We’re really excited to launch the newest Video
Marketing Quiz with all new questions.
Following the success
of the last quiz, we wanted to top ourselves and present some of the data
generated by the tests we run in the most engaging way we could imagine.
Since the last quiz we have seen the format picked up and imitated
by Omniture/Adobe, which just makes us think that we created an exciting
product.
To mark this launch we are giving away hundred of dollars in
Amazon vouchers to the people who take the quiz and the Tweet their results.
Every hour for the first eight hours after the launch today
at 10 am ET, five lucky tweeters will be selected and sent $20 to spend any way
they wish.
First of all I want to thank Nalts and his excellent blog for bringing this video to my
attention. It’s another epic mini-movie from OK Go that showcases the band’s
innovative use of short-form video to market themselves and their music.
It’s very entertaining. It’s also fairly useless.
Let’s take a look at their last huge viral success. The video for Here It Goes Again
rode the first wave of YouTube’s explosion into global consciousness. You’ve
seen it. Four indie nerds doing a synchronized routine on treadmills. It’s very
entertaining. According to YouTube’s figures it has been viewed almost 50
million times. That’s just from OK Go’s own channel. The same video on EMI’s
channel has added another 1.5 million and there are probably a few hundred
thousand more views with other unauthorized duplicates.
So the band have produced a video that’s been seen around 50
million times. What did they do with that? Not very much. There seems to have
been very little strategy behind the whole thing. If you watch the video on YouTube
there are no live links allowing you to purchase either the video itself or
anything else by the band. The video serves no purpose other than to entertain.
Even if you were to ascribe every purchase of the song’s parent album Oh No to a viewing of the video,
you would still end up with a dreadful conversion rate. Fifty million videos
viewed has translated, to date, into less than 250,000 albums sold. That’s an
embarrassing conversion rate of less than half a percent.
It makes me want to scream. If only their YouTube page was
linked to iTunes. If only there was a link to purchase a video ringtone of the
video for ten cents. If only the page was designed to drive 50 million viewers
towards some kind of action. Any kind of action. If only 99.5 percent of those
views weren’t totally wasted.
Damian Kulash, lead singer with OK Go sees it differently.
He believes that the video’s huge viral success helped the band to sell out
concerts on five continents and win a Grammy. I don’t doubt any of that, I just
wish he’d tried the video ringtone idea as well (and cut me in for a
percentage).
Which brings us back to now. This new video from OK is very
entertaining. Before it even went live on YouTube, Kulash was complaining in
the New York
Times, no less, about his record company’s refusal to allow video
embedding. Kulash was concerned that without the possibility of his video going
viral, the band would be unlikely to replicate the success they have achieved.
Fortunately for us, EMI caved in and we can now embed the video.
In the two
days since it launched, it has been viewed almost 2.5 million times. The video
page still carries no advertising or identifiable call to action. Sales of the new album
are, as yet, unknown.
I think the video is very entertaining. It still makes me
want to scream.
I know this report came out a week or so ago, but it's essential reading for anyone with more than a passing interest in the interwebs.
There is so much analysis produced these days that you need a report detailing the best reports to read. With all this noise, comScore continue to produce clear and informative statistics that always seem to answer the question someone in your office just asked you.
Some of the highlights from this report are the first-ever decline in annual growth rates for ecommerce as well as the unstoppable expansion of online video.
The report also captures the birth of Bing and the rise and rise of Facebook as it became the thrid largest display ad publisher in the US after Yahoo! and Fox Interactive Media (which includes MySpace).
You can download the entire report here, but you will have to give comScore some details first. It's well worth filling in the form to get to the report.
Over at Online
Video Watch, Corey Kronengold
comments on Brightroll’s
announcement that they have been profitable for the past 12 months. Corey
is not entirely trusting but he acknowledges the positive message this sends to
the industry.
At comScore, December’s
video viewing figures showed a new entry in the top ten video content
properties as how-to syndication platform, 5min.com, hit 30 million US uniques
for the month.
Fierce
Online Video’s Jim O’Neill
satisfied continued demand for iPad stories with a piece on Hulu’s rush to
become iPad-friendly in time for the tablet’s launch or soon thereafter. There’s
no doubt this story will run and run and the implications for the future of
online video have yet to be fully determined.
At ReelSEO,
Mark Robertson was
delighted to report on the efforts of many of the online video platforms to
support SEO as part of their offering. YouTube has been the de facto search
engine for video until now, so it’s great to see these platforms supporting the
indexing of video across all search engines.
Finally, today, no review of online video this week would be
complete without mentioning the Superbowl. In what was a fairly lackluster year,
the stand out commercial for me was this one for Snickers featuring Betty White
(now with added Abe Vigoda). Geriatric genius!
The announcement this week of the iPad brings with it some
mouthwatering possibilities for the further advancement of online video and video advertising in traditional print media.
The iPad is more portable than even the simplest notepad
computer. It's a leisure device first and foremost, not a work tool. I think we will finally see streaming video move out of the home
office and into the leisure experience. Browsing on the couch or in bed means
that users coming across video will relate to it in a different way.
The iPad might introduce video advertising into leisure time
as early adopters flick through apps while sipping on their coffee and eating
breakfast. It just looks like a more accessible tool than a formal laptop.
Part of the iPad’s strategy is to take on Amazon’s Kindle
and other ereaders. With a comprehensive range of books and periodicals for
sale from iTunes, there is a perfect opportunity to subsidize the cost to the
reader of a magazine or newspaper subscription with the insertion of targeted
video ads or at the very least video sidebars with extra information about a
story and links to other upselling opportunities.
It’s not that these possibilities don’t already exist, it’s
that the iPad is the first device in a long time with a good shot at changing
the way we consume print media.
I’ve never been an Apple evangelist, but the thought of
having all my magazine and newspaper subscriptions waiting for me in easy to
browse apps makes this a very tempting proposition.
Am I overstating the fact? I’d love to hear what you think.
They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
What they mean is, when someone pays attention to you and respects what you do
enough to reproduce one of your original ideas or activities you should be
flattered. And we usually are.
Last July, before the release of his New York Times
bestseller, Trust Agents, I approached Chris Brogan with an idea for a Twitter
giveaway. I proposed that we give away 50 copies of his book on the day of its
launch to the first 50 people who tweeted about a brand awareness campaign we
were running. The campaign centered on our Video Marketing Quiz which is a fun
interactive game that tests your knowledge of video as an effective marketing
tool.
We were overwhelmed with the results. As soon as Chris tweeted about
the giveaway, everything went nuts with thousands of people taking the quiz
and tweeting about it afterwards. It was such a simple idea, yet it worked so
well for us and we were tremendously grateful to Chris for his support and
proud to be part of the launch for Trust Agents.
We knew it was a successful idea when Chris ran with it and
instigated the exact
same promotion with his pals at LinkedIn less than a month later. I’m sure
it’s not the last time we will see Twitter used in this way.
This week our Video Marketing Quiz saw another form of
imitation as Omniture, the web analytics company that was recently
bought by Adobe, released an interactive game that tests your knowledge of
banner ads as an effective marketing tool. If you disregard the background, the
awkward fonts and the clumsy interface that never quite clicks on what you want
to click, it’s eerily similar to our own Video Marketing Quiz. All of which
goes to prove a few things:
If something works for someone else, you might be able to make it work for you
If you want to know who’s listening, check who’s copying
Great ideas belong to the world (but it’s always nice to
know you had them first!)
EyeView's Video Marketing Quiz Omniture's Pick The Winner Quiz
It may be the start of the new year but we’re still
calculating the gains online video made last year. comScore has just released
the online video viewing figures for November 2009 and they tell another story
of records being broken at the end of a breakthrough year for online video.
Here are some of the key takeaways from the latest report.
YouTube remains the most important delivery mechanism in
online video streaming over 12 billion videos in the month and helping Google
to a 39.4% share of all online video watching for the month.
Far behind YouTube, but ahead of everyone else is Hulu. With
a 3% share of all videos watched during the month Hulu has exceeded all
industry expectation and defied the perception that online video is a short
form medium.
In fact the market share percentage of almost every video
property, including YouTube, has dropped since comScore’s figures of last July
with the exception of Hulu.
With the average Hulu viewer watching over 2.1 hours of
video in the month the average length of each online video viewed has risen to
exactly 4 minutes. There are no figures about the average duration of video
watched at YouTube, but this blogger believes it’s considerably less.
It may be time to start considering long form and short form
video as two different verticals online as one grows and the other recedes in
importance and viability for advertisers.
From the advertisers’ perspective, Tremor Media remained on
top with the widest potential reach of all ad networks at just under 50%
penetration, up from 42% in August. The rest of the top 10 also experience a
nice bump in penetration apart from ScanScout Network who have seen their
penetration drop from 50.6% last July to under 20% in November according to
comScore figures. This dip follows a round of funding
for ScanScout reported at $8.5 million.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
