The Video View
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- formats in search of audiences
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- last.fm and smartclip tie the knot
- MLB.com added to Little Roku
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- 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
good creative + good format + good media = good advertising
A recent piece over on the E-consultancy site got me thinking. Good advertising happens when a good creative idea is delivered in a interesting and appropriate format in media that makes sense for the message. This is not rocket science – it has been happening since God was a boy.
Some of this is still getting figured out though for online video advertising. Unlike TV where depending upon location the ad is a 10/15/20/30 second long message or regular display advertising where a banner usually has to fit the IAB guidelines, there are maybe still too many variables when it comes to in-stream advertising that it is hard for the industry to get it’s head around them, what format, what length, pre/mid/post roll. Do you want companion banners? What if the video is played full-screen? How much interactivity should there be? Is it long-form or short form content? Is the content professionally produced? How many times should the user see the ad? Should we allow them to skip the ad after seeing it once? ad infinitum…
The best creative can often be found where the constraints are narrow – not broad, display advertising has come on leaps and bounds since the market figured out that having thousands of pop-ups was a bad thing. This has been a growing period during which the media owners have had to decide upon the value of their media and to try not to de-value it with too many ads. The creative teams have had to work with what they had and maximise the use of the space, the creative gallery from the IAB shows how this can work (although in my humble opinion the default answer of ‘pumping the majority of the effort into a microsite’ is a bit unadventurous). The media buyers often play a numbers game where they have to splat as many people as possible to get the required response rate but this is getting more focussed and targetted as the industry develops and advertisers get more sophisticated moving on from the altar of the click-through rate.
With in-player video advertising (as opposed to in-banner) the different parties need to pull together to see what works, what doesn’t and what is the most efficient way to use the space, what constraints to impose and what metrics are important (check Dean Donaldson’s blog for more on that). Maybe when that is all decided upon we will be able to stop talking about the technology and the formats and start talking about the creative idea which is what good advertising should be about.
JW Players – ‘Like Wordpress for Video’
Posted by vaughan in technology providers on August 12, 2009
If you have a site that has a video player – the chances are that you will have heard of the JW Players. There are versions for wmv or flv and a desktop variant is available too. They are known and loved by many people in the industry for their low cost, easy to implement and easy to customise nature. As someone once described them to me ‘they’re like Wordpress for video’. As such they have been used by thousands of sites.
The success of the player is great but what I think is really interesting is the potential value of this installed base. This is where the Longtail network comes in. If you have an installed player on thousands of sites then the potential for advertising around the video content is considerable. Many of the sites will be incredibly narrow in focus which doesn’t hold much interest for a large advertiser who only cares about the mass market but for a niche advertiser who really wants to hit a target market then this could pay dividends.
Through using the Longtail AdSolution a site can embed a tag from any network or adserver into their player thus opening up the video on their site to advertisers, all this with a self-serve reporting and management system. It sounds good and reports are that it is good. In the UK Longtail are partnered with a couple of different ad networks – Adconion and Adpepper but the system will take tags from Tremor, YuMe, DoubleClick In-Stream and others.
For people with video-heavy sites the prospect of earning some ad-funds from the content is very attractive and this should be possible as long as the advertisers can find the audiences that they want as often as they want.
Omniture now does video tracking
Posted by vaughan in technology providers on August 11, 2009
Everyone knows that the amount of video being viewed online is going up but how do you prove that for an individual site? For the benefit of their sites and content – this is pretty useful information but as in this case with Crackle – it also helps to sell to the advertisers that support the site and make all the content possible. Check here for the Omniture blog post about it.
If you don’t know Omniture then it is worth spending a few minutes undertanding what they do. They measure website performance in amongst a few other things. If they are really starting to take video seriously then I think that that is a good thing. After all – in online advertising it is very hard to sell what you cannot measure and if one of the larger site analytics companies starts to make video measurement as easy as possible then that will be a benefit to the industry.
The majority of the video ad-serving companies will provide measurements about any in-stream ads that are shown but site analytics can be used to measure the actual content, the challenge is making the data make sense to the people that need it. In order to do this they have come up with the concept of ROV (Return on Video), the basic premise of this is – is it worth us renewing a certain show or not. If a show is popular then maybe it should be promoted differently to an unpopular one. There is no point pumping programming dollars into a show that no-one really wants to watch after all.
YouTube jumps into the Pool
The Pool is a group of publishers (MSN, Hulu, CBS) and advertisers who have been corralled by Vivaki – the Publicis enterprise. Their aims are to figure out how video advertising can be standardised across multiple platforms and how the process can be streamlined. Without doubt their aims are worthy, media agencies and publishers alike want this market to grow and to be successful, is this the best mechanism for achieving that? Well that rather depends on how much other agency groups will sit up and take notice of what they are doing. After all if Vivaki do create some ’standards’ how much notice will Omnicom, Group M or Aegis take of them?
The Internet Advertising Bureau has been working with technology providers, publishers and agencies to define the Video Ad Serving Template (VAST) and the Video Player Ad Interface Definition (VPAID), these standards are designed to make it easy for agencies to buy across multiple publishers. The second version of the VAST standard is already under discussion which should hopefully formalise some of the woollier areas of the first attempt. If the technology providers such as DoubleClick, Eyewonder, Eyeblaster et al can help the publishers that they work with to adopt the standards then this should naturally lubricate the market.
Of course the Pool has one advantage over the IAB’s efforts. Vivaki buys advertising space and therefore has some teeth with which to persuade the relevant parties to get involved and to collaborate on developing the formats and standards that will make life easier for the advertisers. The IAB relies upon the musketeer attitude of all for one and one for all in the hope that those involved see the value of making the market grow.
How it will all pan out remains to be seen but the general direction of these efforts is a positive one.
And how would you like to pay for that? cpm cpc cpe cpv cpa…
Paying for your online media or advertising technology has never been ‘easier’…
If you’re new to the world of online advertising then the first thing that you need to learn is that the unit of currency that works for the majority of display advertising is the CPM (cost per mille or thousand). The number of ads displayed in a typical campaign is in the millions so to make things simpler everything is divided by a thousand. This is fine if you are showing a standard display ad that doesn’t do very much and all that you’re after is the percentage game. CPC (cost per click) is sometimes used for display or affiliate advertising but is mostly associated with search engine marketing where every ad that is clicked on has a cost.
Rich media advertising can deliver as many metrics as even the most data-orientated advertiser can handle and this is useful if the ad is built with many interactions – so if you want to count the number of aliens killed in a space invader game or the number of times a widget was shared then you can and these brand engagement metrics are a whole lot more informative than the click-through rate. But they aren’t really suitable for a payment scheme.
The video market is starting to change things again. Since video ads occupy the space between TV and online advertising the click-through measurement that has for a long time dominated online advertising is becoming less and less important. The promise of advertising online is that everything can be measured and this is true to a large extent but this has also become a noose with which to strangle ourselves. A middle ground is needed between TV (on an individual user level – largely unmeasurable) and online video (very measurable but sometimes unusable or irrelevant).
GRP (gross ratings points) are what a TV advertiser buys against, this is basically a measure of reach and frequency as a ration of the target audience. I’ve yet to see a meaningful way for this to be counted and since I’m talking about online video – I’m going to set this to one side for the time being.
Two online video advertising companies that offer alternative billing mechanisms are VideoEgg and Brightroll. VideoEgg started charging on a CPE (cost per engagement) basis earlier in the year and Brightroll have just announced their intention to charge using CPE or CPV (cost per completed video view). No doubt both of these are attractive to branding advertisers – after all wouldn’t a TV advertiser like to pay only for those viewers that actually sat through the commercials?
For a media agency one of the most important considerations is that the costs should be predictable since a large part of their revenue comes from a mark-up on these costs. The same applies for a publisher since they have fixed costs which they have to pay and want to maximise the income around their content. Sales networks can be a little more adventurous and this is where the change is coming from for video since video networks account for a greater proportion of spend than portals in the video market.
There is probably another way of charging direct response advertitsers who want to use video but only pay for those that convert as a direct result and for this I think that we will see something along the lines of a CPAv (cost per acquisition from video). After all, if there’s one thing that’s true in our industry – we sure do love an acronym.
you’re in the army now…
The armies on both sides of the Atlantic have been having something of a recruitment problem for a few years now, the US Army some time ago introduced a video game which would allow you to play out missions with one of their regiments. The scores were then posted on the internet and those that demonstrated a high aptitude and the correct demographic were encouraged to sign up.
In a current campaign created by Publicis the British Army uses video that is common across the TV ads and the online ads to draw a user in through a series of encounters all tied together through the tagline ‘Start Thinking Soldier’. Through a series of problem solving, strategic thinking and steady-hand challenges you can find out about the jobs in the army and the weapons that they use.
Through using real video footage with the flash games the whole experience is one which is interactive and makes the most of all the technologies available to it. This action can really get the heart pumping and provides the merest glimpse into what goes through the mind and body of a soldier in combat.
The fact that this is an integrated campaign featuring outdoor ads on phone boxes, press, TV and online means that it is hitting it’s target audience wherever they are and driving them to the site where the real action begins. There is obviously a need to collect data from this for finding the real potential recruits and this is done through gathering thie rinfo and then assessing their performances. According to my performance – I shouldn’t be a sniper.
Whatever your views on military action – the campaign works and it works through having a strong idea that is carried through across all media. The technology isn’t the story but it does help to tell it.
Mustang Emotions
An old acquaintance of mine, Cary DiCristina, is a screen writer and he recently let me know about a project that he has been involved with for the launch of the next Mustang in 2010. It is a short film competition where the main theme is ‘I love(d) that Mustang so much……’
The basic premise is that a Mustang can spark up such strong emotions, wouldn’t you want to be a part of that? On a similar note to the Nike Debacle post the other day – this is a large advertiser looking to use online video in an engaging way, encouraging the user to seek it out voluntarily. Sure there will probably be a TV/Radio/Newspaper/Magazine spot to accompany the campaign but since the majority of the action is through the website it makes sense that this is where the campaign lives.
The fact is that this is a campaign about emotion, everybody’s emotions about a Mustang are different so rather than try and force a one size fits all ad campaign through everybody’s eyeballs, it works better to invite them in to get content that they can control (hopefully enjoy) and feel good about. I don’t know what metrics Ford are hoping to get out of the campaign but if the quality of the submissions for their short film collection are anything to go by then it must have been a success. If you would like to see Cary’s then please watch The New Girl.
Adidas adds some Coull interactivity
The Adidas House Party campaign has been around for a few months now but I think that it still demonstrates an excellent use of the interactivity that is available in online video. Through the use of hotspots within the footage and clear calls to action they have transformed a good TV ad into a great online video ad.
Aside from the catchy music, high celebrity count and engaging video, the online version has been doctored using some technology from Coull. They allow the video to become more interactive and thus more engaging for the user. It would be interesting to see what results the video achieved, after all this is not about directly selling sneakers for a price point – this is about brand engagement as measured by video views and interactions.
Interactivity built into video provides a much stronger user experience than a plain old video, turning something that is good on TV to something that is great online.
Targeting video advertising.
I recently did some work with the IAB for their online video advertising handbook.
It was interesting to read all of the input from agencies, publishers and other technology providers and I think that the handbook gives a fair introductory overview to anyone who doesn’t understand how online video ads work.
Adobe gives Nike a little XD factor
thanks to the lovely emma for the pointer to this film.
if you are a fan of any niche sport – the chances are that at some point you will see a video of other people far more proficient than you are, making amazing things look easy and providing the perfect product positioning for a sponsor’s products. The latest one that I have seen is from Nike SB (skateboard). It has such high production values that even when viewed through a browser the quality of the video surpasses that of most DVDs.
The skate action is amazing but if you err on the technical side then you can see that the video quality when streamed over a fairly standard broadband line is phenomenal. Apparently Adobe helped quite a lot with this side of thigs with their new video products. Well done to them.
Is this advertising? Of a sort yes – product placement is increasingly being seen as a way to cut through the clutter of other online advertising methods. Are Nike tracking how many people buy their shoes who have also see the video? Probably, probably not. If someone watches the video and then goes straight to nikestore.com and buys then they’ll be tracked but for offline purchases the same dliemma of old media applies. How can you track someone who sees a TV, Magazine or Outdoor ad?
Increasingly big brands will give their consumers content which they want to give them a warm fuzzy feeling about the brand. Nike has been successful in doing this. Hopefully other large brands will see the possibilities and instead of holding back from pure branding exercises on the internet will get stuck in, be proud of their products and what people do with them and move on from allowing click-through-rates to be the only online measure that counts.
