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Jivox Video Marketing Blog

11 June 2010

30 Billion Videos Watched Online in April 2010

By Jack Loechner, featured on www.mediapost.com

According to a recent comScore Video Metrix service, 178 million U.S. Internet users watched online video during the month, and topped 30.3 billion videos in April, with Google Sites ranking as the top video property with 13.1 billion videos, representing 43.2 percent of all videos viewed online.

YouTube accounted for the vast majority of videos viewed at the property. Hulu ranked second with 958 million videos, followed by Microsoft Sites, Viacom Digital, and Yahoo! Sites.

Read the whole story on MediaPost.

- The Jivox Team

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23 March 2010

Smucker Sweet on Carat

MediaPost reported yesterday that Smucker has tapped Carat to handle media planning and buying duties on its $125 million advertising account.  Congrats to both companies!

How much of its sizable media budget will Smucker be spending online?  We’re not sure, but here’s an online idea that could work for Smucker in 2010: interactive video ads.  Smucker and Carat can easily take existing TV commercials – including ads for other Smucker brands such as Pillsbury and Eagle – and turn these into online video ads with interactive app-like functionality.

Just for fun, we mocked up a Smucker’s Stars on Ice TV ad to see what it would look like as an online video ad.  Check out the interactivity: viewers can buy tickets, check tour dates and times, and even become a fan on Facebook, all right from the ad unit.  And we did it in about five minutes – it’s that simple! Let us know your thoughts!

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10 March 2010

Using online video ads to reach new customers

Featured on Fastcasual.com

By Diaz Nesamoney

The popularity of online video has caused a major shift in the way Americans consume media. Nielsen estimates that in December 2009, there were 137 million viewers of online video in the United States, watching an average of 193 minutes of video each.

With more people than ever watching video on their computers, does it really make sense to pour money into TV commercials rather than tap creative content for online distribution?

Online video ads offer premier engagement metrics, and offer one of the best ways to use your videos online. Many of today’s online video-ad platforms also enable you to pinpoint precisely which customers you want to reach by demographic, location and more.

Round Table Pizza, a restaurant chain from Menlo Park, Calif., with more than 500 locations, worked with its media agency to create and run a series of 30-second online video ads using their existing TV spot. They ran the spots on a network of local newspaper, radio and TV station Web sites as in-banner placements.

Taking advantage of the flexibility of the online medium, Round Table added custom interactivity in its ads to boost response rates. After viewers watch a Round Table commercial, they are given options such as finding a restaurant near them, accessing a coupon for that restaurant, or sharing the ad on Facebook. In fact, their video ad acts more like an interactive app than a traditional online video.

The in-banner video ads yielded strong results, performing nearly twice as well than typical online display ads both in terms of click-through rate and interaction rate.

Here are some tips for successfully making the leap from TV to online video ads:

Include calls to action in your ads: Unlike a TV commercial, where advertisers can only suggest that customers “come in today” or “visit our Web site,” the online video format allows you to add immediate calls-to-action. When transferring a commercial online, make sure you include a clickable link to your company’s Web site, as well as your phone number and address. Also consider including a printable coupon and maybe even a link to your local online directory listing using a teaser such as “Check out our great reviews on Yelp!”

Make your ads interactive: If you really want to increase the power of your marketing videos, consider turning your videos into interactive apps. Some online video ad companies now allow you to add custom Flash or HTML applets directly into your video ads — such as a store locator, interactive maps and menus — so viewers can interact with the ad without ever leaving the player. Interactive video ads instantly measure viewers’ responses by tracking their real-time interactions, instead of just measuring views or clicks.

Ensure your ads are reaching the right audience: Getting your ads onto premium local Web sites is critical for fast casual restaurants, because effective local targeting will ensure you’re hitting an audience that is most likely to take action. Whichever way you choose to distribute your ads, make sure you’re able to control which audience sees the ad and that you’re targeting within an appropriate geographic radius.

Measure results: One of the best things about online video ads is that they are instantly measurable: You should be able to see immediately whether your ad is actually working to bring new customers in the door. Make sure you review your results as often as possible to see what parts of your online video marketing campaign worked best and which were less successful, and then optimize your ads as needed. You can even carry these lessons into your next TV spot or use online video as a testing ground for more expensive TV campaigns.

TV spots may still be an important advertising medium for local and national businesses, but with the shift in people’s “screen time” rapidly moving from the TV to the Web, it makes sense to turn your TV commercials into online video ads. With just a little bit of work, you can reach both traditional TV audiences as well as highly targeted online audiences with essentially the same content.

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10 February 2010

Super Bowl Commercials: Which Ones Would Win Online?

The Super Bowl is behind us, and now it’s time for consumers and the ad industry to dissect the commercials that ran during the game to choose the best and worst of the year. Consumers watched the commercials not only during the game, but online after the event ended; millions voted for their favorite Super Bowl commercials on Hulu’s AdZone and on YouTube’s AdBlitz.

While everyone had favorite ad – whether it was the Snickers “Game” or the Doritos “Underdog”, or another one entirely – we decided to review the commercials for more than just entertainment value. We asked the question: which of these spots would work as online video ads… and which wouldn’t?

As we pointed out in a recent blog post, for most marketers, it makes sense to take TV spots and turn them into online video ads; you get more bang for your buck by distributing a commercial both on TV and online, because you can reach two distinct audiences with one piece of content. Transforming a TV spot into an online video ad is relatively simple – you just need to add interactivity elements – but some commercials lend themselves better to this transformation than others.

Here are two examples of Super Bowl ads – one that would work well as an online video ad, and one that would not.

This Teleflora commercial is a great candidate to transform into an online video ad.

The message of the commercial is crystal clear: don’t send someone flowers via a service that ships them in a box if you want them to arrive fresh. There’s not too much going on visually, and it’s short. The clarity and brevity of the commercial lends itself well to the online environment, where viewers have little patience for longer-form ads.

What’s more, there is a lot of opportunity to add custom interactivity elements to this commercial. Because there are no text overlays on the commercial, you could add clickable text in the online environment. You could, for example, add an interactivity button that said “Click here for 15% off your next flower purchase” or “Send someone flowers now!”, which leads to the Teleflora website and automatically applies any discount at checkout. Other potential custom interactivity elements could include a “Build a Bouquet” applet, a “share this ad” button, a “Send a virtual bouquet to a friend” button, or a short text promoting the Teleflora iPhone app.

On the other hand, this commercial by GoDaddy offers an example of what NOT to produce if you want to later translate the commercial into an online video ad.

The concept might work well on TV, but it would be tough to transform this commercial into a video that engages online audiences. First of all, there is too much talking, too much action, and too many characters; it’s just too “busy” to engage an impatient online audience. Also, the subject of the commercial – a spoof on a TV talk show – doesn’t really work online, where people aren’t in a “TV” mindset. Lastly, because there is already so much text overlay, it would be difficult to add calls-to-action and other custom interactivity elements to this commercial. The bottom line: the content, action, and format of this commercial make it a TV-only opportunity.

Many marketers realize today that you can’t create video content in a vacuum. One video ad can be used in many places – on TV, on your website, in email campaign, seeded to video-sharing sites like YouTube, and distributed on video advertising networks. The goal in creating engaging marketing videos is to “create one, use often.”  When creating TV spots, keep in mind that your commercial may ultimately end up online as a video ad – so make sure to create simple, straightforward videos that you can later overlay with custom interactivity elements on the Web.

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19 January 2010

Turn your Video Ads into Interactive Apps – and Supercharge Clicks and Conversion

Online video ads already offer some of the highest engagement metrics around; people simply prefer to watch an ad or marketing message than to read it. But if you really want to increase the power of your marketing videos, consider turning your videos into interactive apps. By adding custom Flash or HTML applets directly within video ads, marketers can now allow viewers to interact with the ad without ever leaving the player.  

Whether you add interactive elements to in-stream or in-banner video ads, these “souped up” ads will engage viewers in a way far beyond traditional video ads, which are more like TV commercials online than true interactive video experiences. Unlike the passive medium of video-only ads, interactive video ads enable advertisers to directly engage their customers. Interactive video ads also instantly measure viewers’ responses by tracking their real-time interactions, instead of just measuring the old standards of views, clickthrough, and conversion. 

For viewers, the ads deliver immediacy of interaction: instead of having to click through to a website, users can often get all the information they need directly from the interactive ad. And when you make it easy for potential customers to get the information they need, they are much more likely to follow through on a purchase.

But what type of interactive elements should you add, and how? The answer to the first part of the question is simple: any type you want. The sky’s the limit as to the type of applets you can add to your video ad. Some ideas include:

  • Taking a virtual house tour after seeing an ad for new homes for sale;
  • Seeing a Flash tour of a car interior and requesting a test-drive;
  • Displaying a map to find the closest store location;
  • Sharing the video with a friend and adding your own commentary;
  • Showing a series of video clips for a concert tour;
  • Participating in a trivia contest or quiz to win a discount;
  • Requesting a quote for an insurance policy or home loan

Here is a great example of a video ad that uses custom interactive elements.

You can add these app-style ads to your marketing mix by using a service like Jivox. With Jivox’s custom interactive element feature, you simply develop a small applet in Java or Flash, and then click to add it to the video ad.

By adding custom interactive elements to video ads, companies can change their ads from a passive to an active medium, boosting direct response, social recommendations, and immediate product discovery via the video advertising channel. The end result is a better-informed, more engaged customer, improved ad performance, and, ultimately, higher ROI on video ad campaigns.

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