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.

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.

What is Online Video Publishing?

June 7, 2008 by larrykless

What exactly is online video publishing?

It’s actually an entire ecosystem that has emerged as the distribution of video on the internet has grown over the last 15 years. It began with small postage stamp sized videos that were extremely pixelated and only a few frames per second. That was the time before broadband when the average connection speed ranged from 28.8-56 kilobits per second. It predated Flash video and H.264 but the seeds were planted and I remember way back when in the mid-1990’s that video was going to be “the killer app.” In the last few years it has really become democratized and evolved from the big Hollywood studio model to the independent producer and citizen journalist.

Now there’s online and offline video workflow processes that differentiates the platform from traditional video production which mainly involves the three stages of production (pre-production, production, post-production) and distribution. Now we ingest, transcode, output, tag, distribute, share, rights manage, monetize and get reporting metrics. The use of physical media like videotapes and discs has lost it’s relevance in the age of online video publishing when you can broadcast a live video feed directly to the web and instantly archive it at the same time. The proliferation of free uploading and hosting, automatic encoding, Creative Commons licensing, syndication via RSS, embed tags make it possible for anyone to be an online video publisher.

In it’s most basic form, online video publishing is making video available on the web and on internet connected mobile devices. The video and web tools, delivery platform, distribution network and syndication are key to online video publishing.

Here’s a great introductory resource to kick things off compliments of online publisher and new media communication guru Robin Good:

Online Video Publishing And Sharing for Learning and Collaboration: A Mini-Guide
posted by Robin Good on Kolabora, November 16, 2006

Stay tuned for more to come…

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

Online Video Publishing [dot] com by Larry Kless

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