"Online video is driving astonishing innovation in thousands of different fields ranging from the ultra-niche to the sharing of truly world-changing ideas" – Chris Anderson, TED
That astounding fact is just one of the 10 on this document/presentation put together by MediaMind to show how big an opportunity in-line video advertising is for advertisers and brands out there.
In-stream video ads are the ones that go at the beggining of a video (pre-roll), during (mid-roll), or after (post-roll).
These have become popular in the last year and will become even more with Google Adwords for Video being available to everyone.
So here are the top 10 reasons to choose In-line Video ads:
Those are the words coming directly from Facebook’s Director of Platform Partnerships for Europe, Middle East and Africa, Christian Hernandez, recently on Monaco Media Forum.
And it is particularly relevant since with the announcement of the Open Graph Platform and its implications in Online Video, Facebook is expected to drive even more viewership for networks and small video producers, so an further opportunity waiting to happen.
If you missed yesterday’s Webinar on Video Crowdsourcing, with Wooshii’s own Fergus Dyer-Smith, then no worries – we’ve got the video for you!
Joining him are Peter LaMotte from GeniusRocket and Anna Sawyer from Trada, who will discuss – in 55 minutes – everything from video strategy, to content, cost and control over project and the distribution, and more.
We’ve been testing this for a while now and it has gone live in the past few days: a curated video section here on the blog!
There you’ll find plenty of resources about every aspect of video production and video marketing, like for example, “Handheld Techniques”:
Just click the “Video Tutorials” tab above, and you’ll see a growing collection of videos chosen by us, but you can help too: if you find a video that you think should go there, just tell us about it and we’ll add it.
We will be adding new videos to this section everyday. Enjoy
In a previous post, we talked about the main points about creating great videos for your website, and one of things focused was Distribution. In this post, we go further and see how you can maximize this aspect with the tools available nowadays on the web.
If you recall, we talked about 3 main avenues for video sharing:
- your own website
- video sharing sites
- and social networks
It’s the middle one I want to talk about in this post, Video Sharing Sites.
There are plenty of these out there, being the main one Youtube, of course. Then you have Vimeo, DailyMotion, Metacafe, etc. And one thing to take into consideration is that every one of these has their own audience, so you may choose to upload the video only to Vimeo or Veoh because that’s your type of audience, but you may be limiting yourself just uploading it to those sites. And also, because having a certain type of audience in each site, doesn’t mean everyone who visits is exactly the same: the people who you want to show the video too may be in any of them.
So with all this in mind, the best thing to do would be to choose a few video sharing sites and upload to them all. This can be a very long process, but fortunately, there are services out there that allow you to upload the video to several different sites at once.
One of them, and the one we use at Wooshii, is HeySpread. It’s really simple, and it doesn’t have much more functionality that the uplading part. See a video of it in action:
Another good option is TubeMogul. They’ve recently focused more on advertising, but it can still be used to distribute videos on several video sites, and the analytics part is great too!
Finally, we have Visible Measures, which is also focused not only on the publishers part (you), but also advertisers.
So to sum it up, uploading the video to several video services across the web will sure get you more visibility, and thus reach the goals you want to with online video, be it get more brand or personal awareness, get more customers, more jobs, and so on.
This week, new impressive stats came out of Youtube. One of them was about how people now upload 48 hours of video every single minute to the online video giant. That is a lot indeed!
What can happen in two days, you ask?
- You could drive non-stop across the country from our office in San Bruno, Calif. to New York City
- You could undertake a massive movie marathon by watching the entire Back to the Future trilogy eight and a half times (we’d recommend you do that at YouTube Movies)
- An ambitious cheetah (the fastest land animal at an average running speed of 75 mph) starting in South Africa could traverse 3600 miles of the African continent and reach Egypt
Along with this, they also claim that Youtube now has 3 billion views… daily!
That’s the equivalent of nearly half the world’s population watching a YouTube video each day, or every U.S. resident watching at least nine videos a day.
But it’s all stats for Youtube, it’s about business news too. The New York Times reported this week new business plans for Youtube, namely a program called First Watch, where they’ll play pre-roll ads for first video seen by a user in a given day. Pre-roll ads aren’t always that popular, so we’ll see how this goes (already in testing by big name brands in the US).
Either way, those stats are huge milestones for the company that made online video what it is today.
For the last few years, online video has seen explosive growth! All the studies, reports, and stats back up this fact and naturally more and more companies and brands have started adding video to their websites.
For example, in a study by IAB, 69 percent of marketers and 55 percent of agencies plan to increase their digital video advertising with 22 percent growth predicted in the next 12 months;
One reason is that advertisers are finding that their audiences respond better to Digital Video Advertising (DVA), with consumers showing a higher engagement rate with online video.
It’s no surprise then, that a Tubemogul and Brightcove study found that brands saw a massive 98% jump in engagement in the last quarter there is data of (Q4 2010), and that brands are improving the quality of their content and connecting with receptive audiences.
One of the causes of all this growth and engagment is that DVA is more trackable and targetable and DVA production is less expensive, making it more cost efficient.
IDATE even says web video advertising to grow 55% annually – faster than any other ad format online. But that’s not all: they say that video will in fact be the largest of the three emerging markets in the US and Europe in 2014.
So all these studies and stats show a very clear picture: Online Video is here to stay and it is growing fast.
So how do you get started with Online Video?
STEP 1 – Develop a video strategy
It is all to easy to rucj in to the production side of video marketing. Sites like Wooshii, (plug 1) have made video priouction easy but like all good marketing you should first consider
What is your goal. Is it to introduce your business? To explain a new product or to showcase your services?
Your brand, what do you want to communicate and could set the tone of the video.
Once you have that set then you can start looking at how you might produce your video. You have a number of options
Lets ignore one and two and look at three. There are loads of reasons why you could be creating great video content yourself. Here is our rundown on the why and how.
Step 2 – Production
Video Camera
Nowadays you have a wide range of cameras at every price and every quality.
It also should be noted that more and more video services, (like Youtube) have the HD option This allows you to take advantage of getting great quality video.
At the low end, ($99-$150) you have real simple cameras, (some of them shoot HD) but they have the bare minimum in terms of features. Cameras like the Sony Bloggie Touch, the Kodak Play Touch, or the soon to be defunct Flip cameras.
Of course an alternative is the in built cameras on many mobile phones. The iPhone for example, shoots HD video with a very good quality, and best of all, has got some great apps for filmmaking/videomaking.
Infact not only for filmming, but for all phases of making your video.
5 great apps for video making
- SteadyLens an app that helps you make better Steadycam-like shots;
- iMovie – Apple’s own app, that allows you to edit your videos on the go;
Continuing with Cameras, past the cheaper ones you get the Digital Single-Lens Reflex cameras (DSLR), which in the last few years have gained the ability to film some incredible quality video in HD.
Cameras like the Canon 7D ($1850 body only), or the Canon MK II ($8.500 body only) – which can you believe have been used to film episodes of popular TV series “House”? The quality is amazing and it is one of the top choices you could make.
Canon 7D
Sound
Sound is incredibly important, and people don’t often give it the credit it should have, in the final result of a video. Particularly if you’re going to have interviews in the video for your company.
Make sure you have good microphones and make sure the sound is close to perfect, sometimes it really is almost more important than picture quality!
Also keep in the mind the sound mix too, you should be sure to balance well the voices, sound effects, and music. It will contribute greatly to the experience of the viewer while watching the video and their decision to continue viewing.
Here’s a good video with other great tips:
Music
Music can really add “soul” to your company video, so if you choose to have it, choose it carefully.
Do not use copyrighted music that you don’t have the rights for a song. At best it will get your banned on most video sharing sites at worse sued !!!
There are many resources out there for finding royalty-free music, and if you don’t want to spend a lot of money on music these are great ways to go to find a piece a music to perfectly set the mood you want for your video.
5 great resources for finding good royalty free music
Like sound, lighting for videos is often not given the proper attention. Good lighting is key to the quality of your video, regardless of the camera you use.
Sure, some cameras provide a good enough quality with mediocre lighting, but it’s not just about light or dark. There are nuances in lighting, the mood, the tone of the video, that a proper videomaker uses very well in order to make a good video production.
If you don’t have the budget to go around buying lights for videomaking, just look at the resources you have available at your company or even at your house! Not ideal but it will surely help.
3 Tips for lighting your video
Get lots of light for your camera to work with. Don’t record your video at night, even indoors.
Move lights around – Get them at the side, infront, light can come from any where windows, lamps etc
If shooting from the front try and move lights so that you end up with a small spec of light in your pupil. It will liven up your picture (Tip from KickStarter)
Shooting
With digital video, where you have plenty of storage, people are proine to wasting it and time doing many takes, or filming unnecessary details.
Again, planning here is crucial to the video. Make sure you planned the shots well in advance, and shoot just what you want BUT remember to shoot beyond your shot. Leave space either side ( more than feels natural) of every shot to allow you to edit easily post shoot.
Also make sure there aren’t many (or any) interferences on the “set” or in the place you’re filming when it comes to the sound capture, you’ll regret it later if there are!
Editing
Nowadays, there is a great choice in software for editing, and for every wallet. From the non-expensive software that comes with your computer (Windows Movie Maker if you’re Windows, iMovie if you’re Mac), to the highly popular Final Cut Pro for Mac, one of the most used pieces of editing software out there.
If you’ve done everything right till now, things will go go easier for you in this editing phase. It is in the edit that all things come together: if you’ve planned well, you already have a good idea of what shots to use.
It is also key the sequence of the shots – the sequence immediatly before will influence how the viewer perceives the sequence that comes next, so be aware of it or even use it and manipulate it if it fits the tone of your video.
It is also while editing that the very important component of sound will be put in place, not only the music but also the sound effects. And it is this phase where your video will be finally complete!
Distribution
Like most of the things we talked above, these days there are also many choices when it comes to distribution.
Three main video distribution channels
Your website
You want your work to be there, it’s one of the ways people find you and where your videos will fit nicely to showcase what you can do. If you’re a brand, of course people will arrive at your site and a nice video will immediatly tell them who you are and what your products and services are in a rich and engaging way.
Video Sharing Sites
Another solution is uploading your video to video sharing sites, such as Youtube or Vimeo. These sites are also very good at aiding discovery so there is a good chance someone will see your work or brand on Youtube before anywhere else (it is the 2nd largest search engine, after Google!).
Other than that, using video sharing sites means the video will be hosted for nothing reducing your overall costs.
Social Networks
Another great solution is to get your video up on a social network such as Facebook. With vasts amount of traffic and neat mechanisms to share your content Facbook offers an intersting delivary menchanism.
Of course if you really want spread use all of the above. There’s little downside and the benefits are tremendous! Services such as TubeMogul can help you upload to all the major sharing sites in just one hit
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I hope you enjoyed our round up.
If you want any help getting started then just get in touch at Woochii.com ( plug 3)
