Thursday, May 26, 2011

Video: A Direct Effect on Sales.

According to a quarterly survey of video presence at major online retailers, e-commerce video is becoming an increasingly important part of the sales process at many sites. The number of retailers using 1,000 or more clips has increased 50%, now comprising 32% of retailers, up from 22% the previous quarter. Leading the way is Overstock.com, which carries approx. 95,000 product-oriented clips. Close behind is Amazon.com with 72,636 videos. Also deep into video are the online extensions of the shopping channels, HSN (29,6220 videos) and QVC (17,687). The most impressive shift is not the higher volume of videos being used by retailers so much as the number of companies now recognizing the power of video to sell the goods.

In addition to leveraging video on site, retailers have been upping their presence and acceptance on YouTube. Subscribers to retailer video channels increased 21% in the quarter. The number of retailer videos posted to YouTube in the quarter rose 9% to 96,000, and the 420 million views of these videos represented a 13% quarterly increase. Nike and Systemax (TigerDirect, CompUSA, CircuitCity) enjoy the most video views on YouTube.

Another key area for tying video to sales is search visibility. The number of retailer videos popping up in search results has also increased substantially, he says. In this respect HSN is a search SEO leader, with 12,500 videos being indexed, compared to Overstock with 6,310. Interestingly, high profile brand Nike also does well in search, even better than Apple or Victoria's Secret. Bing has been drilling more effectively into retailer video recently.

The metrics around video in search and on retail sites is starting to prove what many marketers felt in their gut - that video has a direct effect on buying decisions and its value can be mapped and measured.
Steve Smith, MediaPost
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Wednesday, May 18, 2011

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Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Blip.tv now video content curator.

If you think professional video shows created exclusively for the Web are difficult to find, you’re not alone. Blip.tv, a video site that specializes in Web-created shows, has heard the same complaint from its users too. To fix this problem, the company reintroduced its Web site on Tuesday with a focus on curating the best video shows for its users.
“The goal of the redesign was to figure a way to help people discover new and original series on our site,” said Dina Kaplan, a co-founder of Blip.tv. “People have no idea where to go and where to find original Web video online — which can be a daunting task — and our redesign definitely solves that problem.”
The new Web site, which is built using HTML5 and CSS, aims to highlight the top 5 percent of content on the Blip.tv site. Damien Bruno, the general manager of Blip.tv, said the site hosted over 50,000 video series. Finding the best content in this haystack can be a formidable task for anyone, Mr. Bruno said.
To help narrow down interesting content, Blip.tv producers will start picking videos with the best-quality content and then highlighting them on the site.
The new site also offers users a way to dive through content through a series of new portals. These include popular videos, which display the most watched content on the site, and trending videos, which highlights the most viewed video series, week to week, as they grow in popularity.
Blip.tv has grown rapidly over the years as a Web site dedicated to popular video series. Blip.tv has also grown a large following with its content creators as it is one of the few sites that shares advertising  revenue with the producers.
“Last year we had producers of shows making $500,000 a year on their Web series,” said Mike Hudack, chief executive and co-founder of Blip.tv. “In 2011 we expect that number to hit $1 million for some producers.”
The new site design will soon be followed by an updated iPad and iPhone application and more integration into devices that hook up to a standard television.
-Nick Bilton, New York Times
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Wednesday, May 11, 2011

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Brand Ad Dollars Continue Migration From TV to Online Video

Brand advertisers are continuing to divert ad spend away from broadcast TV and toward online video, advertising agencies say. Despite that fact, most prefer to acquire inventory direct from publishers and networks rather than exchanges and demand-side platforms.

Speaking at Streaming Media East panel in New York City today, representatives from Zenith Media and Aegis Media said their brand-focused clients - particularly those in the consumer packaged goods sector - are growing their investment in online video consistently, as audiences continue to diversify their content consumption habits.

"CPG clients will continue to spend a lot on video to replace the erosion of audiences for TV," said Gina Smilyansky, digital strategy director at Aegis-owned Carat, in reference to users' increased use of devices such as laptops and tablets. Carat currently works with CPG giant Procter & Gamble, with Smilyansky focusing on the Gillette brand.

Meanwhile, Zenith Media's Integrated Planning SVP John Nitti described a similar trend among his firm's clients, many of which "are looking to make up for falling audiences in broadcast." He too suggested online video ad investment would continue to grow, especially as agencies and brands become more familiar with identifying key performance indicators and return on investment from those campaigns. Zenith works with clients including General Mills and Nestle in the online video space.

As with online display media, increasing amounts of video inventory are now being made available through demand-side platforms and exchanges, which - in theory - enables advertisers to buy media targeted to niche audiences. Despite that fact, Nitti and Smilyansky suggested the majority of video inventory is still being acquired through direct relationships with publishers or through networks.
"Most clients are comfortable with moving into online with premium, professionally produced content," Nitti said, suggesting the majority of inventory currently available through exchanges doesn't necessarily meet those criteria. "It's also a question of long-form versus short-form. There's a difference between sitting down and opting in to watch a 27-minute show versus a five-minute video," he added.

Likewise, Smilyansky admitted her agency buys relatively little video inventory for brand clients on a data-driven or behaviorally targeted basis. "We're used to doing so in display, but not so much in video yet," she said, adding that it is something "clients like P&G would definitely be interested in" if it could be achieved across well-lit environments at scale - criteria on which she said the space currently under-delivers.

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Sunday, May 8, 2011

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Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Online Video Ads Growing Faster Than Other Online Ad Categories

A new survey from BrightRoll finds online video edging out mobile video and social media as the fastest-growing type of online advertising.

Online video advertising spending is growing faster than all other web advertising categories, according to the results of a survey released today by online video ad services provider BrightRoll. The biggest driver behind the growth appears to be ad dollars being moved from display and television to online video.

Of the buyers surveyed, 28% said they expected to see the greatest increase in spending in online video, with mobile video a close second at 27% and social media following at 25%. 86% of the survey respondents are moving display dollars to online video, while 64% are moving TV spend to online video. Notably, respondents are also moving search, social media, and direct response dollars to video, at numbers of 28%, 27%, and 26%, respectively. More than 60% of respondents said they felt online video advertising was at least as effective or more effective than TV.

Ad agencies are finding more and more that their clients value online video's ability to target very specific audiences, with more than 40% saying it was the feature that clients found most valuable, an increase of 9% over last year. Unfortunately, 10% of those same clients ranked "ability to reuse creative" as the most important feature, the same number as last year. It's a small percentage, relative to the other features, but still disheartening that a tenth of ad clients see online video advertising as nothing more than a way to repurpose what they've done for TV.

Within the types of targeting—behavioral, contextual, content, and demographic—behavioral targeting was ranked most important, and the majority of agencies said that at least 40% of their campaigns will include some sort of behavioral targeting in the next year. -Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen, Streaming Media

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Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Eyeview Offers New Way Of Looking At Video Ads

Tech for Customized Video Spots Online, on Mobile and TV -- on the Cheap

It's no secret that most of the biggest online video advertisers are simply finding another place to run their 15- and 30-second TV ads. They do this because there often is no budget for new online creative, and the online buy is just an extension of what they're already doing on TV.

But what if you could change those ads and make them interactive and customized -- on the cheap? That's the promise of Israeli startup Eyeview Digital, which, after more than three years in development, is starting to implement its technology for advertisers such as Johnson & Johnson and Bed, Bath and Beyond.

Here's how it works: Eyeview's technology allows advertisers to customize video ads in real time, targeting different demographics and geographies with various creative. So for example, a retailer could customize for the weather, a movie studio for a local megaplex, a local auto dealer for different local markets.

Eyeview charges on a cost-per-thousand basis, a percentage of the total cost of the media buy (around 10%). CEO Oren Harnevo -- brother of Ran Harnevo, CEO of another video startup acquired by AOL, 5min -- says the technology works in online video, mobile and, theoretically, on TV, provided the video can be delivered over an IP network. So far the company has distribution deals with AOL (natch), AdapTV, TidalTV and Collective Media.

Mr. Harnevo said when he started developing the tech, he was most interested in merging his two career interests: computer science and film. "I always wanted to combine the two," he said. "The basis of technology is, how do we use computer science to make media better?" The ad application was the opportunity he saw in the marketplace.

Eyeview has raised $6 million over three years from Google exec chairman Eric Schmidt's investment vehicle Innovation Endeavors, as well as Lightspeed Partners and Gemini Israel Funds. The company has 15 developers in Israel and an office of several sales execs in New York.
 -Michael Learmonth, AdAge Digital

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