With the rise of ubiquitous broadband, inexpensive HD cameras, HD computer monitors and customer acceptance, it is time for every organization to develop a video strategy.
According to the recent Forrester Research Report “The Forrester Wave™: US Online Video Platforms, Q4 2009 “, It is predicted that by 2013 the number of video streams will double. Today, 71% of the US online audience watches video on the Internet.
Update: 84.4% of U.S. Internet users watched at least one online video in October and the average person watched 10.8 hours of video
YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world with Google Sites surpassing 10 Billion Video Views in August. TEN BILLION VIDEO VIEWS!
Update: Comscore announces nearly 28B Videos Viewed in October!
YouTube just a few weeks ago announced that full 1080P HD video uploads will be available on the service shortly. Think about that, a full HD 1080P video, hosted for free on YouTube. This points to convergence between your home’s HDTV and online video is about to reach a major inflection point.
Other notable findings from August 2009 include:
The rise of social media has created an additional channel for direct to consumer video syndication. Often videos are “re-tweeted” on Twitter and “Liked” on Facebook providing for additional viral spread for online videos across the social networks. Facebook has quickly become the 3rd largest video distribution platform and offers HD 720P video hosting for free. Many smart marketers are creating video centric Facebook Pages tied to direct response offers, contests and other direct-to-consumer communications that drive sales and brand loyalty.
“Time spent viewing video on social networking sites increased 98 percent year-over-year, from 503.8 million minutes in October 2008 to 999.4 million minutes in October 2009, according to Nielsen. In conjunction, the number of online video streams viewed on social networking and blog sites increased 45 percent year-over-year, from 240.8 million streams in October 2008 to 349.5 million in October 2009.”
New mobile devices like the iPhone and 3G data services expand the video reach to mobile devices. A properly formatted short video loaded to an iPhone is a great networking tool to better describe “what you do” when you meet new contacts at events. I tested a fashion show video on a mobile device a years ago and both men and women in my test group loved to watch the videos on the mobile device. Mobile screen resolutions and fast graphics processing units (GPU’s) on mobile devices are raplidly turning smart phones into portable 1080P VCRs that may connect directly to your TV.
Intel has developed HD WiFi HDMI chips that are being used to create a wireless video mesh network in the home and office. This means that in the near future most TVs will be native HD WiFi enabled, thus eliminating the need to hard-wire your TV sets to connect to HD over broadband services such a Hulu and YouTube HD channels. Bit Torrents for video files already surpass audio files and companies like Boxee provide a “new way to enjoy entertainment on your TV and PC”.
The Nielsen Company reported on September 15, 2009 that overall online video year-over-year, unique viewers, total streams, streams per viewer and time per viewer were up, led by a 41 percent growth in total streams.
Video streaming services such as uStream.tv and LiveStream offer both free and premium offerings. Video streaming is a super method to reach new customers anywhere in the world where there is a broadband connection. Many smart companies are extending the reach for their business events my merging live streaming with social media communications to serve as a back channel. Both uStream and Live Stream integrate Twitter and Facebook into their interfaces creating a back-channel for two way communication. Thus, video has changed from a one-way communication medium into a two-way communication medium when packaged with social media chat.
The main problem we face today with streaming is proper bandwidth at event facilities such as hotels. Often they charge an outrageous rate for a dedicated broadband connection. Livestream has innovated by creating a streaming backpack module that has a number of wireless modems that connect to a “brain” that fits in a small backpack. They featured this technology at New York Fashion Week. New compression techniques and the rise of broadband technology will eliminate the current bottle necks for live streaming. In fact, mobile phones today can live stream using Qik.
Often I will live stream events using uStream and use the system’s recording feature to save the video to on-demand. Their API also connects to YouTube, thus you may stream video live and then save to both uStream and YouTube.
All major search engines from Google to Bing feature video search and also highlight videos in their main indexes. This further compounds the value of video and creates additional touch points to reach audiences off of your main website.
Companies like Ooyala founded by ex-Google employees, have developed and end-to-end offering that has advanced monetization and analytics tools. These include new video capabilities such as clickable video regions tied to metadata that will add a new paradigm to ecommerce shopping online. TubeMogul provides a video syndication system for consumer focused video syndication sites like YouTube and Vimeo, complete with analytics.
Ooyala, Brightcove and WISTA among others including YouTube now provide various data points to measure video consumption, embeds and even geo-targeting data by region. On the high-end, Autonomy’s Virage technology eliminates the traditionally manual and costly operations to process and analyze information by performing these functions automatically and in real-time. Currently, most video platforms have manual entry for adding meta-data, a time consuming but required process.
Video Analytics allow you to measure and optimize both video production and video syndication. We already know that short 1-3min videos work best because people have short attention spans. But this is quickly changing as people now watch longer form video if the content is engaging and distributed at night after dinner when people are in the comfort of their own homes.
Video is a perfect medium for training and education for internal employees, partners and clients. Complex information is often better communicated by mixing video with motion graphics than with text. Seattle’s F5 Networks has created a YouTube and partner channel called “Dev Central” http://devcentral.f5.com/ that features both video and audio podcasts. F5’s Technical Marketing Manager, Peter Silva, has created an entire community around F5 products and services by leveraging new media and collaboration. Thus, there are as many benefits to create videos for internal communications as there are for direct to consumer video strategies.
Major brands such as Red Bull have embraced the notion of private label media and basically create their own internet TV channels tied to branded events as a way to reach their customers around the globe. Companies today have the power to become the media as consumers are comfortable with brands becoming a reliable source of information and entertainment.
In fact, Red Bull creates so much private label media video that they sell it to other marketers who need footage for commercials and online media projects. Just look at the integration of video into the Red Bull USA website and you will see that video and rich media are pervasive and penetrate across sports, music and entertainment.
Red Bull even pushes video further in their “augmented reality” powered the Red Bull Bulletin Magazine. Articles with augmented reality markers are held up to your computer’s web camera. Then the augmented reality system maps videos to areas on the magazine. The magazine is available as a printable PDF, thus Red Bull leverages broadband to deliver both a print magazine and HD web videos.
Private label media is also a smart play for non-consumer brands with less than visually compelling topics.
Booz and Company just released a smart new white paper entitled “The Promise of Private label Media” which is worth reading if you are charged with your companies sales and marketing strategy.
I predict that we will see the rise in corporate video and audio production studios for mid-size companies because the price points for gear and ROI are now in the sweet spot. I created a short list of gear needed to create quality HD Video studio. The costs range from $5K to $10K depending on how many camera angels you want. This is a very small price to pay when you look at a company’s overall marketing budget, training and internal communications budget.
What gear and staff is required for a corporate video production studio?
Internal video production is a time consuming process that is quickly being streamlined using new technology. For example, Matrox has a new video compression card that will take a 5min HD video rendering time from 2+ hours down to 5 minutes. The current missing link is inexpensive HD Video Mixers. Currently HD video mixers that switch between two cameras and add logos and titles cost around $10K. There are other “gap” solutions such as running two Black Magic Intensity cards in a Mac Pro Tower but these are currently no optimal.
A smart way to start to develop your video strategy is to use an outsourced video production company to help you produce content. Set up a video shoot day and record a series of short format web videos to maximized your ROI.
The above technology, consumer uptake and statistics plainly reveal that all companies need a video strategy. It is time to build your video strategy and use rapid iterations to learn what works and how to best engage your audience. If you do not make the move today then you increase your risk profile every day as your competitors move quickly a head using one of the most powerful communications mediums of all time.
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Copyright 2008-2010 Tim Reha