VMakers Video Marketing

Monday, June 17, 2013

Ready For The Dual-Screen Future?

Multi-Screen Experiences - Television and Smartphone

Dual-screen experiences are about to transform the way people interact with video and the way publishers, broadcasters and advertisers capture and engage their attention. We’ll see handheld devices and big-screen TVs working together to create exciting possibilities for entertainment, game play, social interaction, marketing, and commerce.

According to Nielsen, more than 39% of Americans use their smartphone while watching TV at least once each day, and 62% do so multiple times each week.

Are advertisers ready to capitalize on the revenue potential that dual screen will bring?

For marketers, dual-screen advertising opens the door to creative that is more intriguing for viewers, as well as more effective in driving specific types of conversions. For example:

A national auto ad runs on the TV screen while the handheld device simultaneously shows a geo-targeted companion ad with local dealer information and a build-your-own-car app.

A TV ad for the latest blockbuster franchise movie presents an interactive quiz on earlier films in the series. Viewers use their tablets to respond, viewing crowd-based results in real time.

Instantaneous cohort-based surveys delivered through the handheld gauge the effectiveness of a consumer packaged goods brand’s TV ad, rewarding participants with special offers.

For publishers and broadcasters, experiences like these add freshness and interactivity to their properties. They can boost TV ratings and ad revenue, as viewers that might have defected to online and mobile video return to take advantage of the new dual-screen experiences.

The greatest technical challenge will be the definition of standards. Industry leaders are already working on standards for broader compatibility across platforms, so expect dual screen apps to become more popular over the next 12 to 24 months.

Another key element is the ability to sync content between the TV and handheld. One approach is through audio fingerprinting: the microphone on the handheld listens to the TV to identify the content and its timing.

This can work, but doesn’t serve as a long-term solution. A more robust model will deliver information to a handheld app about the TV content available, use viewer data and input from the handheld to drive targeting and content selection, and serve the corresponding video and other content back to the TV seamlessly.

Advertising technology, digital video and rich media ad creative, and IAB ad standards continue to be based entirely on a single-screen metaphor. As programmers and multiservice operators look to monetize the full real-estate inventory afforded by dual-screen viewing, a new standard is necessary to help accelerate adoption of new formats. While experimentation has a valuable role to play, it’s incumbent on groups like the IAB to see that standards do emerge to prevent ongoing splintering of formats, sizes, and server technologies.

For dual-screen advertising to pay off, it needs to reach a critical mass of consumers, which will be challenging early on. Until dual-screen experiences become the norm, we’ll be dependent on a small but growing number of innovators to go first, do the work to deliver these experiences, and prove their effectiveness and ROI to the industry.

The dual-screen future is an exciting prospect, but be ready for the opportunities it presents. Think about what it’ll mean for your business in terms of content, process, and technology. More interactive and engaging ads will drive better results for the brand and publisher alike.-MediaPost

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How Visual Storytelling Connects with Consumers Around The World [infographic]

-Edelman

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Friday, June 14, 2013

8 Mobile Video Myths

Even the most cautious of mobile projections can't downplay the incredible growth in mobile video consumption, and the ad dollars that follow. By 2017, eMarketer predicts that mobile video ad spend will hit $2.7 billion, or nearly 30% of total digital video ad spend.

But as in any case where the space grows at a breakneck pace, there is a deep information gap about capabilities, limitations and even definitions. Below are some common misconceptions we often hear around mobile video – and the actual truth.

Myth #1: The screen is smaller, so my ad will have less impact
Have you ever seen someone super-engaged as they play a sophisticated, high-resolution video game on their smartphone? Or on a train, using their commute to enjoy "Game of Thrones" on Netflix? Those little screens pack a lot of pixels, and video looks great on them.

Mobile video advertisers can capture consumers’ attention at all times of the day, not just while they’re at their desk at work or at home watching TV. And compared to online, mobile is far less cluttered -- no “banner blindness” means more space for brand recall. In fact, mobile video campaigns have been found to lead a 19X increase in aided awareness, a 4X increase in unaided awareness and a 2X increase in ad awareness, according to InsightExpress. Still don't think your ads will have impact? Think again.

Myth #2: No one is going to watch my video ad all the way though
Nearly half (47.8%) watch mobile video ads to the end, according to Celtra's April report. They also found that having a video option encouraged engagement with an ad; about 14% of viewers interacted with an ad by playing a video.

Myth #3: It's pre-roll or nothing
Pre-rolls do get significantly more impressions, but don't discount the rest. According to this Adobe study, ads placed at the end of a video have a better click-through rate (about 3%) than those placed within it or on the front end. Mid-roll ads have the highest completion rates, while post-rolls work best for direct-response advertisers with a call to action.

Myth #4: Calls to action all "click out" and require a mobile landing page
Not so. You can have activity within the video unit itself. On premium branded mobile video ad units, you'll find overlays that can engage users via swipe, shake, or other mobile-only actions that open up a branded slate that can house multiple videos, product information, and more.

Myth #5: All mobile video is clickable
Even by the end of 2012, when mobile ad technology had already come so far, that functionality was not as widely available as you might imagine, especially if the video played directly in the "native player" of the mobile device.

This year we’ve seen a burst of clickable, interactive elements for mobile video. These clicks don’t just lead the user out to a mobile landing page -- they can be customizable to include other types of calls to action. And since they’re non-linear, you can use text, graphic ads, or video overlays to display a message on top of the video content itself.

Myth #6: Video consumption is mainly taking place on tablets
Smartphones account for 90% of time spent watching mobile video, with only the remaining 10% of time spent watching video on tablets, per Flurry study. This is especially significant given that smartphones only account for 79% of active users.

Myth #7: Mobile video isn't scalable
Billions of transparent, premium and brand-safe mobile video impressions are available. It’s so scalable, in fact, that advertisers can layer contextual and demographic targeting on top of it.

Myth #8: You can't really measure the impact of mobile video ads
Of course you can. You can measure clicks and completion rates in quartiles, and also run brand studies and ad effectiveness studies in conjunction with a mobile video campaign to measure its effectiveness. In addition, some ad platforms allow advertiser add survey-based research to measure the impact of their mobile ad video campaigns, which can provide validation that it is positively affecting their brand metrics.

Mobile video advertising is not only here to stay, it's only going to get better as the industry matures. And if the past year is any indication, that innovation will happen extremely fast -- bringing new levels of targeting, transparency, and more efficient ad serving for video ads. Add this to the already personal nature of mobile devices and the inherent opportunity within the video medium for brands to tell stories that attract, engage and emotionally involve their viewers, and we're looking at an enormous opportunity.-MediaPost

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Social Video Significantly Increases Brand Attention

Recent research from the Unruly Social Video Lab has found there is a huge appetite for branded videos on the web. Unruly currently tracks 506,976 "shares" of online video ads every 24 hours.

This morning, Unruly opens its doors on its first Social Video Lab in America, enabling advertisers to make the most of this trend. Located in New York, the new lab is modeled on the video technology company's original Social Video Lab in London, which was launched last summer.

Visitors to the New York lab will be given a hands-on interactive journey through the science and history of online video sharing, plus a tour of current video trends. They will also have access to the Unruly Viral Video Chart, which has tracked 329 billion video streams since 2006. Advertisers can find out how their current social video footprint compares with their competitors, how to create shareable content, and how to determine the distribution strategy required to achieve their campaign goals.

Visitors will also be able to test the shareability of their own campaigns using Unruly ShareRank, an algorithm-based tool which uses over 100,000 data points to predict the number of shares a video will attract, before it is even launched, meeting the seemingly impossible desire to "predict viral success."
During a tour of the new lab last week, Cat Jones, Unruly's Director of Product Innovation, said, "Video is the world's fastest-growing ad format in terms of ad spend, so it's really important that brands have their fingers on the pulse and allocate their marketing dollars wisely. Leaving it to luck simply isn't an option."

"Creating and distributing shareable content for social media is at the top of the agenda for CMOs, and brands can use the Lab experience to pinpoint exactly what's trending."

So, do social video recommendations significantly impact traditional brand metrics?

A recent study conducted by Decipher Research, which surveyed online video viewers, aged 18-34, across four social video campaigns from Guinness, Coca-Cola, Unilever's Cornetto, and Energizer Batteries, sought to determine the impact of peer recommendations. And the social ad effectiveness study found that recommendations dramatically increased ad performance.

Video Enjoyment

Viewers enjoy recommended videos more than non-recommended videos: there was a 14 percent increase in the number of people who enjoyed the video following a recommendation versus those who had discovered it by browsing. Moreover, a recommendation reduced the number of people who did not enjoy the video by 41 percent.

Viewer enjoyment of branded video is important because it has a direct impact on key brand metrics. Viewers who enjoyed the video they watched demonstrated 139 percent higher brand association, 97 percent higher purchase intent, 35 percent higher brand favorability, and 14 percent higher brand recall than their counterparts who did not enjoy the video.

Brand Recall

Sixty-eight percent of viewers who had browsed to the video correctly recalled the brand when prompted, compared to 73 percent of viewers who had arrived at the video following a recommendation.

This 7 percent uplift suggests that video viewers are in a more receptive and attentive frame of mind following a recommendation, allowing brands that produce and distribute social content to benefit from closer communication with their audiences.

Brand Association

Recommendations caused a 7 percent increase in brand association: agreement with key brand statements increased from 41 percent among viewers who had browsed to the video to 44 percent among viewers who seen the video following a recommendation. This result reinforces the above suggestion that recommendations make viewers more receptive to brand messaging.
There was also a drop of more than one-fifth in the number of respondents that disagreed with key brand statements. Recommendations have a large role to play for brands in changing off-message perceptions amongst their audiences as well as in actively cultivating on-message perceptions.

What Viewers Did Next

Viewers of the social videos tested went on to perform a multitude of brand or video related actions, notably 49 percent of viewers purchased the advertised product within three days of the view. Thirty-eight percent of viewers spoke to someone in person about the video, showing a social video view to stimulate real life conversation: what starts online becomes interchangeable with real life in the minds of today's consumers.

Interestingly, online sharing and emailing of the link are immediate reactions, highlighting the need for sharing functionality within a video player - users do not come back and share a video later, it is a spontaneous exercise. Nine percent of users searched for the brand, and 4 percent of users searched for products of that type: social video viewing is having an effect across all aspects of the purchase funnel.

user-behavior-within-3-days-of-video-viewing

user-behavior-within-3-days-of-video-viewing

Conclusion

This research demonstrates that social video significantly increases brand attention. The power of social video lies in the recommendation to view content. This recommendation comes not only from peers in social media environments, but also from authoritative blogs and news sources covering advertiser content editorially.

The impact of the recommendation on consumers is considerable:

Viewers are more likely to enjoy a video when it has been recommended than when encountered through browsing (14 percent higher enjoyment).
Viewers are more likely to recall a brand name when the social video has been recommended than when encountered through browsing (7 percent higher recall).
Viewers are more likely to engage with an ad's messages when the social has been recommended than when encountered through browsing (10 percent higher brand association).

Ultimately, enjoyment of the video correlated positively with all tested brand metrics in the sales funnel, including brand favorability and final purchase intent.-SearchEngineWatch

Thursday, May 30, 2013

How To Leverage The Power of Video - June 16 Workshop

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Wednesday, May 29, 2013

More Than 3 in 4 Mobile and Tablet Video Ad Views on an Apple Device in Q1

Android may have the lead on iOS in terms of US smartphone market share (with the same true on a global basis), but more mobile video ad views took place on an iPhone (31.4% share of mobile and tablet ad views) than an Android phone (22.5% share) in Q1, according to FreeWheel’s latest Video Monetization report. But that may not be the only comparison worth making. That’s because the iPad outstripped them both, accounting for 39.2% of total mobile device video ad views for the quarter, as iPad users tended to focus more on long-form content supporting higher ad loads.

In fact, 58% of ad views on the iPad were served during long-form content (more than 20-minutes) for the quarter, compared to just 27% on the iPhone and 24% on Android phones. The researchers note that “this reflects TV-style viewing habits on iPad versus on-the-go usage for mobile phones.”

Overall, non-desktop video viewing (either through mobiles, tablets, or OTT devices) accounted for 19% of video views in Q1, a more than 50% jump from 12% just a quarter earlier.

About the Data: The FreeWheel Video Monetization Report is released quarterly and seeks to highlight the changing dynamics of how enterprise-class content owners and distributors are monetizing professional digital video content. The underlying dataset is one of the largest available on the usage and monetization of professional, rights-managed video content, and in 2012 comprised over 53 billion video views.-MarketingCharts