Tagged: blogmark

Coull launch with TradeDoubler and Route One

Great to read the press from iTWire about our exciting new links with Trade Doubler and Route One:

“…Route One has also incorporated tagged video product promotion through its relationship with Coull, which links commission back on all tagged products in a video to TradeDoubler’s PLT framework. Route One is the first retailer to go live on the TD Network with Coull.com, and the first to link video tags back to PLT, providing a highly customizable video channel for enhanced online revenue.”

http://www.itwire.com/press-release/43041-route-one-goes-live-with-tradedoubler-product-level-tracking

Get your free trial

Is the digital divide increasing?

The digital divide is something that, since the first availability of computers to society, has been steadily increasing. Though it refers to the variation in access and availability to forms of ICT’s, it also refers to the capabilities, proficiency and skill on ICT’s. Basically children/young people in UK, and I world presume most of the western world, are introduced to ICT and new technologies from a young age, at school, at home etc, as a compulsory part of their education, therefore it becomes almost second nature; working Facebook or surfing the net, and equally using the Internet to watch online video (in whatever format that maybe).

As ReelSEO have pointed out the 18-34 demographic are rapidly moving away from;

“standard broadcast broadcast television in favour of online and time-shift video”.                                                                          http://www.reelseo.com/young-adults-thumb-nose-broadcast-television-choose-digital/

Therefore the amount of time viewing video advertisements, be it intentionally or not so intially, is greatly increased between this demographic in particular. For many involved within online advertising it is definitely something to take into consideration when creating online advertisements. Furthermore, as mentioned in previous blog ‘Why to opt for video advertising, and Coull’, this demographic is far more likely to take notice of an advert if 1. video is used, as it is far more eye catching, and 2. if the video is interactive, as a plain video is simply the same as what television ads offer, and during TV ads the channel is normally changed, whereas interactive video adverts will not only attract attention but allow the user to be involved too.

This is talk of increasing use of online video not to say in anyway that television will become obsolete or unused in the coming years, there are simply just many more alternatives, i.e ipad, smartphones, computers etc. Television will always have its place among these, and therefore so will television ads, it will perhaps just vary in the extent to which it is used for viewing, and advertising. Mark Robertson of ReelSEO probably puts this in the best way:

“5-10 years from now, we wont be discussing TV vs. online vs. mobile.  Rather, it will simply be “the screen” that consumers use to consume the moving picture.  Video is video, it is powerful, and it will remain so, regardless of the platform for delivery, because video is the most compelling way to tell a story.”                          http://www.reelseo.com/young-adults-thumb-nose-broadcast-television-choose-digital/

Google TV and interactive video

“Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said in an interview late Thursday that a new killer ad format—which he dubbed “interactive video ads”—is coming. Such ads, which could appear anywhere on a Web page not just inside a video, would allow users to interact with the ads in new and more engaging ways, such as asking users to click on a video to learn more about a product. He said he has encouraged Google’s ad teams to think along those lines, but didn’t comment on any specific plans.”

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052748704075604575357180763918638-lMyQjAxMTAwMDEwNjExNDYyWj.html#ixzz0wlyxBvKs

<!–89ac6ab072784f278ed277527dc51d27–>

With the introduction of Google television I definitely feel that they are using YouTube as a testing ground for interactive video advertisements, and therefore depending upon the response received could be used to a larger extent on Google TV. With statistics from other sites showing that an interactive video is far more successful in creating sales, I think that it is only common sense to say that it will also do well on Google’s video products too.

Reelseo interviewed Jimmy Healey, Senior Manager of E-Commerce for Onlineshoes.com, one of the first companies to actively use online video to advertise their products in 2006. He considers how video has evolved, and how it has adapted how they use it in their advertising, to begin with it was primarily used to increase info on the products on sale on the website, to now actively using interactive video as a major advertising resource.

“I think the greatest insights we’ve gained is, one, just doing it – taking the willingness to make the business decision to actually invest in it.” Says Jimmy. “We didn’t invest heavily at first, but we did do a lot of testing with it. And with testing we found that we made a strong business case for investing considerably more into it.”

http://www.reelseo.com/video-ecommerce-onlineshoes

Though interactive video is still quite new it is definitely set to boom in the online advertising market. As Mr Healey points out, it was perhaps a risk plunging money into this relatively untapped resource, though as shown in the comScore statistics it is definitely going to play off for any advertisers that do so. I think therefore somewhat like what Mr Healey did with Onlineshoes.com using video as a test resource, Google are also doing the same with their interactive video on YouTube, of which I definitely feel will be increasingly effective. What is now especially interesting is to see what Google choose to do with Google TV and online interactive video.

comScore New July 2010 Video Ad Rankings

Despite the recession last year affected online video advertising budgets, from all quarterly statistics it is more than apparent that online video advertising has grown hugely from the financial fall of last year.

“eMarketer estimates that online video advertising will grow 48 percent in 2010, accelerating from 39 percent growth last year.”
http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/20/online-video-advertising-frenzy/

Though only video advertising is still relatively in its infancy, only fulling taking off in 2008 when gained a massive 127 percent hyper-growth, advertisers are still plunging into the field in a big way.  Test budgets are being distributed to online video advertising in far larger quantities than would normally be used for the majority of other advertising commitments.

““I have never seen test budgets that start at half a million dollars,” says Glickman. Usually ad agencies start testing with one tenth as much.”
http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/20/online-video-advertising-frenzy/

However it has to be said that such a gamble on the part of the advertiser is definitely paying off, comScore released the July 2010 online video rankings last week. They showed the percentage of people in the US watching online video in July this year, which was a staggering amount of nearly 3.6 billion! Yes billion not million, unlike July last year which was no where near this number. All in all for July video ads reached 44.7 per cent of the total US population, and this is only set to rise over the next few month. Great news for all video performance networks such as Coull, especially due to the fact that Coull offers such an innovative player for advertisers and publishers to use on their video ads. No other company in the UK offers what the Coull Video Performance Network does, and at this time with the obvious demand for online video advertisement the Coull Affiliator is obviously the way forward in making video advertisements interactive.

Why to opt for video advertising, and Coull

With vast amounts of internet advertising online at present, trying to sell products via said advertising has become increasingly difficult. Mainly due to the fact that most people find internet ads irritating, perhaps because many offer little interaction. However, with video advertising it offers the user something to watch and interact with, rather than simply a static image on the screen.

“One internet based ad agency posted 28 videos that generated 80,000 viewers in one month and subsequently after a couple of months, without any alterations made to those videos, number of audience increased to 3,000,000.”
http://www.pr-interactive.com/web-design-resources/2010/08/why-online-advertising-agency-opts-for-video-advertising/

Video advertising can also be used to increase the publishers SEO:

“Now, advantage of video ads are further used through manipulation of keywords. Keywords containing the term ‘running’ returns web pages containing videos and eliminates inclusion of sites with written articles, blogs. In this way, SEO are pushing pages with video files to high rankings and enhancing the visibility. Links of video files can be easily posted and used as link building online marketing stratergy.”
http://www.pr-interactive.com/web-design-resources/2010/08/why-online-advertising-agency-opts-for-video-advertising/

However, even with video advertising there is still the problem that once a user has click on the video, or has actively searched for the site through search engines, they must still hunt for the product that caught their attention through the advertisers web page, often this puts people of bothering. This can rapidly effect the amounts of money that can be made from online video advertising, particularly if publishers are on a CPA plan. Whereas Coull differs, and potentially revolutionizes video advertising, is in the way that they offer the ability to click on the item in the advertisement that has captured the users attention, and then will be taken to the exact product. Which in turn increases the CPA income that can be made. Therefore the type of innovative interactive video that Coull offers is potentially the future of nt only online video advertising but online advertising in general.

More people watching television shows online

Since the introduction of YouTube and general online video there has been a large audience for online video. However with the ability for a large amount of websites being able to support full length programmes and movies, there has been a dramatic increase in the amount of people opting to watch videos online, with particular regards to television programmes (on a player such as BBC iPlayer) and full length movies.

“A growing portion of the video audience is watching TV shows and movies online, reflecting a shift in the content mix from short user-generated clips to full-length professional content…
Technology companies are also seizing an opportunity to market devices that take advantage of the consumer’s desire to merge the online and TV viewing experiences. These trends are creating an environment in which online video will continue to thrive well into the future.”
http://www.emarketer.com/Report.aspx?code=emarketer_2000684

The large increase in online video viewers should have a dramatic impact on online video advertising, as Reelseo have recognised, online video has become a global phenomenon. Advertisers must considers this as a massive opportunity to embrace online video advertising, in particular interactive video which has statistically been shown to have a higher impression rate that standard online video advertising.

“Online video even topped mobile marketing and SEO in regards to priority in those budgets.
Considering the fact that some 177 million Americans watch some form of video online each month and that they saw some 4.3 billion video ads in June, is it at all surprising that budgets are on the rise for all manner of online video, ads or not?” http://www.reelseo.com/online-video-advertising-anymore/

What does iVdopia launch of V5 (the first HTML5 video platform) mean for online video advertising?

What does  iVdopia launch of V5 (the first HTML5 video platform) mean for online video advertising? Well it is claimed that the V5 will allow advertisers to use a single video advert on a large majority of media applications, i.e Smartphones such as the iPhone. Which had previously required different adverts, due to there ‘inability’ to support Adobe flash player. It is described by iVdopia as a

““create once, run anywhere” tool, the V5 enables advertisers to overcome the operating system restrictions within the fragmented mobile device market and deliver the most compelling form of video advertising to the rapidly growing number of users across Smartphones.”

http://cirnews.wordpress.com/2010/07/28/ivdopia-launches-html5-video-ad-platform/

The possibilities that V5 offers for advertisers, publishers, affiliates, etc, could be quite exciting, in terms of a larger target demographic for their online video advertisements. Particularly as such a large majority of people own iPhones, iPads, and other such portable devices.

“With the launch of V5, we have extended video advertising to every screen to take advantage of the rapidly growing audience numbers on non-Flash devices.” http://cirnews.wordpress.com/2010/07/28/ivdopia-launches-html5-video-ad-platform/

For Coull video performance network the V5 could enable the ability for the innovative interactive advertisements that Coull creates for numerous large advertisers, and publishers, to be viewed on a wider scale. Especially as it has been found by Google research that people tend to respond fair more to creative interactive adverts, which is what Coull enables online video adverts to be http://research.google.com/pubs/pub36496.html.

However V5 has also been receiving its fair share of negative publicity in regards to its actual capabilities. Therefore there is perhaps an uncertainty about the pending release of the V5 for world wide Internet usage. However if it can eventually do all of the things that iVdopia has promised then it could, potentially, extend online video advertisement audiences massively.