Through various articles both online and in print, it is becoming stronger notion that the Internet is going “live action”. From these readings, especailly an interesting online article written by Terri Miller, it is becoming more logical to move into Video Marketing Productions, and by his thoughts will become a staple.
For instance, please read these quotes:
• “This [online video ads] could very well become the dominant form of online advertising… probably within the next 18 to 24 months” – Bob Hanna, senor vice president of sales with Burst Media-a group that offers publisher sites to advertisers.
• “Online video ad spend is to surge by 89% in 2007 and is poised to grow and in 2010 will be worth around $2.9 billion”. – marketing vox.
• “At some time early in 2010, one in 10 dollars devoted to internet advertising will go for video placements” – David Hallerman, a senior analyst with eMarketer and author of the report ‘Internet Video: Advertising Experiments & Exploding Content’
It should now becoming more clearer that Video marketing will most likely become the ”next big thing” in the world of Internet marketing.
Well what is Video marketing? Video marketing is the use of video for conveying your message to an audience while topics can range from business perspectives to personal grievances. Most experts believe that videos are more effective when it comes to establishing an engaging and interactive platform to communicate with the target audience.
Video advertising is one of the basic forms of video marketing. In most cases of video advertising, the advertiser would make use of the video that is already being run across various television channels. Usually, the video is edited to shorten the duration. This also makes the video more appealing to the online audience.
However their can be many pitfalls to creating a proper Video marketing campaign. According to Amit I. Budhrani of Alza Management Institute, “Most advertisers feel that the content for a video advert can be borrowed from their own TV commercials. However, this is not the case. One needs to clearly differentiate between a video advert and an advertisement made for the TV. Video made for a TV can nevër replace video that is required for the Internet. And it will not make a good impression about the company in the eyes of the people since they can quickly make out that the ad has been copied directly from the TV. If this happens then one is likely to löse out on viewers since people will not care to view the ad of the company ever again. Hence the company will loose viewers instead of gaining them. And this will be a very big loss of opportunity.”
Budhrani also adds that, “People are not going to spend their bandwidth on ads that can be seen on TV. In other words, if you have to capture the attention of the online audience, then you have to present them with fresh content that is creative as well as engaging.”
Ron Coomber of ITV agrees with the opinion put forward by Amit I. Budhrani of Alza Management Institute. According to Coomber, “The conventional 30 second TV commercial will not be as effective when presented on the Internet.” According to Lanctot of Avenue A/Razorfish, “It’s easy to repurpose TV Ads, but it’s not a good idea. Everyone seems to agree, but they keep doing it.”
With all of that being said, there are newer ideads bringing some changes to these industry standars. According to Treffiletti of Carat, “We have some clients who have allowed us to actually shoot video for [the Internet]. In addition, when they’re shooting a commercial and they have the A roll and the B roll, the B roll has a lot more life now. We can actually use that extra footage.”
The other form of video marketing that has been attracting the attention of business lies in the ”to be in-text video advertising”. In this particular form of video marketing, a video gets uploaded and subsequently played whenever a user scrolls over an underlined text.
Experts state that in-text video advertising is a highly efficient method that can be precisely targeted towards a particular segment of the online audience. This is because a person will be induced to take his mouse over an underlined word only if he can relate with that word. For instance, a young mother might roll her mouse over words like ‘bottle feeder’, ‘baby diapers’, ‘infant care’ etc.
In-text video advertising is a user-initiated form of advertising. This means that the video will be played only when the user opts to roll his mouse over a phrase or a word.
Advertisers also have the option of going in for ‘product placement in video’. This form of video marketing is similar to ‘in-film’ advertising wherein the product is placed in the video. ‘Product placement in video’ works on the same line except for the fact that the same is done in the virtual world and through an online medium.
The products are integrated in the online video. At times, the viewers are also allowed to interact with the product in question. This increased interactivity enhances the engagement quotient of the advertisement.
‘Advertiser funded video’ is one more manifestation of video marketing. In this form of video marketing, the advertiser creates the content of the video but the same is run on third-party websites. The video seeks to entertain, inform or educate the viewers as well as to convey the information of the advertiser to the target audience.
One can also directly deliver the video to consumers via email. This form of video marketing is known as ‘direct video’. However, this is a relatively new form of marketing and is yet to be exploited in a big way. The rise of Web 2.0 has allowed advertisers to deliver videos in HTML [Hyper Text Mark-Up Language] and thus avoid languishing in the receiver’s bulk or spam folders.
Most experts believe that this form of video marketing has good potential especially considering the fact that an increasing number of netizens are now opting for hi-speed broadband connections instead of the traditional dial-up connections. This is good news for those opting for ‘direct video’ as research has proven that those having broadband connections are more receptive towards video.
The growing popularity of such sites as YouTube has opened up one more avenue for advertisers, business houses and the corporate sector. One can place videos in social network sites. According to a report that appeared in Reuters, “YouTube, the leader in Internet video search, said on Sunday viewers are now watching more than 100 million videos per day on its site, marking the surge in demand for its “snack-sized” video fare.”
Experts state that this particular form of advertising has great scope provided the videos feature original content [that is the ideas for the video are not directly uplifted from the ads that are run on television] and are high on creativity.
Thus, there are various forms of video marketing. Advertisers, wishing to use this form of Internet marketing, should carefully weigh the pros and cons of each form of video marketing. They should also weigh their intentions and objective campaigns of their online marketing campaign against each form of video marketing and select the one that will help them to gain maximum mileage.
