So
metimes we're all guilty of pontificating the value of all this wonderful stuff we call online video. At the end of the day it's just easier to spread the word than to prove it. One of the main challenges for proving an idea is that you need hard data to back up your claims. And that, folks, is like gold dust these days. Data, real meaningful data, can mean all the difference to a competitive edge of a company. So you can imagine my excitement when I got my hands on some really interesting real world data around the opportunity in Interactive Video.
Its been some time since we first started seeing the emergence of Hotspotting technology. This is the ability to use Adobe Flash's core layering framework to mask on a layer of interactivity over a video stream. As a concept this is a really powerful story, and many have latched on to the task of solving the problem of doing this effectively - many of our Technology Alliance Program members are looking at this day in and day out.
But for me its always been more a technologist-lead problem then a user-lead problem. Geeks all around the place saw this layering feature underused and so started to code a solution. Unfortunately for some it was just a problem to be solved and that problem really wasn't bothering anyone. Or so I thought...
Now, thanks to our good friends at WireWAX, we have some fresh real data that is basically giving your video a voice saying: HEY YOU, tart me up with some that interactivity would ya? We can make some cash out this!
For the last 6 months WireWAX has been working with some top brands to bring interactivity to some of their videos - the results that follow are pretty outstanding:
The Campaign: The Kooks / EMI - week long in Jan 2010 - demo
Results: 60,000 views (32,000 unique) - 74, 000 clicks
Click to View Ratio: 1.23
The Campaign: Girl with the Dragon Tattoo / Momentum - 2 months (Jan - Feb 2010) - demo
Results: 74,500 views (51,000 unique) - 500,000+ clicks
Click to View Ratio: 6.71+
The Campaign: Laura Marling / EMI - 3 months ongoing (May 2010 to now) - demo
Results: 26,500 views (17,803 unique) - 55,000 clicks
Click to View Ratio: 2.07
The Campaign: Gallo Wines / Hearst Digital - 2 months (June to July 2010) - demo
Results: 2,600 avg views (avg over 6 videos) - 1,433 clicks
Click to View Ratio: 0.55
WOW is the only word that comes to mind. When you sit this side by side of a typical advertising CPM model where 2 - 4 PERCENT clickthru is acceptable, more likely deemed successful, even the lowest Click to View Ratio above of 0.55 (or 55%) is a ridiculous improvement. Let's not even start on the 671% of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo event!
But hey what about a shake of more data for you?
For WireWAX:
- The average viewer clicks 8.3 times in one viewing
- 58% were after the first 30 seconds
- 33% were between 15-30 seconds
- 6% were in the first 15 seconds
Now I'll admit these results are somewhat subjective to where in the timeline the user can actually click but still it's interesting to see that engagement goes UP the longer the video is playing. That's pretty impressive when today it's all about engagement and stickiness of the user.
No matter which way you slice the pie it's a pretty pervasive argument to bring clickable video into your monetisation strategy.
Unfortunately it's not all sugar and rainbows. There are serious challenges all the way up the video production line to create video that works well with Interactivity. Thankfully though there are people like WireWAX and their sister company WiseGuy who greatly simplify this and make the Total Cost of Deployment per video a fraction of the cost it used to be.
And you Express customers out there? Yup this will work for you as well.
Really hard to see a reason why you SHOULDN'T deploy Clickable Video...
-- Cameron Church
@cameronchurch