Online Video in 2008

What are the 6 things you need to know about consumers’ online video habits?  What are the 4 trademarks of successful web video?  What 3 things do marketers need to do to make their video assets relevant?  My colleague Grant Owens provides the answers, in a valuable rundown of the state of video in 2008…

Unlike traditional media, where content is delivered in time-tailored streams and fixed locations, the Internet introduces inherently new behaviors and users actions are sending a resounding message that relevance is the key to great online video experiences.

Fortunately technologies are lining up just in time to meet consumers need for more personally and contextually relevant online video experiences. In fact, the long awaited era of convergence is finally upon us, but not in the universal box way everyone had predicted;  rather convergence is developing behind the scenes. Back-end technology platforms now seamlessly deliver video experiences regardless of source, device or content location.

What consumers are doing with online video?

As with any rapidly evolving media it’s important to identify the consumer behaviors that are developing into expectations. Here are a few key behaviors that will be cornerstones for video innovation in the next year:

1. Personal Taste Making
Internet video is massive and largely unstructured and users are looking for tools that manage their unique media interests. Although videos are currently recommended based on a similar tag, category, or past choices, standard conventions from commerce sites like Amazon.com and music experiences like Pandora’s Music Genome Project or Last.FM’s scrobbling technique have made this type of machine memory a user expectation and users will benefit from similar tools in video.

2. Seeking Peer Pressure
Even with historical viewing preferences and keyword relevance, users still want to know what’s hot. While a number of online video services rely on the “wisdom of crowds” to surface and display the most popular video content, new features will undoubtedly emerge to help users discover new content through more complex social influences and introduce peers with similar shared passions

3. Exploring New Routines
Many case studies, some involving diet sodas and hard candy, have proven the massive reach available when users snack on pop-culture clips, but online video is also becoming a direct proxy for lack of quality programming on television. Internal AA|RF data indicate that online video viewership peaks on Friday nights when network programming is typically weaker and with 2008 kicking off within a writers’ strike we believe many more viewers will explore online video options.

4. Finding Web Gems
Search is currently inadequate at helping consumers swim through the complex video environment and as an alternative the majority of online video viewers say they find new videos through friends’ recommendations. Today’s search tools are useful when the user has previously heard about a video and would like to locate it. Search providers are actively experimenting with sound recognition and contextual tags to improve the results. We also expect to see topical segmentation - enable searching within a video at particular points. This technology is on the market, but in its current form, the videos are sliced up to create additional ad impressions and allow time-stamped targeting.

5. Plucking and Aggregating
As users are becoming increasingly content-source agnostic and enjoy both professional and user-generated content equally, the role of aggregators and syndication tools is growing. Now users can aggregate content themselves and combine different sources with different content filters into their daily media touchpoints. We believe successful video experience models will be those based on a mix of push and pull sources integrated into users’ existing routines.?

6. Using community to share, comment and embed
With video files proliferating to multiple destinations, the community surrounding video content is often as important as the videos themselves. Most online video destinations provide one or many ways to invite social participation from tagging and saving favorite videos, through commenting and rating, to editing and embedding. Other social interactions that are likely to take shape in 2008 will be in-video comments, real-time voting, and co-browsing for additional media with viewers that share your interests.

Leveraging user behavior to achieve video ad relevance

Messaging through online video is available in two forms: integrated advertising and branded entertainment. Although pre-roll represents an easy-to-understand model, it does not represent the full spectrum of opportunity within online video. Smart marketers will experiment with more relevant and creative online video tactics in taking advantage of both formats for brand engagement.

The first and most common option, integrated advertising, begins with the theme of relevance and ends with the filter of “does it annoy ‘em?” After establishing a user-centered rally cry, good vs. great executions will be determined by a few of the following principles:

1. Plan for the Environment
Online video ad integration will depends on how the video is delivered - through a social networking page, in-banner, or elsewhere. Is the approach a passive full-screen experience with longer form content or a short form video where advertising may need to appear as post-video jumping off points via surrounding display advertising?

2. Create Meaningful Context
Video ad integration, like any other media, is best approached as a point in time informed by a host of others behaviors, passions, pain points and historical actions. Advertising should also align with metadata attached to each video; submitted tags, video titles, etc. Soon audio and image recognition technology will decipher video content and attach appropriate marketing messages.

3. Syndicate Your Message
Syndication services supply video to multiple destinations allowing in-video advertisements to be viewed across a large swath of web properties anything from a personal blog to a national news site. Although the idea of your brand travelling around the web unprotected can be a little distressing, many syndication providers offer levels of control. Marketers can select categories to blacklist or cherry pick safe zones.

4. Analyze and Optimize
Beyond traditional TV metrics, online video advertising can also be tracked through various engagement metrics including: unique views, interactions within the unit and many others. Some AA|RF clients are also beginning to set benchmarks and perform custom advanced analysis such as: viewer segment analysis, cross-channel effects and optimal frequencies. Solid metrics enable optimization of creative messages, video formatting, site placement, and other key variables.

Where branded entertainment and online video meet

Integrated advertising is not the only online video marketing model to engage consumers with your brand message. Marketers should have the same entrepreneurial spirit Procter & Gamble had in the 30’s that led to the Soap Opera. The modern opportunity, branded entertainment, is one which marketers can supply compelling content that is both entertaining and engages viewers with their brand’s core values.

Depending on campaign objectives marketers may choose decidedly different content type and delivery formats. Whether it takes the form of a mockumentary or a simple product demonstration, compelling and creative content tied to a brand’s core values can create a truly durable experience.

It’s also very common that marketers enter the branded entertainment space looking to crack the viral code. While there is clearly no single recipe that will turn an online video effort into a viral juggernaut, there are guiding principles that we believe will improve overall success.

1. Create Something of Value
Do not interrupt what people are interested in; be what people are interested in. Base your content on consumer insights that align with your brand. You are creating content for your audience, not talking about yourself. Say it with a twist: make it funny, surprising, original.

2. Begin Web Native
Exploit the unique opportunities of the web- don’t just put :30 spots online. You need to align content and format with the behaviors of the audience.

3. Grease the Skids

Marketers also need to create buzz in order to get buzz. A little promotion can help- even if that means utilizing some of the more traditional marketing tactics. Make your content shareable and embeddable. Let it be seeded. Make it rewarding to spread it.

Experimentation will count in 2008

Regardless of whether you are creating your own content or attaching an advertising message to someone else’s creativity - experiment. Innovative marketers have a chance to define new standards with every video project.

Be flexible and prepared to tailor each experience using the growing number of backend convergence technical capabilities to deliver an experience consistent with consumer expectation and behaviors.