Video is taking over the marketing world, both for B2B and B2C audiences. Cisco estimates that by the year 2019, video will make up 80 to 90 percent of all consumer Internet traffic—up from 64 percent in 2014. That’s a staggering statistic.

Given that video has gotten increasingly accessible, shareable and inexpensive to produce in recent years, this is good news for marketers. Gone are the days of expensive, painstakingly produced videos hosted on the corporate website. The rise of Blab, Meerkat, Vine, Periscope and other disruptive platforms make it possible to produce and release impactful videos without overwhelming your budget.

In fact, thanks to the self-publishing revolution, there seems to be an inverse relationship between how professional and polished your videos appear to be and the relatability and authenticity of your brand.

Still, for marketers who have long relied on traditional web and email campaigns, whitepapers, ebooks, and the like, it can be a struggle to justify the costs of video—even relatively low-budget efforts. After all, as much as authenticity matters, your brand still has a minimum standard of professionalism to meet.

Next time you’re called upon to defend your video marketing spend, start by mentioning that Cisco statistic, then trot out the following five metrics.

Metric #1: The Results of Your Brand Audit

If you’re not performing a recurring brand audit—at least annually or semi-annually—start now. It’s important to check in regularly with current and potential customers to ask them basic questions like:

• Have you heard of My Amazing Brand?
• What product or service does My Amazing Brand provide?
• What are the leading brands in [your market here]?
• Check all the places you have seen My Amazing Brand: online ads, social, video, etc.

Over time, you can track trends in overall brand recognition, and see if increased video activity results in more people checking that video box, more people saying they’re familiar with your brand, more people understanding what it is that you do.

Unlike in the past, video marketing today is easy to track and measure. Every view of every video is tracked, and every view translates into brand lift. Maybe the 49,000 views you got on your latest video didn’t immediately impact sales, but they’re an indication of rising brand recognition, which in turn supports demand gen efforts.

Metric #2: Web Traffic from Video CTAs

Even if your purpose for producing a video is pure branding, embed clickable CTAs whenever possible, to drive viewers back to your website. You can do this through a graphic at the end of the video—perhaps combined with a voiceover that repeats the CTA—a YouTube ad overlay, pop-ups, and other options.

Video-generated traffic is easy to measure and map back to the original source, whether your video is posted on YouTube or featured on an industry publication. If your video efforts are attracting enough quality leads to your website, you’ll have no trouble defending that portion of your marketing budget.

Metric #3: Customized Customer Conversions

Some videos are created solely for top-of-the-funnel awareness. Others may be hoping to directly drive a purchase. Always know what your objective is before you create the video. Then define and measure it in terms of conversions, with the understanding that “conversion” can mean different things from campaign to campaign. It doesn’t always have to be a direct “buy now” CTA. Getting customers to fill out a form for a whitepaper, ebook, or other free asset could count as a conversion too.

The more you can build deliberate goals and practical measurements into your efforts, the easier it will be to get those who control the purse strings on board with your video spend.

Metric #4: Direct Demographic Targeting

Whether your objective for your video is revenue, conversions, brand awareness, or a combination of the above, analyze your available distribution methods in order to target specific demographics and buying patterns.

Because video can have such a strong emotional appeal, from heart-warming to humorous, it can seem to lack gravitas in the eyes of numbers-driven executives. But being able to show the CFO (or whomever is approving your budget) that your video distribution strategy is built upon deliberate demographic goals will lend an air of seriousness to your approach, especially in combination with other metrics like web traffic and customer conversion rate.

Metric #5: Return on Marketing Investment

This is a metric that’s relevant some of the time, but not always. When the goal for a video campaign is direct conversions, then return on marketing investment (ROMI) matters, and you should track it and share your good results whenever possible.

But branding efforts are different; there’s rarely a measurable financial return. Unless you can spend a fortune on primary research, how can you prove that Dove’s latest viral video campaign is truly what drove last quarter’s increase in body-soap sales? You can’t, unless you have a Unilever-sized budget for surveys and analysis. Some executives understand that marketers need a portion of the marketing budget to be exempt from strict ROMI analysis—because awareness campaigns that are not tied to direct revenue are essential for the growth of the brand. But for other executives, it’s a message you’ll have to impart again and again. Or, if they want everything to be tied to ROMI, tell them all you’ll need is a vastly increased budget for surveys and analysis.

Measure What Can Be Measured

It takes deliberate effort to combat the dangers of “metric overreach.” With so many numbers and measurements available to marketers, it’s easy to fall into the trap of trying to tie dollars to every little thing we do—and unintentionally train executives to view our efforts the same way.  As long as we’re proactively monitoring what can be monitored and proving the effectiveness of our efforts where it’s possible to do so, we can hopefully earn a little bit of leeway in the budget for a bit of experimentation.

While metrics certainly do matter, marketers must also have some room to experiment with pure brand awareness, untried distribution channels, and innovative new platforms—or risk being left in the dust.

(c)iStock/martin-dm

Ad blocking, at its core is a reaction against negative advertising experiences. As the debate around its use continues to rage across the industry, Brightcove recently conducted research to examine consumers’ evolving relationship with online video advertising, asking 4,000 viewers across the UK, France and Germany about their experiences, feelings and preferences.

One of the major findings of the report was that a huge 92% of consumers identified at least one improvement that could be made to today’s online video advertising experience – from the quality of the ad itself through to its frequency and relevance.

So how can publishers go about solving the riddle of ‘the perfect online video ad’ in order to fight back against ad blockers? And what would the end-result of these improvements look like?

As part of our research, we delivered a range of video advertising scenarios to consumers – varying from the length and number of ads, to the device and social platform they are viewed on – and asked them to provide feedback on their preferences.

Optimal length and frequency varies

Two thirds of consumers stated that the length of the content they want to view effects whether they are willing to watch an ad in order to get it – with tolerances differing depending on the content type.

They are more willing, for example, to watch an ad in front of a movie (48%), or TV episode (46%) than a video from a vlogger or social media star (11%).

In terms of duration, around three-quarters of respondents felt that any online video ad shown on a smartphone or tablet should be no longer than 30 seconds – interestingly, this figure rose slightly to 45 seconds if the viewing is taking place on a smart TV or laptop.

However,  getting your ad length correct is counterproductive if you then show it too frequently.

Here, perhaps optimistically, while over half (53%) of the surveyed consumers said that they would be willing to watch two or more ads during a 30 minute episode of a show on a smart TV, six in ten (60%) said that the maximum number for viewing on a smartphone would be one.

Social platforms also play a part

Linked perhaps to the length of the source content, respondents named YouTube as the social media platform that they would be most willing to watch an ad in front of (63%), while Pinterest (42%) and Snapchat (16%) are the platforms on which they are the least willing to do so.

Of those who use at least one of the main social media platforms we listed, almost two in five (37%) believe that online video ads on Snapchat should not exceed 10 seconds, with only 28% saying the same for YouTube and 26% for Twitter.

Meanwhile few respondents reportedly believe that online video ads should exceed 30 seconds on Pinterest (28%) and Instagram (25%).

The importance of interactivity

Consumers also fed back that they are more likely to tolerate ads if they are interactive. In fact, nearly 58% felt this way, with this number rising to 70% amongst 18-24 year olds. 

One fifth of those who have downloaded an ad-blocker also pointed to ads’ lack of interactivity as a reason for doing so.

The bigger picture

While the majority of the responses in our research erred on the low side, both in terms of the length and number of ads consumers would be willing to tolerate per device or platform – and are likely unachievable from a revenue perspective – they should at least be a starting point for publishers.

In order to ensure consumers continue to accept the ad-supported content model, publishers will need to strike a deal with their audiences – to balance their ideal with something that is more realistic commercially.

After all, one in two consumers also told us that they weren’t willing to pay for any form of online video content.

Changing up the approach

The good news is that we’re already seeing movement in the way in which publishers approach the online ad experience.

One such example is the increasing number of publishers turning to programmatic video advertising – a method of advertising which has proven efficacy at targeting the right message to the right consumer.

Not only does this address the issue of irrelevancy, but, unlike the techniques of old where ads were bought in bulk and shared in large untargeted volume, programmatic ads are targeted much more narrowly (i.e. by age, gender, geography, interest and behaviour).

Similarly, the evolution of the HTML5 VPAID 2.0 standards has been a clear response by the industry to the need for more interactivity.

Launched by the IAB, the relatively new video format establishes a common interface between video players and ad units, and – unlike its predecessor Flash – allows great cross-platform interactive ad experiences.

If publishers are able to continue taking steps like these to get the balance right, then with video consumption showing no sign of slowing (58% of consumers admitting that the amount of online video content they watch across their devices has increased in the last twelve months), the future opportunity could be massive.

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ExchangeWire Research’s weekly roundup brings you up-to-date research findings from around the world, with additional insight provided by Rebecca Muir, head of research and analysis, ExchangeWire. In this week’s edition: Booming digital ad spend; Millennials and males lead the way with online video; and Manufacturing leading the way in IoT.

Booming digital ad spend

Digital advertising received USD$17.6bn (£14.4bn) in investment from US companies in Q3 2016, according to the IAB’s and PwC’s latest Internet Advertising Revenue announcement.

This is the highest third quarter for digital advertising on record, unsurprising given the relative nascence of the digital ad industry, the growing sophistication of ad products and services provided by ad tech firms and platforms, and the ongoing emergence of new players in the space.

Mobile will be the fastest-growing advertising channel and buoy spending on each of the digital formats. US mobile ad revenue will rise by a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26.5% through to 2020. Digital video ad spending is rising faster than search and display. US digital video ad revenue will rise by a CAGR of 21.9% through 2020. Mobile search will overtake desktop search ad revenue by 2019. Mobile search ad spend will rise by a 25.2% CAGR, while desktop search ad revenue will decline during the same period.

Millennials males lead the way with online video  

Millennials and males are leading the trend toward online video viewing, according to the fourth semi-annual State of Online Video report from Limelight Networks.

More than three-quarters of respondents watch online video every week, though there are significant differences in video adoption by age and gender. While just over half of all consumers watch more than two hours of online video per week, 68% of Millennials do so. There is also a significant disparity by gender, with more than 58% of men watching more than two hours per week, compared to less than 45% of women.

Respondents ranked television shows as the top type of content they watch online, followed closely by original content/YouTube, and movies. Millennials prefer to watch TV shows and movies online, while people over 60 primarily watch original content/YouTube and news.

High prices are the most important factor influencing whether consumers will cut the cord with cable, or pay-TV providers. More than four-in-ten (41%) cite price increases as the primary reason they would abandon their subscription. However, 24% of respondents say they would cut the cord if they could directly subscribe to the channels they want online.

Manufacturing leading the way in IoT

The manufacturing sector is expected to significantly increase investment in the Internet of Things (IoT) between 2016-2023, according to market research firm Research Nester. This is largely to boost the efficiency of automated processes in manufacturing industries, ensuring a more streamlined production cycle.

The IoT market is expected to reach USD$724.2bn (£590.8bn) by 2023, registering a CAGR of 13.2% up until this date. Rising adoption of smart devices and growing awareness towards IoT among urban populations are fostering the growth.

APAC is expected to dominate the global IoT market for the next seven years. This is being driven by urbanisation and the availability of low-cost data services. Rising tech savvy populations across the region and more government initiatives to adopt advanced technology in emerging nations, such as India and China, are also helping.

There are a growing number of companies trying to help online-video creators get pre-cleared music for their content.

London startup Hookd is the latest to break cover. It’s touting “the world’s first pre-cleared, commercial music licensing solution for online video creators”.

Its plan: “By working with major and independent labels and publishers alike, Hookd will provide a simple, mobile friendly, one-stop shop for you to search and license your favourite music directly into your video, wherever you want it to be broadcast online.”

The emphasis is very much on tracks from “real artists” rather than production libraries, with the company promising that its licences are valid for Facebook videos as well as YouTube – a good thing given Facebook’s development of a Content ID-style copyright protection system.

Hookd is also offering a service to creators that will strip uncleared music out of their existing videos and replace it with licensed tracks from its catalogue “without affecting the spoken word in the video at all”. Hookd’s founder and CEO is Paul Sampson, formerly the SVP of global business development at CueSongs.

What’s less clear is how the company can promise that the commercial songs it licenses won’t be automatically claimed through Content ID and similar systems.

LawNewz.com, founded by ABC News Chief Legal anchor Dan Abrams, has become the must read and watch site for the latest big legal stories and live criminal trials of the day. We are now looking to expand our small team of ambitious, energetic, legal experts and journalists who have been editing, analyzing and covering the most talked about stories –from the legal issues in the 2016 campaign to the highest profile trials.

We are now looking for 2 on-air host/writers to be part of our online video network, which will be offering viewers top notch coverage and legal analysis of the day’s top trials  A thorough understanding of our legal system, experience with, or covering trials and a passion for criminal news is a must. Duties would also include writing articles and providing legal analysis for our website, LawNewz.com. If you think you have what it takes and want to impact the news cycle, then we want to talk to you!

•Legal background a must

•Strong on-air performance with ability to ad-lib and provide legal analysis for hours on end

•Familiarity with WordPress a plus

•A jack-of-all-trades type attitude

•A serious passion for the world of law and crime, including an understanding of the judicial system

•Be able to thrive under pressure, and excel when stress levels are at their highest. Experience working in fast-paced, breaking news environment is a plus

Flexibility to work nights and/or weekends is a plus as well.  Pay will start low and will be more than disappointing for any practicing lawyers but the experience will be unparalleled and there is an opportunity to increase pay quickly. Availability to work out of our New York headquarters is required.

Send your resume and cover letter to jobs@lawnewz.com

Job Type: Full-time

Have a tip we should know? tips@lawnewz.com

Normally, I might take a look back at 16 of the most read, shared, and talked-about Tubular Insights posts of 2016. But, this wasn’t a normal year. And I’m not even talking about global news, important issues, and sporting events like the US election, the Brexit referendum, climate change, fake news, the Rio Olympics, or the World Series. Yes, all of these were big stories that caught the attention of video marketers as well as the rest of the world. But, I’m talking about unexpected news and developments in the online video and internet marketing industries like the sudden death of Vine, the bewildering birth of Pokémon GO, the unforeseen delays in the adoption of virtual reality, and the unanticipated popularity of live video streaming, the surprising implosion of Yahoo! Screen (née Yahoo! Video), and the startling explosion of Samsung Galaxy Note smartphones. But what about trends and insights about video marketing in 2017?

Hoping to discover the way forward by looking backwards when the market is moving sideways would be like driving a car down a dark and twisting road by looking in the rear-view mirror and hoping we don’t end up in a ditch. So, what do we need when the times, they are a changin’?

Current Trends in Video Marketing

For starters, we need critical data. Then, we need a deeper analysis of the top trends in the digital video marketing business. Fortunately, we got a bit of both last week – just in time for all of us to examine and evaluate before we’re expected to deliver strategic insights and tactical advice in the coming year.

Let’s begin with the unpredicted data dump by YouTube. Ironically, you won’t find the latest YouTube stats on the YouTube Statistics page. Instead, you’ll discover this critical data about who’s tuning into YouTube and when, where, and what they’re watching has just been published on Think with Google.

And what do we know now that we didn’t know before? Well, most of us imagine that the “average YouTube user” is a millennial. Why? Because, in the old days, the average YouTube users were millennials. But, who knew that YouTube watch time among older audiences is growing? From 2015 to 2016, time spent on YouTube more than doubled among adults 18 and older. Let’s consider that the baseline for growth among YouTube viewers. Now, hold on to your hat. From 2015 to 2016, time spent on YouTube almost tripled among adults 55 and older. That right, those viewers are Baby Boomers.

Gen X is also spending more time watching YouTube. From 2015 to 2016, time spent on YouTube grew 40% faster among adults 35 and older than among adults overall. And according to comScore, YouTube reaches 95% of adults 35 and older in a month. But from 2015 to 2016, time spent on YouTube grew 80% faster among adults 55 and older than among adults overall. And according to comScore, YouTube reaches 95% of adults 55 and older in a month. And, I’ll bet that you know a HiPPO (highest paid person in the office) who thinks that the average YouTube user is a young, single male. Why? Because that’s the outdated stereotype of gamers who live in their parents’ basements.

Now, I don’t want you to lose your job, so just blink if you agree. But, then check out reality: More than 50% of YouTube’s audience is female. And YouTube users are more likely to have a college degree compared to the general population. And YouTube users are more likely to have kids than non-users. Where are the MythBusters now that we need them?

I also suspect that you also know someone on your team or at your ad agency who has been advocating for dayparting. You know who I’m talking about. And I’ll bet that he or she assumes that people watch YouTube on their mobile devices during the day and « on the go. » Well, the majority of watch time on YouTube is mobile. In fact, on mobile alone, in an average week, YouTube reaches more adults 18 and older during prime time than any cable network does. So, you-know-who has got that right. But, it also turns out that YouTube viewing behavior on mobile is more like TV than I had assumed: The world watches at home, during prime time, and on horizontally oriented screens. I know, I said something entirely different during a content marketing webinar just last week. But, I hadn’t read this new data yet. Here’s what I know now: A Google/Ipsos Connect survey in July 2016 found:

• Three in four adults report watching YouTube at home on their mobile devices;
• Home mobile YouTube viewing occurs primarily during prime time;
• Seven in 10 people default to horizontal viewing when watching videos on their phones;
• YouTube users are twice as likely to pay close attention while watching YouTube compared to TV users while watching TV.

In addition, the same Google/Ipsos Connect survey found:

• Almost four times as many people prefer watching video on YouTube as on social platforms that are less video-centric;
• The top two reasons viewers watch YouTube are “to relax” and “to feel entertained”;
• The top four content categories watched by YouTube users are comedy, music, entertainment/pop culture, and “how to”;
• 68% of YouTube users watched YouTube to help make a purchase decision.

Now, I could dismiss this new data because half of it doesn’t conform to my pre-conceived assumptions. But that would be wrong. And video marketers who want to continue being successful in 2017 need to unlearn about a third what they’ve learned over the last 12 months because things change that fast in the digital video marketing business.

The Latest Platform Changes and New Features

Do you want an idea of just quickly the online video industry changes? Here are just some of the news stories from the past few weeks:

• Facebook launched Live 360 video, which will be available to more Pages via the Live API in coming months, and will roll out more broadly for all Pages and Profiles in 2017.
• Snap Inc. announced Groups, a new way to communicate with up to 16 friends on Snapchat. Chats sent to a Group are deleted by default after 24 hours. Snaps sent to a Group can be opened and replayed just once by each recipient.
• Instagram announced that its community has grown to more than 600 million Instagrammers. That’s up from 500 million six months ago. And they now have more ways to share than ever before with Instagram Stories, live video and disappearing videos in Direct.
• YouTube launched a new custom URL system that works independently from Google+. Kudos to YouTube for making this positive change for the millions of channels that have custom URLs today, as well as those who will request one in the future.

Multiply these developments by 52 weeks a year, and you can get a sense of why things are moving sideways almost as fast as they’re moving forward. But wait, there’s more!

Video Marketing in 2017

Last week, the folks at [email protected], a global, cross-discipline team of social experts from across all of Ogilvy Mather’s businesses, published their yearly report, Key Digital Trends for 2017, on SlideShare. And slides 45 to 56 present their strategic insights about “a video first world.” What’s that? Well, it’s a real “thing.”

Back in 2014, Facebook made video a priority (i.e. the social network made News Feed changes and algorithm updates that rewarded video uploaded directly to what has now become a video platform). Then suddenly, out of the blue that summer: a huge charitable event known as the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge just happened to go viral! Other platforms saw the opportunity and stepped up with their own video offerings. Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat – if you can download it, you can watch/create/share video on it!

Then, in July 2016, Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook, says on a quarterly earnings call, “We see a world that is video-first with video at the heart of all our apps and services.” Zuckerberg’s quote is interesting by way of its structure. There are two key parts here “video-first” and ‘”all our apps and services.” Video first means video will get the priority. All our apps and services means all of Facebook’s platforms: Facebook itself, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Oculus.

As part of its mission to be video-first, Facebook started going after one of the few remaining heartlands that Twitter has left: LIVE content. The best and easiest way to do that was with the social network’s live video streaming product, Facebook Live. The social network is throwing a ton of money at this – both from an innovation perspective as well as a media angle. The folks at [email protected] say a Facebook spokesperson told them that he or she hadn’t seen “a company-wide pivot like this” since the social network decided it wanted to be “mobile first.”  (Note: More than 75% of Facebook’s ad revenue now comes from mobile). In short: Facebook Live is a big bet from Facebook and it’s throwing everything it has at it to make it successful.

The team at [email protected] also say, “Let’s not forget about YouTube. After a year in the wilderness, licking its wounds and working out what the hell happened with Facebook video, YouTube is pushing back. YouTube is now courting brands with its effectiveness and crowing loudly about what does (and does not) constitute a “view.” Perhaps this also explains YouTube’s data dump last week. In any event, the social experts from across all of Ogilvy Mather’s businesses say that YouTube “is the one to watch – this one is barely getting started.” They also posed a rhetorical question: “Just what kind of video are we talking about?” Landscape? Portrait? Square? Circular? Panoramic? 360? Virtual? Augmented? And they answer their own question by saying, “We are witnessing the collapse of traditional video formats.”

How Video Marketers Need to Prepare

So, how do video marketers prepare for this brave, new video-first world? The social experts say, “The main consumer-facing digital platforms are shifting. For the content-snacking generation, video is now starter, main, and dessert. To not have any kind of video support and/or strategy that lives with and/or complements your existing communications would be a fool’s errand. It’s time to learn to love video.”

The folks at [email protected] also have some tactical advice about preparing for a video first world:

• Got a television commercial (TVC)? Get/cut/use all of the footage!
• Shooting a TVC? Get someone there who is shooting with a smartphone!
• Can’t afford a TVC? Shoot something yourself!
• Get clever/useful with video apps that can give you the creative edge that you need!
• Publish to Facebook? Use Square Video!
• Got a ton of cash? Do something awesome in VR!
• Got a small amount of cash? Look into 360 video!

This rising tide should lift all boats – at least all the boats in the digital video marketing business that aren’t anchored to the way things have always been done in the past.

Are you concerned that the HiPPO who we talked about earlier will need a second opinion before seizing the opportunities that a video first world offers to your organization? See, I’ve been in those meetings, too. Well, check out the Cisco VNI forecast, which says that nearly a million minutes of video content will cross the network every second by 2020. Globally, IP video traffic will be 82% of all consumer Internet traffic by 2020, up from 70% in 2015. Global IP video traffic will grow threefold from 2015 to 2020, a CAGR of 26%. And globally, virtual reality traffic will increase 61-fold between 2015 and 2020, a CAGR of 127%. Hope you all had a good chance to think about that over the holidays. Now get ready for the ride of your life in 2017.