Corporate video is OVER. Thank God.

September 24, 2012 by Larry Kless

Guest post by David Murray, program chairman, Strategic Video Awards

A brief history of the last 50 years in corporate video: Corporate training films begat weird corporate promo videos begat dreadful corporate streaming videos begat public embarrassment through paltry page views.

Funny Office Safety Training Retro Video! Hilarious!!

‘You and Office Safety’ – Safetycare free prev

1984 Apple’s Macintosh Commercial

Kevin’s New Employee Orientation Cheesy Corporate EOE Video

Corporate communication types and marketers have now been forced to realize—finally!—that people apply the same standards for watching your video that they do for watching TV shows or the dozen or more YouTube videos they watch every day.

If it isn’t grabbing their heart or their mind and shaking it violently, they switch it off. In a second.

Because they know that with one click they can find Jon Stewart joking, Jeb Corliss crashing or Volvo—Volvo!—doing something completely insane.

Jeb Corliss Table Mountain Crash

Volvo Trucks – The Ballerina Stunt

Yep, corporate video makers have realized they can’t get away with making corporate videos anymore.

What will they make? The judges at the Strategic Video Awards can’t wait to find out.

And we hope you’ll enter your non-corporate corporate video before our Oct. 26 deadline.

The Strategic Video Awards were created for everyone who uses video to communicate for corporations, associations, non-profits, public institutions, colleges and universities, PR firms and ad agencies, and custom publishers. The Strategic Video Awards differ from other programs in that we judge the effectiveness of the message versus the technical aspects of the video. For more information, go to: http://www.strategicvideoawards.com/

Debunking Video Advertising Myths

September 23, 2012 by Larry Kless

This article originally appeared on The SmartVideo Blog as Why Generate Personalized Video in Real Time posted by Yaniv Axen on June 1, 2012, and is republished here through a content partnership with SundaySky

A recent article on digiday.com reviewed some of the myths in the ad-tech space and discussed why they are indeed myths. While reading this, I thought about the applicability of this to the online video advertising space. Let’s analyze each myth separately.Myth 1: There’s not enough quality inventory for advertisers.When we talk about online video advertising, I look only at in-stream video ads. And while there is certainly less inventory in video compared to display, video inventory is growing at an amazing pace. Comscore reports that last month Americans viewed 9.5 billion video ads. So basically, in one year, we more than doubled the number of video ad views – incredibly 2.5X compared to April 2011.

Number of Video Ad Views per Month – Based on ComScore’s Monthly Video Rankings Report

In terms of quality of the inventory, I believe it is extremely powerful to get the attention of a viewer for 15 or 30 seconds in a pre-roll ahead of the content the viewer is looking to watch. We’ve seen high engagement rates – without comparison to display ads, which sometimes even appear below the fold. So, at the end of the day, a video ad view is much more powerful than a banner ad impression.

Myth 2: Publishers should worry about programmatic buying.In my humble opinion, publishers should worry if buying is done in the traditional way. Programmatic buying is the only way to maximize the full potential of your inventory. It’s true that today because of the scarcity of good premium content, high-end inventory is easily sold, but with time, advertisers will want to make smarter buys and be willing to pay higher prices for the “right” opportunities.

Myth 3. Ad Tech is too complicated.I believe that the video ad environment is still less complicated than its elder display counterpart. I also believe there will be some consolidation in the next few years. Advertisers would like to manage their advertising budget in a transparent way and be able to transfer funds between channels to areas where they see higher returns per every dollar spent. Today, the market is very fragmented (search, display, social, video, email), but with time, technology platforms will be built to provide a true holistic view on ad spending and returns. Companies, like Google, Adobe/Omniture and others, are already heading in that direction, and video is going to be an integral part of that.Myth 4. Programmatic buying introduces a new set of undifferentiated middlemen. In general, I would like to see fewer players along the value chain and each taking a piece of the action. Fewer hands involved in the process will increase market efficiencies. As they say, “cut out the middlemen.” While many ad-tech companies bring value to the chain, especially in the formative stages of the online video advertising space, it can be hard to distinguish one video exchange from another. Again, ideally, with time as the space matures, there will be fewer middlemen. The online video advertising world is a few steps behind the display banner space. Whether it is 2 years or 5 years behind, it is clear that video is catching up quickly and we here at SundaySky are certainly excited to help shape the future of it.

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SmartVideo delivers a compelling, personalized, real-time video experience designed to reach people with what they need to know in the most engaging, entertaining and informative way possible. SundaySky’s innovative convergence of technology and creativity has advanced the use of SmartVideo to more effectively engage people at every step of the customer lifecycle. Follow SundaySky on Twitter and Facebook.

Measuring True Financial Impact of Online Video Advertising

August 19, 2012 by Larry Kless

This article originally appeared on The SmartVideo Blog as Measuring True Financial Impact of Online Video Advertising posted by James Dicso on April 27, 2012, and is republished here through a content partnership with SundaySky

Online video is the fastest growing advertising medium with over 8.3B video ads in March, according to comScore’s latest online video rankings. As inventory grows and online video advertising strategies mature, this trend should not only continue, but accelerate.

As noted in eMarketer, Video Ad Performance measurement remains a challenge. Some advertisers use traditional TV metrics, such as Gross Rating Point, while others focus on click through rates or completion rates to measure performance. The challenge with each of these metrics is that it misses the larger goal of delivering (Return on Ad Spend (RoAS). Most other online advertising categories are performance based with a focus on delivering measurable incremental visits, conversions and revenue.

We believe a smart video advertising strategy should incorporate RoAS as the primary metric to measure true financial impact, while ensuring that the video ads also deliver positive brand experience and engagement. This requires the ability to both report on these metrics and use a control-group approach to measure how much of this performance is incremental.

Assuming an advertiser buys into the idea of using RoAS as the performance metric of choice, the whole video advertising program should be designed around the idea of visitor targeting and performance optimization to maximize RoAS. This includes optimizing the media buy, as well as optimizing the video ad. (Video ad targeting and performance optimization will be the subject of several future blog posts.)

There are many ways to measure performance of video advertising programs. Our belief is that RoAS measured via control group is the smart way to go.

Is your video advertising program delivering measurable financial impact?

Photo credit: Zoom U » Online Video Advertising | Calgary Video Production Blog

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YouTube is Powerful Than TV

August 8, 2012 by Larry Kless

Guest post by Roman at Frozzo

A couple of decades ago we couldn’t even imagine our lives without TV .It had its indisputable reasons. The majority of population got the vast amount of information from TVs. We were learning about new products only by watching the ads concerning the company, we were watching movies, cartoons, TV shows and even when we liked them we had the opportunity to record them in order to watch them later hundreds of times, show them to the others and enjoy them every time we saw them .We thought that this is the top and nothing could be better.

But later the internet appeared and we betrayed our best friend –TV, leaving it alone with elderly and found a new one – Internet, which enabled us to use websites that showed us everything online. We could watch anything we wanted at any time. Gradually the social media developed and the most popular online platform YouTube was launched in 2005. Since then arguments are held- which one is better TV or YouTube. Of course the majority of users are young and they will assuredly say that YouTube is better and will give their reasons.

The time factor plays a predominating role in this argument. YouTube is available at any time you want to watch. If you are away it is available everywhere you want to watch, just find the wireless connection and finally it is available on your cell phone. NO restrictions are put there and anyone cat enter here and watch videos according to their interest. Everything is sorted out here. Any member of your family can watch a video and get the information he requires from YouTube.

You want to entertain your children and don’t know how- here it comes to help-find all the cartoons of the world and let them watch it successively. Want to listen to your favorite singer’s latest song and watch the music video, here again Youtube comes to help. Have just got an interesting video and want to share it with your friends-post it on Youtube, the more views you get the more famous you are. Want to know anything about your favorite product- here the ads will be found.

And what do you think you lose doing it? Nothing, you don’t even need to pay money, just sign up here and add and watch as many videos as you can. So with these simple explanations I assure you that YouTube is better, faster and more qualified than TV.

Guest author bio: Roman runs London based social media marketing company Frozzo. His mission is to help and lead people to get real Twitter followers, YouTube views and Facebook fans.

Videos Show You How To Install Performance Parts

August 5, 2012 by Larry Kless

Guest post by Alex @ Redline360.com

The do-it-yourself automotive trend is growing every day, and especially in a down economy, people want to save money by installing performance parts themselves so they can save hundreds of dollars on labor. There is no better way for a manufacture of performance parts to connect with their potential customers than to create videos such as the one below that give you a background and step by step installation guide so you feel comfortable doing the job yourself. For example, in the video below, Mishimoto, a brand popular for radiators and cooling parts, demonstrates how to install their parts into a Subaru Impreza WRX.

It also helps that the video has a professional race car driver, Matt Waldin, to give credibility to the brand and entice customers to continue watching the video. The video goes step-by-step in explaining not only the benefits of the part, but what tools you need to do the job so you can be sure you have everything necessary to get the job done.

Some customers like to make their own product videos, and they gain a following and recognition on automotive forums of their knowledge and experimentation of the products. Lots of times, especially with newer cars, people like to hold off on buying parts until someone in the community buys it first and then reviews it for quality, ease of installation and performance gains.

Some how-to’s can get very technical, and some customers even do mechanical comparisons on a dynamometer to determine effectiveness of parts, such as a comparison of the difference between a short ram intake and a cold air intake. Information such as this isn’t so straight forward, so there needs to be testing done that can only be given credibility with a video posted online, or dyno sheets that show power gains. As customers get more savvy, online videos are going to be playing a bigger part in the automotive performance market.

Strategies, tips, how to's and best practices for online video publishers

Online Video Publishing [dot] com by Larry Kless

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