The Video View
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- Video news elsewhere
- formats in search of audiences
- how short is short?
- Is Hulu more important that Time Warner Cable?
- last.fm and smartclip tie the knot
- MLB.com added to Little Roku
- pre-rolls to help YouTube turn a profit
- UK Commercial TV viewing shows an upswing
- what are the differences between in-stream and in-page video ads?
- why the JK wedding is a successful viral
- Why you need to be using video on your site…
- YouTube finalises revenue share for video partners
- YouTube to turn profit?
Posts Tagged video
Making online video work harder.
Posted by vaughan in creative, technology providers on November 26, 2009
Matt Kaplan recently posted on Mediapost about the importance of making video advertising work for the web. It is an excellent post and one that many advertisers and agencies should consider before setting out the goals of their campaigns. The advertising equivalent of a 12″ remix is the 1min 15 secs version of an ad that was destined for a 30 second slot on TV. Just because you can post a longer version doesn’t necessarily mean that you should and remember that this is online so people are a click away from being elsewhere.
The creative possibilities within a video are bountiful. From the intrusive ‘CLICK ME I’M SOMETHING DIFFERENT’ to the more subtle ‘you seem to be enjoying watching so why don’t you find out more about me’. The tools are widely available to make a video interactive so it seems like now would be a pretty good time for advertisers and agencies to start using them. One important point that I think Matt misses is that a user who is watching a video ad online will almost always have a mouse in their hand and the advertiser needs to think about whether they want the user to use it or not. Interactivity doesn’t make sense in every situation but where there is an opportunity to pass an engaged user on to the point of purchase then why not let them? If someone is giving you their time to watch an ad on YouTube then they are already a pretty engaged user, why make them go elsewhere to look for the product or service that you want them to find.
This is a picture diary of me growing a moustache for Movember. If I hadn’t included the link to donate within the video then people would have to look elsewhere, email me, go to my Facebook page or hunt me out any other way to find the link. By making the clicking and the donating as easy as possible I think that my video has more value. My donations have gone up as a result of it certainly and that was the KPI that I set out ahead of time so for me this has been a success. It may be time for advertisers to move on from thinking that 10,000 views on YouTube is enough of a success, after all – that’s just TV on a computer.
| Find more reactive videos at coull.com |
Kanye and Spike are a fantastic pair.
This is possibly one of the oddest music videos that I have ever seen. You can see it over on Creativity Online.
Does it sell the music? I don’t think so, does it sell Kanye West? Yes – I think that it does. The video is long at just over 10 minutes during which time Mr West is seen lurching from pillar to post in search of his inner self. A journey involving loving cushions and a plentiful supply of rose petals.
Definitely worth a watch.
IAB Launches New Video Site
Posted by vaughan in Uncategorized on October 12, 2009
The IAB in the UK has launched a new video site dedicated to building up a community around video advertising. I hope that they can help to build some momentum amongst the agencies, advertisers and publishers that we need to make online video advertising the mass-market media that I feel that it deserves to be. there are certainly some great creative examples out there.
Check here for more info.
tested to destruction
Ever since Blendtec launched the ‘Will it blend?’ videos on an unsuspecting public in 2007 there has been a trend for professional and user-generated content which demonstrates the toughness of a product. Here is one from power tool manufacturer Craftsman in the US as seen on Creativity Online.
You can also see some quality skateboard testing over at Flexdex, which has encouraged people to go out and test their own boards by driving cars over them – see below
Seeding the idea to test products with professional content can then lead product fans to do similar videos in homage to their favourite products. As the guy in the Jeep say to his buddy Trom – ‘yeah man, we’ve got video of that’. Advertisers can get a little wary of this kind of viral content production – after all what would happen if someone tried to blend a Craftsman drill in a Blendtec blender while riding a Flexdex skateboard? Mayhem – that’s what and frankly that is a video which many fans of the genre would like to see but I doubt that the CMO of a large corporation would be thankful for.
Once video is online then people can play with it, copy it, mash it up with various other influences and generally go crazy. They don’t have to respect brand guidelines or rules from Ofcom or the FTC but if there are fans that truly believe in what the brand produces then they should be encouraged rather than limited. Engaging with them carries a greater potential than limiting them and if the occasional bad egg gets out then a quick mail to YouTube or other video sites should soon get them taken down.
I’m a big fan of tearing down some of the walls, let the creative masses get their hands on your content and see what they come up with. Judging by the number of crowsourcing headlines that have been getting attention recently – it seems that quite a few advertisers are starting to agree.
Where’s Waldo…I mean…Dexter?
This is an ad for the new season of Dexter – a TV show in the US. It allows users to click on the video to locate the star of the show and move on to the next level. If you fail to spot him you get to try again, if you do spot him and manage to click on him in time then you get to go to the next video in the series. It can be highly frustrating – especially if like me you are unable to locate him on level 4 and give up in the process.
Games are well proven to increase a user’s engagement with advertising – the in-built human need to solve a puzzle gets drawn out in all of us, couple that with video footage and we can’t help ourselves, the mouse finger gets twitchy and before you know it you’ve spent half an hour chasing a guy around a video and you still can’t see him. You win this time Dexter but wait until I am hangover-free and then we’ll see who is the quickest on the video-clicking draw.
Video is a big cornerstone of Yahoo!’s strategy
Yahoo has embarked upon a major marketing campaign to try and increase it’s presence and relevance as an online media giant. One of the areas that they are intending to focus on is video and while their numbers seem a little small in comparison to YouTube it is worth remembering that a higher percentage of Yahoo!’s content is professional and therefore good space to advertise around.
Yahoo! have also gone through something of a revamp of their web properties, mail has a new interface, Flickr is now ‘from Yahoo!’ and they are starting to tie them all together. Given the well publicised deal with Microsoft on the search advertising side it is clear that Yahoo! has to do something to differentiate itself, they are masters of the display advertising market and it would make sense for them to focus on video. They are a little late to the game but in their case I think that this means that maybe they can learn from other’s mistakes and get such critical things right as frequency capping, targetting and reporting that they have for standard display advertising.
Video advertising – not just for the big boys
Posted by vaughan in creative, technology providers on September 23, 2009
I saw an article on Ad Operations Online about a company called Jivox who have a nice way of helping local businesses to get a video ad online.
In a simple process you can upload your video, add some calls to action and specify how much you want to spend on media costs. Of course the creatives are basic but then if you are a small business advertising on local sites then maybe you don’t need an incredible creative – just a way to get your message across.
If you click on the image and watch the video then I guarantee that you’ll want to go and visit iFly next time you are in Hollywood – that looks like a lot of fun! The message can only really be delivered through using video, text with a still image just wouldn’t cut it. It will be interesting to see if the service has longevity, the long tail can yield great results when managed effectively i.e. not managed at all but entirely self service so I think that it should do well. The challenge will be to make sure that the results are what the advertiser needs in order to justify the money that they’ll have to spend on using it.
VAST, VPAID, VAUGHAN*
Posted by vaughan in regular, technology providers on September 8, 2009
via Admonsters
The IAB in the US has been working with some of the luminaries of the the online industry to try and make standards available which help the whole video advertising value chain to get along in the hope that this will allow the market to move on with technology discussions and move us forward to discussions of the creativity that the formats should allow.
Why are standards important? Without them the whole business just becomes too complicated to be worth it, with them the efficiency increases – campaigns online quicker, creatives better able to use the channel, reports more consistent and containing better data. This is a benefit for advertisers looking for the lost or dispersed TV audience, the media owners who are hoping to maximise the payback on their content and the agencies who try to deliver better results every time.
In order to make it as easy as possible – VAST (Video Ad Serving Template) makes it easy for an ad-server to deliver an ad into a player, the response from the ad-server follows a standard format to let the player know what is coming – is it linear or non-linear, will there be a companion banner, etc.
VPAID (Video Player Ad Interface Definition) makes it easy for the video player to understand how it is supposed to work while the ad is playing so that the content isn’t compromised and also tells the ad what size it needs to be to maximise the use of the space available.
Many of the large online video technology companies are involved in the development of the standards such as Freewheel, Eyewonder, DoubleClick and Eyeblaster along with the video media owners Turner, Hulu, MTV and Google. Hopefully the Digital Video Committee can keep the momentum that they have been building and get everyone along for the ride.
*As for VAUGHAN (Video Advertising’s Ungainly Group Hug Afficianado + Note-taker) – I have trademarked it but will licence it to the IAB when they run out of others. (Gag suggested by a certain Mr Philpot – now of AdForm)
Nike SB has another good day…
Thanks to the Amazing Raisin for pointing it out over on Brand Freak.
I posted a little while ago (here) about the way that Nike SB had turned to skate video model around to provide free high quality skateboarding footage online. It seems that they are set to continue producing the same high quality feel but this time in a more conventional 1 minute slot which you can see here. The extended version is embedded above.
This ad has some great footage, a fantastic sound track, humour and above all the coverage of the shoes is as subtle as a skateboard shoe brand can be. The extended version was released after the TV version which made it an online event drawing even more viewers. Well done to Nike SB they really seem to be on a roll.
How do you know if your video is working?
If you are not someone who cares about how well your videos perform then stop reading now. If on the other hand you are one of those people that is using video on their site to promote something or are sending videos out into the wilds of the internet in the hope that they will be viewed by thousands of people before bringing you untold riches then read on.
The great promise about using online marketing is that you can measure the success or failure of your campaign and therefore optimise the content, placement, reach or frequency to maximise what it brings to you. I am sure that the vast majority of advertisers entrust these activities to their ad agencies who perform them diligently and therefore squeeze every last conversion from their advertising dollars. In the real world it can be hard to find time to make sure that everything is working or budget to re-edit a video or make sure that the video is in the right place with the right call to action. So if you are using video how can you measure, track and optimise this?
Eyeview Digital provide a platform to help companies to make and manage their videos and then provide detailed reports on how they’ve performed. This helps the site to test and tune their video to provide the best performance, how long is too long, male or female voiceovers, big flashing red arrows or the subtle approach.
In an ideal world this kind of testing would be happening anyway but Eyeview have a tool which will help sites to maximise the benefits of putting video on there in the first place. You can try their quiz here to see if you know it all already, I won’t reveal my score, I should have done better!
If you are in the business of releasing your videos into the wild and are curious to see where they perform best and what happens after people have seen them then Tubemogul may be able to help you out. They provide a simple system which lets you distribute your video across multiple channels with a single action and then tracks the success of that video. They gather the statistics from the video sites and provide you with graphs showing viewership, drop off over time, traffic sources and many others.
This is especially important given the recent news that YouTube is planning on partnering more with video producers who publish viral content (Techcrunch write-up here). Traditionally this has been a no-go area for YouTube who have not wanted to sell advertising around amateur content that carries a higher risk of causing offence or being disrespectful to the brand. If you are a content producer and can now gain some financial reward for your work from YouTube then having another system to monitor the success of your video must be a good thing.
In the same way that the search marketing industry (SEO) required tools to control and monitor text ads across multiple search engines (frankly the need for this has decreased with the demise of several of the search engines) Tubemogul allows you to perform a similar function across multiple video sites.
Of course you could just carry on regardless and hope that your videos are being successful for you but wouldn’t you like the peace of mind that you are getting the most out of them that you can?
