Video Marketers Prove ROI Better Than Text-Based Marketers [Infographic]

For many online video marketers, cost is the biggest obstacle to web video production. However, there is ample evidence to suggest that investing in web video marketing will be worth every penny.

Web video content is easier to track and measure than text-based content, according to Vidyard. Here's a look at the many metrics for video marketing you can use to prove ROI. Read the full article »

6 Conversion-Boosting Benefits of Online Videos

The popularity of online videos continues to soar while traditional television viewership is faltering. Last year, web videos accounted for more than half of all mobile data traffic, but its trendiness is not what makes internet video marketing so appealing to businesses. Including video content in your site is known to increase your conversion rate, boost your click-thru rate, and improve the perceived quality of your website.

That’s why it makes sense to include video on your site. Here are 6 ways that using video boosts conversions, with the stats to back them up. Read the full article »

Streamhub Launches Online Video Analytics Service

Streamhub recently announced that it has launched a real-time video analytics service for the web video industry. The new video tracking and reporting service will pull data from its own services in addition to YouTube and other social media sites, including Facebook and Twitter, in order to to calculate key influencing factors affecting viewer engagement. Read the full article »

Online Video Trends: Devices, Demographics, Audience Size

New research from the IAB based on a survey of individuals who watch online video content at least once a month reveals some intriguing online video marketing statistics, particularly for enterprise video marketers.

American adults prefer original digital video content to news, sports and daytime programming on television, and they like it almost as much as they do primetime TV. Read the full article »

Twitch Is the Web Video Juggernaut You Didn’t Know About

Reports broke on Sunday evening that YouTube, the uncontested leader in online video, was in talks to buy Twitch, a relatively niche streaming service, in a deal totaling more than $1 billion. The Wall Street Journal quickly amended Variety’s original report and claimed that talks between the two companies were only in the early stages, but the possible purchase would be YouTube’s most important yet. So, what is Twitch?

Twitch is a service for livestreaming video games (or more accurately, video footage of those games). Users host streams and usually offer live commentary as they play, reacting to the game in real time. This genre of online video—Let’s Play—is incredibly, and increasingly, popular. Read the full article »

How to Deliver Useful Marketing With Video Resource Microsites

Great marketing strategists bring their products to market by finding creative ways to help their universe of potential buyers solve problems faster, better, or cheaper. It's called utility marketing and it's about delivering interesting content to interested parties, instead of interrupting them in their tracks with pesky ads.

We are bombarded by brand messages and numb to advertisements. Ozgur Alaz illustrated just how difficult it is to break through the noise with this compilation of devastating stats for the traditional marketer. Few people click on ads. The vast majority doesn't even trust them. For a product to get our mindshare, it needs to earn its way.

Last year Jay Baer took utility marketing to the masses with his New York Times best-selling book, Youtility. His book explains how modern marketers should construct a process to continuously provide help and information that will attract buyers. It now seems a marketer's job resembles a training program developer crossed with a strategic communications professional. Read the full article »

TV Ad Dollars Slowly Shifting to Web Video

Increasing Portion of Broadcast and Cable Budgets Follow Younger Audience Online

Online video outlets are finally starting to chip away at television's hold on advertisers.

Several major advertisers, including MasterCard, Mondelez International and Verizon Wireless in the past year have moved a portion of the money they previously spent on television to online outlets, conscious that viewers are more frequently watching video online, ad executives say. And with online outlets in recent weeks unveiling plans to ramp up their programming, more shifts are likely, say media buyers.

Money for online video is "definitely coming out of TV," said Ben Jankowski, head of global media for MasterCard Inc., which shifted a small portion of its TV budget to online last year and will move more money this year.

Starcom MediaVest, a big ad-buying firm, said it shifted more than $500 million out of TV over the past 12 months, three quarters of which went to online outlets. The agency, which is owned by Publicis Groupe SA said it is planning a bigger shift during this year's "upfront" ad sales negotiations with major TV networks, which kicked off Monday. Read the full article »

Aol Buys Marketing Analytics Company Convertro For $101M

A day before its quarterly results, AOL, owner of TechCrunch, has announced another acquisition to beef up its ad tech operations. It is buying Convertro, a marketing optimization platform, for $101 million – $89 million in cash, $2 million in converted stock awards and a $10 million earn-out over 17 months.

AOL says that it will be integrating Convertro’s service — which lets a marketer look across different ad channels, formats, segments and so on to figure out things like which ads influenced which kinds of users and when – into AOL Platforms, covering services like Adap.tv, AdLearn Open Platform (AOP) and ONE, the company’s recently-announced programmatic effort.

The deal is an interesting one in that it points to how AOL has been gradually shifting its business not just to one based on ad revenues, but on making those revenues more high-margin and more intelligent — no surprise, since competing against the likes of Google or Facebook as a volume play with lower margins is a losing game. Read the full article »

National Geographic Launching 9 New Web Shows

National Geographic magazine is now a multi-platform content behemoth dedicated to “digital and visual first.”

On platforms like Hulu and YouTube, National Geographic videos are getting a total of 685 million views a year and its the number one media brand on Instagram with 5 million followers.

At its first NewFronts presentation on Tuesday, executive vice president and worldwide publisher Claudia Malley announced the 126-year-old National Geographic would be attempting to expand this following by launching 9 new digital shows. Read the full article »

Keys to Video Success: A Look at 6 PR Daily Video Award Finalists

The growing demand for visuals in B2B marketing is self-explanatory; videos shed light on the humanity, heart, and sincerity of a business in a way that text alone cannot. These factors are what make visual content favorable among audiences and a vital part of any marketing strategy. PR Daily’s 2013 Video Awards is recognizing the organizations that have showcased an outstanding use of videography to share their messages, and our award-winning production team, MultiVu, is a finalist in 6 different categories.

To help you uncover your organization’s hidden stories, MultiVu’s Senior Producer, Evan Horisk, gives us the inside scoop behind each of the nominated videos and the results they achieved from using visuals to engage their audiences. Read the full article »

2014 Digital NewFronts: The Mantra: Mobile, Video and Social

As we keep an eye on the Digital NewFront sessions in New York City, it immediately became clear, it’s all about mobile, video and social. Every outlet is thinking about the smartphones that have become integral and indispensable in our lives. They’re all counting on that fact as they create new content and to that end, look for more and more video. This made us wonder who’s still reading but let’s get to the rundown of Day 1. Read the full article »

New IAB Study: Digital Video as Crucial as TV Advertising by 2019

In a new Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) study released on Monday, three out of four brand marketers and advertising agency executives said they expect original digital video programming to be as important as TV programming within the next three to five years.

The study is released at the start of the Digital Content NewFronts, during which media buyers check out the programming strategies of some of the top media companies in the U.S.

Additionally, sixty-five percent of the 297 ad-buying executives polled for the study, which tracks advertiser attitudes towards the evolving digital video medium,  anticipate that they will spend more on digital video advertising this year than they did in 2013. Read the full article »

Video Marketing Strategies: The Hard and Soft Call-to-Action

The marketing process for creating a video will identify many important factors. For example it is essential to decide the overall aim of the video, to identify the key messages and to understand who we are communicating with. For most video creators this will all be standard practice. The depth of analysis and the implementation methods may vary, but as long as this is all happening then the video stands a good chance of being watched in its entirety.

The call-to-action stage (which is normally near the end of the video) is where we hope to influence the viewers onward journey, providing them with a compelling reason to take the suggested action. But strangely, this all important stage is often 'hard wired'. In 99% of videos it will be to contact the company, place an order online or some other similar definite action. Read the full article »

Yahoo Might Be Building An Online Video Platform, But You Won't Be Able To Use It

Yahoo's reportedly planning to launch a web video platform in the next few months, and it intends to fill it with familiar faces and professionally made clips. How? By poaching some of YouTube's biggest stars, at least according to Recode. The website's sources say Mayer and her crew are trying to win over popular YouTubers with the scent of money. Yahoo's apparently offering them (presumably) large guaranteed rates or bigger ad revenues for their videos, in an attempt to benefit from YouTube users' increasing discontent about how little they're earning on the platform. The company even promised them extensive marketing and the chance to promote their clips on Yahoo's well-trafficked home page. Read the full article »

Video Advertising Goes Global With French Power Merger

Two major players in online video advertising, Ebuzzing and Teads, are merging to create a new company with plans to list on the NASDAQ in 2015. Both companies are French, and have separately been developing "outstream" video advertising – allowing the distribution of video advertising outside of traditional video editorial. Ebuzzing has been working with advertisers since 2007, while Teads has been working with online publishers since 2011. Read the full article »

Online Video Ads Cost 38 Percent More Than Cable TV Ads

SQAD, based in Tarrytown, N.Y., bills itself as "the largest independent source in the U.S. for TV, radio and digital costs and analysis."

By comparing four media bases--display, cable TV, network TV and in-stream video--SQAD determined "the average CPM for an in-stream online video advertisement in 2013 was $23.03, or 38 percent higher than the average A18-49 CPM for cable TV." The research determined that network TV was the most expensive advertising medium. Read the full article »

Microsoft to Launch New Video Ad Service to Rival YouTube in the UK

Microsoft is prepping for a launch of its new video advertising service in the UK to rival Google’s YouTube, which commands a huge share in the segmen Read the full article »

Netflix-Traffic Feud Leads to Video Slowdown

Netflix streaming video content is taking longer for users to download due to a decrease in prime-time speeds. On Verizon's FIOS network, Netflix's prime-time speeds saw a decrease of over 14 percent in January 2014 compared to previous months. As more viewers stream video content, the infrastructure that supports streaming video is being strained. Most US broadband companies need to upgrade their infrastructure to support long-form streaming video content. Read the full article »

FreeWheel Co-Founder On Growth And Video Ad Alliances With Amazon, AOL

As a video company that provides tools and technologies to web publishers to help create and sell video ads, FreeWheel has entered into a number of new partnerships with companies including AOL and Amazon. A core component to FreeWheel's products is a Ratings Based Planning tool. Read the full article »

Amazon Lays Foundation for Giant Video Advertising Business

Amazon has entered a deal with FreeWheel. The video company is slated to provided technology that will enable Amazon to create an online video advertising business. FreeWheel previously worked with Amazon to serve ads in a number of TV shows available for viewing on the Kindle Fire device. Read the full article »