Digital Video: Powerful Today, Explosive Tomorrow

Editor's Notes

• #4: Current consumption trends show that video content is more popular than ever There are 40 billion videos streamed in the US each month and 75 million people watch online videos each month – that’s ¼ of the US population182.5 million digital video viewers are projected for 2013YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine with 2 billion videos streamed each year Those stats serve to show the power of digital video in today’s consumer landscape. Brands need to respond by offering the video content that consumers crave. Data shows that if you have a video on your website’s landing page, your landing page will be 53% more likely to show up on the 1st page of Google search results Another powerful statistic is that the average user spends 88% more time on a website with a video than a website without a video
• #5: What these consumption trends have taught us is that video has grown from a “nice to have” to a “must have” as today’s consumers expect video content from brands87% of marketers use video for content marketing. This means more marketer are using video than blogs, articles, photo galleries, etc. to engage potential customersVideo advertising is taking up an increasing chunk of media budgets. Industry experts project $4.1 bill ion will be spent on digital video ads in 2013 and $6.3 billion will be spent on digital video ads in 2015. Marketers are responding by creating ad units specifically designed to showcase video in a compelling manner. Just this week, Bank of America ran a takeover unit at the top of the NYTimes.com homepage that activated a live stream of the New York Times “Schools for Tomorrow” education conference. The New York Times is an example of a publisher who is really excelling at releasing innovative ad units that enable live streaming video of events. As more publishers create innovative video ad units, marketers are shifting budget towards video advertising. Video’s share of overall digital display budget is expected to rise from 23.4% this year to 30.7% by 2017.
• #6: It can be argued that digital content is social and that most of digital marketing is social marketing these days, and that is definitely the case for video. Some key social networks showcase the social aspect of video. Instagram launched in the fall of 2010 so it’s about 3 years old and is now owned by Facebook. Earlier this month, Instagramrevelaled they had reached 150 million active users. Originally conceived as a photo sharing platform, they released video sharing earlier this summer in a move that many thought was a direct effort to rival Vine. 5 million Instagram videos were posted within the 1st 24 hours of video being available as a content type. Twitter launched Vine as “a mobile service to capture and share short looping videos” in January of this year. Last month, Vine announced that 40 million people had downloaded the app. That’s an increase of 27 million people over the course of just two and a half months. Branded vines are shared 4 times as often as other branded internet videos. 5 Vines are shared every second on Twitter. Facebook has been toying with the idea of launching video ads for months and the industry has been waiting for the release. Some advertisers even started creating video ads in anticipation of a summer rollout, but Facebook has delayed the launch to ensure the video technology was up to par (meaning the video units need to load quickly so as to not disrupt the members’ experience) and that the units are splashy enough to convince brands to spend about $2 million per day to run them. This is quite expensive when you think about how a 30-second spot during the last Super Bowl cost advertisers about $3.8 million. Those familiar with the upcoming launch believe the video ads will appear prominently on members’ homepage news feeds and will show 15 second or less clips on both smartphones and the web
• #7: As the data shows, digital video is being consumed at a high rate by a growing number of people, digital video is becoming an increasingly important tactic in marketing and advertising, and this year digital video has really taken off and become more social. So as marketers, how should we incorporate digital video into our marketing strategies?Map video to your business goals & the decision making processAlways remember your audience and consumer behaviors Create new videos instead of repurposing if possible Make your videos interactive to stay in line with trends Know your channels
• #8: As with all marketing tactics, before you decide to jump on the latest tactic, you want to consider your business goals and determine how video would fit within the buyer purchase funnel and decision making process. At R2i, we often talk about moving potential customers from awareness to consideration to acquisition to advocacy, and I recommend thinking about how video could be used to move your customers through this process to meet your goals. Video can often provide a faster path to engaging your target audience and meeting your goals as you can deliver your message or story in a compelling way that drives awareness, propels potential customers to include you in their product or service consideration set, spurs acquisition, prompts advocacy. If your goal is to make more people aware of your product or service, then video could be used to tell the story of your company or to creatively showcase your key brand values (animate storytelling and branding) If your goal is to acquire customers, you could incorporate interactive direct response elements like form fields into your videos in order to capture new customer email addresses Video length comes into play here as 15 second videos give you better breakthrough which would help meet the goal of raising awareness, while 30 second videos can allow you to convey complex messages, which could help convert a potential customer who has put you into his or her consideration set. Once you have established your business goals and determined if video can help you meet your video goals, you want to make sure you’re creating content that maps to your target audience’s behaviors and preferences.
• #9: Most consumers prefer short videos – we recommend always keeping videos under 30 secondsThink about behavior of your customers – if they are likely to use tablets then video could be a great tactic for you since data shows video ads on tablets grab viewers’ attention since tablets are highly personal devices that are usually being held in consumers’ hands. Click-through rates are actually higher for pre-roll video ads on mobile devices and tablets at 4.9% compared to PC’s (0.6%)Most video ads are viewed in primetime (10pm – midnight) and most video ad views take place late in the week with nearly half of all ads watched between Thursday and Saturday. Ad completion rates are highest on weekends, likely reflecting the greater amount of leisure time that people have on weekends. Remember that your customers are being inundated with cluttered email inboxes, push notification from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, text messages, from friends, and more – so aim to engage early to keep your customer’s attention and break through the clutter
• #10: Once you’ve established how video will help you meet your goal and move potential customers through the decision making process, and once you’ve confirmed your audience behaviors and preferences related to video content consumption, you’re ready to create videos to incorporate into your marketing plan. Whenever possible, we recommend creating new videos instead of repurposing videos. - It’s not just about repurposing a 30-second TV spot anymore-Made for web video creative outperforms repurposed video in terms of aided brand awareness, message association, brand favorability, and purchase intent
• #11: As you create new digital videos and video ad units, make them interactive.Trends are showing that more video ads are becoming interactive. The share of video ads that are interactive has doubled from last year according to eMarketer. Interactive means that audiences can actually interact with your ads right in place without having to click through to a landing page. Interactive features could include a clickable button for a Facebook “like,” an ad selector that allows members to choose among multiple categories, a call to action within the video player so that an ad pauses and expands in a new window where the audience interacts, or an overlay to include a poll or a form field where a potential customer can submit information. Interactivity can also help you move potential customers through the decision making process. If you have a high consideration product or service (i.e. if you’re a higher ed institution) then make your videos interactive in order to enable your audience to get more information to help them make their purchase decision. If you have a low consideration product or service (i.e. you’re a cereal brand) then make your videos interactive in order to entertain and draw an emotional connection through games.Be innovative as you create this two way communication.
• #12: At this point, you know how video fits into the decision making process to help you meet your marketing and business goals, you know how video maps to your customer behaviors and preferences, you have hopefully created a new video rather than repurposing, and you have hopefully integrated interactive features into your video – now it’s time to syndicate your videos across channels and run campaigns. Knowing your channels can help guide you through this process. Vine is all about brevity as videos are limited to 6 seconds. Like tweets, the brevity of videos on Vine inspires creativity. Vine videos could be great for quickly showing snapshots of new product features, showing a short how-to video, creatively inviting people to events, or teasing people with content. Instagram videos can be 15 seconds and you can take advantage of filters and video editing features to convey more information. Instagram videos are great for promotional campaigns, video series, and commercial style videos.