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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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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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.

How You Should Be Measuring Business Video Impact

July 21, 2012 by Larry Kless

This article originally appeared on The SmartVideo Blog as How You Should Be Measuring Business Video Impact posted by James Dicso on April 18, 2012, and is republished here through a content partnership with SundaySky

Companies want to prove that business video delivers a measurable financial impact to justify the investment.

In the current online business environment, all companies need to invest in solutions that have a clear and measurable ROI and payback period. Sure, vendors of business video solutions tout the impact of video on targeted business metrics, such as conversion rate, churn rate, engagement rate, call rate, and customer satisfaction as drivers of ROI. But, do they prove that business video is actually delivering these results? If vendors only compare the metrics of video viewers to non-viewers, without controlling for volume of video views and the effects of self-selection bias, the actual ROI results will be inaccurate.

True SmartVideo solutions are designed to address these concerns. Every program starts with defined goals that are measurable. The initial phase of the program includes a persistent control group that separates visitors into a test group (has access to video) and control group (no access to video). Performance of the video group vs. the control group is measured for each metric. This addresses the volume of video views on the total performance and also controls for self-selection bias. The aim is to measure transactional impact (short term) and lifetime impact (longer term) on key metrics.

I’ll use an example to illustrate these points.

A common statement is that “video-viewers convert at 3x the rate of non-viewers”. If non-viewers convert at 2%, this means that video viewers convert at 6%. Without using a control group to address video view rate and self-selection bias, the ROI projections would not be accurate or realistic. Consider the below visual.

This illustration demonstrates the impact of self-selection bias on the test visitors who don’t view video (slightly lower conversion rate) and also reflects the impact of scale of visitors who choose to view the video. Although video viewers convert at 3X non-viewers, the actual lift in conversion is 5% when comparing total video group vs. control group (2.1% conversion rate for the video group vs. 2.0% for the control group).

To effectively measure impact of business video, it is critical to define the success criteria and metrics before kicking off the program. Then, establish a control group to measure the overall effect of video on the target metrics, instead of measuring only actions of video viewers vs. non-viewers.

Is your business video program delivering measurable financial impact? If not, consider adopting a SmartVideo approach.

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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. Our platform generates hundreds of thousands of SmartVideos daily that attract traffic, retarget prospects, convert prospects to customers, support customers and enhance customer relationships. SundaySky SmartVideo users include leading consumer-facing organizations like AT&T, Office Depot and Tiger Direct. Follow SundaySky on Twitter and Facebook.

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