EyeView's Blog

IAB Digital Video Guidelines - Impressions vs Performance

Here’s a little gem that I missed at the end of last year. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has updated its guidelines regarding online video.

The IAB comprises more than 375 leading media and technology companies who are responsible for selling 86% of online advertising in the United States. According to their site, “the IAB educates marketers, agencies, media companies and the wider business community about the value of interactive advertising. Working with its member companies, the IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices and fields critical research on interactive advertising.”

The IAB is concerned with standardizing the measurement of ad impressions so that publishers and advertisers are always talking the same language. Faced with the rapid growth of video ads, the IAB was compelled to update its “Video Ad Impression Measurement Guidelines” from 2006 with a new addendum dealing with Auto-play.

The IAB defines “Auto-play” as follows: A video ad or a video ad linked with video content that initiates ‘‘play’’ without user interaction or without a user actively starting the video (essentially automatically starting without a ‘‘play’’ button being clicked by the user).

The new IAB guidelines require approved web publishers to disclose the fact that they using videos with auto-play to prevent unscrupulous advertisers running such ads well below the fold and recording “impressions” that may never be seen by visitors.

In a world where there is still much confusion over online advertising, this attempt to introduce standards into the wild, wild web is welcome, or at least it would be if it weren’t for two fundamental flaws in its logic.

The first comes from the IAB’s continued definition. There is no requirement to disclose the use of autoplay “if the user has a reasonable expectation that they are entering a video environment.” Even today any user should have a reasonable expectation that the commercial site they are visiting is a “video environment”. In the next 12 months this will become even more apparent as video achieves online ubiquity.

The second problem is even more basic. Using impressions to value video ads will not remain the standard for much longer. Apart from a handful of big-name, brand advertisers, companies will soon expect their video campaigns to provide ROI based on performance and how successfully they drive users through the sales funnel. As online advertising swings towards performance advertising, the effectiveness of video will be judged by increased conversion, not by impressions. There will no need for a standard definition of an impression once everybody has abandoned the world of impressions for performance.

The motivation for disclosure is becoming obsolete. Performance advertisers demand measurement by performance, not impressions.

6 Predictions For Online Video For 2010

The end of the year is always a time for reflection. This year I left behind my life with a major online video sharing site and started working for a company that is just as enamored with online video but approaches the medium with higher expectations. If video sharing sites represent the youthful excesses in the life of online video, then the next iteration is all about online video growing up, taking responsibility and earning its way.

Here are my predictions for the coming year in Online Video. I hope you enjoy my perspective.

1. Video Sharing sites will continue to grow in size but diminish in importance. In other words YouTube will be huger than ever but the story will be even more fragmented than it was this year. Apart from unpredictable viral hits like Susan Boyle, no YouTuber will ever again achieve the prominence that subscription grinders like Fred, Hot For Words and Michael Buckley have. YouTube has taken over from MTV as the number one place to watch music videos. YouTube is already more relevant as a search engine than as an entertainment destination site. It’s almost like Google could see into the future when they bought it.
2. Some small and medium businesses (SMBs) will embrace video more than ever before. The cost of entry for online video has been so reduced that every commercial site will experiment with the medium. Most will do so with no way of measuring whether the experiment was successful.
3. Some large businesses will continue to invest large sums in telling their stories with video. They will continue to be happy to do so despite not knowing how effective these videos are because however large the budget they are still cheaper than creating and buying airtime for TV ads.
4. Some SMBs and some large businesses will demand that their investment in online video brings a measurable return. They will operate under the assumption that marketing spend needs to be justified and they will seek out video solutions that combine analytics with video creation and implementation. They will find such solutions and they will be very happy.
5. Video will become a more important weapon in the affiliate marketer’s arsenal. As affiliates acknowledge the persuasive power of video over less dynamic media, they will push advertisers towards supplying video versions of banners and other collateral. Affiliates will be a major force driving video to becoming more accountable in the sales funnel.
6. Everyone reading this blog will appear in at least one video posted on the internet between now and this time next year. Happy New Year.

Happy Holidays From EyeView

As we come to the end of an amazing year, it’s great to look back and reflect on the changes we’ve seen. The year 2009 will be remembered as a breakout year for online video as it left the confines of video sharing sites and crossed over into mainstream acceptance. In 2010 every commercial site will include a video presentation at some point in its interaction with potential customers.

The final sign of acceptance will be when video is made accountable not just as a ‘nice to have’ marketing extra, but as a fully functioning tool in the marketer's arsenal with its own ROI and the expectation of revenue generation.

EyeView is proud to be leading the charge towards accountable video with our award-winning optimization program and our fantastic roster of clients.

Thank you to everyone for making 2009 so exciting and let’s see if we can’t do it all again in 2010!

Brits Vs. Yanks - A Conversion True Story

There seems to be some debate about who said it first, but whether it was Oscar Wilde or George Bernard Shaw the quip still holds true that England and America are “two countries separated by a common language.”

But even when the language is the same, the accent used to express it can vary widely, and our response to that variation may impact our willingness to listen to the message being delivered.

We have long been interested in testing the impact of different accents. We usually do not change the content of a video for British or American audiences, but the accent in the voiceover is a different matter entirely.

Ginger Software markets a product aimed at improving your written English. It identifies spelling and grammar errors and is particularly useful for students, people with learning difficulties, such as dyslexia, and business people for whom English is a second language. Once we had proven that the inclusion of video on Ginger’s site increased their conversion rate, we decided to test whether there was a difference in conversion when the audience heard an American or a British accent delivering the voiceover. Given that the product is tied so closely to people’s perception of correct English, we thought this would be real grudge match between two great nations. And the results didn’t disappoint.

We ran an A/B test where 50% of the global audience saw the video with a voiceover in a British accent and 50% saw it with the voiceover performed with an American accent. The conversion goal for each version of the video was to get visitors to download Ginger’s software.

Looking at the global population, we saw that the British voiceover was 4% more effective at converting visitors into downloaders. On its own, that would be interesting enough, but we wanted to look further into what was happening in each country.

It seems that the often-heard comment by Americans that things sound smarter with a British accent actually translates into action. For US audiences, the conversion rate for the British accent was 5.5% higher than the American one – above the global average. In Canada, the British accent still outperformed the American, but by a mere 1.5%.

Irish viewers watching the British version converted 12% more often than those hearing an American voice while the response of the Australians was even more extreme. Viewers “down under” converted 32% more often when pitched with Pommie tones than with an American twang.

The Brits didn’t have it all their own way. In India, the American accent was 12% more effective at converting visitors. But the most surprising statistic of all came when we looked at the comparative performance of the two accents in the UK. For audiences watching the video in the UK, the voiceover with the American accent was 8% more effective at making visitors download Ginger’s software than the British accent, representing a significant swing away from the global trend. This was a wonderfully counter-intuitive response to the test that really drives home the importance of knowing your audience and optimizing your video geographically to ensure you get the best results.

There is nothing to say that the results obtained here would be replicated for other videos on other sites, but there is no denying the value of testing to ensure you get the maximum revenue from your traffic wherever it comes from.

When A/B Tests Attack!

We went back to one of our most successful optimization projects to see if we could further improve on the high standards we had already set.

Previously we had embedded a landing page video for TutorVista and experienced tremendous success. With clear confirmation that the video was key to boosting their conversion we decided to experiment further. When we have a clear champion like with that first test which increased conversion by over 80%, we test new alternatives in the hope that we can squeeze even higher conversion rates from the incoming traffic.

This time we tested a graphic element that was part of the call to action at the end of the video. The video was embedded next to a call to action button that said Subscribe in the panel to the right. In the first version (below on the left) we finished the video with a giant arrow on the player pointing towards the Subscribe button to reinforce the closing words of the video’s voiceover.

The competing version of the video went one stage further with a dynamic arrow shooting out of the confines of the video player and coming to rest right next to the Subscribe button (below on the right). The idea was to drag the viewers’ eyes as close as possible to the conversion goal for the page.

Whenever we run a new test for a site we always try to predict which way the test will go, but this one surprised us all. The arrow on the left that stayed within the player and gently insisted on directing attention to the Subscribe button converted at a significantly higher rate than the dynamic flying arrow that left the player.

There may be more tests to run for this kind of element that gleefully breaks the fourth wall of online video, but for now the “old school” version remains on top.

Brightcove Highlights the Challenge Ahead

I have been keenly following the recent developments at Brightcove, one the world’s leading syndicators of video content. Despite cutting back on staff towards the end of 2008, Brightcove has bounced back with the release of Brightcove Express a new iteration of their service aimed at small and medium businesses and priced accordingly.

Jeremy Allaire, CEO of Brightcove, has always been an evangelist for online video. When he launched the company over five years ago he stated his belief that video would become as commonplace on the web as text.

Discussing the launch of Brightcove Express, Allaire said, “In the last 12 to 18 months, we’ve seen a dramatic rise in the number of company sites that are adding video. These are not media companies, but corporations and organizations of all kinds: consumer goods companies, universities, government agencies. Nonmedia companies are our fastest-growing segment.”

Our experience at EyeView is very similar. We are seeing increasing numbers of commercial sites beginning to harness the power of video for their businesses. Everyone wants video but many are coming to the medium without a clear vision of how their investment will be recouped. Even as video become ubiquitous there is still much uncertainty about the business model behind it. Video must be accountable or it will never succeed.

Brightcove have attempted to go around the issue by lowering the price to make it affordable for everyone, but syndication costs are just one part of the budget for video. Bobby Tulsiani, a senior analyst at Forrester, addressed this problem head-on.

The biggest challenge for Brightcove and its competitors, Tulsiani says, “is whether these company websites will be able to monetize their video content. The continued growth of the market will be determined by whether these companies can justify the cost of creating and serving videos on their sites.’’

It all comes down to establishing clear links between the implementation of video and an increase in engagement, loyalty and, of course, revenue.

Video demands ROI and the companies beginning to embrace the medium will too. The ability to deliver proven revenue gains and authentic analytics packaged with a video that is engaging, persuasive and on-message will be the key that unlocks the full potential of video for online businesses.

Decline in Digital Ads Offers Opportunity for Online Video

Online newspapers, once thought to be the only viable future for news media are no longer providing the comfort they once did. As offline ad revenues decline and cover price wars continue to cause major worries for print newspapers, publishers turned to their online siblings to help pick up the slack and for a while it was working. At first, many of the advertising dollars that left offline media just migrated online. It was the same media buyers talking to the same ad-sales personnel just about a different medium. In other words there was no advertising crisis, just a movement away from a tired medium towards a fresh and exciting one.

But, like the wrapping for today’s fish and chips, that is all yesterday’s news. In the UK the continuing depression in the property market combined with ongoing uncertainties in the job market has hit ad sales right where it hurts – in the classifieds. For too long now, newspaper publishers have depended on a booming property market and a healthy turnover of staff in key areas to ensure that they meet their targets. This report shows the problems facing the UK’s largest newspaper group, Trinity Mirror.

While the forecasts for the next few quarters are no brighter, I like to think that this downturn represents an opportunity for publishers rather than their end. No can say for sure whether the property market will return to its former heights, but publishers can use this time to regroup and think about what they really have to offer online. One of their key investments should be in video. No other online medium has the same power to persuade and encourage users to act.

I believe that as online publishers emerge from the current funk they will embrace video as the best solution for their advertisers knowing that it is the medium most likely to convert and provide value to those advertisers. At the same time, advertisers are turning to video as the most effective way of delivering a branded message with a precision-targeted call to action to each and every viewer.

Online video is the right solution for advertisers and publishers alike as they try to make sense of the current turmoil. The implementation of online video ads with measurable ROI will establish new models of publisher integrity which will rebuild confidence across all advertising sectors.

When the dust settles, people will be watching video and increasing numbers of them will be clicking on the embedded link.

Another Video Conversion Success Story

Anyone with a school-aged child has wrestled with the problem of tutoring. Whether your son needs help with his trigonometry homework or your daughter needs to stop falling behind with her reading comprehension you will discover that finding a tutor can be as difficult as it is expensive. Whether you have to travel to the tutor’s residence or find a mutually agreeable time in your own home, you can expect to pay anywhere from $30-75 per hour of one-on-one tutoring.

It was only a matter of time until someone came up with a better solution. TutorVista operates out of Bangalore, India with a team of highly qualified professional tutors available round the clock to work with your children improving their academic skills. As long as you have a broadband connection, you can get unlimited tutoring for under $100 per month.

The guys at TutorVista approached us with a problem. They had a landing page that was specifically designed to funnel traffic through their sign-up process. The landing page was already reasonably successful by most standards but they wanted to try and increase conversion for that page to make sure they were getting the most out of their traffic.

A conversion solution was prepared which included a battery of tests to be performed on the landing page to measure optimization around a video which we created specifically for the page. The first test embedded the video on the page for half the visitors and tested it against the existing page and the existing conversion rate. On top of that, we made the embedded video autoplay for first-time visitors, reasoning that the information in the video was useful enough to overcome the issues that sometimes arise from autoplay.

Arun Kumar, Manager at TutorVista, continues the story: “We implemented EyeView’s solution on one of our landing pages that already had a pretty impressive conversion rate. The very first test they ran boosted conversion by over 80 percent. EyeView really works.”

We will be running more tests over the coming months, with the aim of further optimizing conversion for this page, but there is nothing sweeter than hitting the first pitch right out of the park.

Congratulations to TutorVista on having such a great product and congratulations to the EyeView team for taking a gamble and watching it pay off handsomely.

If you want to watch the video, I’m adding it here, but the real magic for TutorVista is happening right on their landing page:

The Message Or The Medium

The BBC's political panel show Question Time celebrated its 30^th anniversary in September of this year. The format has remained mostly unchanged in that time with a chairman fielding questions from a live audience before a panel of invited guests usually representing each of the three major political parties in the UK and a journalist or representative of one of the smaller political parties.

The show, and the BBC, has attracted considerable criticism for extending an invitation for tonight’s live broadcast to Nick Griffin. In July of this year, Griffin was democratically elected to the European Parliament where he represents the British National Party (BNP) a far right party whose members have at various times made remarks that were anti-Semitic, anti-Islam, homophobic, in support of Holocaust denial and against mixed-race relationships. While Griffin has tried publicly to tone down some of the less-palatable aspects of his party’s manifesto, there is no denying the party’s (and his) roots in the murky world of British fascism.

Prior to broadcast, the debate has centered on whether or not Griffin should have been invited. Some people question whether the BBC, a state-funded broadcast company, should give a platform to a man whom many consider to be an unrepentant racist. The response of the BBC, until now, has been that it is merely the medium and that it would be wrong for the corporation to control the message. I don’t want to delve further into the ethics of this situation, but I do want to think about this distinction.

We know that online video increases engagement for the visitors to your site. We know that the more video they watch, the more likely they are to continue along the conversion path you have built for them. An engaged visitor is a contented visitor and is more likely to download, register or purchase.

My question today is how important is the medium and how important is the message? Is it enough to embed today’s most popular video on YouTube within your landing page to entertain your visitors? How big should such a video be? Could you turn the entire page into a screening room for the funniest clips and hope that prolonged exposure to such fare will cause them to click the download button out of sheer gratitude? In presenting the medium, how much responsibility will you take for the message?

Coming from the other side, should you prepare a video that delivers the right message clearly and articulately, hitting each of your marketing beats and presenting an overwhelming case for people to continue towards conversion and then use an clunky generic player to host it? Do you want someone else’s ads to appear on the player during and after your precision targeted pitch?

In other words, how should you divide your attention between the information you are trying to get across and the method you employ for doing so?

In the case of tonight’s Question Time, the BBC may be able to claim that they are doing nothing wrong, merely broadcasting someone else’s opinion. On your own website, you probably need to focus on the message just as much as the medium. Either one of them can negatively impact your site’s effectiveness, while doing them both well can significantly increase your conversion rate.

New UK Tax Legislation Means More Interesting Videos

In the past two years, the British government has made changes to the tax legislation that have particularly impacted independent contractors and the agencies that recruit and pay them.

Part of the new legislation exists to counter fraudulent claims of tax exemption and part of it seeks to ease the tax collection burden of small companies employing workers on an ad hoc project basis.

These changes have given rise to a new kind of company known as an “umbrella company” to manage the financial relationship between the contracted employee and his or her employer. The law makes it clear how these companies act and apart from the fees they charge and the level of service they offer there is very little room for any umbrella company to maneuver in terms of paying more or less tax than another similar company.

In a new market such as this it becomes important for the first company to offer a service online to concisely explain the offering and establish itself as the market leader for clarity and professionalism.

This was the brief we received from Excellium Umbrella, an umbrella company that manages salaries, taxes, travel expenses and meal subsistence claims all through a unique online portal.

None of this may be relevant to your situation, but if you take a look at this video, I think you will appreciate how complex ideas can be expressed in an engaging, informative and even entertaining way to build confidence with users and boost conversion over time.