Tagged: video performance

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

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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

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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.

AdMarkTech.Com: Taking Interactive Videos To New Levels Of Cool At Coull

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.

Interactivity in video formats key driver in campaign performance

Yesterday’s MediaPost Video Insider’s post “Video Advertising: A Performance Medium by Any Measure” focuses on the importance of performance in online video advertising. Video advertising performance is driven by three key factors: campaign execution, traffic quality and technology.

Producing  “creative creatives” drives campaign execution according to MediaPost.  “Advertiser-generated content represents the ultimate branding solution, wiping out the line between advertising and programming. Consumers love it, and advertisers who leverage the ‘lean-forward’ experience by adding interactivity or calls to action are clearly getting higher performance than from repurposed 30-second television commercials.“

“Advertisers should leverage the interactivity video formats can add to their creative. While television offers established ways to monitor performance, the measurement capabilities provided in the online world are even greater.”

We are on the right track then!