EyeView's Blog

Long-form or Short-form Video? Hulu on the Rise

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.

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.

New Online Video Provider Comparison Site

I was excited to be contacted this week by Kris Drey. During daylight, Kris is VP of Product Marketing over at Fliqz, a video hosting service. But late at night, when the moon is full, Kris is launching a new site called VidCompare.com. According to the homepage VidCompare is “a free comparison service for business decision makers looking for an Online Video Platform Provider”.

Although the site is still officially in Beta, Kris and his partner, Alex Polonsky have done a great job reaching out to different sites and creating a directory of companies working with online video at varying levels. Each entry gives a brief outline of the site’s offering and a breakdown of the different services. You can see information about the company’s target market and pricing models as well as a sample video to give you a taste of their player. It’s easy to filter your search and distinguish between white-label players and full-service production houses.

Satisfied users can come back to the site and add a review of the companies they’ve worked with. It’s not a new model, but it’s already proven its effectiveness in other markets.

Whether you’re in marketing for a huge multi-national or a one-person start-up looking to include some video on your new site, VidCompare takes the headache out of researching a bunch of companies to find the best fit.

From my perspective as a vendor, the arrival of VidCompare is a validation of the online video market as a healthily competitive place. We know more and more business are looking to incorporate online video on their sites and presenting the range of possibilities in an accessible way increases visibility and adds transparency to this search.

It’s too early to know how much value the site can provide to vendors in terms of leads, but I’m sure customers will welcome the chance to compare their options and that will ultimately provide benefit to everyone.

So far, it looks great and I will update as the site grows.

Testing, Testing,... one, two,... one, two,...

In case you’re still unclear, I’ve been thinking a lot about testing recently. Testing takes me back to my 6^th grade science classes. How did we determine the effect of salt on boiling water? We tested it. How did we prove that the extension of a spring is proportional to the weight hanging off it? We tested it.

Testing is good, and not just for proving things people already know. Testing also helps us to establish credibility for the things we think we know. Testing may even provide evidence to contradict things we were sure we knew.

There is a vast wealth of advice available for marketers that consists almost entirely of supposition, subjectivity, anecdotal speculation, conjecture, inference and guesswork. Some of the hypotheses proposed online will eventually be tested, but until that time it’s impossible to estimate how many will be proven true and how many false. One thing is certain - just because something worked in one instance, there is no guarantee it will work again or as well in another.

For example, we could say that video increases conversion until we were blue in the face and it would be meaningless. Instead we go out and prove it time and again for each of our customers for each of their landing pages.

This is an actual screen capture from our report platform that shows the increased conversion of one of our customers’ landing pages when it was tested simultaneously, with 50% of the visitors getting the page with video (Embedded Player) and 50% getting the existing video-less page (No Changes). As you can see, the page with the video converted over 30% more visitors than the page without. Tested and proven.

At EyeView, we made ourselves a rule - No Guessing. We promise our customers that when we present a strategy to increase conversion it will not be based on our ‘stamp of authority’. It will not rely on our ‘combined years of experience’. It will not leverage our ‘inside understanding of your industry’.

When EyeView delivers a video solution that claims to increase conversion we will show you exactly what we did and precisely where it worked. The reason we can do that is because we tested it. We tested it when it didn’t work and we carried on testing it until it did.

Always remember that when you make an assumption, you make an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and… er… ‘mption’.

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.

How Do You Measure Conversion?

I knew the guys were planning something special, but I was really impressed when they finally showed it to me this week. EyeView’s Conversion Calculator has been specifically developed to help marketers understand the impact increased conversion can have on their revenues.

You simply enter the following information:

•          No. of monthly unique visitors to your site
•          Your current monthly conversion rate (as a percentage of overall site visitors)
•          The value to your company of each converted visitor

Then you can use the handy slide to calculate the increased revenue you would generate with every per cent increase in conversion. Depending on the size of your company, you might find that an increase in your conversion rate of a few per cent translates to tens of thousands of dollars. That would also mean that you could guarantee a return on your investment with EyeView within a matter of days of implementing our end-to-end video solution.

If you want to go to the next stage you can enter your details and get a passcode to reveal EyeView’s tailored pricing estimate and precise ROI details.

I think that this Calculator provides the most compelling case so far for moving some of your marketing budget into tackling the Conversion issue.

EyeConvert - More than meets the Eye

As our graphic designer puts the finishing touches on the EyeConvert platform he hums the tune of transformers. Picture it for a moment “EyeConvert - the world’s first rich media conversion platform” sung in a mechanical transformers tone and pitch. Well the relationship between the two is not far off. Subconsciously he was making a very distinct connection. From being pieces of machinery the transformers themselves converted into advanced mechanical fighting equipment for the good of mankind. What EyeConvert does is it uses the created rich-media in your website and continuously converts it into an efficient form of communication to your customers and ultimately increases your conversion rates………..for the good of mankind.

 

Now on a more serious note: The EyeConvert platform allows you to leverage your rich-media content and significantly improve your website conversion rates. It does this by using two modules, Serve and Test & Analyze. Working in conjunction, these modules provide you with all the required functionality and information to effectively introduce rich-media content to your website. In English that means this is a happy place where one can go and see how many people are viewing the video, what they do with the video and if it is helping you reach your goals. With this vital information in hand the EyeView conversion experts will be able to set you on the right path to conversion glory!