The Three Levels Of Engagement In Online Video

I watched a great webinar yesterday that Mike Volpe and Karen Rubin ran over at HubSpot. You can catch up on all their great tips here: http://www.hubspot.com/archive/online-video-webinar/.

After the webinar was over, I began to think about the people who watch online video and just how much of each video they watch. Does everyone who presses the play button stick around to the end? Within minutes I was able to find exactly this kind of data in our platform’s reporting suite. Even more importantly, we are aggregating this information for more than 250 videos that are live right now.

Here are the three levels of engagement that we identify. Our platform allows us to get a lot more granular than this, but I think this is a great starting point for investigation.

Level One

The lowest level of engagement takes in viewers who don’t get much further than clicking the play button and barely watching the first 12-15 seconds. What should you be doing in the first 15 seconds of your video to reach these guys?

Level Two

Once they get past the first milestone the next level of viewers can watch up to 70 per cent of your video. These guys like to watch video, but they don’t stick around to the end. Perhaps they think they already get the point. Perhaps they’re just impatient. What kind of messaging should you include in your video that doesn’t rely on viewers watching all the way to the end.

Level Three

These are the most engaged viewers and we see a clear correlation between viewers who watch more than 70 per cent of your video and a significantly increased chance of conversion. People who watch more online video are more likely to convert. What can you do with your video that will encourage viewers to keep watching through to the end and respond to your call to action?

There’s plenty of food for thought here and I’d love to hear what you think we should be doing for each of these groups.

At EyeView, we’re already starting to suggest answers to these questions, but the only way to see if we get them right is to test and test again. We’ll be bringing you the results of those tests as we move forward.