Interactive video platform Coull http://www.coull.com welcomes Hitesh Bhatt from MSN UK as its new commercial director.

Bhatt, who joined MSN UK three years ago as a sales manager was more recently acting head of agency sales.  His latest role involved managing a team of nine sales people, negotiating annual contracts with key agency groups such as Aegis, Omnicom and Publicis and was involved in the strategic direction and running of the MSN UK sales team.

He is an advertising and media industry veteran with more than 15 years of experience and joins to lead the Coull sales team.  Previous roles for Bhatt have seen him work for EMAP, MTV UK and Yahoo!  He will be responsible for expanding agency relationships, optimising business opportunities and growing revenue from the Coull Engage product.

Hitesh brings invaluable experience to Coull.  His appointment demonstrates Coull’s commitment to building closer relationships with agencies, advertisers and publishers looking to embrace interactive video.  “With Hitesh, we will fully understand our clients’ business needs and work in collaboration to develop effective video advertising products and services” says Irfon Watkins, CEO at Coull.

Hitesh Bhatt, commercial director at Coull comments, “It’s an incredibly exciting time for technology providers, agencies and brands as the online video advertising market begins to demonstrate its effectiveness in an extremely competitive arena.  Coull is delivering innovative, brand-driven, measurable campaigns that allow online video to truly engage with audiences in a non-intrusive way. I look forward to the opportunity to demonstrate how far the medium is moving along and how brands can maximise the effectiveness of online video campaigns using the Coull platform.”

This is the fourth senior appointment to the Coull head count with Claudia Giovannoni, marketing director joining early March 2008 heading up the marketing department.  Other new members of the Coull team include the board of directors appointments including Gillian Kent, former MSN UK managing director and CEO of Propertyfinder.com and Creative Ventures Group founder Spyro Korsanos also joined the board as non-executive director.

Coull received series B financing earlier in the year from Finance South West Growth Fund (managed by YFM Group), Creative Ventures Group and private investors.  The funding has allowed Coull to release the ‘Coull Engage’ product to assist brands maximise the return on investment (ROI) of their online campaigns, which are currently being used by Agent Provocateur, Boots and Renault.

Irfon Watkins, CEO at online video company Coull and chairman of the IAB Video Council discusses how brands can maximise the effectiveness of video campaigns.

Our emotions play an incredibly important role when it comes to our decision making processes; particularly when those decisions involve purchases.  At one point or another, as consumers we have all made a purchase that was driven by the emotion attached to the product and/or the brand.  As brands, agencies and marketers, we try to tap into this emotion, and drive an action – whether it be sales or awareness led.

If we were to define brand engagement it would be, “The culmination of what your consumers think, feel and do in relation to your brand,” or to put it simpler, “how plugged in” they are to our marketing messages.  Brand engagement is the attachment they have to your brand (both consciously and unconsciously) and the action they take based on that perception.

Since we became a digitally charged society, it’s become ever more important (and thusly, more challenging) to connect and resonate with our existing and potential customers and depending on the product and/or market, there will inevitably be different driving motivating factors, such as a sense of fun and style, or reliability and roots etc.  Traditional advertising and marketing campaigns, such as television, billboards and radio will always have their place, however unlike the internet, they don’t provide the means for consumers to ‘plug in’ instantaneously. 

With something as intangible as a thought or a feeling we need to qualify it by marrying it with an action – and this is where many stumble.  There is a widely held perception that measuring how digital activity contributes to customer engagement is difficult, but with the amount of tools at a marketer’s disposal today, it is now easier to measure an online campaign than ever before (such as web analytics, social reputation software or reports from individual services).   At Coull we have been measuring the effectiveness of such activity for several years and the benefits of doing so are obvious brands understand how to enrich their messaging.

Rich media is one such way that technology providers using to drive consumer and brand engagement online.  The beauty of an online campaign is that it gives you the unique opportunity to view interaction levels as the campaign un-folds in real-time.  This in turn gives marketers the ability to address any changes that can be implemented to drive brand engagement whilst the campaign is still ongoing.

For FMCG in particular, where cost is lower and competition fierce, having the brand / campaign resonate with the target audience is absolutely crucial. Digital marketing agencies have been trying to find ways of increasing FMCG involvement in a variety of ways, some examples being social media initiatives and new online advertising formats that employ rich media Flash experience or interactive videos.

There remains the idea that brands can ‘exploit’ a medium, we’ve all seen the articles and heard the phrases brandied about.  But exploitation is a dirty word, and brands, agencies and marketers alike should be thinking about engagement, interaction and awareness.  Brand engagement is not always about waving the brand or product in the consumers faces, with the expectation that if they see it often enough they will act and think in the way we want them too.

We (Coull) have managed interactive video campaigns for brands such as Boots and Renault - both of whom showed above average levels of user engagement.  With the Boots campaign, over 30% of users interacted with the products in the video advert, and it also drove five times the average play rate than similar, non-interactive videos.

Forrester estimates that US online video advertising alone will be worth in excess of $7.1 billion USD by 2012 which represents a 72% increase whilst interactive marketing as a whole (of which online video is a huge component) will more than triple to reach $61 billion by 2012.  Forrester also predicts that budgets for interactive marketing will grow from 8 per cent of all ad spend to a very significant 18 per cent. 

These figures are very encouraging, and we can only presume that we will see similar growth in the UK.  Consumers remain advertising sensitive, and whilst “traditional” online advertising (such as banners, skyscrapers etc.,) will always have their place, interactive marketing, particularly video, will continue to have a more important role to play in how well our brands resonate with our consumers.

Click here to read the comment on Mad.co.uk website.

Online video is certainly one of the hot areas for growth both this year and heading into 2009, and your Special on the subject addressed many of the key areas that we at Coull are observing (NMA 22.05.08).

You say that brands are relying heavily on repurposing existing TV commercials online and, as an interactive video platform, we see a lot of this. As video production can require a significant budget, it makes sense that marketers feel they could (or should) use the same creative for online.

However, the ability to bring qualified responses following a call to action is significantly higher with interactive videos because they provide the viewer with the means to learn more about a particular product, service or brand. This creates a lean-in experience rather than just the lean-back one typical of TV ads.

From Irfon Watkins, CEO, Coull  

Click here to read the comment on the NMA website.

Coull has been around since 1998 and making videos interactive since 1999. A long time before anyone could have foreseen the current growth in online video content.

Consciously choosing not to promote user generated content, clients of Coull consist of Media Agencies and rights holders and publishers of professional content. “We see our position as offering publishers and content owners something different and I think that’s been successful for us.” Stated Irfon Watkins, CEO of Coull in an interview with AdMarkTech.

With in-house developed technology Coull gives their clients a method for simplifying video production and adding user interaction. Taking care of all the technical elements of the process, clients are left to focus their budget not on technology, but on the important issues of creative design and marketing. Using the Coull technology platform to add interaction to videos takes approximately five minutes per video once clients become familiar with the platform.

Consisting of a team of 16 people based in Bristol, England, Coull has spent the best part of the last 10 years building the in-depth technology. With the lack of broadband, it has only been the past 18 months that they have really been in a position to benefit from the technology that has no real competition in the current market place.

Their client base consists of clients such as MindShare who, in turn, are utilizing the Coull technology platform to service international clients such as Unilever. “We’ve been working with other media agencies like MediaCom and Carat on brands such as Renault and Alfa Romeo. We also work with MySpace, Fox, MSN, Yahoo, Bebo and many other publishers and media agencies. We don’t tend to work directly with the brands themselves. We focus our sales activity on the agencies and publishers.”

The revenue model can work in one of two ways and all revenue is generated as a result of published videos. Coull host all the video content and use 3rd party content delivery networks such as Limelight or Akami to deliver the videos.

“The whole philosophy of Coull, from an ad perspective, is to make the platform open and allow the advertising client to work with existing systems that they already have. Using MindShare as an example, Mindshare would upload a video to our dashboard; bearing in mind we’ll take a video in any file format. They would then make the video interactive themselves. It’s a simple process to do with no need to involve creative or technical knowledge. Any junior within the account team can make the video interactive using the Coull technology. Selecting the player is the next step. Mindshare used this technology on a Unilever product called ‘Sure for Girls’ which is a deodorant. They branded the player ‘Sure for Girls’ and then our dashboard generated a tag. The tag conforms and is served through existing ad property systems like DoubleClick or Atlas. Additionally it is also format compatible with publisher sites such as Bebo. MindShare use our platform to make their videos interactive, split server tag, traffic that tag to their existing systems and publish them on partner sites. Our format is approved across Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Fox and MySpace.”

With relatively little competition in the video analytic space, Coull is gaining huge traction in this area of service.

“One of the big issues about the online video space is if the objective of the online video ad is to get you from that ad to another site as quickly as possible, then why spend a lot of money making a 30 second video clip if it’s designed for you to navigate away? Using our format drives engagement with the video. Coull technology allows a viewer to click on objects within the video and find out a little bit more about what they’ve clicked on before choosing to exit to go onto another site. We’re measuring everything in terms of what objects are clicked on and every bit of user interactivity once they’ve clicked to play the video. This is what we class as engagement.”

Additionally, using the Coull technology, videos can be shared in multiple ways. Using a url, email or embed code to drop into MySpace, blog or the user’s choice of Social Network, all the advertiser’s branding stays perfectly in tact, therefore benefiting the advertiser by all method of distribution.

But what does the future hold in store for Coull?

“We will continue to grow our business in the online video advertising space and also move very aggressively into the social networking space, allowing anybody to upload and make videos interactive and publish. Then we’ll connect it to the revenue and advertising model. What you’ll see a year from now is an interactive video version of salesforce.com. A site which is fully transactional where you can upload a video, publish it and link it to contextual advertising models and networks and share revenues that are generated from published videos.”

Having just signed a deal with JWT, Coull are looking to extend their current relationships with marketing agencies and enter the US market by the end of this year.

Click here to  see the article on AdMarkTech.Com.

I enjoyed your article on “Why brand engagement matters”, but I found it strange to read about perceived difficulty in measuring how online activity  contributes to customer engagement.

The difficulty  in measuring online campaigns can be corrected by providing brands and advertisers the appropriate bench-mark measurement indexes.

With the amount of tools at at a marketer’s disposal, it is now easier than ever to measure an online campaign. Tools, such as web analytics, social reputation software or reports from  individual services, are readily available - albeit at a cost. We possess more accessible and accurate data to crunch when we’ve decided what metrics and method to adopt in measuring activity.

Rich media in one way technology providers are assessing new ways to measure consumer and brand engagement online. Focus group have their place but an online campaign gives you the unique opportunity to view interaction levels as the campaign unfolds real time. This enables marketers to make changes to drive brand engagement while the campaign is still ongoing.

Irfon Watkins

CEO

Coull

Brands are slowly getting to grips with online video advertising, but there’s still much to learn about what content and formats work best, finds Nicola Smith.

Earlier this year, over 70% of respondents to a survey by Burst Media of more than 2,500 people said they watched online video content, with 33% citing advertising as the most popular content to view.
Online video presents a vast opportunity for advertisers. As Helen Bradshaw, national media manager at Peugeot, says: “We can’t afford not to use it; it clearly works.” But working out what works best in a fast-changing environment dictated by fickle and demanding consumers is an ongoing battle for brands.

As Sky has found, incorporating an interactive element into online video advertising is increasingly important. “People want a degree of control over what they’re doing - YouTube has trained them to expect that,” says director of online and partner marketing Scott Gallacher.

Sky has just created some bespoke ad content for Gladiators based on this principle, in the form of an online video game. “The video was specifically shot for the ad and allows users to virtually fight one of the gladiators online in an MPU,” says Gallacher. “It allows us to marry the richness of video with interactivity.”

Renault has promoted its Mégane and Laguna models via online video advertising this year and also sees interactivity as an essential ingredient. It recently worked with Lycos and media agency Carat to create a video ad where users could click on hotspots to see more information about aspects of the cars.

“We saw a very high view-to-interaction rate,” says David Isherwood, Renault’s manager of digital and interactive campaigns. “Click-through was lower than we’d expect but, impressively, nearly half of those who did click went on to satisfy the call to action of the ad. The results suggest that click-through rates will suffer using this format but that it attracts a solid level of interaction.”

The fact that the automotive sector doesn’t rely on impulse purchasing, instead investing in a lengthy sales process with its customers, is one reason Bradshaw believes the industry is less adventurous than other sectors in its online video forays. But it is learning. Peugeot has recently partnered with film and TV clip site BlinkBox, which Bradshaw calls “engaging” and “innovative”, but she reco gnises that “being on there with something dull is worse than not being on there at all. You have to be creative, but it’s always a test, a leap of faith.”

You have to be prepared to learn the hard way, she adds. “We’ve created a couple of online video games in the past that people just haven’t reacted well to. We learned that we need to make them more engaging, more quirky and more interactive.”

Enticing users to interact with online video ads is a gradual process as they’re educated about what to expect, but Boots is already seeing encouraging results. It recently worked with video technology specialist Coull and web portal Lycos to convert a standard 30-second TV ad into an interactive unit that let users get involved. Every object in the video was interactive so users could find out m ore about the product by clicking.

“The results were very surprising,” says Fiona Smith, the agency head at Lycos Europe who developed the campaign. A standard click-to-play MPU achieved a click rate of 1.2%, with 29.3% of those clicking actually interacting with the unit. “This interaction rate is unbelievable, bearing in mind this ad unit is in its infancy and users don’t fully understand what it has to offer. You can imagine th e interaction rates within 6 to 12 months when this unit has become a media norm.”

Poor transfer

The growing demand for interactivity in online video ads may cause certain problems for brands that rely heavily on repurposing TV footage. To date, companies have been able to make it work, as with Audi’s recent work with agency GT to repurpose infomercials originally created for its Audi Channel and run them as a series of direct-response ads on motoring sites.

“We cut the videos down from 60 seconds to 15 seconds and they sat in user-initiated expandable ad formats,” says Chris Hawken, head of brand communications at Audi. “The ads were designed to be direct response, so we experienced really strong click-through rates but low dwell times. Many people clicked within the first five seconds. In this instance repurposed content was very effective.”

The film and TV industry is also well-positioned to repurpose TV footage. As Heath Tyldesley, director of interactive marketing at Paramount Pictures International, says, it will use TV footage in most of its mainstream online video advertising because the short-form content of between 5 and 30 seconds suits the medium. “Given the fact that we have broadcast-quality viewing opportunities, a piece of TV media is relevant online as well,” Tyldesley says. “We have had good success with that and I imagine we’ll continue to work that way.”

But Lycos’s Smith is conscious that growing demands for interactivity may make repurposing more difficult. “Very few TV ads are built in a way that makes interaction possible,” she says. “We’re normally given a TV commercial, which isn’t always suitable for online. A lot of brands want to jump on the online video bandwagon regardless of whether the brand, or more importantly the TV ad, is suited to the online environment.”

Renault’s Isherwood also acknowledges the issue. “So far our TV ads have leant themselves well to adaptation for online, but we recognise that, depending on the nature of the ad and the need to edit a small section of it, this won’t always be possible,” he says.

Unit trust

Learning about online video ad formats is arguably easier and cheaper as these can easily be tested and changed mid-campaign. Brands are still playing with the options, but MPUs are widely deemed to be a winner due to their simplicity. “It’s an effective format that integrates well into entertainment and movie pages and tends to showcase our content with immediacy,” says Tyldesley. “It doesn’t ne cessarily have broadcast-quality impact but is certainly very high quality.”

Sky’s Gallacher is also a fan. “MPUs are one of the most amenable formats for video content,” he says. “We’ve experimented with other formats, such as skyscrapers, but MPUs tend to be the easiest and deliver the best performance.”

But there’s still a process of trial and error when it comes to identifying what sort of MPU will appeal most to consumers. The Boots campaign was a typical learning process. While the user-initiated MPU reaped impressive interaction results, the auto-play MPU failed to capture consumers’ imagination. “It didn’t perform well and we stopped the unit within a few days,” says Smith.

Boots’ experience suggests that consumers increasingly don’t like to be passive viewers. It’s one of the key reasons behind the explosion of video-sharing sites, where users can control the content. Sky has used more than 20 such sites to promote the US Open Golf and the Twenty20 cricket test, seeding humorous footage of golfer Ernie Els being bowled out and cricketer Kevin Pietersen chipping out of a bunker.

Gallacher says Sky will continue to use the platform for content that already has a level of brand awareness. “We’ve tended to use the sites for short snippets of information that people already know about. So far we’ve only measured it on views, but in future we’ll link back to the site and monitor the traffic.”

Its trials have also taught Sky another lesson. “There’s a lot of work that goes into tagging and making content searchable. The difference between success and failure is making sure people can find content easily,” says Gallacher.

Last year YouTube introduced Flash overlay advertising, based on testing that found overlays to be more successful than pre-rolls. It supports some brands’ scepticism about the long-term future of pre-rolls. Tyldesley says, “I hear reports that pre-rolls are tolerated at the moment but I wonder how that will be managed in the battle between user-initiated and forced content.” Paramount is certain ly exploring opportunities on user-initiated content sites, recently working with Mediaedge:cia to create a branded channel on YouTube to support the cinema release of comedy Strange Wilderness.

Richard Stanton, digital account manager at media agency Universal McCann, is also unsure about the future of pre-rolls. “People are reasonably receptive to pre- and post-roll ads, but on most sites you can’t skip through pre-rolls so I think we’ll start to see consumers’ opinions changing.”

He also believes that the increase in advertisers wanting to run pre-roll ads has grown disproportionately to the increase in quality video content. “Video search engines like Blinkx, which we work with, are helping by aggregating video content, but this is likely to be a significant challenge for us in the near future as the novelty of pre-roll wears off.”

Surely the willingness of consumers to have their online viewing experience interrupted depends on how targeted and creative the content is and the nature of the brand? For example, Gallacher isn’t a fan of pre-roll, mainly because it can be seen to devalue Sky’s core product. “We have a lot of content that people are passionate about and want to watch, so we try to use it as a centrepiece rather than tagging it onto other content. We tried pre- and post-roll before and it didn’t work as well as our other stuff,” he says.

Conversely, Peugeot enjoyed success with its online pre-rolls to support its sponsorship of the Rugby World Cup last year. “We ran 10-second pre-rolls on a range of sites including ITV.com, automotive sites and a range of portals,” says Bradshaw. “We had strong content that was also humorous [a bunch of rugby fans driving around France singing Kenny Rogers’ ‘The Gambler’], which helps. I always t hink pre-roll is effective because it’s less intrusive than an overlay and better than an MPU because users are requesting a piece of content and you have their attention immediately before.” The ads reaped over three times the expected results.

Terms of engagement

Yet results and measurement are another key challenge facing brands in this embryonic industry. As companies strive to achieve customer engagement, perhaps the biggest obstacle lies in the lack of any definitive measurement of what this actually means.

Bradshaw says that engagement and its measurement are heavily dependent on the type of campaign. “If you do a branding campaign, measuring leads isn’t a relevant metric, so you’d use impressions, but they don’t really tell you anything. If you have a view rate on a piece of video advertising and a click-through rate that shows people are engaging with the creative enough to play a game or watch a clip, then they’re interested in your brand, which means they’re engaged.”

Lycos’s Smith believes it’s about continuing to make your offering compelling after users have clicked. “With the Boots campaign we found that once the user engaged they interacted with a few products,” she says. “For me it’s about moving users to the next level of interaction, taking them further into the brand once they have clicked, which is easier said than done.”

Gallacher takes this one step further. “Engagement is someone offering to have an ongoing relationship with the brand off the back of an ad. We’ve seen that with our Facebook Gladiators group, which has 200-odd members. People saying ‘I’m a fan of this’ is a true measurement of engagement.”

For onlookers this is an exciting and intriguing time; for brands fighting the online video ad wars at the frontline, though, while battles are certainly being won, the war, it seems, is ongoing.

Quick Facts

1. Online ad spend in the UK in 2007 came in over the £2.8bn mark and was up 38% up on 2006
2. Total internet display advertising spend saw a 31% year-on-year increase in 2007, while the core formats - banners, skyscrapers and embedded rich media including video - grew by 45% to £592m.
3. Spend on embedded formats has doubled during the past two years to account for 79% of total display (all figures from IAB/PricewaterhouseCoopers, April 2008).

Click here to see the article on the NMA web site.

This study delivers clear evidence of just how powerful and effective the TV and online combination is. TV and online are perfect partners and the study urges advertisers to recognise the greater impact  they can have if they use them together.

TV benefits from the way online offers a means of expressing and exploring the desires and motivation TV creates. Online usage is not displacing TV viewing and it is time to celebrate the complementarity of these two most powerful digital media.

The study also reveals that “tech-savvy” population regularly go online while they are watching TV, enabling instant online response to TV ads.

Click here to read the full article.

Irfon Watkins, CEO at online video company Coull and chairman of the IAB Video Council discusses how brands can monetise video in a competitive and social media driven environment.

If implemented and managed well, interactive marketing can be the most effective (and cost effective) way of not just raising brand awareness, but also resonating with your audience, creating brand loyalty and driving sales. Video is almost certainly a key area that social networks, publishers, brand owners and advertisers are looking to increase awareness. We are likely to see this trend steadily increase throughout the rest of 2008 and into 2009.

Forrester estimates that US online video advertising alone will be worth in excess of $7.1 billion USD by 2012 which represents a 72 per cent increase whilst interactive marketing as a whole (of which online video is a huge component) will more than triple to reach $61 billion by 2012.  Forrester also predicts that budgets for interactive marketing will grow from 8 per cent of all ad spend to a very significant 18 per cent.  It’s safe to assume that similar growth will be replicated here in the UK.

Moreover, as online video grows in popularity among consumers, advertisers are also seeking new and creative ways to reach this key audience in a non-intrusive, fully interactive manner. New rich media ad formats continue to be developed that are integrated within a streaming video, do not interrupt the viewing experience and match to the most relevant content in non-intrusive ways.

As consumers flocked to user generated content (UGC) sites such as YouTube and MetaCafe, the most obvious conclusion was to place “pre-roll” in the videos – and this seemed to offer a solution for UGC sites who were struggling to return a profit to their investors.  Now, “pre-roll blindness” is hot on the agenda where users are ‘seeing’ the advertisements, but they are not ‘seeing’ them, certainly not connecting with them on a deeper level.  Pre-roll is often seen as disruptive and intrusive and the challenge for both publishers and advertisers is creating compelling videos to communicate that will be on-brand.

We are seeing traditional production companies snapping up the rights to online video content, such as ShineReveille recently taking on MySpaceTV content to distribute to traditional media outlets such as television and DVD; the reverse being broadcasters such as The BBC and Channel 4 distributing their content through platforms like Bebo and YouTube.

Brands are producing more videos, hosting these in UGC sites predominantly and employing a seeding strategy to increase pick-up, interactivity and longevity of the content.  Video represents more opportunities to communicate marketing messages in creative ways; so we are begin to see this realised on a scale that has taken many by surprise.  We are starting to experience video come into its own finally, although it is still somewhat finding its feet in some quarters.

Social networking sites are monetising their video content through contextual advertising, sponsorship and placement – all of which are passive rather than interactive.  As with all things ‘Web2.0’ a proposition, be it a video, a text ad and/or a widget, needs to be ‘value-adding’ in order to capture imagination and more importantly, retain interest, follow through a call to action and invite recipients to share it with others

Video (until now) has not been particularly interactive, though companies like Coull offer publishers, social networks, agencies and brands the ability to create something special in using video in order to maximise their potential.  New platforms and ad formats have enabled the fusion of consumer created advertising and non-intrusive content with active participation by viewers. This creates one of the most compelling and comprehensive models in the online advertising industry. 

Bebo’s success of Kate Modern (which since it launched in August 2007 has received over 27 million views) is now followed by Sofia’s Diary where key brands are sponsoring the series and paving new ways to connect with users. Brand engagement and monetising opportunities can also be reinforced and married to traditional advertising sales.  Product sponsorship can be married to online video advertising placements that are non-intrusive and reinforce the value of the product.

Consumer-inspired commercial opportunities are a real opportunity to capture monetising opportunities. Online video opportunities allow users to interact with the brand in a more interesting way, access more information about that product and emotionally connect with brands.  Perhaps the ‘Rolls Royce’ of them all is when your target audience becomes your brand ambassador and takes the time out to create an ode to your brand, product and or service - whether this is a mash-up (a video re-mix) or original content. 

When brands embrace ‘consumer power’, involving them in successful ads that are driven by the evolution of video and this translated well in digital environments; you can see how the medium holds the potential to inspire others to capture similar interest.

Click here to read the article on the Mad.co.uk web site.

There are several ways in which social networks can monetise on content, including advertising (product placement, behaviour targeting and contextual), social commerce and, perhaps in the future, mobile.

New advertising formats such as interactive video or rich media formats allow higher engagement rates and do not interrupt the user experience, thereby bringing user engagement to a different level and providing brand engagement and better monetisation opportunities.

Video is a key area that social networks, publishers, brand owners and advertisers are looking to increase awareness of. Traditional production companies are snapping up the rights to online video content. Shine Reveille  recently took on MySpace TV content to distribute to  traditional media outlets such as television and DVD, while broadcasters such as the BBC and Channel 4 are distributing their content through platforms like Bebo.

Brands are producing more videos, hosting  these on their sites and using seeding strategies to increase pick-up, interactivity and longevity of the content. Video represents a unique opportunity to communicate marketing messages.

Brands are monetising their video content  through contextual advertising, sponsorship and placement - all of which are not engaging and interactive. And by placing users at the centre of the online video, new platforms and ad format have enabled the fusion of consumer created advertising and non-intrusive but active, participation by viewers.

The success Bebo has had with Kate Modern is now followed by Sofia’s Diary where key brands are sponsoring the series. Product sponsorship can also be married  to online video advertising placements that are non-intrusive and reinforce the value of the product.

Consumer-inspired  commercial opportunities are a real opportunity to capture monetising opportunities. Online video opportunities allow users to interact with the brand, access more information about the product and emotionally connect with brands.

Perhaps the Rolls-Royce of that is when your target audience becomes your brand ambassador and takes the time to create an ode to your brand, product or service. When brands embrace consumer power and involve them in successful ads that are driven by the evolution of video and how that is translated in digital environments, you can see how the medium holds the potential to inspire others to capture similar interest.

Irfon Watkins, CEO

Coull, Bristol

Click here to see the article on Mad.co.uk web site.

Lycos Network Europe, the online advertising sales network, is using a new advertising format, which allows users to interact with content in online advertisements like never before. The format, pioneered by Lycos with Coull, interactive video advertising tools provider, and media agency Carat, is the first of its kind in the industry The new formats enable users to interact with video content while a film plays.

This exciting format, delivered on the Coull Engage platform, means advertisers can now showcase video content online while, by clicking on product features, users can get more information as details are shown in the unit.

Renault is the first automotive brand to trial the format across Lycos Network Europe and sales network partner site About.com.

Users will be able to interact with Renault’s latest advert, learning more about the standards set by the Laguna in quality, comfort and driving pleasure.

Renault has also staged a complete takeover of the Lycos site, using a “push-down homepage takeover” format. The format enables users to roll-over a banner at the top of a page, which scrolls down, pushing the site content down the screen, rather than covering it. The new Laguna TV advert then plays in the space created by the push-down.

Sam Kayum, Sales Managing Director for Lycos UK, said: “These new formats point towards the future of online advertising, encouraging users to interact directly with content - key in today’s cluttered media environment”.

David Isherwood, E-Marketing Manager for Renault UK, said: “Renault has a long history of incorporating innovation into its product development, so it’s only natural we wanted to be the first car manufacturer to pilot this new technology.

“As a continually forward-thinking company, interactive marketing is an area we are increasingly developing an interest in, and its pioneering technology combined with customer experience fit perfectly with New Laguna”.

Lycos has recently signed up a similar campaign by Nivea, which will use the new format in coming weeks.

Click here to to see the article on Marketingservicestalk web site.