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Posts Tagged ‘online video’

Zazoo writes for NETT on online video Thursday, March 11th, 2010

Zazoo was asked to put together a workshop article for NETT magazine on how to promote your business online using video. The article has been published in this month’s issue (see a PDF version here).

Here are a couple of excerpts:

“Online video is no longer a nice-to-have addition to your marketing mix: it’s becoming an essential tool for small businesses trying to stand out in a crowded market. Yet, often the biggest challenge for SMEs interested in creating online video is taking that first step. Your dream may be to create something that goes viral, but where do you start? How do you make it interesting enough to get people to watch – and then spread the message? The good news is, creating online video is getting cheaper and easier to do.

“….The biggest challenge for businesses, especially SMEs, is taking the first step. Video can confound people who are only familiar with traditional marketing. Developing an interesting concept is the next challenge. Viewers have been conditioned by years of television watching to expect video to be entertaining as well as informational, so that talking head presentation from your MD is an online video no-no.

“….Each video and each campaign is different, so work out ways you candetermine the success of your video in meeting your goals.How can you tell whether increased sales are due to your video? You do things like link from the video to a particular landing page on your site instead of the home page. Measure hits to this page and add a call-to-action…. As you produce more videos, you can see what type of content gives you the most business impact.”

Keep on the lookout for future articles in NETT and other publications.

Ray Welling, Content Guy, Zazoo


More bang for your buck - repurpose your content as online video Thursday, February 11th, 2010

Phyllis Zimbler Miller writes this week in the Internet Business Examiner about a cost-effective way to drive more traffic to your site - turn your existing text content into video content.

She writes, “Turning your written content into short (2-3 minute) videos can be a very effective way to repurpose your content.

“You can break up the content of a long article or post into two or three short videos of you talking about the subject and then upload these to YouTube with appropriate keyword tags. Next you can embed the videos on your own site and leave the video link on other places around the Web.

“Of course, it’s a good idea to include your site’s URL on the video itself so that anyone seeing the video can instantly connect to you.”

While I think repurposing text content as video can be very effective, I would caution against just producing a talking head video of someone reading out your articles verbatim. You need to be a bit more creative and think of how you can tell the story visually, using pictures and graphics, rather than just someone’s face. That creative touch can mean the difference between traffic arriving at your page and bouncing off, and traffic that stays and moves down the conversion funnel.

Ray Welling, Content Guy, Zazoo


Consumers expect video entertainment as well as marketing from companies Friday, February 5th, 2010

eMarketer’s recent report on the use of online video by the consumer packaged goods sector has uncovered some interesting results, such as the numbers showing that people are expecting to be entertained by companies as much as they are expecting to be marketed to. 

Across nearly all of the categories, entertainment rated as high as marketing (see above). Solving problems and offering incentives to buy were the highest rating expectations, on average.

The survey, conducted among nearly 600 US new media users, demonstrates the strength of online video and shows how consumers’ perceptions of marketing and advertising are changing, as the line between content and promotion becomes increasingly blurred.

“Digital video content, whether delivered through a computer, mobile phone, handheld device or TV monitor, has the potential to ignite two-way conversations between consumers and brands,” said Tobi Elkin, author of the report.

According to an eMarketer summary of the report: “Putting a hard number on the dollars spent by consumer packaged goods marketers on online video content is difficult, as outlays are not included in measures of paid advertising spending. Assessing its effectiveness is likewise a problem for marketers. The same metrics issues that bedevil marketers trying to assess the effect of online advertising on their brands also plague the ability to evaluate the performance of video content.”

Ray Welling, Content Guy, Zazoo


Constant content reaps business benefits Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

A recent article in MarketingProfs has some insightful comments about what sort of content you should put on our website to engage people and get them to keep coming back to your site.

Bob Knorpp, president of the advertising, marketing and social networking consultancy Cool Beans, makes the point that your website should be about the future, not the past. He says, “I could have easily filled my website with descriptions and photos of my past projects. But I hated that option,” because perusing a list of past accomplishments at a website is like “reading a history book and calling it cutting-edge thinking.”

He creates weekly podcasts and video clips related to the podcasts, tweets about site updates, and has a Facebook and Wikipedia page. Although the amount of effort sounds exhausting, he says it helps his business in three ways:

  1. It establishes him as an experts
  2. It provides context for clients.
  3. It makes him better at his job.

“Having your customers engage with a growing body of content is one of the surest ways to raise the perception that you are expert in your given field, and create a path toward ongoing loyalty and advocacy with your brand,” Bob says.

Shameless plug: If you want to emulate those efforts but don’t have the time/internal resources, Zazoo can help you create relevant, up-to-date, optimised content.

Ray Welling, Content Guy, Zazoo


Prediction for 2010: embrace video or become invisible Sunday, January 10th, 2010

Daniel Flamberg, managing director of marketing agency Booster Rocket, published his predictions for interactive strategies for 2010 on iMedia.com this week. One of them was about the growing use of online video for business. He wrote: 

“Video is the meme of choice online. It seems that everyone has and uses a video camera to upload all kinds of content online. In 2010, if you can’t be found on YouTube and its competitors, you will be invisible. (my emphasis) Look for considerable competition among sites vying to rank second. Watch vertical video sites attempt to increase their visibility, if not their utility or viewership.

“….Also look for new ways to emerge to tell stories in video. There appears to be a very broad tolerance for homemade videos and video with very modest production value. Videos will be shorter and better tagged. Many will be clickable, and some brands will try to create (or re-create) a branded online serial aimed at their psycho-demographic target. The Holy Grail is still the video that achieves altitude and is virally passed to zillions around the world.”

As more companies realise the importance of Internet content to sustaining their business, more and more will turn to low-cost video content for their websites.


Look no further for digital video content Monday, August 24th, 2009

Zazoo has produced a quick video displaying our digital video services. Contact us at info@zazoo.com.au if you would like any further info!


Zazoo Show Reel


Let’s go to the video Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

Twitter has been getting all the media attention this year, but online video has also taken off in a huge way in 2009. Here are some interesting facts:

  • 62% of U.S. adult Internet users watch videos on YouTube and other video-sharing web sites, up from 33% in late 2006, according to a recent report from the Pew Research Center.
  • Also from the report: “Online video watching among young adults is near-universal; nine in ten (89%) internet users ages 18-29 now
    say they watch content on video sharing sites, and 36% do so on a typical day.”
  • Speaking of Twitter, check out how Twitter compares to online video consumption on the chart below:

  • According to a ComScore report, 157 million Americans watched 19.5 billion online videos in June, up from the 16.8 billion in April. The average viewer watched 124 online videos in June, up from 111 million in April. Google (read YouTube) still accounts for 40% of all videos viewed and more than half of videos viewed per user.
  • A report on ClickZ calls online video “the fastest growing medium in history, having gone from zero to mass market globally in three short years.” More good advice from this report: “Create ads that work as content. Create fun or arresting videos that tell a story and seamlessly integrate your brand.”
  • Another report from iMedia UK looks at the myths of online video and explains why it’s not as expensive, boring and unaccountable as you might think.

Online video on the rise Tuesday, March 31st, 2009

One of the topics getting an increasing amount of airplay is online video. It’s growth is bucking the downward spend pattern of most other forms of media. Here are just a few of the articles worth reading on this trend:

  • Is the Big Shift Underway? Talks about how relatively high CPMs compared with television to grab large audiences has been holding back the growth of online video. One of the comments on the story says, “We think there is another business model emerging for brands leveraging video on the Web: Brands hosting video content on their own site instead of running ads around someone else’s video at an aggregated site. Our vision is that brands will soon realize that a person watching video content on a brand’s website are easily worth 20 times the value of a viewer offsite watching an ad. We think a new metric will soon be developed. And it will define the ROI of brands creating their own engaging, fun content on their own websites that visitors want to see.”
  • Online Video Changes Game for Brand Marketers: “Video has expanded well beyond the media industry and into nearly every corner of the professional Web, as corporations, governments, non-profits and educational institutions look to use video as a cornerstone of how they communicate, market and inform on the Web.” Has some good case studies on the effective use of online video.
  • Online Video Subtitles (Duh!): Predicts that spending on online video advertising will grow by more than 50% a year for the next five years to more than US$5.8 billion by 2013. Cites research showing that adding subtitles to videos increased time spent viewing by more than 40 per cent.

Will be interesting to, um, watch what happens in Australia in this part of the online market.


I think I’m a bit hungry… Thursday, February 26th, 2009

An entry in this week’s Online Video Insider blog highlights a tasty new trend: online video snacking; or as Dave Jackson writes, “more people, watching more videos, more often.”

A recent ComScore report on the topic found that in November 2008:

  • 146 million people, or 77% of the U.S. Internet audience, viewed online video;
  • Those viewers watched 34% more online videos than they did last year;
  • The average online viewer watched 273 minutes of video (more than six hours), up more than 40% vs. the previous year;
  • The average duration of online video is only 3.1 minutes per video; and
  • The audience viewed 87 videos per month on average, 18 more videos per month than last year.

    •  

    The blog post highlights that the average duration of online video was the only metric that remained consistent compared to ComScore’s 2007 survey, up only 18 seconds per video - despite the fact that long-form sites such as Hulu (which runs mainly TV episodes) did not exist in 2007. To quote: “Americans still have relatively short attention spans when it comes to their online viewing experience.”

    Gender differences are interesting:

  • Women watch 41% more online videos than they did last year.
  • They now watch 79 videos per month on average, up 33%.
  • They spend 227 minutes watching online video, up 46%.
  • The average video length for women is 2.9 minutes, vs. 3.4 for men.

    •  

    The conclusion? “Video snacking is a real trend because online video meets a content need for viewers and is easily accessible to those viewers throughout their day. Marketers and agencies, particularly those that are trying to reach women, would be well served to look for ways to build on this trend to help achieve their goals.”


    We are all publishers Monday, January 5th, 2009

    In the digital age, if you’re a marketer you’re also a publisher. Rebecca Lieb has written a great piece in ClickZ which was republished the other day, and is well worth a read.

    She argues that “Marketers have been creating content in all sorts of media in all kinds of channels since the beginning. But now that virtually every brand, manufacturer, service, and product you can think of is online (and likely runs its own Web site), content has blown wide open. Almost anyone involved in any type of online business can no longer hope to survive without a solid content strategy.”

    In the 21st century equivalent of custom publishing, big brands such as Budweiser in the US even have their own online TV channel. Lieb writes: “Think of it as the online equivalent of a Disney or Warner Bros. theme park. You know the rides and merchandise are selling you something, but few people care about the church-and-state divide on branded territory.

    “….Strong, well thought-out and executed content strategies create rewards for marketers. They go viral. They attract community. They can blow out SEO (search engine optimisation) to epic proportions. Rather than a company’s Web page showing up in organic results, content can generate page after page of relevant results.”

    She concludes: “As an editor/marketer hybrid, I may have some bias here, but I’d be hard-pressed to think of a marketing problem that couldn’t be tackled head-on with a solid content strategy.”

    Couldn’t agree more.


    TV-online video migration continues apace Wednesday, November 19th, 2008

    The evidence is gathering that online video is cannibalizing television consumption and revenue. 

    An IBM study that polled 2,800 people in six countries has revealed that more than three-quarters of people have viewed video online and nearly half do it regularly. Of those who have watched online video, 15% say that as a result they watch “slightly less” TV, while 36% said they watch “significantly less” TV.

    Paying homage to the history of commercial television, 70% of online video viewers prefer the ad-supported model over consumer-paid models. They specify, though, that they prefer watching a commercial before or after an uninterrupted online video, and they don’t like product placement.

    Almost 60% of the respondents said they were willing to provide to advertisers some personal information about themselves in exchange for something of value, such as access to high-quality music videos, store discounts or airline frequent-flyer points.

    “The industry must find appealing ways to monetize new content sources or risk a similar fate as that of the music industry where value shifted away from core players,” said Saul Berman, the study’s co-author.

    Meanwhile, eMarketer reports that while TV revenue growth is slowing, online video revenue growth is soaring - though the overall numbers suggest there is a fair amount of leakage in overall spend.

    eMarketer estimates there will be $284.8 billion in total US ad spending in 2008, and TV still garners 25% of those dollars. But in 2009 US TV advertising spending will decline 4.2% to $66.9 billion.

     

    “This precipitous drop reflects not only the poor economic conditions, but fundamental changes in the way television advertising is being bought and sold,” says Carol Krol, eMarketer senior analyst. “Although there will be inevitable stumbling as they find their footing, the broadcast networks are making bold and interesting choices in an effort to follow consumers online,” says Ms. Krol. “They are collaborating with competitors, hooking up with online partners and forging alliances that were unheard of just a few years ago.”

    Online video ad spending as a percent of TV ad spending is expected to nearly double over the next two years, however it will still only reach 1.7% in 2010 - and still less than 3.5% of overall online advertising spend.

    Krol points out that there is still “no clear winning online business model for broadcasters,” and that online advertising revenue growth is less than offline media decline. Which raises the question: where is that money going?


    ‘Engaged’ video viewers open to brand messages Friday, October 24th, 2008

    Forrester Consulting’s online video engagement report , conducted for online video company Veoh, reveals that while some online video viewers still only “snack” on short clips, there is a growing audience of “young, influential, engaged viewers who watch a great deal of long-form online video and pay attention to the brand messages delivered to them in online video environments.”

    As Veoh reports: “The study found that Engaged Viewers (viewers who watch more than an hour of online video a week) make up nearly 40% of all online video viewers and watch nearly 75% of all online video. Of these Engaged Viewers, those who spend the most time consuming and sharing long-form content:

    • Are more likely to watch videos all the way through
    • Pay more attention to online video more than they do TV
    • Interact with and rate the videos they watch more frequently
    • Are twice as likely to recall in-video ads and post-rolls than non-Engaged Viewers
    • Agree more readily that advertising is fair and helps pay for their free experience
    • Consider banner ads and ads that come in between videos (mid-rolls) most effective”

    The takeaway? Veoh concludes that, “As online video viewing matures, advertisers can take advantage of the unique opportunity to reach valuable Engaged Viewers by starting with the following:

    1. Think Advertainment, not Advertisement. Engaged video viewers are more open to enjoying the advertising they watch giving marketers an opportunity to create ads that are as entertaining as the video clips they are paired with. Make the advertising a part of this engaging environment by telling compelling stories rather than consistently repeating the same 30-second spot.
    2. Active mindset = greater action…. Consider having multiple creative units depending on the mindset and propensity to engage with the medium.
    3. Think about all the ad units on the page as a team. All viewers feel advertising can be annoying. But none of them said it had to be annoying. Engaged viewers respond to ad formats that don’t intrude unfairly. Their preference for banner ads supports this. But banner ads can be supported by a comprehensive ad experience that ties display ads, sponsorships, and in-video ads together into a coherent package.
    4. Target it and they will come. As more viewers spend more than an hour a week viewing online video, it’s time for advertisers and the sites that enable them to start matching ads to viewers more intelligently. The easiest place to do this is with long-form content, where the choice of programming - an episode of one’s favorite tv show - says more about a viewer than a short clip about a dog on a skateboard ever can.”

    Online video grows, still tiny in comparison Wednesday, October 8th, 2008

    Online video ad spending is set to hit US$500 million this year and is predicted to grow to nearly US$3.5 billion by 2012, but is still tiny compared to the US$70 billion TV advertising market, according to eMarketer.

    In another sign that media agencies are still stuck in traditional paradigms, eMarketer is predicting that most of the growth in online video will come from major brands booking pre-roll and mid-roll streaming advertisements - in other words, ads that you have to watch, which is the closest thing you can get to traditional TV advertising on the Internet. Oh yeah, product placement and sponsorship are the next biggest spend areas. The move toward innovative advertising models using social media continues its glacial pace…


    Online shows, short-form video for Fairfax Wednesday, September 17th, 2008

    From the B and T newsletter:
    “Fairfax Media is diversifying its advertising opportunities through the development of new types of short-form video content on its websites, and has commissioned several new online shows.

    “The new internet TV shows include several ‘infotainment’ broadcasts and branded content shows including Land Rover’s Best Breaks, a 12-part series looking at short breaks from Sydney and Melbourne.

    “An increased demand, particularly around lunch time, from viewers has led to a new ‘primetime’ audience for advertisers to tap into, said Pippa Leary, managing director of media for Fairfax Digital.

    “’Short-form videos offer more freedom to viewers- because it’s on demand and easy to share with others,’ she said.

    “….Fairfax is closely monitoring what is happening in the US and the UK in the branded content area, said Leary. ‘As audiences get more sophisticated the advertisers have to get more sophisticated, too.’

    She said one of the major trends Fairfax have noticed is advertising agencies creating both TV ads and online ads when doing a shoot: ‘The ads for online are a lot shorter and also incorporate more interactivity.’

    “The media company’s latest show was a comedy sketch called 51st State by performer and writer Dan Ilic, which covered the Democratic Convention in the US. ‘Because it was topical at the time, the series blurred the lines between news and entertainment. It appeals to a broad audience and also advertisers trying to reach a diverse audience,’ said Leary.”