EyeView's Blog

Viral Videos Suck... or... This Too Shall Pass

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.

comScore's Digital Year In Review

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.

Enjoy.

Online Video Stories Of The Week

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 iPad and the Future of Print Media

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.

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.

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.

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:

Online Video - A Medium In Flux

These days the only guarantee with online video is that what was true yesterday may not be true tomorrow. We are living in a period of rapid evolution where little remains the same for long.

A couple of articles caught my eye this week, because they reported facts which seemed to run counter to everything that we thought we knew until now.

First up was Jacqui Cheng writing in ars technica on the decline in P2P filesharing as online video streaming continues to grow. It seems like only yesterday when th No. 1 topic of geek conversation was the overwhelming percentage of internet traffic that was taken up by BitTorrent. According to the 2009 Global Broadband Report published by Sandvine "real-time entertainment traffic (video and audio streaming, Flash media, peercasting, placeshifting) accounts for 26.6 per cent of total traffic in 2009, up from 12.6 per cent in 2008." In the same period filesharing has declined by 25 per cent as people move towards wanting their content "on demand".

The second article backing this trend up comes from the ever-reliable Media section of the Guardian Online with a report by Mark Sweney on the viewing habits of Virgin Media's VoD customers. The article quotes Virgin Media boss, Neil Berkett, when he says that his customers spend more time watching VoD than they do with mainstream terrestrial UK channels Channel 4 and Channel Five. Again this runs contrary to previous thinking that VoD was a niche service that would not find the support from advertisers necessary to make it stick.

Streaming video is more popular and mainstream than ever as people are more selective about what they want and when they want it. Watch this space.