shot, and although online audiences have a high tolerance for production values, distraction from the message through poor quality means fewer results for you.
9.9.
User-generated content
Online video is a powerful currency and a great conversation starter. Enable social sharing and commenting your video will be your offering to the world of social media, and you‘ll be able to see the sorts of responses people are having. But user-generated content itself could be a fantastic way to engage your customers fully in an ongoing conversation via video. Where user reviews are an important factor in decision-making for your product, try letting existing customers upload their own reviews, comments or demonstrations. If you‘re using video for internal communications you might find the act of contributing to the project is as much a brand-strengthener for those who take part as the message itself.
Case Study: Reed.co.uk Short Film Competition
Now in its second year, the competition encourages people to create a short film around a particular theme and submit it via reed.co.uk for the chance to win cash prizes. Mark Rhodes, Head of Marketing at reed.co.uk, believes last year‘s competition exposed a rich seam of creative talent. He explains: ―The talent and effort that went into creating such a diverse and engaging selection of short films meant we had no hesitation in running another contest this year. Throughout the economic downturn, we‘ve continued to promote positivity around the jobs market with our Love Mondays advertising campaign. Now we want people to tell us what Mondays mean to them by making a film about it.‖ Over 350 films were entered this year and a shortlist of 12 was selected and put before a panel of expert judges. http://bit.ly/9jaHRO
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10.
Legislation
It‘s important not to forget that not everyone experiences the web in the same way, and the same goes for your online video content. Videos, like websites, are starting to experience the same degree of scrutiny from compliance bodies and there are significant pieces of legislation like the Disability Discrimination Act (UK) and Americans with Disabilities Act (US) that, although relatively untested in relation to video, are a compelling reminder of the need to strive for accessibility on the web.
10.1.
Accessibility controls
Most good online video platforms will offer a subtitling tool that you can use to build your own closed-captions and screen-reader detectable text transcripts, or even upload them from a transcript file. Compliance tests will also look at whether your video player needs a mouse to operate, or whether you have keyboard controls enabled for people with motor control difficulties. For many brands, this might be about best practice, not to mention the obvious commercial opportunity that is going to be missed if viewers with particular needs are overlooked. For many local authorities and public sector organisations, having accessible video is a must-have.
10.2.
Other benefits of compliance
The benefits of having accessible video aren‘t limited to compliance or even strictly to those with manifest accessibility issues. Many people browsing in offices won‘t have speakers or will be watching in distracting environments and closed captions will give your content a clear advantage for this audience. There are SEO benefits to closed-captions too. Many players will store the transcript text alongside the video, meaning that search engines find lots of lovely text to index when they crawl the page where the video is embedded. The ability to create and deploy different versions of the same video with subtitles in different languages could save you thousands of dollars in post-production where traditionally you‘d need to create separate outputs with the subtitles ‗burned‘ into the video in each case.
Multiple publishes
―We created a feature in Buto that lets our clients create multiple publishes (versions) of the same video. These different publishes are treated as unique pieces of video for the purposes of reporting and embedding video into web pages, but they all reference the same media file. ―As a result, we‘ve had people use this feature to publish the same video with different-styled players to different websites, but also to deploy different publishes to different international territories, each with the sub-titles in a different language.‖ Will Grant, Creator of Buto
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11.
11.1.
The Future of Online Video
Trends
Consumption
At the moment the whole of online video feels like it‘s a trend in itself. But from a sudden rise to popularity in 2006, and exponential growth since, video is clearly here to stay. 2011 seems to be the year where marketers in general are seeing online video as a seriously valuable tool, regardless of sector. According to recent IAB figures, more than two thirds of UK marketers are planning to increase their online video ad spend in 2011.11
„Video is where websites were in 1998‟
―Most brands in 1998 knew they needed a website, and were happy to find some brochure content to digitize to suffice. The majority of brands are in the same position with their online video: they‘ve got some ads, some corporate video of their AGM and they want to put these online. The next question for marketers to ask is ‗how does video work for us in our strategy?‘‖ Stuart Maister, Managing Director at BroadView Communications
Technology
Whilst brands get to grips with their own strategies and work out how online video will help them deliver results, a market known for its innovation will carry on innovating. If anything is certain, it‘s that new features and techniques will emerge both in the creation of video itself, how it‘s distributed and how it‘s consumed.
“The next big thing will be video in augmented reality”
―This could give people the ability to experience things in totally new ways. For example, in real-time but with a layer of graphics on top. There is a massive amount of innovation going on in this space within advertising, mobile, and augmented reality communities.‖ Mike Johnston, Executive Producer at Boss Creative Meanwhile, producers and production companies are evolving to keep up with changes in the sector as clients get better versed in the language of online video and what they want it to do for them. Simply producing the content is not enough for ambitious brands like Adjust Your Set, and a combination of strategy, creativity and technology could become the norm for successful providers. For those who invest in broadening their offering, there‘s a growing market to tap in to.
The future of the video production industry
―There‘s definitely growth in the marketplace and we‘ve seen like for like growth for three years in our business. It‘s not the case that budgets have increased, but by taking what we do seriously we‘ve been able to tap into larger budgets now than three years ago. This is particularly helped by the extent to which we can measure the impact of our work. We start off by concentrating on doing good work that people will enjoy watching. But now we can see exactly how much of an impact this has had on whatever our client‘s communications problem is.‖ Lee Kemp, Managing Director at Fullrange
http://www.b2bmarketing.net/knowledgebank/search-marketing/best-practice/how-useresearch-optimise-your-online-video-campaign
11
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Audiences
Just as brands and platforms will change, so too will audiences. With an increasingly personalized web, audiences will expect content to be even more relevant to them – and that‘s of increasingly high standards.
“The future is about personalisation”
―When we buy a product it‘s not because of the ads – we buy because of people we trust. In the real world, 70% of the decision is down to recommendation and we have to find a way of achieving this online. This is as much about credibility as anything else – finding a way to create genuine, honest communication.‖ Manley, Director of Search at LBi
“Content is going to get better”
―With more success stories and bigger budgets, we‘re going to see a lot more great content which is fantastic. We might also see the range of genres that brands are investing in broaden: consumers do indeed like snack-sized content. But just like people enjoy canapés they also like hearty meals so I expect we‘ll see brands exploring longer-form content more.‖ Sarah Wood, COO at Unruly Media
11.2.
Monetisation
We‘ve already seen some of the differences in success and cost between ‗paid‘ and ‗shared‘ video. So long as there are commercial interests at stake, these debates won‘t go away. The incumbent industry of media buying has been anything but slow to react and adapt to the new space that is the web, and video banners are as purchasable as ad slots or billboards. In spite of their availability, these paid-for spots may offer significantly less benefit to brands when today‘s consumer prefers permissive conversation to interruptive rhetoric. Although brands should always be willing to invest in content distribution, the future of branded video on the web may well be dictated by the successes of brands who go out and create genuinely entertaining, interesting or useful content and offer it into the social space. Meanwhile companies whose sole business is producing content can expect even easier and cheaper ways to monetize their content directly in the future – and benefit from the meritocracy of the social web to find their audience. Copyright protection and Digital Rights Management will never prevent content from being copied illegitimately. Instead the challenge for content owners is to ensure the legitimate experience is, in as many was as possible, better than the illegitimate one and that payments can be accepted quickly and easily. The rise in music sharing online eventually taught the music industry that the more music people share ‗illegally‘, the more they bought through legitimate channels.
11.3.
Mobile video and Connected TV
Mobile devices are an increasingly popular way for people to consume online video content and many predict that mobile devices will overtake fixed-line for video consumption within the next few years. Connected TVs are television sets that are connected to the internet, allowing them to direct video from online channels like YouTube directly into people‘s living rooms. Like most technical innovations, Connected TV has been given a huge amount of press over the past 12 months and obsession with form over content is where brands stand the highest chance of getting things
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wrong. However, Connected TV is a relevant innovation for brands to get their heads around, simply because of the new environment they could now find they have access to: that of sit-back home entertainment. Brands that invest in creating their own channels so this is made easy for the consumer will have the benefit of being in a new and exciting space with very little competition for the time being.
“Marketers are one of the biggest video producers in the world”
―Ooyala Everywhere allows viewers to continue a storyline across multiple devices. Integrations with authentication services like Facebook Connect can make things easier for viewers when it comes to professional content and DRM, because they only need to sign in once. ―For the marketer, this means being able to see a consumer across multiple devices and across many different videos. Marketers are becoming more and more like media companies. Connected TV, which is the next step in media consumption, offers a huge opportunity to early adopting brands because there are only a handful of apps in most connected TV app stores. A brand that takes advantage of app stores on connected TVs will find a competitive landscape for share of voice similar to what they were seeing back in the 70s.‖ Bismarck Lepe, Founder of Ooyala
11.4.
In conclusion
Whatever the technology, platform, audience or message, the absence of an overarching strategy with clearly-defined aims will mean that only luck will deliver value to brands investing in online video. As new innovations come to market and audiences consume ever more content from an increasingly broad range of devices, not to mention sources, the smart brands will be the ones who can test each tactic and every new technology against the question: how (and) will this fit into our strategy? Online video is an exciting place to be, and there is a whole future of innovation, trend-setting, flagship-building and game-changing to be done. Excitingly for today‘s digital marketer, the next big thing in online video could come from anyone in brands regardless of sector or budget.
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12.
Glossary
ADA – Americans with Disabilities Act. Legal enshrinement of the equal rights of US citizens. Specifically relevant to the accessibility of online video ASA – Advertising Standards Authority (UK). Augmented reality. A way of experiencing the world with an added layer of information, typically graphics, data and visualisations, either in-vision in the case of goggles or headsets, or overlaid on top of live video on a screen or portable device. Back links. Incoming links to a website, counted as part of a page‘s score or PageRank (Google) and used to affect where a page appears in search engine results. Bitrate. The amount of data transferred per unit of time. Used in relation to the size of videos on the web, for example a 1200Kbps video would consume 1200 kilobits of data per second. Blended SERP. Search engine results page that mixes media types, for example images, video, news and business listings. CDN – content delivery network. Network of computers containing copies of data placed at different points (or ‗nodes‘) to improve performance. Codec. The compression method that makes video files smaller. Connected TV. TV sets that are connected to the internet, designed to present online video as a full-screen experience in the home. Container. The file format in which compressed video and audio is contained. DRM – digital rights management. Access control technologies that are used by publishers and copyright holders to restrict and manage the use of digital content. Flash video. Video codec developed by Macromedia, now part of Adobe, which is delivered into web browsers using the Adobe Flash Player. h.264. Standard for video compression. HTML5 video. Element introduced in HTML5 specification for the purpose of playing video on web pages within the web browser. In-stream / in-player ads. Adverts that appear during video playback, either served from a third party ad network or controlled by the content published. iOS (formerly known as iPhone OS). Apple‘s mobile operating system. IP address. Numeric label assigned to each device on a computer network. ISP – internet service provider. Company providing internet access to homes or businesses. Metadata. Data that provides information about one or more aspects of the data it relates to e.g. length of a video. Multivariate testing. Technique for testing hypothesis where there are multiple variables. OVP – online video platform. Software platform for the management and delivery of online video.
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POP - point of presence. In this context, the geographical location of a server or group of servers on a CDN. Pre-roll. Piece of video (usually advertising) that appears before a video plays. QuickTime. A type of container. RTMP - Real Time Messaging Protocol. Way of delivering where a persistent connection is maintained between the media server and the user‘s browser that breaks the stream into fragments and delivers the video bit by bit. SEO – Search Engine Optimisation. The process of improving the visibility of a website or web page in search engine results pages. SERP – Search Engine Results Page. The results that are returned by search engines when a user performs a search. TCP/IP - Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol. Set of communications protocols that form the basic language and function of the internet. Theroa. Open-source compression standard for video. UGC – user-generated content. Content that has typically been produced by consumers or amateurs rather than brands or professionals. Vcommerce – video commerce. Video Sitemaps. Small files that contain information about where videos are located on the web. Vlog – video blog. WebM. Open-source compression standard for video.
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13.
13.1.
13.1.1.
Appendices
Industry Experts‘ Biographies
Chris Gorell Barnes
Founder and CEO at Adjust Your Set, London, UK
Chris is a new media entrepreneur working in digital video marketing and advertising. The business he founded in 2008 is a leader in the field of online video and has created the awardwinning M&S TV and significant online video channels for a range of brands including Debenhams and Lastminute.com. In May 2011 Adjust Your Set came 8th in a list of Top 50 fastest growing media companies in Europe. ―I founded Adjust Your Set in 2008 prompted by a shift in media habits. Driven by new technologies and social media, it became clear that there was an opportunity for a new type of agency that would help brands navigate this emerging landscape and become more like media companies in their approach to communication.‖ Chris is an expert in content creation and distribution strategies and has contributed a number of sound-bites to this report which tie together the creative, technical and strategic elements of online video.
13.1.2.
Will Grant
Creator of Buto, Birmingham, UK
Will is a web technology professional with over ten years‘ experience overseeing the design, architecture and marketing of powerful websites that are easy (and even fun) to use. Buto was created in 2008 in response to a customer need from its host company Big Button Media‘s video production clients. Since then it‘s built up quite a following, attracting worldleading clients such as Tesco, Freshfields and Amec to its software-as-a-service online video platform. Buto is a great example of a small British product that can operate by stealth and win customers on the basis of great innovation. Will is a technologist with a highly sophisticated normal people interface and his input has been hugely valuable in translating some of the technical details in this report.
13.1.3.
Mike Johnston
Executive Producer at Boss Creative, Seattle, USA
With a background that includes traditional agency as well as digital agency experience, Mike has worked in advertising for ten years leading the strategic planning and supervision of national award-winning advertising campaigns including broadcast, web, interactive, mobile, corporate and online media. Mike has been responsible for several web videos for Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Phone 7, some of the earliest mobile advertising with teams at AT&T, plus web design and marketing videos for Microsoft, FedEx, and the band, Alice in Chains. Mike has been particularly helpful to this report in explaining how branding goals link in with creative video content.
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13.1.4.
Lee Kemp
Managing Director at Fullrange, Birmingham, UK
Lee runs Fullrange, a UK Top 50 (Televisual, 2011) digital film production agency offering creative, production, post-production and duplication services. They work for brands like Unilever, American Express and Deutsche Bank as well as regional organisations like Marketing Birmingham, Retail Birmingham and Screen West Midlands plus lots of agencies, charities and smaller companies. Lee‘s mission is to tell stories that are visually brilliant and measurably great. This report has benefited from Lee‘s insights into the developing market for online video production as well as the importance of metrics and where current measurement techniques fall short.
13.1.5.
Bismarck Lepe
Founder of Ooyala, Mountain View USA
Bismarck is a Stanford Graduate who formerly served as Senior Product Manager at Google where he was guiding the development of content monetization products for AdSense, Social Networks and Online Video. Ooyala was started in 2007 to unleash the true power of online video for publishers everywhere. Now with offices across the world and $42 million of funding, Ooyala is a leader in online video technology, analytics and monetization. Bismarck has been particularly helpful in contributing his expertise in video analytics and the future of online video.
13.1.6.
Stuart Maister
Managing Director, BroadView Communications, London, UK
Stuart runs a TV company specialising in the development and delivery of web-based programmes for large companies. With a background in TV and radio journalism, Stuart has seen online video unfold from the start. He‘s watched brands‘ attitudes change from scepticism about who could see it to enthusiasm when it became the case that everyone could. Stuart has provided valuable insight into how larger organisations think about online video.
13.1.7.
Manley
SEO Director at LBi, London, UK
Manley is search analyst who leads a strategic and campaign team for LBi where he‘s been since 2005. Manley‘s background is in web accessibility, although now as SEO Director, Manley is responsible for Technical Search Analysis, developing best practice guidelines and providing consultancy both to clients and agencies on designing, implementing and supporting their search strategy. His expertise in the field of search is obvious in conversation and he‘s been insightful in the sections on video SEO in particular.
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13.1.8.
Joe Pélissier
Marketing Consultant and Producer, London, UK
Joe‘s professional career started in video production before he set up his current consultancy service that helps companies adapt to the new world of digital communication. Since the rise in online video, Joe‘s brief has expanded from copywriting and marketing and communications training to see him become increasingly involved in online video for his clients. Joe‘s range of experience with companies of all sizes across almost every sector has brought a highly useful degree of breadth to the whole report.
13.1.9.
Sarah Wood
COO at Unruly Media, London, UK
Sarah Wood is co-founder and COO of Unruly Media. She‘s responsible, in her own words, for ensuring that Unruly is delivering the most awesome social video campaigns on the planet. An academic in a previous life, Sarah continues to lecture in New Media, Screen Cultures and Digital Marketing at several UK universities. Speaking to Sarah about online video is an exciting and energising experience and her energy and personal dynamism alone are enough to convince any brand of the power of online video. As someone who sees projects from start to finish and has managed relationships with producers, agencies, clients and media buyers alike, Sarah‘s insights into what makes good online video are the most informed and refined imaginable.
13.2.
13.2.1.
Further and continued reading
Sites
Reel SEO http://feeds.feedburner.com/reelseo Beet.TV http://feeds.feedburner.com/BeetTV Paul Nilsen http://www.paulnilsen.com/feed/ Media Post Video Insider http://blogs.mediapost.com/video_insider/?feed=rss2 Inside Online Video http://www.insideonlinevideo.com/?feed=rss2 VideoVoo http://videovoo.com/feed/ LostRemote.com http://feeds.feedburner.com/LostRemote NewTeeVee http://newteevee.com/feed/ Online Video Watch http://www.onlinevideowatch.com/feed/ The Business of Online Video http://blog.streamingmedia.com/the_business_of_online_vi/atom.xml Tremor Media Blog http://blog.tremormedia.com/?feed=rss2 Video Insider http://blogs.mediapost.com/video_insider/?feed=rss2
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Video on the Web http://feeds.feedburner.com/typepad/kenmc1/video WebVideoUniverse http://www.webvideouniverse.com/icom_includes/feeds/special/wvu-15.xml Digital Media Wire – Video http://www.dmwmedia.com/taxonomy/term/617/all/feed (Courtesy of http://www.reelseo.com/video-marketing-rss-feeds/)
13.2.2.
Charts
Ad Age viral chart http://adage.com/section/viral-video-charts/ Unruly Viral Chart http://viralvideochart.unrulymedia.com/
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Online Video
A Best Practice Guide
Online Video
A Best Practice Guide
Published
July 2011
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Econsultancy London 4th Floor, The Corner 91-93 Farringdon Road London EC1M 3LN United Kingdom Telephone: +44 (0)20 7269 1450 http://econsultancy.com [email protected]
Econsultancy New York 41 East 11th St., 11th Floor New York, NY 10003 United States Telephone: +1 212 699 3626
Contents
1. Introduction ..................................................................... 4 2. About Econsultancy ......................................................... 5
2.1. About the author ......................................................................... 5
3. Introduction: Online Video Strategy ............................... 6
3.1. 3.2. 3.3. 3.4. 3.5. Why now? .................................................................................... 7 Where online video fits in ........................................................... 8 Content is King ............................................................................ 9 Key factors to consider .............................................................. 10 How this guide is structured ...................................................... 11
4. Why Video Works: Strategic Benefits ........................... 12
4.1. 4.2. 4.3. 4.4. 4.5. Exposure ..................................................................................... 13 Delivering information in a different way .................................14 Increase sales conversions ......................................................... 15 Reduce abandonment and increase dwell-time ........................16 Brand engagement ..................................................................... 17
5. Your Strategy ................................................................. 19
5.1. Strategy setting tool ...................................................................19
5.1.1. 5.1.2. 5.1.3. 5.1.4. Defining your audience .......................................................... 19 Setting business objectives ....................................................20 Choosing your team ...............................................................20 Why strategy is important .....................................................20
6. Online Video Essentials ................................................. 21
6.1. 6.2. How video works on websites .................................................... 21 Video formats ............................................................................. 21
6.2.1. Flash video ............................................................................. 22 6.2.2. HTML5 ................................................................................... 22
6.3.
Online video platforms .............................................................. 23
6.3.1. Choosing your OVP ................................................................ 23 6.3.2. YouTube and Vimeo............................................................... 24
6.4.
Digital rights management (DRM) & video security ................ 25
6.4.1. RTMP ..................................................................................... 25 6.4.2. DRM ....................................................................................... 26
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6.4.3. IP Security .............................................................................. 26
6.5.
Social sharing ............................................................................ 26
6.5.1. 6.5.2. 6.5.3. 6.5.4. Comments .............................................................................. 27 Ratings ................................................................................... 27 Content re-posting ................................................................. 27 Viral video ..............................................................................28
7. Getting an Audience ...................................................... 29
7.1. 7.2. 7.3. 7.4. 7.5. Existing customers and channels ............................................. 29 Email distribution ..................................................................... 30 Seeding content ......................................................................... 30
7.3.1. Top US content destinations ................................................. 31
Pre-roll and advertising ............................................................ 32
7.4.1. Top US online video ad properties ........................................ 33
Video search engine optimisation (SEO).................................. 34
7.5.1. Video SEO tool ....................................................................... 34
8. Measurement ................................................................. 36
8.1. 8.2. 8.3. 8.4. 8.5. 8.6. What you can measure .............................................................. 36 Interpreting video analytics ...................................................... 38 Integrating video metrics into other tools ................................ 40 Informing other marketing channels ....................................... 40
8.4.1. Following the conversation....................................................40
A/B and multivariate testing (MVT) .........................................41 Improving performance ............................................................ 42
9. Producing Content ......................................................... 43
9.1. 9.2. 9.3. 9.4. 9.5. 9.6. 9.7. 9.8. 9.9. Writing briefs ............................................................................ 43
9.1.1. Video brief setting tool........................................................... 43
Selecting a supplier ................................................................... 44 Top tips for picking the perfect partner ................................... 45 What to expect ........................................................................... 45 Producing in-house ................................................................... 46 Choosing equipment ................................................................. 46 Basic production techniques ..................................................... 47 Planning and execution ............................................................. 48 User-generated content............................................................. 50
10. Legislation ...................................................................... 51
10.1. Accessibility controls .................................................................. 51 10.2. Other benefits of compliance ..................................................... 51
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11. The Future of Online Video ........................................... 52
11.1. 11.2. 11.3. 11.4. Trends ........................................................................................ 52 Monetisation.............................................................................. 53 Mobile video and Connected TV ............................................... 53 In conclusion ............................................................................. 54
12. Glossary .......................................................................... 55 13. Appendices ..................................................................... 57
13.1. Industry Experts‘ Biographies .................................................. 57
13.1.1. Chris Gorell Barnes ................................................................ 57 13.1.2. Will Grant............................................................................... 57 13.1.3. Mike Johnston ....................................................................... 57 13.1.4. Lee Kemp ............................................................................... 58 13.1.5. Bismarck Lepe........................................................................ 58 13.1.6. Stuart Maister ........................................................................ 58 13.1.7. Manley .................................................................................... 58 13.1.8. Joe Pélissier ........................................................................... 59 13.1.9. Sarah Wood ............................................................................ 59
13.2. Further and continued reading ................................................. 59
13.2.1. Sites ........................................................................................ 59 13.2.2. Charts .....................................................................................60
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1.
Introduction
Econsultancy‟s series of best practice guides have been created for internet professionals who typically work in marketing or e-commerce roles. The guides steer readers to ensure that projects and strategies are executed in the right way for optimal results. This guide to online video is specifically aimed at brand or marketing managers, content owners and digital marketers who are using video as a strategic tool. It aims to lay out everything that‘s happening in online video so you can choose the tools and techniques that will work for your project and achieve clear, measurable business objectives from online video. It‘s full of examples from some of the top people in online video to help you anticipate what will be relevant to your organisation in the future. We hope it proves useful to you.
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2.
About Econsultancy
Econsultancy is a digital publishing and training group used by more than 200,000 Internet professionals every month. The company publishes practical and time-saving research to help marketers make better decisions about the digital environment, build business cases, find the best suppliers, look smart in meetings and accelerate their careers. Econsultancy has offices in New York and London, and hosts more than 100 events every year in the US and UK. Many of the world‘s most famous brands use Econsultancy to educate and train their staff. Some of Econsultancy‘s members include: Google, Yahoo, Dell, BBC, BT, Shell, Vodafone, Virgin Atlantic, Barclays, Deloitte, T-Mobile and Estée Lauder. Join Econsultancy today to learn what‘s happening in digital marketing – and what works. Call us to find out more on +1 212 699 3626 (New York) or +44 (0)20 7269 1450 (London). You can also contact us online.
2.1.
About the author
Steffan Aquarone is a young entrepreneur who thrives on making things happen. At just 20 years of age, Steff was a founding director of a Top 50 corporate video production company. As Managing Director, he developed content for Land Rover, Vodafone and Massey Ferguson as well as leading the business through its first five years, managing 18 full-time staff. Steff is now a freelance digital entrepreneur working with early start-ups in the creative and digital sector as well as global brands like Tesco and Deloitte, helping them develop elements of their business strategy. He leads online video courses for Econsultancy and writes regularly on the future of video on the web. Still a producer active in the field, he is a director of the Producers‘ Forum, a member-led network for film & TV producers, a trustee of 100year-old Cadbury children‘s charity BAYC and co-owner of feature-film production company Immense Productions with best-selling comedy writer Guy Browning, which will release its first feature Tortoise in Love in 2011. Steff is an unflappable operator who can make things happen against the highest odds and speaks regularly to audiences about the highs and lows of business, young entrepreneurship and the power of digital marketing. He graduated from the University of Warwick with a BA (Hons) in 2006 and became a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2007.
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3.
Introduction: Online Video Strategy
Online video has exploded in the past five years. It‟s not simply here to stay: video is already an expected part of the user experience online and is fast becoming the most powerful way to reach new audiences. Your ability to use online video as a strategic tool for your brand or project relies on you having a thorough, up-to-date understanding of the creative as well as the technical aspects of online video. Although the barriers to entry are low, your online video will be competing for an audience with the world‘s best entertainment content in an environment where it‘s easier than ever for viewers to move on if they‘re not interested. Many brands have recognized the power of online video and have been investing heavily in it. One of the goals of this report is to share the success of some of these stories. But there are some basics that it‘s important to grasp too, such as how online video works, what social sharing means for online video, and what you can track to measure success.
Investing in online video
―Some brands get it, and some don‘t. Many see it as an extension of advertising, or a cheap alternative to it. Some even come to us saying know they‘ve got to do it but deliberate for months and don‘t ever commit to what they‘re going to do. ―In truth a lot of online teams are managing lots of different developments at once and one of our approaches is to use a strategic framework to help brands identify their priorities, then work out how they should organize and develop their content strategy and how best to leverage the content for maximum effectiveness.‖ Stuart Maister, Managing Director at BroadView Communications Online video is listed as one of the top ten strategic technology trends for 2011 (Gartner, 20101) and this year is expected to show the biggest growth in commercial use of online video yet. But in order to know how online video can help your organisation, you need to understand how it can help your customers. Knowing that content is king will help you avoid coming up with the next online video clanger. A strategic tool can‘t be deployed to solve all your problems at once and online video is no exception; you need clear, specific objectives to refer to in your thinking and your brief-setting. This report contains some tools to help you do that. It will also help you decide whether to commission from a production company, source from suppliers or produce your own video content in-house. Content may be king, but getting an audience to begin with is pretty important too. This report looks at the myriad of ways to reach audiences with your content and what you can expect by way of return on investment if you decide to commission services from third parties, whether in the new realm of content seeding or the more recognisable model of pre-roll advertising. As online audiences grow ever more discerning, it‘s vital to eject the relative security of traditional interruptive advertising from your mindset. Audiences no longer watch stuff because they have to, and it‘s important to understand that, in the long-term, your online video content has to be watchable and sharable if it‘s going to stand a chance of success. No report would be complete without a good deal of speculation about the future and we‘ve asked some of the top people in the field to give their opinions about what‘s in store for online video. As well as growth and innovation, this report also covers legislative considerations, such as the
1
http://www.gartner.com/it/content/1524600/1524620/february_9_top_10_strategic_tech_d cearley.pdf
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Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in the US. In the UK, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is taking a firmer stance on online activities. Whether it‘s tools, techniques, tips or tricks, this report should help you to progress your online video strategy with more confidence and the latest information at your fingertips.
3.1.
Why now?
Two key enablers led to the sudden rise of online video in 2006: TCP and broadband. TCP stands for ―Transmission Control Protocol‖ and was conceived back in the 1970s as part of the earlystage design of the language and function of the internet commonly referred to as ―TCP/IP‖. TCP is a way of allowing large chunks of data to be sent across the internet and it‘s the dominant method for most of the internet‘s most frequently used applications including the World Wide Web and email2. Although TCP has long been a reliable way of getting the right information to the right place, it prioritizes accuracy over timeliness. Videos are large files even when compressed, and it wasn‘t until the speed of connectivity within the internet itself rose that it was possible to deliver video online in anything like real-time. In the same year, YouTube‘s use grew from 30 million to 100 million views per day in a five-month period (Business Week, 20063) and the rest is, albeit incredibly recent, history.
Why this year?
―Video is rising in particular this year on the back of social media. It‘s been a bit of a second-class citizen until now, but it‘s an incredibly powerful thing. It started in retail and, by next year, I think most organisations will have a line for video in their marketing budgets.‖ Chris Gorell Barnes, Founder and CEO at Adjust Your Set One of the biggest and most obvious establishments to move into online video has been the stock of traditional media owners whose content, traditionally accessible via broadcast television, is now available online. The BBC iPlayer, which launched in beta in July 2007, is an obvious example. Traditional media owners also includes print and media organisations whose repertoire of media has extended into video. The rise of online video has been accompanied by all the norms and behaviours of traditional advertising in the form of ad breaks, advertorial and pre-roll. But the desire to watch video online has had more than infrastructural implications. Sites such as YouTube (launched in February 2005), Google Video, MSN Video and Yahoo Video allowed users to upload their own content. A generation of young people have become the first to see mobile phones and video cameras as virtually synonymous.
A user-generated future: a small selection of channels where users can upload their own video content
2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_Control_Protocol
3http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2006/07/youtube_100_mil.ht
ml
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The ability for anyone to upload a video they‘ve made has permeated technology in personal computers, smart phones, and video cameras. Even first generation ‗Connected TV‘ sets now provide YouTube and other online video access, as well as digital broadcast channels. Amateur producers are uploading everything from cats on skateboards and unsigned comedy routines to video blogs and citizen journalism. In fact, amateur clips gave the world the first images of the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami disaster. Probably the most significant thing about the rise in online video is that it‘s not a just a young person‘s game. The fact that more under 35s view online video than any other demographic is entirely attributable to their increased internet use generally (Comscore, 2010 4). But everyone seems to watch online video, regardless of age.
Online video in the UK
―Over 15 million people in the UK are going to watch 200 million videos today. ―Over 35 million people are going to watch an average of 17 hours of online video each this month‖ Marc Gosschalk, Senior Analyst, Comscore, ibid
3.2.
Where online video fits in
The fact that it‘s such an expected part of the online experience is probably why, here in 2011, online video is such an important consideration for brands. Traditional advertisers are seeing a lot of their ad spend being diverted towards advertising before, during and after content that is online rather than on TV. Newcomers who are investing in content for their brands for the first time are finding they can build audiences in new and powerful ways with some staggering success stories.
Case Study: Aussiebum
Video is a key part of Aussiebum‘s online offering, which founder Sean Ashby credits with increasing turnover by 40% from Au$16m to Au$23m in spite of a catastrophic climate for retail. ―When internet retail started they said that it would never overtake the experience of going into a store and shopping,‖ Sean told Fiona Graham of BBC news in December 2010. ―I think the same could be said online about video. Nothing can replace the experience of video compared to just an image. Video is the biggest competitor to shopping in a store itself.‖ As well as taking a high-profile place in the company‘s online offering, the content itself has been well thoughtout. Sean recognized the importance of keeping strong, branded content at the heart of the project: the videos are quirky and tongue-in-cheek in tone, and include an ‗on the street‘ experiment that asks men to test the claim (there and then) that the ‗Wonderjock‘ does for men what Wonderbra does for women. Aussiebum attributes the bottom-line benefit of their online video to the fact that customers find and enjoy the content, buy-in to the fun of the brand, and can then convert their interest into a sale. Jeremy Allaire, CEO of Brightcove, the online video platform that powers Aussiebum‘s online video, told BBC News:‖A video of a Thomas Pink shirt on YouTube doesn‘t do any good, but on their own website, as part of their brand experience, the brand context and the e-commerce experience - then it is very different.‖
4
http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Presentations_Whitepapers/2010/comScore_Data_ Passport_-_Second_Half_2010
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http://bit.ly/LZQF7 as told to BBC News, 2010 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11899824 Above all, millions of customers are using video as part of their daily lives: making it, watching it, and sharing it. Brands that want to be part of this activity need to understand it fully and manage it strategically. Discovering where it fits in best is a typical challenge for the content strategist. Organisations commission video from a variety of internal departments. To create an online video strategy for an entire organisation is a challenge but it‘s the sensible, practical way to ensure best practice. If you‘ve not already done so, create a map of the stakeholders in your organisation to whom your online video is important. You‘ll probably find people from different levels of most departments. If you‘re doing it right, your online video will be drawn from your brand‘s tone of voice, informed by your strategy, pitched at your defined market and driven by commercial objectives. This isn‘t going to happen if your online video is treated as a subset of e-commerce or online content management, or if it‘s left to the PR department.
3.3.
Content is King
People who are obsessed by using every new communications innovation are as bad as those who dismiss social media until it hits them in the face. Each brand or product is different and conversation will happen in different places online depending on the country or sector. But it will be happening, whether you like it or not. The first thing you need to do online is find out where the action is. In traditional advertising, there‘s a whole industry to tell you the value of each ad spot and who‘s likely to watch it. Online, your customers will choose where to be, and they‘ll move around freely and frequently. As marketers, you have to go and find them. If you create content that is written for your brand, saying the things you want to say, listing unsubstantiated reasons to buy the product, then however much effort you‘ve made and money you‘ve spent getting to the place where the conversation is happening, your customers will ignore you. Invest carefully, think about what you customers will want to see and hear, and you might find people will give you the time of day. Do it really well – create something so compelling, so interesting, funny or insightful that people genuinely enjoy your content, and you‘ll find that people might even recommend it around.
Content is King
―Content has to be interesting, entertaining or useful if it‘s going to work‖ Chris Gorell Barnes, founder and CEO at Adjust Your Set Just in case you‘re struggling with this, here‘s a clumsy analogy: the web is like a big nightlife area within a city. We all know by now that ―having a website‖ and ―being in a bar‖ are necessary but not sufficient conditions for success. You‘re not going to meet interesting people in a bar that‘s empty, or one that‘s full of the sorts of people you don‘t get on with. But finding the right bar is just part of the puzzle. You‘ve got to choose what to say. Wandering in without an introduction and talking loudly about how great you are isn‘t going to win you any friends. You can be bold, but if you‘re going to be loud you‘d better make sure you‘re funny. Try to listen and to have two-way conversations. Be interesting and people will want to listen to you. Be funny and they might laugh. Do some or both and they might like you and want to see you again.
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Next time someone hands you a corporate video brief, or a script, think about who it‘s been written for. Is it for the customer, who‘ll find it useful, interesting or entertaining? Or is it for the PR department, who want to ensure key messages are delivered? If the content isn‘t interesting, entertaining or useful, then these messages won‘t get through, simply because people will have moved on to something else long before they‘re even mentioned.
“Marketers forget they‟re talking to real people”
―So often I feel like the only guy in the room who‘s worried about the poor slobs who‘ve got to watch whatever thing is being talked about by everyone in the marketing and technical departments. ―You need to think about the lifestyle of the people who are in your target audience, not just about the product. Video might not be the tool to ask people for money to buy something – you might need to use another channel. But it can be the tool that creates the golden halo around your brand by providing content or solutions suited to their lifestyle.‖ Mike Johnston, Executive Producer at Boss Creative The simple fact is that online video doesn‘t involve someone being trapped into watching things in the way TV ads do, and this means that content producers have to work harder. It‘s easier for viewers to move away and not come back if they don‘t like what they see. The final thing to remember is that this doesn‘t just affect B2C or consumer marketing videos. All viewers are human beings. Rational, business decision-makers are time-poor so they will click-away if the content isn‘t valuable. But everyone prefers content that is engaging as well as informative.
3.4.
Key factors to consider
Before you launch into spending money on video or letting your brand be represented by someone from your office shrieking incoherently into a camcorder, take a step back to think about your strategy and what you‘re trying to achieve. Some of the most common mistakes are caused by spending too much too fast, and trying to adopt a new approach without due forethought.
“New uses for online video are constantly appearing but agencies are slow to respond”
―I really am surprised at how slow production companies and agencies have been at understanding, developing and mastering this. They‘re fixated with the direct response strategy. I try hard to convince people of the benefits true engagement can bring to their brand. Getting people to opt in and being able to help them can really make them love a brand more.‖ Mike Johnston, Executive Producer at Boss Creative Another factor to consider is where you spend your budget. This doesn‘t just mean the cost of production, because although content is king it‘s not going to get very far without distribution. The great thing about digital marketing is you get results quickly, meaning you can tweak and improve both your tactics and your budgets as you go.
“I‟m constantly surprised by the speed at which sharing has increased”
―Links are becoming a replacement for conversation - people will just share a link. It‘s a bit like ‗I tweet therefore I am‘. This might sound worrying to some, but the content that‘s coming out of all this is fantastic. There‘s a real chance that advertising might once again have the potential to drive both creativity and technology in the way that state funding doesn‘t have the ability to do right now. Brands have a big role to play in this future because they have the budgets - but they have to remember that online video is so democratic.‖
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Sarah Wood, COO at Unruly Media Having clear aims to direct your strategy is important and there are some tools to help you do this in the ‗Your Strategy‘ section.
3.5.
How this guide is structured
This guide has been assembled so you can dip in and out for information about key themes as you go, or indeed start from the place you think your current thinking has reached already. In this respect, the ‗basics‘ are laid out towards the front of the report, with sections like ―Online Video Essentials‖ and ―Your Strategy‖ before later sections where even the most advanced online video strategist should find some useful insights. Don‘t be fooled into thinking the ‗basics‘ are a given though. A great many brands are spending a lot of money doing ambitious, complicated things without coming to terms with some basic truths about what their customers actually want. There are quotes and tips from personal interviews with industry leaders throughout the report. Our experts have also contributed towards a broad range of case studies. Finally at the very end, after the Appendix, is an attempt to disambiguate a number of different words and phrases that have started to appear amongst the industry vocabulary with oftenunscrupulous purposes. The most sensible and therefore preferred terminology is referred to consistently in this report, but if you‘ve skimmed through the report and haven‘t spotted anything on ―in-stream ads‖ yet, check the appendix first.
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4.
Why Video Works: Strategic Benefits
Simply having it?
It‘s often said that web users nowadays expect video as part of their online experience. But simply having it is not enough. Five years ago, simply having a video would make a website stand out. But in 2011, expecting customers to want to watch your video, simply because it‘s there is tenuous, when what consumers now expect is relevant content that they can enjoy or find useful.
The biggest surprise
―The biggest surprise I‘ve experienced in online video so far is that most companies don‘t have a strategy, instead they‘re pursuing online video very tactically and are undoubtedly wasting money. Part of the reason for this might be the fact that no-one really owns online video within an organisation, but it doesn‘t have to be complicated; just plan your business strategy, organize your content, and leverage its value across your channels to reach your audience and drive the right calls to action.‖ Stuart Maister, Managing Director at BroadView Communications In spite of this apparent confusion about why they might be using online video in the first place, many projects have been successful for some key, definable reasons, which will be explored through case studies in this section.
“The reasons companies typically want to use video are often observations rather than objectives.”
―There‘s a realisation that they should be using it. And an observation that it‘s affordable and therefore accessible to them, perhaps for the first time. But we see a huge variance in terms of quality of material, and I put this down to companies having a lack of understanding about how to put it all together. ―The challenge is to get businesses to think like media publishers. There‘s nothing wrong with doing it all inhouse, but they need to learn how to plan, deliver and edit. Cheap and cheerful is fine, but you need to think about shelf-life.‖ Joe Pélissier, Marketing Consultant and Producer
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4.1.
Exposure
Whether through search (via blended search engine results pages) or social media, video has the potential to create exposure for a brand. If your core aim is to reach eyes and ears, the ‗Getting Your Audience‘ section will outline ways to pay for your content to be seen, whether through promoted YouTube appearances (http://www.youtube.com/t/advertising_overview) or traditional media buying online. Exposure for exposure‘s sake begs the question of what the true strategic objective is, and even the simplest exposure strategy should include tools to drive click-through, or at the very least be able to attribute the benefits of video views to bottom-line objectives.
Case Study: will.i.am‟s Yes We Can
―In the category of videos that shaped the game, the will.i.am Yes We Can video is one of my all-time favourites. In January 2008, will.i.am wrote a song, ―Yes We Can‖ in support of Barack Obama‘s campaign. The lyrics of the song are composed almost entirely of excerpts from Obama‘s speech on January 8, 2008. The music video attracted three million views within a week and over four million subsequently on YouTube and by June had won an Emmy for ‗New Approaches in Daytime Entertainment‘. It‘s a video that paints a picture of a world full of hope.‖ Sarah Wood, COO at Unruly Media http://bit.ly/4G34rg Turning completely away from purchased audiences or heavily invested-in brand awareness, online video offers a more meritocratic means of raising awareness than perhaps any other medium, so long as you can deliver something of value to your audience:
Case Study: Lauren Luke
Lauren Luke is a self-taught make-up artist who became a mother at 16 and decided to start recording make-up tips and tutorials from her home in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. People who watched her videos started asking her questions about how to achieve the looks she was demonstrating and her channel has since attracted over 111 million views, and is one of the most subscribed-to channels on YouTube in the UK. http://bit.ly/6pMi
“The key to honest communication is letting people speak”
―I‘ve been consistently amazed at how quickly brands – or people – can build a following using online video. ―The lesson here for brands is about passion, enthusiasm and honesty. The expert or front-person could come from anywhere in your organisation. Relationship marketing is about letting people speak – Jamie Oliver has a webmaster present his videos. But don‘t forget to teach them how to present and talk to camera too – something which Lauren Luke is clearly very good at naturally.‖ Joe Pélissier, Marketing Consultant and Producer
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4.2.
Delivering information in a different way
Video can make complex propositions really simple
―Salesforce.com had an early, simple video explaining how cloud computing worked. It explained it to me, and I bought.‖ http://bit.ly/DkIA5 Stuart Maister, Managing Director at BroadView Communications One of the great things about video is the sheer amount of information you can get across in a short space of time. If you‘re talking about a product that someone wants to explore, it‘s a step or two short of being able to put the object in their hand. Things that are hard to convey in photos, such as movement add a new dimension. For example, letting viewers see a video of what a set of clothing looks like on someone. Training and professional content has long made use of video as part of the media mix for delivering learning and development messages. But it‘s the shift towards video as the preferred communications medium for people to ingest information that calls for a strategic look at video across an organisation‘s training or internal communications function. Using video may stimulate greater uptake, or achieve higher reach, but unless it‘s relevant and engaging, you can expect dwindling update and poor information retention.
Case Study: Embrace Life
―Embrace Life‖ is Sussex Road Safety Partnership‘s award-winning seatbelt advocacy commercial, created by Writer/Director Daniel Cox and Producer Sarah Alexander. In the ten months since its launch in January 2010, the advert gathered over 11.8million views on YouTube alone. Created to raise awareness of the importance of wearing a seatbelt, Embrace Life was deliberately developed to provide a counter-point to the hard-hitting ‗shock and awe‘ advertising so common to road safety. The campaign has scooped a wide range of awards, including YouTube Ad of the Year, a Prince Michael International Road Safety Award, Gold World Medal at the New York International Advertising Awards, Bronze Lion at the Cannes International Advertising Awards and Highly Commended from the Chartered Institute of Highways and Transportation. A ‗traditional TV‘ ad, perhaps, but one whose reach and impact spread far wider online with the Partnership receiving hundreds of requests for the advert to be screened around the world from non-governmental organisations, government bodies, local TV stations and driving organisations all keen to raise awareness. ―This is my favourite online video of all time. As I understand it, the client put a brief out there, and the producers went back and said they had an idea, but it would cost considerably more than the stated budget. The client loved the idea and found the money. It‘s a great testimony to courageous commissioning, and to originality: they managed to present a positive message out of a very negative theme dominated by a certain genre.‖ Lee Kemp, MD at Fullrange. http://bit.ly/a8t5I2
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4.3.
Increase sales conversions
Across the web, the organisations that have so far invested the most in online video are retailers, perhaps in part due to the way its deployment can be attributed directly towards bottom-line objectives like higher sales. And yet many retailers who have invested in online video have done so without a complete strategy.
“It‟s staggering how few retailers are optimising their video content.”
―Only half of retailers have their video content properly listed in Google, for example. One of the things our system does is refresh brand-owners‘ video sitemaps on Google every day, so there‘s the greatest chance of their content being found.‖ Will Grant, Creator of Buto It‘s not just about metrics either – a successful product video strategy needs to think about context as well as content. The success rate of using video for different types of product might vary. If you‘re promoting your video micro-site as a destination within its own right, you need to make sure you‘re choosing your featured products wisely. Otherwise, you risk losing valuable site visitors into a TV Channel page that hasn‘t taken them through to either a purchase, part of the catalog or to a compelling reason to continue browsing. Flagship, high-margin items will be the most profitable areas to start with, and complex products that require demonstration might see the biggest uplift.
Case Study: M&S TV
Two years old in March 2011, M&S TV is continuing to deliver a new form of customer engagement, resulting in longer dwell times, repeat site visits and a significant uplift in conversions. M&S is known for its innovative online approach and with online predicted to plateau in growth over the coming years, the retailer was keen to find ways of growing its online business while retaining the customers already visiting the site. In addition to enhancing the experience, the channel had to ultimately drive sales. M&S TV was launched with a range of objectives including: Raise the level of customer engagement Illustrate the hidden stories beyond the shop floor Provide an elevated customer experience by raising the level of information available around key product ranges Allow deeper insight into the company‘s social and environmental responsibility programme, Plan A Streamline the shopping experience through sympathetic integration of e-commerce tools Increase sales The Solution, M&S TV, is a collection of over 500 films divided into 12 channels. Each channel focuses on a particular company theme or business vertical. To maintain brand consistency, the channels are managed by a central commissioning team with staff from both M&S and Adjust Your Set. This team also plans future content and measures consumer response. The films tend to be under two minutes long, in order to fit the consumption patterns associated with branded channels. In order to maximize engagement and conversions, links are weaved throughout the editorial, and displayed prominently next to the player. M&S TV has been a huge success. Just one year into the project more than three million minutes of content had been viewed, and delivered the following results: Three times as many product views when supported with video Up to twice as many repeat visits by customers who watched M&S TV versus those visiting the site alone
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Up to twice as long dwell time for customers who watch M&S TV as those who don‘t Average uplift in basket size: 23% http://bit.ly/lJf7Na But it‘s not just product conversions via video that let the viewer get a better sense of what they‘re buying. Video can put a face to the name of a brand or service to give the consumer a sense of what the experience of using it might actually be like.
Case Study: Virgin Holidays
Such has been its commercial success that BroadView has won three awards for this project for Virgin Holidays, which has increased sales of Upper Class tickets by 30% and given Virgin Holidays a 50:1 return on investment within three months. A simple video of a presenter suggests that customers consider upgrading their flight. If they click through to the Upper Class page the presenter, dressed as a Virgin Concierge, takes them through the benefits in a warm and friendly way. ―This has proven the value of humanizing the online buying experience using video. Instead of being faced with simply a form to complete, or an option to click, our customers are instead able to interact with the Virgin Holidays brand in a more engaging way.‖ Chris Roe, Virgin Holidays Sales & Distribution Director. http://bit.ly/lIG7cP
4.4.
Reduce abandonment and increase dwell-time
The product page isn‘t the only point where a customer makes a decision about what to buy. There are stages beyond the product selection where users can drop out due to lack of trust in the brand, such as missing reassurance about quality or delivery. Shopping cart abandonment can be a painful affliction for online retailers, in part due to the perceived anonymity of online shopping. Video has a role to play in making the relationship with an online shopper more personal – whether it‘s a friendly welcome, a video that reassures the customer about the credibility of the business before they buy, or a way of saying sorry when something goes wrong.
Case Study: Groupon unsubscribe video
If you unsubscribe from the Groupon daily mailing list you‘re taken to a typical page that confirms your removal. But here you‘re also told ―We‘re sorry to see you go. How sorry? Well, we wanted to introduce you to Derrick; he‘s the guy who thought you‘d enjoy receiving the Daily Groupon email‖. Beneath this there is a photo with a button that says ―punish Derrick‖ which, when pressed, plays a video of a colleague entering and throwing a drink all over the poor chap. The call to action at the end of the video is a button to re-subscribe to the list after all – a last ditch attempt to retain a subscriber by offering some humor and personalisation to the otherwise anonymous experience of unsubscribing from a mailing list. http://bit.ly/8XtySn Putting the right content in the right place relies on having a clear understanding of the user journey, and being willing to test the impact that a video can have. There is more on this in the section on multivariate testing, later on.
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Video is a great way to virtualise real-world experiences
―Most of our clients come to us because they want to increase conversions or educate the marketplace. However, there are other measures, for example increased dwell time and therefore engagement with the brand. One client saw time spent on their industry blog increase from an average of three to 17 minutes per session.‖ Stuart Maister, Managing Director at BroadView Communications
4.5.
Brand engagement
Using video to increase overall site dwell time is about offering the right content at the right time. Offering a TV micro-site or ‗video‘ section to your website could provide a great opportunity for deeper engagement with the brand. But to take commercial advantage of this, you need to be able to offer relevant choices to people that enable them to buy. Video will, by its nature, increase page dwell-time, but only if it‘s visible. Make sure it‘s obvious and easily accessible, and consider highlighting video on your site or in product search results.
“Brands use online video because they want to leverage the value of the social web”
―Brands generally approach us with four goals: advocacy, action, awareness, and attention. ―Consumption of video and video sharing is on the up – and if brands can produce great content people will want to share that too. The ability to win advocates within a peer group like this is extremely powerful. Sarah Wood, COO at Unruly Media If your video strategy is aiming purely for brand engagement, then it‘s more likely the channel for your videos is going to be social media rather than your existing e-commerce site. Putting relevant, interesting or entertaining content out there for people to discover can help to reach new people or change opinions about your brand.
“Brands need to entertain their audiences if they want to survive”
―The ones that succeed are the ones that entertain. They think of people as audiences – and participating ones, not just ‗consumers‘. ―It‘s part of the advocate, friend, evangelist approach to marketing.‖ Sarah Wood, COO at Unruly Media Book-keeping software manufacturer Sage brought the Krypton Factor back to ITV1 as a branded entertainment campaign, with the aim of associating their brand with the discovery of qualities that make people successful in business. Your brand could do the same, for far less cost, by releasing genuinely entertaining content online. The strategic challenge is about knowing who you‘re targeting, finding out where online they‘re likely to be, and ensuring your content is the start of the conversation - not just a selling platform.
“Online video offers an opportunity for deeper engagement”
―Video offers much more in terms of interaction. Before, the conversation was happening in living rooms and by water coolers. Now brands have access to the very broadest swath of audiences online. ―You can test as much as you want too – but don‘t fear criticism. Engage with people who are giving it – you might really have a problem that they‘re telling you how to fix.‖ Mike Johnston, Executive Producer at Boss Creative
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Having difficulty convincing your bosses that this would work for your brand?
You don‘t have to be a popular consumer brand to make online video work for you. The Concrete Network in the US is a website that exists to educate professionals on popular concrete techniques and applications. They‘ve invested in video tutorials that explain everything from design ideas to specialist tools and techniques in a market that is one of the slowest to respond to digital media. http://bit.ly/3RntWn
How to get started
―If you‘re in a large, traditional organisation that‘s averse to digital marketing, take a step back and look at your communications strategy in general for where video might fit in best. Doing it in the right place at the right time and demonstrating results will help to educate stakeholders about the relationship between the web, social media and their bottom-line.” Joe Pélissier, Marketing Consultant and Producer
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5.
Your Strategy
Having a strategy makes common business sense, but it‘s surprising how many people want to just skip to the action. If you have a plan, you will know whether or not it‘s working. Tweaks are easier than ever to make if you know what metric you‘re trying to optimize. Getting the budget to do more next year will depend on you putting forward a rational cost analysis for why it was all money well spent. It doesn‘t need to be complicated; having an online video strategy simply means defining an overall aim, towards which you‘ll make your decisions about which tools to choose and how to deploy them. Here‘s a simple tool for starting your project with the important questions answered.
5.1.
Strategy setting tool
What are you going to do? Who is it for? How are you going to reach them? – What technology platform do you need? – What channels are you going to use? What are you trying to achieve? How much do you have to spend? How are you going to measure success? Who else needs to be involved? What does really good look like? What does really bad look like?
5.1.1.
Defining your audience
The question of ―who is your video for‖ needs to be considered in two stages if it‘s going to help inform your content creation. The first bit of this is to list specifically who the content is for. Bear in mind, there‘s nothing you can do to guarantee your content won‘t get out beyond its intended audience. Then, just as you would with new product innovation, think about what this target audience would like and what they might find entertaining, useful or interesting.
“Take it one step at a time”
―Before doing video, think about social. Get to know your audience first: listen, then try facilitating a conversation (whether online or real-world) then start participating but take it slowly.‖ Sarah Wood, COO at Unruly Media If you‘re a niche product in a specialized market then the size of your audience will play a big part in informing your strategy – five thousand views on the right blog might be better than several million on YouTube if they‘re the right five thousand people. Bear in mind, you can‘t easily control who your audience is, and even the biggest brands can get it massively wrong:
Case Study: PHD Worldwide
PHD Worldwide is a global media communications agency with over 2,000 staff in 59 offices. Critics of the agency‘s ‗We Are The Future‘ video said the use of teenagers talking in corporate marketing language was cynical
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and cringeworthy. Their website statement beneath the embed of the YouTube video they created says it all: ―‗We Are The Future‘ was originally created for an industry conference and as a promotional video to stimulate discussion within the marketing industry. It aimed to make projections on what the media landscape could be like in ten years based on what we are seeing now. ―It has since reached a much wider audience and created a mixed reaction which has largely been negative. ―In retrospect we would have approached this very differently and accept that we got it wrong on this occasion, particularly in getting young people to voice it. We apologise to anyone who did not like it. ―We believe people have the right to debate the video and its contents so will be leaving it on YouTube to allow that and we welcome comments. ―However any grossly obscene comments will not be tolerated and will be removed.‖ http://bit.ly/g2Wu5d
5.1.2.
Setting business objectives
Setting your business objectives for your online video might be a simple case of aiming for higher sales conversion on a range of product lines using product videos. Or it might be a simple ‗cost of engagement‘ comparison with other marketing activities. You need to choose clear, measurable objectives for your video, and then the right tools to measure performance with.
“Don‟t talk about viral anymore”
―Brands no longer need to hide behind the fact that they‘re behind a piece of content. Don‘t be afraid to have strong calls to action, or use in-player adverts.‖ Sarah Wood, COO at Unruly Media
5.1.3.
Choosing your team
On the question of who else needs to be involved, you might have to think broader than with other projects. Online video is a high-profile undertaking in many organisations and if you‘re keen on metrics, you‘re going to need some pretty heavy integration between your video, your website and your e-commerce or other end-goal measurement system. Might be time to buy your web master a coffee.
5.1.4.
Why strategy is important
„Strategy is key‟
―Brands are becoming media companies – they have to think about formats, programming and measurement just for starters. This can‘t be done ad hoc – it‘s no longer enough to have a good creative idea, or a wellproduced piece of video. A lot of the outcomes are from the second click – the next thing someone does after pressing play. You need to think about what your connected customer is doing during and after watching your video. All this has to be tied together in a strategy if the approach is going to mean anything. ―Our aim has been to tie together the creative, technology and strategy – a full service video agency. We were born out of an observation that no one was really doing this.‖ Chris Gorell Barnes, founder and CEO at Adjust Your Set
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6.
Online Video Essentials
Before we delve into the depths of case studies, advanced strategies and future innovation, it‘s important to get to grips with some of the basics in online video. This section will look at some of the technical aspects of online video and how it works on the web, as well as introducing and clarifying some of the key functions of online video including social sharing, comments, security and viral video.
6.1.
How video works on websites
The introduction to this report started with a short account of how important TCP is for enabling video on the web but this alone isn‘t enough to ensure the sort of quality of experience most users expect. Video is one of the largest types of file to be transmitted via the web. Most web pages are only ever stored on a single server, so when a user hits that page, their browser requests all the parts of the page from the server, which sends the data back to the user‘s web browser. If the video on a page is also coming from that server, the chances are it‘s going to get interrupted as it‘s sent across the web and this leads to frustrating delays like buffering or failure to serve the content altogether if too many people are trying to hit the same server at the same time.
Video traffic jams
―There are typically a lot of ‗hops‘ between your computer and the server the file is sitting on. Your video file likely has to move between ten or so servers before it reaches your screen. If any of these servers in the chain are overloaded, the whole thing slows down.‖ Will Grant, Creator of Buto To get around this problem and deliver video reliably and quickly into web browsers, most people use an online video platform. The web page in question is still served in the same way, but within the webpage is an embed code which tells the web browser to pull the video in from elsewhere. That ‗elsewhere‘ is typically somewhere nearer the viewer than the web server where the site is hosted and most video platforms use a Content Delivery Network (CDN). A CDN is a large, international network of computer servers that are virtual mirrors of each other, connected by large fibre-optic web links that exist between data centers beneath the layer of the internet that most of our web use exists on. These networks might have hundreds of ‗points of presence‘ (actual physical locations) and thousands of servers that host content. As well as ensuring the big, clunky video files can be delivered direct into your ISP from the nearest copy, CDNs also often control aspects of digital rights management too. And when the video player that‘s being used is smart enough to detect the type of device and connection speed someone‘s using, it can request the right version to be sent to that user‘s web browser.
6.2.
Video formats
You may have heard terms like H.264, or QuickTime, or Flash. There are a great many of these video formats, developed over the years to try and make video quality better and perform faster over the internet. The process of turning video into one of these formats and making it small enough to be delivered via the web is called encoding. A video format consists of two key parts: a codec and a container. A codec is the compression that makes the video file smaller, so it can travel over the internet. A container is the file format that the video (and audio) codec sits inside. There are lots of video formats to choose from and so
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many different devices, not all of which support all formats. The challenge is making sure your video content plays every time on each device. However, just like with standards in other places (remember Betamax?) there are commercial interests and technical opinions at stake amongst the big players in the industry. The biggest friction in online video currently is between Adobe and Apple.
Thoughts on open markets
―No company — no matter how big or how creative — should dictate what you can create, how you create it, or what you can experience on the web… We believe that Apple, by taking the opposite approach, has taken a step that could undermine this next chapter of the web — the chapter in which mobile devices outnumber computers, any individual can be a publisher, and content is accessed anywhere and at any time.‖ John Warnock and Chuck Geschke, Founders of Adobe, 2010 http://www.adobe.com/choice/openmarkets.html
Thoughts on Flash
―Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.‖ Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, 2010 http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/ It‘s unlikely that anyone has either the moral high ground or the commercial clout to resolve this debate any time soon. So as video producers we‘re stuck with at least two major different methodologies for delivering video.
6.2.1.
Flash video
Flash video is the most popular format on the web at the moment simply because most people have got the Flash plugin already installed on their browser5. It works well because decoding and displaying the content on the user‘s device is performed by Adobe Flash Player software, which can be updated without requiring any changes to the user‘s browser software. It also works in the same way on Windows, Mac and Linux (three totally different operating systems usually requiring separate development), allowing for rapid innovation. Using Flash player is also great for developing rich multimedia experiences because it gives developers a huge amount of flexibility to build functionality in and around the video, such as interactivity, gaming and customized players.
6.2.2.
HTML5
HTML5 is the latest version of HTML, the fundamental language used to build things on the web. Some of the key features of HTML5 are designed to meet the needs of web application developers who are building ever more complex interactive things online – including, of course, video. Instead of running within software like Flash that the user has to install on their machine as a browser plugin, HTML5 allows things like video to be done within the browser itself. This might seem like a subtle difference, but in the long term HTML5 may offer greater flexibility and standardisation across platforms and devices.
5
http://www.adobe.com/products/player-census/flashplayer/version_penetration.html
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For the time being this is what‘s relevant: Apple devices don‘t support Flash but do recognize HTML5 and can accept HTML5 instructions to display video. Conversely, within Apple devices HTML5 doesn‘t actually happen natively in the browser as it was built with the intention of doing, instead it loads the video in the Apple Video Player, which is a highly restrictive piece of software that allows for little or no customisation. With iPhones, this means full-screen and no exceptions (although since iOS 4, video actually plays in-line with the content but can be popped out if desired, for example on iPad). However, if you want any customisation in the way your video works on Apple devices, you‘ll have to build an app for the App Store. See where this is going? Video called into the browser with HTML5 has mistakenly become referred to as ―HTML5 video‖, whereas in fact the video being delivered could be any format. Although, it had better be H.264 format and not Flash video if you want it to work on Apple devices. However H.264 won‘t work with a large number of legacy browser versions and Google have dropped H.264 from the latest version of Chrome, pushing their open source WebM format instead. Likewise, Firefox only supports ‗Theora‘ and WebM – indeed so far ‗HTML5 video‘ is proving to be quite a mess. For this reason, and many others, it would be well worth considering choosing an online video platform to help you deliver your online video.
6.3.
Online video platforms
If the preceding few paragraphs fills you with a mixture of dread and boredom, you‘re definitely in the market for an online video platform (OVP). ―OVPs‖ typically help organisations upload video and publish it to their website – and much more besides. Established players like Brightcove have been around since the birth of YouTube, helping brands that want to manage their online video. They‘ve seen hosted, managed online video develop from something that was once only the concern of broadcasters, into a day-to-day commodity for brands.
Growing business
―We more than doubled the number of our customers in the first half of 2010, and the lion‘s share came from non-media customers… starting about two years ago, very organically, we got companies, non-governmental organisations, they were all looking for a platform for their video.‖ Jeremy Allaire, CEO at Brightcove as told to BBC News Online video is typical of many digital channels where marketers have to ensure their strategy is being enabled by new technology, not dictated by it. OVPs give marketers the ability to harness powerful features of online video and measure the progress and success of their online video strategies.
6.3.1.
Choosing your OVP
Vidcompare offers a near-comprehensive guide to the comparable features and benefits of OVPs on the market. Generally, though, the features offered by online video platforms break down as follows: Video ingest and encoding Content management and metadata Publishing, hosting and playback
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Most platforms charge upwards of £99+VAT ($158) per month, although UK-based Vzaar have a package priced in dollars, at just $49. Package prices across providers typically vary depending on a combination of the number of uploads, amount of storage, number of user accounts, data transfer (the total amount of data consumed when people view your content), and features (although there is clearly differentiation in features offered by the different OVPs). The main benefits to using an online video platform are around keeping control over your content, and access to data about its performance.
6.3.2.
YouTube and Vimeo
YouTube is a fantastic innovation in online video and has arguably been the single biggest driver in adoption rates. However, for most brands, the lack of control associated with simply uploading a clip to YouTube and embedding it in a website is inappropriate. YouTube is free to use, and to fund the enormous cost of 48 hours of video being uploaded every minute and 3 billion video views per day (YouTube, 20116), YouTube relies on third-party advertising revenues from parentcompany Google‘s AdWords network. This means that for brands who don‘t want to pay for ad-free YouTube channels or a deeper commercial relationship with YouTube, content could be overlaid with third party ads from any of Google‘s AdWords customers – even competitors. Similarly with YouTube‘s free model, there is no control over the player branding or choice of ‗recommended‘ content viewers are presented with at the end of each clip. And naturally, a good deal of the data that Google collects from viewing behaviour is not made available to content owners.
YouTube is a channel not a platform
―A platform stores, organizes and deploys your online video. A channel is an environment in which video is exposed to your key audience – this could be sales people in meetings, or a popular video channel like YouTube. ―YouTube is a great launch pad for your content and might be one of your key targets. Another key target is your website but you can have multiple targets including partners, resellers and the wider web.‖ Stuart Maister, Managing Director at BroadView Communications Essentially, YouTube is a channel through which brands can access audiences – not an online video platform for brands to upload video to their websites. It could be a great starting point though, and befriending influential YouTube users could be as powerful as getting a national news journalist out to lunch. Vimeo, meanwhile, is a popular content channel for creative media professionals. Like YouTube, it has a service where users can upload content and publish it to their sites, but unlike YouTube there is an ad-free, statistics-rich option for under $60 a year. However, the site is not for commercial content, as blogger Andy Beard points out:
Vimeo is not for commercial use
―Despite the number of high profile blogs that seem to be allowed to bend the Vimeo terms of service, Vimeo make it reasonably clear multiple times on their website that they are not for commercial use. Their terms of service mention it, the signup page mentions it clearly, you could also take a look at their community guidelines and it is just as clear within their FAQ.‖ Andy Beard, owner of Andybeard.eu http://andybeard.eu/2337/vimeo-commercial-use.html However, it‘s not just non-technical folk who are turning to third party providers to help them specifically with their online video delivery. Since it‘s such a crucial aspect of online marketing,
6
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many IT departments prefer to outsource and save the time, effort and capital investment it takes to keep up to speed with developments in technology.
Putting online video in the hands of marketers
―When we built Buto our mission was to take video delivery off the hands of IT departments and put the power of online video into the hands of marketing and communications people. ―But it‘s not just for non-technical customers: a great testimony to our product is the fact that Rackspace, one of the world‘s leading web hosting companies, uses our platform to deliver their online video. They chose us because of the feature-set, which their marketing team loved, as well as the fact that their website engineers didn‘t have to worry about the data load caused by all the video traffic on their site.‖ Will Grant, Creator of Buto As online video evolves, so too do the features that OVPs offer their customers. This is a reason why marketing as well as technical people might want to form a relationship with an OVP. Ooyala, another big provider based in the US, has a raft of analytics features that are particularly impressive which will be covered in more detail in the ―Measurement‖ section. Always be careful to check what the options are for taking your content elsewhere, however, should you choose to change providers in the future. Each platform has its own flagship features and unique proposition and you could expect all of them to offer increased mobile support in the future. However, as a relative newcomer to the OVP market, UK-based Buto has innovated a number of engagement features, based on existing technology, which could be exciting for marketers.
Clickable video that anyone can build
―The technology to ‗track‘ regions within a video and turn them into hyperlinks has been around for several years but like most technologies, it‘s only once they become usable that they really take off. ―In line with our mission we wanted to make a clickable video system that anyone could use to make any object in a video they‘d uploaded clickable and the Buto hotspots editor is something we came up with to help do this. Instead of sending a video clip off for the objects to be traced around, frame-by-frame, we‘ve built a simple tool that lets people tag objects at key points in their motion journey, and the system does the rest. ―What this means is that viewers can click on any object in a video – for example clothing items on a fashion catwalk – and drop it into their basket.‖ Will Grant, Creator of Buto
6.4.
Digital rights management (DRM) & video security
For many businesses, nothing gets through IT procurement if it‘s not been security checked. Although the focus of this report is on using video for marketing, there are times when brands might want to restrict the audience for a piece of content. Happily, there are features around to help with this. The first thing to note, however, is that nothing is 100% secure. Content that can be seen can be copied, either via screen capture software or simply filming a good-quality screen with a digital camcorder. But there are some features, briefly detailed below, that can help brands protect their content especially if the content itself is the product that‘s for sale.
6.4.1.
RTMP
Another invention of Flash video creators, Macromedia (now owned by Adobe), RTMP stands for Real Time Messaging Protocol and is primarily used as an alternative way of delivering video to
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the more prevalent HTTP method. With HTTP video delivery, the video file itself is downloaded in the background while the video plays (which is why you can often see a ‗shadow‘ progress bar behind the playback cursor in online video players). Local caching makes it easier for people to rip content and republish it elsewhere even when content owners have disabled sharing features within the player. RTMP maintains a persistent connection between the media server and the user‘s browser and breaks the stream into fragments which delivers the video bit by bit, making it much harder to rip. This can even be done over a secure connection, which makes it impossible to intercept.
6.4.2.
DRM
DRM is a broader term used to describe access control technologies that are used by publishers and copyright holders to restrict and manage the use of content. iTunes is a famous example of successful DRM, although since 2009 the individual music files that you pay for and download from iTunes are no longer managed by DRM following a deal with record labels. TV and video content on iTunes remains encrypted however, and can only be played back from authorized accounts such as your account on your computer. Of course, even DRM doesn‘t stop people screen or audio-capturing content, but there can be serious criminal ramifications for those who go out with the aim of breaking encryption.
6.4.3.
IP Security
IP security is a feature offered by many online video platforms as a simpler way to protect content. At the point where a viewer‘s browser is requesting a video from the content delivery network, the CDN will look at the viewer‘s IP address (their unique identifier on the internet) and refer to a list of permitted or ‗white listed‘ IP addresses. For internal-only content, this list could be of all the company‘s office IP addresses, allowing access from anywhere within the corporate network. Without secure delivery or DRM, content could still be ripped (and of course screen captured) but this would be likely to involve an attributable breach of company policy i.e. you‘d have an internal culprit to go and chastise!
6.5.
Social sharing
In some ways, the whole idea of online video, and the location of the majority of its success, is in a space that is opposite to the protectionist, controlled intentions of DRM and video security. Video is a highly sharable commodity and a powerful currency on social networks. Videos that become ‗viral‘ reach more people than most marketers could dream of, for a fraction of the cost that even the most austere financial director would be pleased with. As if it hadn‘t been stated enough already, the single most important thing to remember here is to ask whether the content is shareable. Is it good, funny, interesting or useful enough for a viewer to send it to their friends, colleagues, partner or boss? This notwithstanding, the content has to be shareable (technically) if it‘s going to be shared. YouTube makes video sharing easy with plenty of buttons to push video into social networks and email links to friends. But you won‘t get much information on how often and where your content is being shared, which is where the online video platforms‘ social sharing features should be considered in detail. Particularly important is the OVP‘s ability to push the player itself right into a Facebook page or Twitter post, meaning you can still track and control the way the video is consumed and any call to actions you‘ve built will remain with the video.
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6.5.1.
Comments
Again, YouTube offers an excellent comments feature, but even the most open-minded brand might want to have the ability to remove comments that are inappropriate. YouTube‘s comments are part of the YouTube environment whereas OVPs, or your own customized comments feature, will allow you to keep the comments within your web presence or even let them travel around within the video player as the video is shared. The other benefit to comments that fall within your own website is the SEO benefit of having repeatedly-updating content and inter-linking. Video SEO will be covered in more detail in the next section too. Above all, it‘s important to remember how important comments are to online video. Video is a powerful currency in social media, mainly because it‘s a conversation starter. If you don‘t let people participate in the conversation, your content strategy might fail to reach its aims. Moderation might be important, but so too is being open, and responding to criticism in a transparent way.
6.5.2.
Ratings
‗Like‘ (or ‗dislike‘), as well as various star-rating and scoring scales, are a common part of the web, especially where a channel is offering viewers relevant content on the basis of its popularity with other people. You can build your own way of capturing this information, or make it a priority feature when you choose your OVP and use it to prioritize which content you present to new visitors as well as gain qualitative feedback. Or you can plug your content into an external ratings engine. For example, the Like button on Facebook lets users share your content with friends on Facebook. When the user clicks the Like button on your site, a story appears in the user‘s activity feed with a link back to your website. However, if you include Facebook‘s Open Graph tags on your Web page, your page becomes equivalent to a Facebook page. This means when a user clicks a Like button on your page, your page will appear in the ―Likes and Interests‖ section of the user‘s profile, and you have the ability to publish updates to the user.
6.5.3.
Content re-posting
Another way to get your content to spread beyond your website is through allowing other people to copy the embed code (the piece of code that puts the video into your page) and use it on their own sites or blogs. A good OVP will let you see whereabouts your content has been re-posted, and how many views, click-throughs and shares these additional versions have generated for you.
Case Study: Tortoise in Love
Drawn from the author‘s own experience, Tortoise in Love is an example of how enabling content re-posting can drive results from external sources. Tortoise in Love is a feature film that was made by (almost) the entire village of Kingston Bagpuize in Oxfordshire. Written and Directed by Guy Browning, it has a unique story to tell in its making: the Women‘s Institute did the catering, the entire cast and crew were put up by villagers, and the hair salon opened early every day for hair and make-up. When the film reached the Cannes film festival it attracted the attention of numerous news and media organisations including the Daily Telegraph, who were the first non-trade title to report on the film‘s progress there. Following the interview with the film‘s producer, the Telegraph reporter was able to access the film‘s website and copy the embed code for the trailer there. This embed code was inserted into the online version of the Telegraph article, meaning that readers could watch the movie trailer from within the Telegraph website. The producers could then see how many views the content had received at this specific location, and how many of those viewers
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had gone on to join the film‘s mailing list on the website. Without the ability to quickly and easily embed the online video from the film‘s website, it‘s unlikely the Telegraph would have featured the trailer online – and possibly even mentioned the film at all.
http://www.tortoiseinlove.com
6.5.4.
Viral video
Although shared video is arguably the single most powerful lever in online marketing, it‘s important not to dwell too much on the concept of ‗viral‘ film when you set out your online video strategy. ‗Viral‘ is not a type of content. It is a description of a phenomenon where content spreads quickly and exponentially beyond its initial audience through social sharing. ‗Viral video‘ has come to be synonymous with guerrilla production tactics and a ‗home made‘ look but it‘s vital you don‘t over-optimistically refer to your video as a viral video unless or until it is shown to have gone viral. Otherwise you and the people you‘re engaging to produce your content will fall into the trap of prioritising form over content. Some of the most successful viral videos have indeed been home-made. But some have had extraordinarily high production values and have had their success purely by virtue of the fact that it‘s been difficult to discern whether or not the featured brand was involved in the endorsement and creation of the video.
Case Study: VW Polo
The spot begins with a man leaving a modest townhouse and driving off in a VW Polo. After a short drive, the car pulls up in front of a busy cosmopolitan restaurant with al-fresco seating. The man pulls out a detonator, and depresses the button. The shot cuts to a wide where we see that, rather than causing widespread death and destruction, the blast is completely contained by the car. The end-card reads: ‗Polo. Small but tough.‘ It‘s quite clear that this video would never have been authorized for transmission on any traditional or broadcast media channels. It frequently disappears from YouTube and there is on-going debate on rumour blogs about whether VW was responsible for its commissioning (many of the theories are presented and scrutinized on Snopes - http://bit.ly/5fwzrU). The buzz around this controversial piece of content back in 2005 was significant and undoubtedly led to an increase in brand awareness. We can debate the potential motives and rewards, but it stands as a great example of a piece of content that reached its audience through viral (quick, exponential, sharing-enabled) distribution. http://bit.ly/F7HqE
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7.
Getting an Audience
Although much attention has been given so far to the importance of content, it‘s patently obvious that distribution is as vital a feature in your strategy as good content. If your video is going to flourish online in the social space, you need to understand where your audience goes and what they like to do when they get there.
“Content isn‟t everything anymore”
―You‘ve got to think about distribution. Even in the social sharing space you need to invest as much in distribution as production.‖ Sarah Wood, COO at Unruly Media A big watershed separates paid-for and shared content with some strong principles (as well as pragmatic arguments) on both sides. It‘s clear that online video, which earns rather than buys its audience, has a greater impact, much apart from the fact you don‘t need to spend the budget on buying visibility. But does it really cost nothing to seed videos and build momentum through social sharing of content?
7.1.
Existing customers and channels
At the level closest to home, a key audience for your content might well be your existing customers. Video has long been used for purchase reaffirmation and after-sales engagement, and even occasional cross-promotional messages could be delivered with video. It‘s important to think about where this video fits in within your overall contact strategy. If you‘re doing direct prospecting, at what point is it relevant to offer a piece of video in the conversation? For online retail, where does video add most value in the user journey? Just as video is intended to deliver the same information in a more powerful way, video could be used to improve success or customer satisfaction by replacing an existing communication method.
“My best advice is to understand the different ways you‟re going to use video across different channels”
―Customers want to converse on their terms – you can‘t just push something at them. If you‘re using video crosschannel, it needs to feel native to each channel. YouTube, for example, is good for some but only if it‘s the right brand. YouTube has its own brand associations for a start - Vimeo is seen as slightly more highbrow for example.‖ Mike Johnston, Executive Producer at Boss Creative The bottom line is: you might already be talking to the most important, if not entire audience for your content. Before you invest in social seeding strategies or paid-for advertising, see whether the people who really matter are already within your reach.
Glasses Direct
―A chap received his glasses and they were broken. He complained on Twitter, and within hours the team at the Glasses Direct office had shot a really simple video with all the people in the office saying ‗We‘re sorry Thomas‘ which they sent to him that day, and sorted it out the next. A great example of how you can get great return on investment instantly if you get it right‖ http://bit.ly/dP2AFl Manley, Director of Search at LBi
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7.2.
Email distribution
High up the list in terms of desirable applications for video comes video email. But in spite of a brief fling with the idea, most email client software doesn‘t support video directly embedded into emails. This is because of the proliferation of ‗Trojan Horse‘ viruses that found it easy to disguise themselves within large embedded video files attached to emails. The one exception to this is Google Mail, which detects YouTube links and integrates a small YouTube video player at the bottom of any emails in which they‘re contained. But by and large, video in email relies on pointing an image, which is embedded in the email, at a specific landing page. This image is typically a poster frame (the still image that appears before a video is played) with player controls superimposed to look like a video player and encourage click-through. The landing page to which the link is pointed then serves the video and directs the user deeper into an external website. If you‘re planning to use video as part of an outbound email campaign, be sure to think even harder about what‘s in it for the recipient. B2B email is likely to be given even less attention than B2C, and many professionals fight their inboxes down on a daily basis, so if you‘re relying on the entertainment aspect of a B2B piece think carefully about when you send it. Just before coffee time on a Thursday might be better than 9am on Monday or last thing on Friday.
7.3.
Seeding content
Seeding content is a bit like planting things in the garden. If you put it in the wrong place, it won‘t flourish. If the conditions aren‘t right, it might not germinate at all. Is your aim to go for wild, rapid growth or long-term and repeat exposure? Growing up around the evolution of content channels and destination blogs and websites are agencies and even platforms like Epicsocial, Visiblemeasures, and Goviral, which specialize in helping propagate content out to the right places. Sharethrough, the ‗social video distribution and marketing platform‘, lists these types of destination as including: Editorial outreach Sponsored tweets or featured video Facebook pages Promoted video on UGC (user-generated content) sites Featured video on curated sites Promoted story in social bookmarking In-banner video Vertical content sites Facebook apps In-game Among all these channels is the problem of compatibility and submission to multiple channels using their required formats. Several OVPs offer integration with content destinations such as YouTube or Dailymotion, and digital media-buying agency Tubemogul launched a service called ‗Destinations‘ in 2010 that requires you to upload your content only once and choose which destinations to publish it to.
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7.3.1.
Top US content destinations
In the US, 143.9M Americans watched video online during January 2011, according to Nielsen. During May 2011, US internet users engaged in more than 5.6B viewing sessions, with Google Sites ranking as the top video property with over 146M unique viewers, representing 83.5% of all unique viewers. [Source: Online Video Rankings, comScore, June 2011]
Top US Online Video Properties Ranked by Video Content Views, Ranked by Unique Video Viewers, May 2011 Total US – Home/Work/University Locations Source: comScore Video Metrix
Property
Total Internet : Total Audience
Google Sites VEVO Yahoo! Sites Facebook.com Viacom Digital Microsoft Sites AOL, Inc. Turner Digital NBC Universal Hulu
Total Unique Viewers (000)
176,337
147,158 60,369 55,482 48,189 46,535 46,502 42,271 35,185 30,622 28,543
Viewing Sessions (000)
5,662,369
2,173,422 360,205 272,255 176,076 241,026 251,799 246,592 126,760 67,251 195,897
Minutes per Viewer
951.3
311.2 105.1 39.1 19.3 74.2 42.8 45.7 36.3 21.1 217.8
Source: comScore Video Metrix (http://ecly.co/nLYtKW)
Case Study: T-Mobile Dance
T-Mobile‘s Dance is a spectacular 2½ minute film in which 350 choreographed dancers disrupted and confounded commuters at London‘s Liverpool Street station. In the words of Richard Huntingdon, the Saatchi planner behind T-Mobile‘s ambitious ‗Life‘s For Sharing‘ strategy, this campaign was ―depth-charged with bought media‖: TV, outdoor, digital outdoor, radio, online. But although the film was rushed out within hours of the disturbance, creative for most media channels was not available until the end of the following week due to production constraints. Consequently, MediaCom asked Unruly Media to compensate for this potentially quiet period by making the film ubiquitous online. Unruly Media quickly got the film out to flash mob fans, who had been carefully identified and qualified over the previous week. Hundreds of bloggers embedded the clip, which clocked up 1m views on YouTube over the first weekend. On Monday morning, Unruly Media took over popular video sharing applications within Facebook to make the video as easy as possible to re-discover and as frictionless as possible to forward on to friends and colleagues during the week-long hiatus before online creative became available. The results were a genuine word of mouth phenomenon: 18,572,973 plays, 20,649 comments, #1 on Viral Video
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Chart and, moreover, a 22% sales uplift for T-Mobile. The clip spread like wildfire: for every person viewing the video, it was forwarded to an average of 3.6 people, leading to 1.8m forwards within Facebook alone. More than 50 T-Mobile Dance groups formed on Facebook, often to organize similar events at UK rail stations. ―This new media strategy represented a brave move for us and was a resounding success. Not only did we capture the imagination of the nation but we also delivered for the business.‖ Lysa Hardy, Head of Brand and Communications, T-Mobile UK ―Dance demonstrates a nuanced and sophisticated appreciation of the types of content that people want to share and the motivations driving them. Eschewing overused viral triggers such as sex, shock, and humor, dance taps into people‘s propensity to feel touched, inspired and uplifted.‖ Sarah Wood, COO at Unruly Media http://bit.ly/15JUmt
7.4.
Pre-roll and advertising
Tubemogul‘s core business is in fact enabling real-time media buying across multiple channels for online video. They have some smart tools to enable targeting by context, audience and geography, and at the launch in April 2011 of their ‗Playtime‘ platform, offered options to buy video ad space in 90% of the top 1,000 global destinations for online video as ranked by Comscore. Although self-service media buying services such as Tubemogul have the potential to be more cost-effective and responsive than traditional broadcast media buying, there is still a big question mark over the effectiveness of online video advertising. When users have so many opportunities to click away and can typically find non-ad-surrounded versions of the same content easily, are online video ads really going to generate views let alone click-thorough? Whilst YouTube has been offering pre and post-roll video ad space to media buyers for two years, an interesting innovation came at the end of 2010 when they started offering skippable pre-roll ads. In these instances viewers can skip ads, quelling concerns of many customer advocates that people simply don‘t like to be interrupted in their consumption of content. YouTube is only charging brands when the ads are watched in full with reported success rates of 20-70% (New Media Age, 20107). Although it‘s hard to see how this will encourage brands to produce better, more relevant content, there are many different commercial deals to be done to get a higher launch pad for your content whether via paid-for channels or entire mast-head takeovers. A lot of traditional institutions including ad agencies and media buyers have a vested interest in transferring the mechanic of media buying to the digital world and it‘s hard to imagine that the rapid increase in paid-for video advertising online will ever reverse. But what is noticeable is the difference in conversion rates between earned and bought audience – a distinction Sharethrough refers to as ‗paid-for‘ and ‗shared‘ video (Sharethrough, 20118) According to them: Users are three times more likely to watch a shared video than a paid video Shared views are viewed three times longer than paid views They are strong advocates of the ‗entertainment‘ rather than ‗interruption‘ approach, which will be explored further in the final section, ―The Future of Online Video‖. And they‘re not the only ones.
http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/disciplines/digital/youtube-launches-skippable-pre-rollads/3021234.article 8 http://www.sharethrough.com/
7
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“Pre-roll shouldn‟t be necessary”
―If awareness is your only objective then pre-roll might be the thing. But it‘s lazy. The best brands know they can create content people want to watch.‖ Sarah Wood, COO at Unruly Media
7.4.1.
Top US online video ad properties
In May 2011, Americans viewed 4.6 billion video ads, with Hulu generating more than 1.3 billion video ad impressions at. Tremor Media Video Network ranked second overall (and highest among video ad networks) with 700.8 million ad views, followed by Adap.tv (642 million) and BrightRoll Video Network (565 million). Time spent watching videos ads totaled more than 2.0 billion minutes during the month, with Hulu delivering the highest duration of video ads at 560 million minutes. Video ads reached 45% of the total U.S. population, at an average of 34 times during the month. Hulu also delivered the highest frequency of video ads to its viewers with an average of 48 over the course of the month. [Source: Online Video Rankings, comScore, June 2011]
Top U.S. Online Video Properties by Video Ads* Viewed Ranked by Video Ads Viewed May 2011, Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations Source: comScore Video Metrix
Property Video Ads (000)
4,608,833
1,319,995 700,769 641,632 564,938 291,185 268,425 265,765 258,840 257,796
Total Ad Minutes (MM)
2,052
560 410 375 338 158 142 123 92 158
Frequency (Ads per Viewer)
33.7
47.6 10.8 10.9 7.1 10.8 9.8 11.7 11.3 7.7
% Reach Total U.S. Population
45.4%
9.2% 21.4% 19.5% 26.4% 8.9% 9.0% 7.6% 7.6% 11.2%
Total Internet : Total Audience
Hulu Tremor Media Video Network** Adap.tv† BrightRoll Video Network** Undertone** Microsoft Sites Viacom Digital CBS Interactive SpotXchange Video Ad Network** ABC Television
181,695
72
22.7
2.7%
*Video ads include streaming-video advertising only and do not include other types of video monetization, such as overlays, branded players, matching banner ads, homepage ads, etc. **Indicates video ad network †Indicates video ad exchange Source: comScore Video Metrix (http://ecly.co/nLYtKW)
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7.5.
Video search engine optimisation (SEO)
The Search Engine Results Page (SERP) is the obsession of the SEO expert and video has its part to play in improving the Page Score of the pages where it‘s embedded and offering a rich abundance of interactivity, updates and links for search engines to index. There are some wild statistics about exactly how much impact having a video on a page has on its search engine ranking - but undoubtedly it‘s significant.
“The main benefits of Video SEO are exposure and building link-backs”
―Most people think Video SEO is just another thing they should be doing. We do a plan, we look to try and identify their objectives and deploy video as a specific solution, or to fix an existing problem. ―People love to sit and look at videos, but the success of tapping into this depends on what the brand is trying to achieve. Exposure is often taken too literally – the Old Spice videos are prolific, but what are the sales results? ―When it comes to syndication, YouTube and Vimeo are the big players – you‘re always going to be giving traffic to a third party, but the link-backs you‘ll get will be very powerful. Video titles are hugely important for this.‖ Manley, Director of Search at LBi In and of itself however, video is also becoming a powerful factor in search. Google has a Video Search option and regularly delivers video search results into the SERP as does Yahoo, and in some segments YouTube is proving to be a popular alternative to Google for general search, even though all it trawls is a video index (New York Times, 20099).
Videos are 50 times more likely to rank on page 1 of Google
―‗Blended search‘, the practice in which search engines display videos, images, news stories, maps, and other types of results alongside their standard search results, has become increasingly common on major search engines. And optimizing video content to take advantage of blended search is by far the easiest way to get a firstpage organic ranking on Google.‖ 10 Nate Elliott, Forrester Research Video can appear in the SERP of indexes via Video Sitemaps. SERPS include the likes of Google, which can point viewers out to a variety of content platforms. Video sitemaps are small files that contain information about where videos outside YouTube (which populates Google automatically) are located. Typically, these files include a title, description, URL of the page where the video can be watched, the location of a thumbnail image of the poster frame, and the location of the video file itself. The great power of Video SEO is that when a user clicks a video in an SERP, they‘re directed straight to the page where the content is hosted, as opposed for example to YouTube, for example, where it‘s considerably harder to get them to take a related action. So a small amount of time invested in putting together your video sitemap or listing automated video sitemaps as a priority feature could pay dividends. Google instructions are here; http://bit.ly/bTlba; instructions for Yahoo and others are here: http://bit.ly/ES5AF
7.5.1.
Video SEO tool
As with SEO itself, there are several factors you can optimize that will determine where in the SERP your video will appear. These principles can be applied to YouTube as well. Metadata – video title and description tags
9
10
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/18/business/media/18ping.htm http://blogs.forrester.com/interactive_marketing/2009/01/the-easiest-way.html
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Number of comments and shares Backlinks Date added View count (and channel view count, number of subscribers and playlist adds for YouTube) Rating and flagging (where applicable) Incoming links (exposure on other sites, other embeds, RSS links) You will notice that most of these ranking considerations are down to actions that viewers take, not things you can control or manipulate. This places even greater importance on content and makes your video‘s rise to success in search dependent on it taking off from the word go.
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8.
Measurement
We‘ve already identified how strategy without measurement is pointless. This section will aim to explain what you can expect to measure when you put your online video strategy into practice. Although there are a variety of metrics you can use, we‘ll look at which questions to ask and how to interpret data so that relevant conclusions can be drawn. Cross-channel measurement is key to achieving overall business objectives from online video and we‘ll take a look at how video analytics can be integrated into other reporting structures, as well as how to test content and make on-going improvements to everything from position of ads and calls to action, to the creative cut of the content itself. Before you start, make sure you‘re going to collect enough data to say meaningful things about your online video. A sample size that‘s too small won‘t reveal enough, or could lead you off in the wrong direction. Also, make sure you keep your strategic aims in mind when you‘re putting together your measurement tools: focus on measuring those things that will enable you to determine the success of your strategy.
8.1.
What you can measure
The Analytics Overview screen from Ooyala‘s Backlot product
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Most marketers don‘t realize how much rich, detailed information is available about their online video. This is in part because people‘s knowledge is evolving, and in part because of the proprietary attitude free-to-use platforms like YouTube have towards data they collect. They‘ve shown us how great video can look on the web, but they‘ve not shown us how much fantastic information can be gleaned about viewers‘ behaviour.
„Consumers are in control‟
―We‘ve invested heavily in our analytics tools because actual data is the only way brands can understand what content their consumers find appealing in a world where the consumer is in control.‖ Bismarck Lepe, Founder of Ooyala Similarly, self-hosted content (i.e. where it‘s put on your web server and pointed to from your site with a free Flash player) will tell you how many times each video file has been accessed, if you‘re lucky. Even the most basic of online video platforms should be able to offer you the following data about how your videos are being consumed: View counts by day View counts by hour of the day Views per host site (the different places where the video is available) Duration monitoring for every view on every video (how far through the video people watch) Comments and when they were made Social media sharing per video and day In-player advert performance (appearance rate, click through rate, close rate) These ‗raw‘ metrics should be the very minimum set of data you look at to make simple assessments about things like click-through rates, or cost-per-engagement which you can compare to other elements of your marketing mix. If you‘re incorporating other elements into your online video, be they competition entries, vouchers, or free samples, make sure you have the appropriate tools to measure these things too.
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The geographic screen from Buto‘s analytics tool
8.2.
Interpreting video analytics
It‘s all very well sitting down at your review meeting and remarking at how great it is that 436 people watched your video yesterday – but what are you really trying to measure? Video is interactive, and when a viewer or customer does something around a video, it‘s likely to be a choice from several options rather than a simple ‗response‘ that we‘re used to from traditional media measurement. A click is incredibly useful of course, but on its own doesn‘t reveal the extent to which an ad is involving the customer with the brand. Rather than focusing on simplistic measurements like click through rates or video views, you need to look at aspects like engagement rates and duration monitoring too. If you‘re using online video for retail, look at which products and services viewers are interested in, not just the ‗click through rate‘ of each link. Ooyala‘s Backlot product has taken this insight several steps further with features like heat-mapping which show exactly how many views of each part of the video there have been.
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“Timeline heatmaps need to be real time (not aggregate) to give real insight”
―Because we built our database in Cassandra we can collect a lot more information about viewership, in real time, across 50 pivots for both live and VOD content. ―A client of ours who makes video games observed a 20-50% abandonment in the first two to three minutes of a particular video, followed by a big spike in viewership. Plotting this data against the video itself they were able to notice that the abandonment was taking place during computer-generated (CG) game-play, and furthermore that people were scrubbing back over the live game play sections and watching those bits repeatedly. This helped them to cut out the CG part and improve the overall popularity of the promo clip.‖ Bismarck Lepe, Founder of Ooyala This sort of in-depth analysis will help you better understand your customers and how they‘re engaging with your online video content. But video content itself can help to reveal other information about your audience. For example, the device that a piece of content is viewed on often reveals economic and demographic profiles, and geographic data can help tailor the message differently to different regions.
“Most marketers don‟t understand that video isn‟t just a one-way communications medium”
―Video is more than just a messaging and distribution channel. It‘s most interesting because it creates an immersive experience on brands‘ own sites, and at the same time pulls in people from other channels. ―Last year UK‘s Telegraph broadcasted the Chilcot inquiry on Iraq on their site. They had a ‗truth metre‘ that people could use to vote on when they thought Tony Blair was telling the truth. It‘s now easier than ever to have interactive elements live alongside video, which can all be tracked, to provide real behavioural insight into what consumers of online video care about.‖ Bismarck Lepe, Founder of Ooyala An analysis screen from Ooyala‘s Backlot product:
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8.3.
Integrating video metrics into other tools
Integrating your video analytics with overall online analytics systems such as Google Analytics, Coremetrics and Omniture will help you measure the quality of the click-throughs, and what they lead on to. This is the first step towards proper integration of video into overall performance metrics.
“There‟s a big gap in metrics at the moment”
―Metrics only go so far. They‘re just the data you see. The secrets are unlocked in the analysis. When a business or communications problem is being solved using video it isn‘t in terms of the length of the film that‘s watched or number of views it‘s had. Thoughtful analysis has to happen at a level above.‖ Lee Kemp, MD at Fullrange Being able to track the value of click-throughs from in-stream ads could be the single biggest indication of the commercial value of your content. But it‘s important not to forget that there are a number of factors within the video experience itself that could impact on the conversion rate that lies beyond. Comparing the timing of ads as well as their content is a wise place to start. The most valuable clicks come from offering the customer a relevant choice at the right time. Click through rates could be increased with more frequent or compelling ads, but the actual quality of the clicks is what matters. There is a wealth of insight available from professional research companies like Nielsen, comScore, Vizu and Dynamic Logic that can help you understand online behaviour in more detail and these are worth their cost if you want to draw conclusions about your audience from a large set of data based on what‘s already going on out there on the web.
8.4.
Informing other marketing channels
Time of day reports can show you not just when your content is being consumed the most, but by extension when your customers are in the right place and mindset to consume different types of content. Comparing different types of content will reveal more. For example: a retailer is offering product videos on product pages that are quick and to the point, as well as engagement content (behind the scenes at fashion show, for example) via its online video micro-site. Comparing the two types of content might show that very few people watch the engagement content on weekday afternoons, whereas from 6pm, it gets more views than the product page videos. This presents a behavioural insight into the different types of content people consume depending on whether they‘re at work or at home, and could inform the timing of an after-sales email containing an engagement video.
8.4.1.
Following the conversation
Looking at ‗views per host site‘ and social sharing stats in more detail will show you the places where your content has been shared and/or re-posted. Success in this area might be cause for celebration in and of itself, but the type of success could be used to inform your investment in time and effort elsewhere. For example, if you produce a piece of branded content that attempts to explain a feature of the specialist area your business operates in, it might be a great thing that it‘s shared on Facebook. But if you notice that in fact, more viewers are sharing it on Linkedin than anywhere else, you might choose to invest more time in your presence on Linkedin as your video has guided you to the fact that it‘s a fertile place for conversation among your customers about the area you work in.
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A blog you‘ve never heard of that posts your content and appears to have good engagement levels with your customers might be a great new place to consider contributing to, or even sponsoring. No matter how much effort you put in, your customers will always be better than you are at finding out where the conversation is – not least because there might be millions of them out looking for the best advice or the best price.
8.5.
A/B and multivariate testing (MVT)
Multivariate testing is a technique that web optimisation fanatics will have heard of already. Put simply, it‘s the practice of being able to test the performance of different versions of the same piece of content based on given criteria. Websites with online sign-up forms might use MVT to serve slightly different versions of their conversion page, at random, to different visitors, compare what the conversion rate is for each different layout, and then select the highest performing layout going forwards. For video, something as simple as A/B testing to see which version of a video performs best could be very powerful. This functionality is usually easiest to achieve within your content management system, which would let you build two separate versions of a page, and embed different videos in each. Some video platforms are starting to offer the facility too, where the video that is delivered into the page is chosen automatically by the platform based on criteria such as click-through, engagement levels, number of shares or comments. At the more advanced level, being able to deliver content that is specifically targeted at the individual visitor based on other data captured during their browsing session is an obvious evolution that we can expect to see in the near future. But not many brands seem to have evolved their use of video even to the simplest type of A/B testing.
“Multivariate testing will get more popular”
―The biggest surprise to me at the moment is the lack of multivariate testing that‘s going on – actual testing based on different creative cuts of the same piece. I think this is an evolutionary thing and it goes back to design issues. People don‘t want to be data-led because they‘ve already spent so much time getting the content ‗right‘ and this is a legacy from the old days of filmmaking. Today, you‘re missing a trick in thinking the piece is finished when it leaves the edit suite.‖ Lee Kemp, MD at Fullrange Aside from informing creative decisions with real-world performance data, A/B testing could be a simple way of choosing which pieces of content to put where.
Case Study: Game Group
Game Group is the UK‘s largest independent games retailer. They use the statistics from their online video platform to make content decisions based on which videos are the most popular, where they‘re being watched and how long they‘re being watched for. ―If a video is only being watched to 50% that‘s probably not a very good video, and if we can find a substitute video of the same product we‘ll replace it and then, hopefully, that video will get a higher view count and a longer view count as well‖, explains content manager Tom Daly. http://bit.ly/l3JaJX
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8.6.
Improving performance
But collecting this data is just the beginning of the journey. Collecting data is a start, but pointless if the data isn‘t used to optimize current campaigns and improve insight into what people want. Only when you understand the data can you hope to capitalize on successful elements, address any underperforming tactics and inform the contents of your next project.
Continuous Improvement within M&S TV
―Engagement levels are constantly measured, and regular refinements are made in order to improve the quality of the editorial and the rates of conversion. ―For example, if the channel manager sees that users are dropping off significantly within the first ten seconds, the content will be examined in order to understand why this may occur. Similarly if viewers are dropping off before the end, or certain links are not being clicked, then further changes are made.‖ Chris Gorell Barnes, Founder and CEO at Adjust Your Set
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9.
Producing Content
There are lots of routes to choose from when selecting your content, each with a different set of specific characteristics, benefits and disadvantages. The biggest factor determining your route is likely to be budget. Video production companies commonly complain that budgets are a ‗piece of string thing‘ but in reality most have a typical project size that they‘re most comfortable and most competent at operating within. If you‘re going to keep costs down, there are some tips to help you get best value from freelance suppliers, by being clear about what you‘re getting for your money.
“We help our clients choose their production companies”
―Assessing content is still more of an art than a science – sometimes an idea smells good but we need to be able to know why this is. ―We use a proprietary content evaluation framework so we can score content against triggers – when and whether it‘s funny or uplifting, or compelling‖ Sarah Wood, COO at Unruly Media
9.1.
Writing briefs
Any reputable commercial provider will offer top quality using high standard equipment. The absolute key to getting your content right is the brief that starts it all off. A good agency will be on hand before you‘ve even started writing the brief, so if you‘re heading down this route, take along the things you really want to get out of the project – the business objectives and relevant ideas around your strategy. Most production companies won‘t go beyond their comfort zone creatively unless you can scrutinize the ideas they‘re coming back with against a set of clear requirements for your video. Similarly, freelance videographers might give you the best price, but don‘t expect earth-shattering creative or much input into strategy. The following tool will help you to outline the most important factors about your video that a potential provider needs to know. Far and away, the most important one is the question ―why do they need it?‖ If you find yourself answering this along the lines of ―to find out information about our product or service‖, try asking your friends whether they‘d like to find out about your exciting widget innovation next time you‘re hanging out together. This question is designed to make you think about why your customer (or someone you hope will one day become a customer) needs what you‘re about to do. ―Because they enjoy a good laugh at the end of a long week‖ is a qualifying answer, as is ―because no-one out there seems to be able to explain how photovoltaic cells work in an easy-to-understand way.‖
9.1.1.
Video brief setting tool
What do you want? Who is it aimed at? Why do they need it? When do you want it for? What is the essential message being communicated? What change in thinking/motivation/behaviour do you want to achieve? What needs to be said?
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What doesn‘t need to be said? Measurement? Budget? Don‘t forget to reach internal consensus on this with your carefully chosen group of people (see the Your Strategy section earlier on in this report) before you progress.
9.2.
Selecting a supplier
When you‘re buying creative services you‘re typically buying three things: Time on the tools Creativity Strategy People‘s time is really the only direct cost for suppliers (aside from equipment hire). It has little to do with the length of a video and more to do with the cost of execution of whatever the creative idea is that you run with – often reflective of their own size and equipment assets. Most production companies will have a natural project size, so ask for honest insight into the cost of other recent productions to ascertain this. Creative input is a clear value-add that most one-man-bands can‘t offer, but which most agencies and the emerging ‗video agency‘ specialists market themselves on. You won‘t get much of this, or it won‘t be much good, if you‘re paying less than several thousand dollars unless you‘re lucky to know a really good one man band that really can think, advise, produce and deploy by themselves. Of course, a cost-saving alternative is to do the creative part yourselves in your team, but don‘t undervalue the benefit of hardened professionals when it comes to creating content people really want to watch. Strategic ability may well be priced on the reputation of the company and the track record they have in delivering real business objectives for other clients, but it‘s far and away the most important decision-making factor if your budget is stretching to the tens of thousands. But creativity doesn‘t have to mean a wacky idea – it‘s about coming up with creative solutions to problems:
Case Study: American Express “How We Won”
American Express wanted to reinforce its ―win‖ philosophy for its Global Corporate Services Conference in Cannes in February 2008. It wanted to capture ―live‖ the successes of its sales team as they occurred. The problem was how to do this in a cost-effective and efficient manner without disrupting the very sales effort that they were celebrating. Lee Kemp, Managing Director at Fullrange, said: ―We recognized that it wouldn‘t be feasible to send camera teams to 14 countries around Europe – not least because we couldn‘t predict when the ‗gem‘ stories would happen. Having consulted with American Express, we felt that high-value results could be achieved by supporting the production of user-generated content. Giving basic equipment to untrained operators was a potential risk but, by giving active support to American Express, the risk paid off!‖ American Express worked with Fullrange to develop a ―diary room‖ approach where team members could selfrecord entries as and when they had achieved success. The entries documented the sales approach, the key actions leading to the ―win‖, and the subsequent thoughts and feelings of the team. The footage was then sent
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back to Fullrange‘s facility in central Birmingham for a complete post-production process. The project demonstrated the huge potential for film professionals to add value to user-generated content. In this case – as with a great deal of internal communications work – the client was the one with the lively and engaging content; the production company was able to edit, process and output it as high-quality content. http://bit.ly/bGU1sD
9.3.
Top tips for picking the perfect partner
Communicate clearly about the brief and the process. Explain who‘s involved, who needs to sign off, and who is likely to get involved at the last minute. Be clear about what you want to see in order to make a decision. Have a clear brief: what are you looking to achieve? What problem are you trying to solve? How are you going to determine whether it‘s been a success? Hold two selection rounds - one via paper, maybe just credentials, one meeting/pitch, and be clear about what you want at each stage. Ask where the money is going, what you‘d get with more budget, what you‘d lose with less. Check who owns the rights and what the restrictions are on where and for how long you use the content. This might not just be about the production company‘s copyright – most performers including voiceover artists have different rates depending on the territories. Understand the whole process: budget overruns and who pays, missed deadlines and how this impacts the payment schedule, or whether there are penalties on either side. Get to meet the people and find out who has responsibility for which element of production. Often clients will attempt to do some of the work themselves to reduce costs, but this needs to be written down and understood. Let the production company be involved in deciding who does what as you might underestimate the disruption a film crew can cause.
9.4.
What to expect
With all this in mind, what can you expect from the different offerings in the market? There‘s no way various people won‘t object to some of what follows, but it‘s designed to be a very broad outline to help guide your decision-making.
―One Man Band‖ (just as likely to be a lady obviously)
< £5,000 ($8,000) Same person consults, designs, shoots and edits. One single relationship throughout. Capability assessed through show reel and experience in chosen type of content. Pros: one point of contact throughout, opportunity for immersion in your brand and team, likely to be excellent value. Cons: risk putting all your eggs in one basket; likely to be stronger on the practical production side and an advocate of the technology, less on the creative and strategy.
Production Company
£5,000 - 50,000+ ($8,000 - $80,000+) Team of different specialists
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Dedicated account management Capability assessed through client base and known brand testimonials Pros: everything you need in one place, start to finish management, often excellent value insight and creative compared to agencies Cons: expect to pay considerably more - especially insight and creative, and elaborate ideas with cash costs will add to the budget
Ad Agency
£50,000+ ($80,000+) Video just one component of service offering Sometimes have in-house capabilities Account management and creative at the center Pros: built into your broader communications strategy, brand, creative, strategy are core capabilities Cons: sometimes their inexperience in video shows and they‘ll just sub-contract to a production company. Of course you‘re still paying for all those friends‘ account managers.
What differentiates suppliers?
―There is a certain base level in terms of visual quality that‘s not difficult to achieve, but certainly marks a half decent company out from cowboys. But quality is more important than that: it‘s about understanding. We only do video, and in concentrating purely on video, we try to understand everything around it too: what each video is trying to achieve, as well as how it‘s consumed. Who‘s watching it, and why. Even at the lower end of the production company budget range you should expect all three: technical capability, creativity and strategy.‖ Lee Kemp, Managing Director at Fullrange
9.5.
Producing in-house
The cost of out-sourcing could be an issue for reasons of scale as well as project budget. At some point in the evolution of your business, it may make sense to create an entire business unit for the in-house production of content, or even just a workflow for managing content sourced from suppliers. But for most, producing in-house will mean a marketing manager with a camcorder, and there are some dangers as well as opportunities to be found in this approach. The biggest danger is not that of low quality or wasted time when someone forgets to plug the microphone in: even a few hundred dollars can purchase equipment that, in the right light, will be indistinguishable on the web from a professional outfit. Overreaching expectation is usually the troublemaker in this approach and there are some simple ways of avoiding trying to go too fast too soon.
9.6.
Choosing equipment
The market for ―pro-sumer‖ production equipment is fiercely competitive and you‘ll find close competition around features and price-points between the key brands. One thing this competitiveness means is that most manufacturers have products of increasing sophistication at different price points so you can generally expect to get what you pay for, whatever the budget. To set up a very basic in-house production capability you‘ll need:
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Camera – Sony, Canon, Panasonic, JVC pro-grade camcorders £2,000-5,000 ($3,000 - $8,000) Accessories – Tripod e.g. Pro6HDV – Tieclip mic e.g. ATR-3350 cabled, or EW112-P – Rifle mic e.g. Senneheiser 416 Total camera budget £5,000 - 7,000 ($8,000 - $11,000) Editing suite – Powerful computer - e.g. Apple Mac – Software – Final Cut (Pro) Total editing suite budget £2,000 - 4,000 ($3,000 - $6,500) This all said, for a simple diary-room entry done to-camera, a smart phone with a low-cost app to up and tail will suffice, and will probably help you get your clip uploaded to YouTube faster than any other medium. Another note on speed: if you‘re starting out buying kit for the first time, go tapeless. Cameras that record onto static media will help you get footage into your editing system quicker than tape. Check out DV user http://bit.ly/jXLXSd for consistently excellent advice and user-reviews of the latest kit. Don’t forget a bag! And what about headphones? Or lighting?
9.7.
Basic production techniques
The key to successful in-house production is not to go too far too fast, and to know the limitations of your equipment. Low cost, mobile phone- integrated video cameras have transformed the very bottom of the value chain in video production and doubtless caused some trouble for people making a living out of the fact they‘d invested in the kit it was too expensive or inconvenient for most brands to purchase themselves. But the production industry is very much in business still, so before you let your boss conclude that the Flip camera is the solution to all your online video needs, think about how visible and costly it‘s going to be when your ambitious story looks like it‘s been shot by a monkey with a camcorder. The tools themselves are a very small part of the picture. There are, however, some techniques that you can read today and deploy tomorrow to improve the quality of your end product. The first is to remember that everything else in this report counts still – content is king, giving the viewer what they want, working out what you‘re trying to achieve, and how you‘re going to reach your target audience. And bear these tips in mind: Keep it short but sweet. Only use music if: – You own the rights. – It‘s not a distraction. Tell the story in pictures as well as words. Start simple in the edit - cut and cross-fade only.
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Don‘t attempt graphics until you‘re further down the line. Review it with the team - and expect input. Test the message on someone who‘s not been involved.
9.8.
Planning and execution
Next there‘s where to start. Don‘t go too far away from the most basic approach to start off with: a camera in a fixed position, filming someone talking against a white background. Getting them to talk to an interviewer off-screen will work much better than trying to look down the barrel of the camera. Even moderately out-of-practice professional presenters can create an eerie feeling in their audience when they try to address the lens. You can always cut the interviewer‘s questions out later so make sure the subject conveys the contents of the question in their answer. There‘s a surprising amount that can go wrong even in this environment, so try following these tips:
Background
Free from distraction Check contents carefully Consider shooting against white Check the background and make sure there‘s nothing distracting from the person speaking. Often the worst visual distractions are subtle things the camera operator didn‘t notice during the shoot, for example an object that appears to be growing out of the subject‘s head, or a sign in the background with some letters obscured to make an unwanted new word. Try to have something in the background that suits or supports the message (e.g. a landmark, map, or brand identity).
Sound
Quiet room Ensure you‘re using an appropriate microphone Check which source is picking up before you start
Lighting
Diffuse and strong No strange shadows Only approach lighting if you‘re confident you‘re going to use it. A small kit is a wise investment once you‘ve tried and tested your approach (Dedolight do a set for around the $3,200 mark, but check out DV user as mentioned above for the latest advice). Three-point lighting is a standard method used in video and film. By using three separate positions, you can light a person clearly and control (or eliminate) the shadows produced by direct lighting.
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Three-point lighting of a plain background
Key - direct on subject, principal illuminator Fill - also on subject, but relative to key, often lower, to counteract shadows Back - rim of light, separates subject from background
Framing
Centerd face, don‘t chop the top of people‘s heads off Make sure you can see both eyes Get the subject to face slightly left or right of camera Make the framing a decisive choice, not just where you put the camera
Camera setup
There‘s nothing wrong with auto! White balance, which you might want to look up how to do for your particular camera Check the right thing‘s in focus, even on auto Check sound levels
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Shots ranging from wide shot to MCU (medium close up) are best for information delivery, i.e. when the subject is talking about factual information. Shots tighter than a MCU are appropriate for when the guest is talking about something personal or emotional — the shot pulls the viewer into the same emotional space as the viewer. Stick within these techniques at first and see how you get on. As you‘ll have noticed, there‘s plenty you can control even with a static shot, and although online audiences have a high tolerance for production values, distraction from the message through poor quality means fewer results for you.
9.9.
User-generated content
Online video is a powerful currency and a great conversation starter. Enable social sharing and commenting your video will be your offering to the world of social media, and you‘ll be able to see the sorts of responses people are having. But user-generated content itself could be a fantastic way to engage your customers fully in an ongoing conversation via video. Where user reviews are an important factor in decision-making for your product, try letting existing customers upload their own reviews, comments or demonstrations. If you‘re using video for internal communications you might find the act of contributing to the project is as much a brand-strengthener for those who take part as the message itself.
Case Study: Reed.co.uk Short Film Competition
Now in its second year, the competition encourages people to create a short film around a particular theme and submit it via reed.co.uk for the chance to win cash prizes. Mark Rhodes, Head of Marketing at reed.co.uk, believes last year‘s competition exposed a rich seam of creative talent. He explains: ―The talent and effort that went into creating such a diverse and engaging selection of short films meant we had no hesitation in running another contest this year. Throughout the economic downturn, we‘ve continued to promote positivity around the jobs market with our Love Mondays advertising campaign. Now we want people to tell us what Mondays mean to them by making a film about it.‖ Over 350 films were entered this year and a shortlist of 12 was selected and put before a panel of expert judges. http://bit.ly/9jaHRO
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10.
Legislation
It‘s important not to forget that not everyone experiences the web in the same way, and the same goes for your online video content. Videos, like websites, are starting to experience the same degree of scrutiny from compliance bodies and there are significant pieces of legislation like the Disability Discrimination Act (UK) and Americans with Disabilities Act (US) that, although relatively untested in relation to video, are a compelling reminder of the need to strive for accessibility on the web.
10.1.
Accessibility controls
Most good online video platforms will offer a subtitling tool that you can use to build your own closed-captions and screen-reader detectable text transcripts, or even upload them from a transcript file. Compliance tests will also look at whether your video player needs a mouse to operate, or whether you have keyboard controls enabled for people with motor control difficulties. For many brands, this might be about best practice, not to mention the obvious commercial opportunity that is going to be missed if viewers with particular needs are overlooked. For many local authorities and public sector organisations, having accessible video is a must-have.
10.2.
Other benefits of compliance
The benefits of having accessible video aren‘t limited to compliance or even strictly to those with manifest accessibility issues. Many people browsing in offices won‘t have speakers or will be watching in distracting environments and closed captions will give your content a clear advantage for this audience. There are SEO benefits to closed-captions too. Many players will store the transcript text alongside the video, meaning that search engines find lots of lovely text to index when they crawl the page where the video is embedded. The ability to create and deploy different versions of the same video with subtitles in different languages could save you thousands of dollars in post-production where traditionally you‘d need to create separate outputs with the subtitles ‗burned‘ into the video in each case.
Multiple publishes
―We created a feature in Buto that lets our clients create multiple publishes (versions) of the same video. These different publishes are treated as unique pieces of video for the purposes of reporting and embedding video into web pages, but they all reference the same media file. ―As a result, we‘ve had people use this feature to publish the same video with different-styled players to different websites, but also to deploy different publishes to different international territories, each with the sub-titles in a different language.‖ Will Grant, Creator of Buto
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11.
11.1.
The Future of Online Video
Trends
Consumption
At the moment the whole of online video feels like it‘s a trend in itself. But from a sudden rise to popularity in 2006, and exponential growth since, video is clearly here to stay. 2011 seems to be the year where marketers in general are seeing online video as a seriously valuable tool, regardless of sector. According to recent IAB figures, more than two thirds of UK marketers are planning to increase their online video ad spend in 2011.11
„Video is where websites were in 1998‟
―Most brands in 1998 knew they needed a website, and were happy to find some brochure content to digitize to suffice. The majority of brands are in the same position with their online video: they‘ve got some ads, some corporate video of their AGM and they want to put these online. The next question for marketers to ask is ‗how does video work for us in our strategy?‘‖ Stuart Maister, Managing Director at BroadView Communications
Technology
Whilst brands get to grips with their own strategies and work out how online video will help them deliver results, a market known for its innovation will carry on innovating. If anything is certain, it‘s that new features and techniques will emerge both in the creation of video itself, how it‘s distributed and how it‘s consumed.
“The next big thing will be video in augmented reality”
―This could give people the ability to experience things in totally new ways. For example, in real-time but with a layer of graphics on top. There is a massive amount of innovation going on in this space within advertising, mobile, and augmented reality communities.‖ Mike Johnston, Executive Producer at Boss Creative Meanwhile, producers and production companies are evolving to keep up with changes in the sector as clients get better versed in the language of online video and what they want it to do for them. Simply producing the content is not enough for ambitious brands like Adjust Your Set, and a combination of strategy, creativity and technology could become the norm for successful providers. For those who invest in broadening their offering, there‘s a growing market to tap in to.
The future of the video production industry
―There‘s definitely growth in the marketplace and we‘ve seen like for like growth for three years in our business. It‘s not the case that budgets have increased, but by taking what we do seriously we‘ve been able to tap into larger budgets now than three years ago. This is particularly helped by the extent to which we can measure the impact of our work. We start off by concentrating on doing good work that people will enjoy watching. But now we can see exactly how much of an impact this has had on whatever our client‘s communications problem is.‖ Lee Kemp, Managing Director at Fullrange
http://www.b2bmarketing.net/knowledgebank/search-marketing/best-practice/how-useresearch-optimise-your-online-video-campaign
11
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Audiences
Just as brands and platforms will change, so too will audiences. With an increasingly personalized web, audiences will expect content to be even more relevant to them – and that‘s of increasingly high standards.
“The future is about personalisation”
―When we buy a product it‘s not because of the ads – we buy because of people we trust. In the real world, 70% of the decision is down to recommendation and we have to find a way of achieving this online. This is as much about credibility as anything else – finding a way to create genuine, honest communication.‖ Manley, Director of Search at LBi
“Content is going to get better”
―With more success stories and bigger budgets, we‘re going to see a lot more great content which is fantastic. We might also see the range of genres that brands are investing in broaden: consumers do indeed like snack-sized content. But just like people enjoy canapés they also like hearty meals so I expect we‘ll see brands exploring longer-form content more.‖ Sarah Wood, COO at Unruly Media
11.2.
Monetisation
We‘ve already seen some of the differences in success and cost between ‗paid‘ and ‗shared‘ video. So long as there are commercial interests at stake, these debates won‘t go away. The incumbent industry of media buying has been anything but slow to react and adapt to the new space that is the web, and video banners are as purchasable as ad slots or billboards. In spite of their availability, these paid-for spots may offer significantly less benefit to brands when today‘s consumer prefers permissive conversation to interruptive rhetoric. Although brands should always be willing to invest in content distribution, the future of branded video on the web may well be dictated by the successes of brands who go out and create genuinely entertaining, interesting or useful content and offer it into the social space. Meanwhile companies whose sole business is producing content can expect even easier and cheaper ways to monetize their content directly in the future – and benefit from the meritocracy of the social web to find their audience. Copyright protection and Digital Rights Management will never prevent content from being copied illegitimately. Instead the challenge for content owners is to ensure the legitimate experience is, in as many was as possible, better than the illegitimate one and that payments can be accepted quickly and easily. The rise in music sharing online eventually taught the music industry that the more music people share ‗illegally‘, the more they bought through legitimate channels.
11.3.
Mobile video and Connected TV
Mobile devices are an increasingly popular way for people to consume online video content and many predict that mobile devices will overtake fixed-line for video consumption within the next few years. Connected TVs are television sets that are connected to the internet, allowing them to direct video from online channels like YouTube directly into people‘s living rooms. Like most technical innovations, Connected TV has been given a huge amount of press over the past 12 months and obsession with form over content is where brands stand the highest chance of getting things
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wrong. However, Connected TV is a relevant innovation for brands to get their heads around, simply because of the new environment they could now find they have access to: that of sit-back home entertainment. Brands that invest in creating their own channels so this is made easy for the consumer will have the benefit of being in a new and exciting space with very little competition for the time being.
“Marketers are one of the biggest video producers in the world”
―Ooyala Everywhere allows viewers to continue a storyline across multiple devices. Integrations with authentication services like Facebook Connect can make things easier for viewers when it comes to professional content and DRM, because they only need to sign in once. ―For the marketer, this means being able to see a consumer across multiple devices and across many different videos. Marketers are becoming more and more like media companies. Connected TV, which is the next step in media consumption, offers a huge opportunity to early adopting brands because there are only a handful of apps in most connected TV app stores. A brand that takes advantage of app stores on connected TVs will find a competitive landscape for share of voice similar to what they were seeing back in the 70s.‖ Bismarck Lepe, Founder of Ooyala
11.4.
In conclusion
Whatever the technology, platform, audience or message, the absence of an overarching strategy with clearly-defined aims will mean that only luck will deliver value to brands investing in online video. As new innovations come to market and audiences consume ever more content from an increasingly broad range of devices, not to mention sources, the smart brands will be the ones who can test each tactic and every new technology against the question: how (and) will this fit into our strategy? Online video is an exciting place to be, and there is a whole future of innovation, trend-setting, flagship-building and game-changing to be done. Excitingly for today‘s digital marketer, the next big thing in online video could come from anyone in brands regardless of sector or budget.
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12.
Glossary
ADA – Americans with Disabilities Act. Legal enshrinement of the equal rights of US citizens. Specifically relevant to the accessibility of online video ASA – Advertising Standards Authority (UK). Augmented reality. A way of experiencing the world with an added layer of information, typically graphics, data and visualisations, either in-vision in the case of goggles or headsets, or overlaid on top of live video on a screen or portable device. Back links. Incoming links to a website, counted as part of a page‘s score or PageRank (Google) and used to affect where a page appears in search engine results. Bitrate. The amount of data transferred per unit of time. Used in relation to the size of videos on the web, for example a 1200Kbps video would consume 1200 kilobits of data per second. Blended SERP. Search engine results page that mixes media types, for example images, video, news and business listings. CDN – content delivery network. Network of computers containing copies of data placed at different points (or ‗nodes‘) to improve performance. Codec. The compression method that makes video files smaller. Connected TV. TV sets that are connected to the internet, designed to present online video as a full-screen experience in the home. Container. The file format in which compressed video and audio is contained. DRM – digital rights management. Access control technologies that are used by publishers and copyright holders to restrict and manage the use of digital content. Flash video. Video codec developed by Macromedia, now part of Adobe, which is delivered into web browsers using the Adobe Flash Player. h.264. Standard for video compression. HTML5 video. Element introduced in HTML5 specification for the purpose of playing video on web pages within the web browser. In-stream / in-player ads. Adverts that appear during video playback, either served from a third party ad network or controlled by the content published. iOS (formerly known as iPhone OS). Apple‘s mobile operating system. IP address. Numeric label assigned to each device on a computer network. ISP – internet service provider. Company providing internet access to homes or businesses. Metadata. Data that provides information about one or more aspects of the data it relates to e.g. length of a video. Multivariate testing. Technique for testing hypothesis where there are multiple variables. OVP – online video platform. Software platform for the management and delivery of online video.
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POP - point of presence. In this context, the geographical location of a server or group of servers on a CDN. Pre-roll. Piece of video (usually advertising) that appears before a video plays. QuickTime. A type of container. RTMP - Real Time Messaging Protocol. Way of delivering where a persistent connection is maintained between the media server and the user‘s browser that breaks the stream into fragments and delivers the video bit by bit. SEO – Search Engine Optimisation. The process of improving the visibility of a website or web page in search engine results pages. SERP – Search Engine Results Page. The results that are returned by search engines when a user performs a search. TCP/IP - Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol. Set of communications protocols that form the basic language and function of the internet. Theroa. Open-source compression standard for video. UGC – user-generated content. Content that has typically been produced by consumers or amateurs rather than brands or professionals. Vcommerce – video commerce. Video Sitemaps. Small files that contain information about where videos are located on the web. Vlog – video blog. WebM. Open-source compression standard for video.
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13.
13.1.
13.1.1.
Appendices
Industry Experts‘ Biographies
Chris Gorell Barnes
Founder and CEO at Adjust Your Set, London, UK
Chris is a new media entrepreneur working in digital video marketing and advertising. The business he founded in 2008 is a leader in the field of online video and has created the awardwinning M&S TV and significant online video channels for a range of brands including Debenhams and Lastminute.com. In May 2011 Adjust Your Set came 8th in a list of Top 50 fastest growing media companies in Europe. ―I founded Adjust Your Set in 2008 prompted by a shift in media habits. Driven by new technologies and social media, it became clear that there was an opportunity for a new type of agency that would help brands navigate this emerging landscape and become more like media companies in their approach to communication.‖ Chris is an expert in content creation and distribution strategies and has contributed a number of sound-bites to this report which tie together the creative, technical and strategic elements of online video.
13.1.2.
Will Grant
Creator of Buto, Birmingham, UK
Will is a web technology professional with over ten years‘ experience overseeing the design, architecture and marketing of powerful websites that are easy (and even fun) to use. Buto was created in 2008 in response to a customer need from its host company Big Button Media‘s video production clients. Since then it‘s built up quite a following, attracting worldleading clients such as Tesco, Freshfields and Amec to its software-as-a-service online video platform. Buto is a great example of a small British product that can operate by stealth and win customers on the basis of great innovation. Will is a technologist with a highly sophisticated normal people interface and his input has been hugely valuable in translating some of the technical details in this report.
13.1.3.
Mike Johnston
Executive Producer at Boss Creative, Seattle, USA
With a background that includes traditional agency as well as digital agency experience, Mike has worked in advertising for ten years leading the strategic planning and supervision of national award-winning advertising campaigns including broadcast, web, interactive, mobile, corporate and online media. Mike has been responsible for several web videos for Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Phone 7, some of the earliest mobile advertising with teams at AT&T, plus web design and marketing videos for Microsoft, FedEx, and the band, Alice in Chains. Mike has been particularly helpful to this report in explaining how branding goals link in with creative video content.
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13.1.4.
Lee Kemp
Managing Director at Fullrange, Birmingham, UK
Lee runs Fullrange, a UK Top 50 (Televisual, 2011) digital film production agency offering creative, production, post-production and duplication services. They work for brands like Unilever, American Express and Deutsche Bank as well as regional organisations like Marketing Birmingham, Retail Birmingham and Screen West Midlands plus lots of agencies, charities and smaller companies. Lee‘s mission is to tell stories that are visually brilliant and measurably great. This report has benefited from Lee‘s insights into the developing market for online video production as well as the importance of metrics and where current measurement techniques fall short.
13.1.5.
Bismarck Lepe
Founder of Ooyala, Mountain View USA
Bismarck is a Stanford Graduate who formerly served as Senior Product Manager at Google where he was guiding the development of content monetization products for AdSense, Social Networks and Online Video. Ooyala was started in 2007 to unleash the true power of online video for publishers everywhere. Now with offices across the world and $42 million of funding, Ooyala is a leader in online video technology, analytics and monetization. Bismarck has been particularly helpful in contributing his expertise in video analytics and the future of online video.
13.1.6.
Stuart Maister
Managing Director, BroadView Communications, London, UK
Stuart runs a TV company specialising in the development and delivery of web-based programmes for large companies. With a background in TV and radio journalism, Stuart has seen online video unfold from the start. He‘s watched brands‘ attitudes change from scepticism about who could see it to enthusiasm when it became the case that everyone could. Stuart has provided valuable insight into how larger organisations think about online video.
13.1.7.
Manley
SEO Director at LBi, London, UK
Manley is search analyst who leads a strategic and campaign team for LBi where he‘s been since 2005. Manley‘s background is in web accessibility, although now as SEO Director, Manley is responsible for Technical Search Analysis, developing best practice guidelines and providing consultancy both to clients and agencies on designing, implementing and supporting their search strategy. His expertise in the field of search is obvious in conversation and he‘s been insightful in the sections on video SEO in particular.
Online Video A Best Practice Guide
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13.1.8.
Joe Pélissier
Marketing Consultant and Producer, London, UK
Joe‘s professional career started in video production before he set up his current consultancy service that helps companies adapt to the new world of digital communication. Since the rise in online video, Joe‘s brief has expanded from copywriting and marketing and communications training to see him become increasingly involved in online video for his clients. Joe‘s range of experience with companies of all sizes across almost every sector has brought a highly useful degree of breadth to the whole report.
13.1.9.
Sarah Wood
COO at Unruly Media, London, UK
Sarah Wood is co-founder and COO of Unruly Media. She‘s responsible, in her own words, for ensuring that Unruly is delivering the most awesome social video campaigns on the planet. An academic in a previous life, Sarah continues to lecture in New Media, Screen Cultures and Digital Marketing at several UK universities. Speaking to Sarah about online video is an exciting and energising experience and her energy and personal dynamism alone are enough to convince any brand of the power of online video. As someone who sees projects from start to finish and has managed relationships with producers, agencies, clients and media buyers alike, Sarah‘s insights into what makes good online video are the most informed and refined imaginable.
13.2.
13.2.1.
Further and continued reading
Sites
Reel SEO http://feeds.feedburner.com/reelseo Beet.TV http://feeds.feedburner.com/BeetTV Paul Nilsen http://www.paulnilsen.com/feed/ Media Post Video Insider http://blogs.mediapost.com/video_insider/?feed=rss2 Inside Online Video http://www.insideonlinevideo.com/?feed=rss2 VideoVoo http://videovoo.com/feed/ LostRemote.com http://feeds.feedburner.com/LostRemote NewTeeVee http://newteevee.com/feed/ Online Video Watch http://www.onlinevideowatch.com/feed/ The Business of Online Video http://blog.streamingmedia.com/the_business_of_online_vi/atom.xml Tremor Media Blog http://blog.tremormedia.com/?feed=rss2 Video Insider http://blogs.mediapost.com/video_insider/?feed=rss2
Online Video A Best Practice Guide Page 59
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Video on the Web http://feeds.feedburner.com/typepad/kenmc1/video WebVideoUniverse http://www.webvideouniverse.com/icom_includes/feeds/special/wvu-15.xml Digital Media Wire – Video http://www.dmwmedia.com/taxonomy/term/617/all/feed (Courtesy of http://www.reelseo.com/video-marketing-rss-feeds/)
13.2.2.
Charts
Ad Age viral chart http://adage.com/section/viral-video-charts/ Unruly Viral Chart http://viralvideochart.unrulymedia.com/
Online Video A Best Practice Guide
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