Webcasting vs. Web Conferencing

May 9, 2013 by Larry Kless

This video from ACT Conferencing, a global provider of integrated conferencing solutions, describes the distinct differences between webcasting and web conferencing. It’s presented by Clair Pearson, Global Product Manager of Events & Multimedia, who discusses the variety of virtual solutions and common terms used to describe web conferencing, online meetings, webinars, virtual events, streaming and webcasts.

What is a Webcast? Video Transcript (Published courtesy of ACT Conferencing)

“Hi, I’m Clair. Let’s talk about some words you probably hear on a daily basis. Words like web conferencing, online meeting, webinar, virtual event, streaming or webcast. These are sometimes used interchangeably, but is it really clear what the terms mean? Understanding what every virtual solution has to offer will allow you to see real benefits for your business. Let’s focus on webcasting. So what is a webcast? A webcast by definition is a broadcast of sound or video on the web. Similar to TV or radio, it’s a one-to-many solution, and it allows you to reach hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands of viewers all at the same time. A webcast is also sometimes referred to as a virtual event. Webcasts are highly scalable and reliable, and they are designed to address a widely dispersed audience all over the world.”

Webcasting vs. Web Conferencing

“There is a common confusion between webcasting and web conferencing. So let’s try to clear that up a bit today. Web conferencing is a solution designed for smaller meetings. It’s normally used in conjunction with an audio conference, and it’s highly collaborative. Web conferencing is perfect for less formal day-to-day meetings, and normally has fewer attendees. A webcast, on the other hand, uses audio streaming or video streaming and allows participants to listen or see the presenter over the internet. Without the need to download or install, or even telephone, the attendee just clicks on the link and joins the virtual event. As a presenter, a webcast with streamed audio can be run using just a plain old telephone. The beauty of this is that multiple speakers in geographically dispersed regions can all be presenting at the same time in real time. Perfect.”

“Webcasts can also include a video element by using a variety of different sources: webcams, on-site camera crews, a professional studio, or even a plain old video conferencing unit in your company’s boardroom. All of these enable you to add video to your webcast. A webcast is so much more than just the ability to listen or view the speaker over the internet. Webcasts can be fully customized to reflect a company’s brand or a theme. They can include a registration page and can allow for literally thousands of simultaneous viewers. Most corporate webcasts include some form of interactivity. Like the ability for participants to submit a question or take part in live polls or post-event surveys. The use of slides in corporate webcasts is also really common. Powerful reporting provides analytics ranging from a high level overview of participation, right down to detailed tracking of each participant. If you’re handling sensitive content, you can restrict access from specified IP addresses, email domains or even add a password for your peace of mind. Webcasts are also routinely archived online, so a presentation lives on beyond the actual event date. Allowing the hosting company to maximize their events and make the most out of the content. Webcasts are extremely useful for training, investor relations, internal town halls, medical marketing events, or continuing education.”

“How do you envision using one?”

About ACT Conferencing

For more than 20 years, ACT Conferencing has been a global provider of enterprise level audio, web and video collaboration services. The company is focused on delivering customization and specialization for channel partners, providing consultation and service delivery to help customers increase revenues, improve productivity, reach new markets, and outperform their competition. ACT’s integrated platforms provide managed, international and local-language services. ACT is headquartered in Lakewood, Colorado, with operations in Australia, Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and the UK. www.actconferencing.com.

Content marketing: Let’s identify the best (and discourage the rest)

May 5, 2013 by Larry Kless

By David Murray

You know who claims to know content marketing these days? Everybody who likes money, that’s who.

What if there was a way to separate the veteran communicator from the Johnny Come Lately?

So that in the midst of this content marketing gold rush, clients and hiring managers can begin identify the pros who know how to think about marketing, conceive strategic content, create the right media, craft compelling messages that actually resonate with key audiences.

You know, the pros who have been doing content marketing all along—as opposed to the person for whom “content” is just a lucrative new vocabulary word.

Behold the all-new Content Marketing Awards, presented by the Content Marketing Institute and sponsored by McMurry/TMG. It’s judged by the very leading lights of content marketing, who are as eager as anyone to identify the best in every aspect of this burgeoning business (and discourage the rest).

“Honestly, the industry needs this,” writes Content Marketing Institute founder Joe Pulizzi. “This is all in the natural progression of a growing industry. “Showcasing the best that the industry can offer, both projects and agencies, will help us get to where we need to go.”

So enter your best work in the Content Marketing Awards—by the May 17 deadline— and prove you belong.

Or get off the bandwagon.

David Murray is program chairman for the Content Marketing Awards, and editor of ContentWise. For two decades David has written and spoken widely on corporate, political and personal communication issues. He’s editor of Vital Speeches of the Day and his writing has appeared in Advertising Age, The New York Times and The Atlantic

Monthly. He blogs about the communication life at Writing Boots.

5 Considerations for Successful Online Video Engagement

December 9, 2012 by Larry Kless

This article originally appeared on The SmartVideo Blog as 5 Considerations for Successful Online Video Engagement posted by James Dicso on June 11, 2012, and is republished here through a content partnership with SundaySky

Today, when consumers shop online, they expect the personalized attention of an in-store experience. They want brands to provide engaging experiences during purchases, and at every stage of the customer journey. As a result, innovative marketers are turning to online video as an engagement tool.

Below are five considerations for ensuring your brand’s success with online video.

Search engines favor video, and now structure their results to reward sites that use it. Consequently, online marketers are investing more in order to promote their videos. One investment that goes a long way toward attracting higher quality visitors is making on-site videos accessibility at scale, e.g., for every product in your catalog. This ensures reach for long-tail keywords, which are known to drive the highest quality traffic and best conversion rates.

Pre-roll ads bring your prospects back. The average consumer will interact with your brand several times before conversion. An effective way to bring site abandoners back and recoup otherwise lost investment in traffic is with retargeted ads designed to re-engage abandoners based on their previous behavior on your website.

Online brands can now take retargeted advertising a step further by presenting abandoners with video pre-roll ads that are personalized based on shopping history, present relevant products and current deals most appropriate to visitors’ browsing behavior. Retargeted pre-roll ads (see Office Depot example below) outperform traditional retargeted banner ads with higher conversion rates and often with above-average order value, leading to a significant return on ad spend.

On-site video increases conversion rates. When videos are properly produced, they captivate users. The availability of video also enhances credibility and the overall impression of the website even among users who do not view them. What’s more, videos generated in real time enhance the potential of on-site videos even further. As content, such as price, seasonal deals and last-minute offers constantly change, product videos are created on the fly to overcome what was a major challenge for manual video production. The result is not only a richer and more engaging shopping experience, but also higher conversion rates.

Online video can be an effective customer service tool. A company’s ability to retain customers strongly depends on the way it services them from the point of first contact and throughout the customer’s lifetime with the brand. Online video is another tool brands can use to deliver the best possible service experience.

Use video to onboard new customers with in-depth product demonstrations, provide order and provisioning status (see Dell example below), or deliver complex bills, statements and invoices with an easily digestible explanation of usage and fees. Companies that have done this have customers who make more informed repeat purchases and less calls to the contact center, resulting in fewer product returns, decreased merchandising and support costs, greater trust and credibility, and generally higher customer satisfaction.

Online video makes for more impactful nurturing campaigns. The effectiveness of best customer nurturing practices, including email campaigns, newsletters, loyalty programs and customer portals, is often enhanced with personalization features to engage the customer with offerings that resonate based on his profile, shopping history and browsing trail.

Implementing personalized videos based on individual shopping history can significantly enhance efforts to nurture, upsell and retain existing customers. The open rate for video newsletters, for example, is two to three times higher than for text. Personalized video newsletters can include a greeting with the recipient’s name, as well as display promotional offerings based on browsing history, geography or preference segmentation.

At right is an example of an email nurturing campaign from Shopbop.com to a customer who recently purchased a pair of denim jeans.

These five applications of online video bridge the gap between live and virtual experiences for the consumer and offers the most streamlined way to present information in all of their touch points with your brand.

Do you have other considerations for successful engagement with online video? Please share your experiences below – I’d love to hear from you.

Visit The SmartVideo Blog for current articles or subscribe the RSS Feed

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.

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.

Visit The SmartVideo Blog for current articles or subscribe the RSS Feed

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

Online Video Publishing [dot] com by Larry Kless

Tags