KITCHENER, Ontario–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Vidyard,
the video platform for business, today announced the winners of the
2016 Video Marketing Awards (VMAs), recognizing innovative marketing and
sales leaders at Viewtopia, the company’s annual video marketing summit.
The VMAs recognize organizations that are using video content and
analytics in exceptional ways to expand their audience, generate demand
and empower their sales teams to close more business.

“Video has become the medium of choice for modern marketers to engage,
entertain and educate their audiences,” said Vidyard CEO and co-founder
Michael Litt. “They are creating incredible high-quality content,
measuring its performance and using detailed analytics to turn viewers
into customers and revenue for their organizations. And the results are
coming whether the organizations are large or small, whether the videos
highly produced or done on a budget. These winners prove the power of
video to connect with audiences and improve the bottom line.”

Below are the winners and finalists in each VMA category:

Video Marketing Campaign of the Year
Winner: Lenovo
with agency partner Traction
Finalists: Philips, Elemica

Lenovo’s marketing efforts had primarily consisted of tactics at the
bottom of the funnel. With the launch of the Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga 12
Ultrabook, an all-in-one laptop and tablet, the company hoped to broaden
its exposure to a larger audience than they had currently been marketing
to and to re-engage dormant customers. They also wanted to educate users
while making them feel entertained. The campaign played out in the form
of five videos, including “Know
your Chad” and “See
Jane Run at Top Speed,” and a series of tongue-in-cheek illustrated
“Survival Guides” for IT viewers to enjoy and commiserate over.

Results: Lenovo saw an immediate lift in video completion rates
from 70% to 96% — a clear signal that the campaign was working.
Engagement soared with a 400% lift over previous benchmarks. The videos
were the most shared and the most viewed assets Lenovo commercial
marketing had ever produced. Lenovo surpassed its target of 17,000 new
leads by 50% with over 25,000 and blew away its goal of 34,000
reactivated leads by engaging over 91,000 contacts. They increased the
number of marketing qualified leads by 250% and improved lead quality by
200%.

Best Personalized Video Campaign
Winner: Reltio
Finalists:
Veracode, Influitive

Reltio wanted a new way to build awareness and drive interest it its
flagship product with a top-of-funnel awareness campaign. The company
launched a personalized
video campaign targeting 10,000 leads to build awareness and
identify their most engaged prospects.

Results: Nearly 30% of all individuals who opened the email
clicked through to watch the video. That marked a 10X increase in
click-through rates compared to their average marketing campaign. Reltio
is now launching a second personalized video campaign as part of its
account-based marketing effort.

Best Use of Video for Sales Prospecting or ABM
Winner: MongoDB
Finalists:
Act-On, P2 Energy Solutions

MongoDB wanted to use more customer testimonials to show the impact that
MongoDB could have on their organizations. With a small marketing team
and small budget, MongoDB picked a few
customers
to do high-quality testimonials.
The end goal was to provide powerful assets for the sales team to better
engage key prospects and move them through the buying journey faster.

Results: The sales team was ecstatic, and the videos become one
of their top three calls to action in outbound outreach efforts to new
prospects. The videos also served as tools for new sales reps to learn
how customers use MongoDB.

Best Online Video Presence for a B2B Brand
Winner:
SolarWinds
Finalists: Applied Predictive Technologies,
Prophix

Video is a key component of the SolarWinds marketing strategy, helping
the company create a unique, relatable voice that stands out for IT
professionals. The video team is a big contributor to brand, social,
product and demand gen creative campaign strategy and leverages a
multi-channel distribution strategy to reach its audiences across the
web. Its videos have been featured on Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, Reddit
and other media sites. SolarWinds’ customers are IT professionals, and
the company uses a snarky, geeky tone to connect with its audience. Top
examples include “Happy
IT Professionals Day” “Free
Tool Brack-IT-ology”, “Meet
the Head Geeks,” and their newly released parodies of hit show
Stranger Things called “Stranger
IT.”

Results: The SolarWinds content has helped the business reach a
wide array of new audiences and boost engagement with its current
customers and prospects. Its YouTube channel features nearly 1,000
videos, and the top 15 each have more than 50,000 views. SolarWinds
continues to invest in video as a primary content medium for marketing
and communications, brand and social media to build and engage its B2B
buyer’s audience.

Breakout Video Marketer of the Year
Winner: Jonas
Construction Software
Finalists: RL Solutions, ExamSoft

Jonas Construction Software started out a year ago with no video content
but a goal to provide prospective clients with a more personalized and
dynamic digital experience to guide them to content that addressed their
existing needs. In its “Why
Jonas” video, the company created a video that explained to
customers how Jonas could help them. The used pop-out features in the
video to direct viewers to product pages. Viewers who made it to the end
of the video got a final call-to-action pointing them to a product tour.
The company has invested in a series of product and testimonial videos
and is tracking audience engagement to help identify, qualify and
convert more leads.

Results: Jonas Construction Software quickly noticed improvement
in the quality of its leads, and prospective clients are more engaged
with its content. Now roughly 50% of all Jonas’ leads from its website
come directly from video content. 20% of closed business comes from
deals that originated with a video view. Conversion rates on email
marketing programs with video content are 200% that of traditional email
campaigns. Sales velocity also has increased, the amount of time needed
to convert a lead to an opportunity has been cut in half, and the time
need to close new business is down by 30%.

Small Business, Big Bang
Winner: Terminus
Finalists:
Social123, Xenex

Terminus employed a video marketing strategy to raise awareness for
account-based marketing (ABM), which was just a buzz word for the B2B
marketing industry a year ago. Terminus launched its #FlipMyFunnel
campaign with personalized
videos aimed at B2B marketing and sales thought leaders the company
wanted to attend its first conference of the same name. They wanted 200
people to attend the first event in Atlanta. CMO Sangram Vajre created
an individual video for each recipient with an opening “Hi
(first name). Sangram here!”. Based on the early success of video
content, Terminus now leverages custom and personalized video for
outbound prospecting, ABM, event awareness, customer testimonials and
product demonstrations.

Results: Besides getting 300 people to attend that first
#FlipMyFunnel, Terminus credits video as a huge part of its ABM strategy
and success. The company has produced eight customer testimonial videos
this year with four more in production. They integrated Vidyard with
Uberflip to track engagement and attribution of its video content. The
unique video stream of content has proven to be an important asset for
the sales team, especially to move deals through the pipeline more
quickly. Sales development reps also have started producing their own
personalized videos to use in outreach to help them cut through the
clutter and increase connect rates.

Video Marketing Impact Award
Winner: Tradeshift
Finalists:
Rapid7, BenefitMall

After working primarily with large corporations, Tradeshift recently
started expanding into the mid-market categories and needed help
generating demand. Enterprise Marketing head Travis Bickham recognized
that Tradeshift’s traditional demand gen model didn’t scale to smaller
companies, and he needed a new way to stand out in the competitive
mid-market. Already using Vidyard, Bickham could see from the platform’s
analytics that customers watched a lot of video before ever talking to
sales teams. He saw that using video as the basis for all demand gen
efforts would help Tradeshift accelerate leads and accounts down the
funnel by providing engaging content and lead scoring at every stage.
With Vidyard’s integration with Marketo, Bickham could track metrics on
leads, conversions and opportunity revenue that his team helped drive
through video content. Bickham later used Vidyard’s personalization
technology to send out holiday videos with each prospect’s name featured
in the video they received.

Results: 100% of active opportunities that convert to deals are
exposed to video before and after sales qualification. In outbound
emails promoting customer success stories, video has double the
click-through rate compared to PDFs when both versions were tested.
Leads who view videos reach qualified status 4X faster than those who
don’t. Tradeshift’s personalized holiday video campaign resulted in a
230% increase in click-through rates, an 88% increase in eBook downloads
and a surge in qualified pipeline development. More than 10% of
marketing-sourced qualified leads in the first half of 2016 came from
that personalized video campaign, resulting in a cost-per-opportunity
that was lower than the average cost-per-lead of other campaigns, an
unheard-of set of results in the world of demand generation.

Video Marketing Trailblazer
Winner: Bisk Education
Finalists:
Cisco, Marketo

Bisk Education partners with universities to help finance, develop and
support online degree programs and with businesses to offer training and
education programs. The company recently began investing in video
marketing and created Bisk Studios to handle all video strategy,
production, marketing and distribution. Bisk Studios contributes to
several campaigns at a time, supporting multiple brands and the overall
Bisk brand. Usually their videos are a piece of a larger marketing
campaign or content strategy but sometimes they comprise the entire
campaign. Bisk Studios also drives internal communications programs,
brand awareness, training, and other video-based programs across the
organization. Investing in Bisk Studios has transformed the way the
company markets its own business and partners with other organizations.
Going beyond traditional marketing and social videos, their production
of a full
documentary with Notre Dame shows what can happen when an
organization gets serious about video.

Results: Bisk’s video series with Florida Institute of
Technology, “Study
Snacks” drove the most Facebook shares of any of its social efforts
to date with more than 2,000 views. Their “Spartans
Will” project with Michigan State University influenced many
students to commit to a specific degree program. On a broader level,
Bisk employees are now engaged in using video initiatives across the
entire company. Employee events are now covered by the video crew, and
one internal company culture video had a 85% click-through rate and over
70% engagement – even after the video was already shown in a group
meeting.

About Vidyard

Vidyard
(Twitter: @Vidyard) is the video intelligence platform that helps
businesses drive more revenue through the use of online video. Going
beyond video hosting and management, Vidyard helps businesses drive
greater engagement in their video content, track the viewing activities
of each individual viewer, and turn those views into action. Global
leaders such as Honeywell, McKesson, Lenovo, LinkedIn, Cision, TD
Ameritrade, Citibank, MongoDB and Sharp rely on Vidyard to power their
video content strategies and turn viewer into customers.

When it comes to video marketing, do you feel like you’re stuck in first gear? Are you telling yourself that video production takes too much time or costs too much money?

The truth is, you no longer need a huge budget to make great video content. Keep reading to find out how video marketing can help your dealership pull ahead of the competition in 2017.

Keep ahead of the curve

Hyperfine Media found that 64% of users are more likely to buy a product online after watching a video, and that enjoyment of video ads increases purchase intent by 97%. This means you’re missing out on an opportunity to get your vehicles in front of an audience that is ready to buy if you video isn’t a part of your 2017 marketing strategy.

Here’s the bottom line: Because one-third of all online activity is spent watching videos, tapping into this channel can help your dealership sell more cars. Unlike blogs or text-based marketing content, videos deliver an interactive, immersive experience that forges a personal connection with viewers.

Few marketing channels can duplicate video’s ability to elicit emotion, and this can be a powerful tool for generating and converting leads during each stage of your customers’ buying journey.

Go from 0 to 60 in 5 steps

There’s no denying the potential of video marketing. When your dealership is up against cute cat videos and the latest viral sensation, however, your content needs to stand out.

To get up to speed, before you launch a full-fledged video marketing campaign, create content your audience will love by following these five steps.

1. Get ready for your close-up

You spend all day talking to customers in your showroom. You may find speaking to an “invisible” audience in a video harder than you’d expect.

To get past this problem, when you step in front of the camera, imagine that you’re speaking with your best friend, a family member, or customer. Don’t be afraid to show some personality.

2. Educate your audience

When creating your video marketing campaign, assume the viewer knows nothing about your dealership, the cars in your inventory, or the services you provide.

Videos are a great educational opportunity, so create content that solves viewers’ problems. These videos may be about the steps in buying a vehicle, its service and maintenance after purchase, etc.

3. Tell a story and provide value

According to Fortune Lords, 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. In addition, nearly 5 billion videos are watched on YouTube every day.

With the internet getting more and more saturated with video content, a successful campaign requires more than just great visuals. It also needs to provide something of value to your customer, like an incentive or exclusive discount.

4. Choose the right call to action

The goal is of your video is to entice viewers to learn more about you by checking out your website and visiting your showroom. If your video ends without providing the next step, however, you’re missing the most important part: the call to action (CTA).

Whether it’s telling customers how to take a test drive, schedule an oil change, or sign up for your newsletter, your video needs to guide the viewer to the next step. Here are a few ideas for CTA taglines to get you started:

• Watch more videos now!
• Get 10% off for your next service appointment!
• Schedule your test drive today!

5. Get your videos out there

Once you’ve finished creating your videos, it’s time to promote, promote, promote.

It may seem obvious to post your video on your dealership website, but don’t forget to also place it on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Make it easy for your buyers to find it by placing it in locations they frequent online.

Because 2017 is right around the corner, now is the time to start planning out a video marketing strategy for the coming year that turns video views into customers at your dealership.

Meghan Garrity is an inbound marketing copywriter at Stream Companies with a passion for helping dealerships generate leads. When Meghan isn’t at work, you can find her on her yoga mat or looking at cat pictures.

ExchangeWire round up some of the biggest stories in the European digital advertising space. In this week’s edition: TubeMogul bought up by Adobe; iab Europe digital video advertising survey; Earnings for YuMe and Marin; FastPay fintech financing program; Targeted display solution by Archant; and Sizmek goes HTML5. 

TubeMogul acquired by Adobe

Adobe has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire TubeMogul for a price tag of approximately USD$540m (£433m) net of debt and cash.

With the acquisition of TubeMogul, Adobe hopes to create an end-to-end independent advertising and data-management solution across TV and digital formats, bringing together the fragmented ad tech and data management process and pushing online video, essentially creating a one-stop-shop for marketers.

The addition of TubeMogul will allow Adobe-customers to spread their video advertising activities across desktop, mobile, streaming devices and TV. TubeMogul’s video advertising platform, combined with Adobe Marketing Cloud, gives customers access to first-party data and measurement capabilities from Adobe Audience Manager and Adobe Analytics respectively.

“With the acquisition of TubeMogul, Adobe will give customers a ‘one-stop shop’ for video advertising, providing even more strategic value for our Adobe Marketing Cloud customers”, explains Brad Rencher, executive vice president and general manager, digital marketing, Adobe.

“Adobe and TubeMogul share a similar culture and vision for the future of advertising”, says Brett Wilson, CEO and co-founder, TubeMogul. “The combination of Adobe Marketing Cloud with TubeMogul’s software creates a uniquely comprehensive platform that will help marketers always know what’s working – and act on it.”

The transaction is expected to close during the first quarter of Adobe’s 2017 fiscal year, subject to customary closing conditions. TubeMogul CEO Brett Wilson will remain in place at the helm of TubeMogul as part of Adobe’s Digital Marketing business.

Adobe is buying TubeMogul on the back of recent growth news: the company released their financial report with a GAAP revenue of USD$56.1m (£45m), an increase of 21% compared to USD$46.5m (£37.3m) in the third quarter of 2015.

Total Spend was USD$138.3m (£110.9m), an increase of 34% compared to USD$103.4m (£82.9m) in the third quarter of 2015. Gross profit was USD$36.8m (£29.5m), an increase of 18%, compared to USD$31.1m (£24.9m) in the Q3 2015.

In tech news, TubeMogul tries the placebo approach in order to give more reliable attribution insights to its customers. The company has just announced the launch of their ‘Ad Swap’ product. The attribution solution is to help marketers better measure their advertising effectiveness.

“Ad Swap gets us back to leveraging the scientific method for ROI measurement without the operational burden or cost normally associated with creating real experiments”, says Brett Wilson CEO and co-founder of TubeMogul.

Thus, TubeMogul software automatically serves ‘placebo’ ads to a randomised target group, keeping all other variables like audience targeting and site placement identical. The compared ads are plucked from other campaigns running on TubeMogul’s software.

The product has already been tested by several clients and is now available globally as an opt-in feature for TubeMogul customers.

IAB Europe surveys attitudes to digital video advertising

Digital video advertising strategies for buy-side as well as sell-side in Europe are maturing. That is the result of a survey by the IAB Europe. Based on a survey of more than 650 advertisers, agencies, and publishers from across 31 markets, the study gives insight in the status of adoption and buy-side and sell-side perspectives on the development of digital video and trading methods.

According to the survey, digital video advertising strategies are now employed by nearly all stakeholders. Over 90% of advertisers, media agencies, and publishers responded that they are using the channel. Thus, digital video is recognised as an essential brand-building format.

Instead of click measuring, stakeholders are moving towards measuring brand KPIs such as brand awareness and purchase intent and engaging in cross-screen planning. Mobile video getting stronger as advertisers and marketers have recognised the changing habits of consumers in this area. In-stream pre-roll formats continue to be dominant in digital video advertising. More mature markets are now also seeing the adoption of out-stream formats, the study finds.

On the sell-side, publishers are investing in digital video as demand for such is high. However, digital video still accounts for a small proportion of the total digital ad inventory.

In conclusion, the tab says the future for digital video advertising looks bright: over 90% of buyers are planning to increase their investment in the next 12 months. This should benefit publishers, the majority of whom expect to see an increase in their digital video advertising revenues over the next 12 months.

Earnings summaries for YuMe and Marin

YuMe has just released their third quarter 2016 financial results. In the absence of overall revenue growth, the highlights were the announcements of executive and board changes, as well as a restructuring plan to improve profitability.

The company announced revenue of USD$35.0m (£28.m), a decrease when compared to USD$38.9m (£31.2m) in the third quarter of 2015. Mobile and connected television impressions saw growth, accounting for 43% of revenue, compared to 32% of revenue in Q3 2015.

At the same time, YuMe announces changes at their executive and board levels: Jayant Kadambi will step back as YuMe’s chairman of the board and chief executive officer, effective immediately. However, Kadambi will remain a board member. YuMe’s board of directors has named Paul Porrini to the role of Interim CEO. Also leaving are Jim Soss, executive vice president and general manager, North America, and Hardeep Bindra, executive vice president, operations.

Similar news from Marin Software: the third quarter 2016 results show that net revenues totaled USD$24.0m (£19.2m), a year-on-year decrease of 9%, when compared to USD$26.3m (£21.1m) in the third quarter of 2015. GAAP gross profit came to USD$15.3m (£12.3m), resulting in a gross margin of 64%, compared to GAAP gross profit of $16.0m (£12.8m) and a gross margin of 61% during the third quarter of 2015.

“Our Q3 results came in just above our guidance, and we continue to make progress in our efforts to advance Marin’s cross-channel performance advertising platform”, said Christopher Lien, chief executive officer of Marin Software. “We believe our investments in technology and product innovation to better meet the needs of our customers will be critical to improving our operating results in the future, and as we continue with our plans, we are taking a cautious outlook for the rest of this year.”

FastPay and Hitachi support growth of digital media enterprises

Fintech company FastPay and Hitachi Capital are joining forces for a partner-finance program to provide liquidity to enterprise-segment clients within the digital economy. The program is to support a new product, FastPay for Enterprise (FPE), which helps companies in the digital media sector with working capital loans of USD$10m (£8m) or more. The facility is expected to originate over USD$100 (£80.2m) in loans within the first year.

“Right now, digital media companies compete vigorously to drive billions of dollars of spend. Yet, their rapid path to becoming a public or enterprise-level organisation requires significant investment in order to stay innovative and competitive. FastPay for Enterprise, with Hitachi as our partner, is primed to accelerate growth for the most innovative companies in the space. We’re also excited about the strategic benefits and expertise that come with the Hitachi relationship”, said FastPay CEO, Jed Simon.

FPE thus aims to provide a flexible alternative to traditional financing, which may even allow larger digital media companies to invest in growth and avoid ownership dilution.

New targeted display solution by Archant

Archant launches GoTarget Display, a new targeted advertising solution that is billed as a mechanism to display brands and their marketing messages to the most relevant local audiences. The product allows advertisers not only to reach targeted audiences on the Archant network, but also across the rest of the web through highly targeted audience extension.

To this end, a wide range of audience segments have been built and will be used to deliver valuable local audiences for advertising customers. In a test phase, the GoTarget Display was already employed by clients such as the University of Suffolk, Bang Olufsen and Royal Norfolk Agricultural Association.

According to Archant, the average display advertising CTR is a triple digit percentage improvement on the national average and a 200% increase on what Archant saw on its network for untargeted display in 2015.

“GoTarget answers a strong need from customers for a simple and smart display advertising proposition,” comments Will Hattam, Chief Marketing Officer, Archant. “It demonstrates our commitment to digital innovation and ensures we are offering SMEs access to the cutting edge targeting methodologies and technology that can really help their businesses thrive.”

Sizmek pushes move to HTML5

In a timely move while Flash is finally laid to rest, Sizmek launches their HTML5 VPAID authoring tool within Ad Builder, for the building of interactive video campaigns. The self-service solution for the codeless authoring of HTML5 VPAID ads allows creatives to create interactive video experiences for cross-screen campaigns.

Video ads continue to rely on interactive formats. Sizmek tries a new approach beyond templated interactive video tools and suggests an open authoring capability, built inside the Ad Builder.

“Interactive video has been left in this weird life-support nether-state where it is still being built in Flash but the entire display world has already begun to move to HTML5 formats”, says Jaime Singson, director of product marketing for Sizmek. “We are excited that our new offering gives our customers exactly the tools they need not only to keep up with the shifts in our industry, but also to gain an advantage in creating impactful, engaging interactive video campaigns.”

Sizmek’s HTML5 VPAID is designed to provide customers the ability to develop rich media campaigns driven by programmatic data. With the authoring tool, trading desk, and video ad networks can preserve their Flash VPAID revenue, while coming to grips with HTML5, especially when building video ad experiences for smaller screens.

KITCHENER, Ontario–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Vidyard,
the video platform for business, today announced the winners of the
2016 Video Marketing Awards (VMAs), recognizing innovative marketing and
sales leaders at Viewtopia, the company’s annual video marketing summit.
The VMAs recognize organizations that are using video content and
analytics in exceptional ways to expand their audience, generate demand
and empower their sales teams to close more business.

“Video has become the medium of choice for modern marketers to engage,
entertain and educate their audiences,” said Vidyard CEO and co-founder
Michael Litt. “They are creating incredible high-quality content,
measuring its performance and using detailed analytics to turn viewers
into customers and revenue for their organizations. And the results are
coming whether the organizations are large or small, whether the videos
highly produced or done on a budget. These winners prove the power of
video to connect with audiences and improve the bottom line.”

Below are the winners and finalists in each VMA category:

Video Marketing Campaign of the Year
Winner: Lenovo
with agency partner Traction
Finalists: Philips, Elemica

Lenovo’s marketing efforts had primarily consisted of tactics at the
bottom of the funnel. With the launch of the Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga 12
Ultrabook, an all-in-one laptop and tablet, the company hoped to broaden
its exposure to a larger audience than they had currently been marketing
to and to re-engage dormant customers. They also wanted to educate users
while making them feel entertained. The campaign played out in the form
of five videos, including “Know
your Chad” and “See
Jane Run at Top Speed,” and a series of tongue-in-cheek illustrated
“Survival Guides” for IT viewers to enjoy and commiserate over.

Results: Lenovo saw an immediate lift in video completion rates
from 70% to 96% — a clear signal that the campaign was working.
Engagement soared with a 400% lift over previous benchmarks. The videos
were the most shared and the most viewed assets Lenovo commercial
marketing had ever produced. Lenovo surpassed its target of 17,000 new
leads by 50% with over 25,000 and blew away its goal of 34,000
reactivated leads by engaging over 91,000 contacts. They increased the
number of marketing qualified leads by 250% and improved lead quality by
200%.

Best Personalized Video Campaign
Winner: Reltio
Finalists:
Veracode, Influitive

Reltio wanted a new way to build awareness and drive interest it its
flagship product with a top-of-funnel awareness campaign. The company
launched a personalized
video campaign targeting 10,000 leads to build awareness and
identify their most engaged prospects.

Results: Nearly 30% of all individuals who opened the email
clicked through to watch the video. That marked a 10X increase in
click-through rates compared to their average marketing campaign. Reltio
is now launching a second personalized video campaign as part of its
account-based marketing effort.

Best Use of Video for Sales Prospecting or ABM
Winner: MongoDB
Finalists:
Act-On, P2 Energy Solutions

MongoDB wanted to use more customer testimonials to show the impact that
MongoDB could have on their organizations. With a small marketing team
and small budget, MongoDB picked a few
customers
to do high-quality testimonials.
The end goal was to provide powerful assets for the sales team to better
engage key prospects and move them through the buying journey faster.

Results: The sales team was ecstatic, and the videos become one
of their top three calls to action in outbound outreach efforts to new
prospects. The videos also served as tools for new sales reps to learn
how customers use MongoDB.

Best Online Video Presence for a B2B Brand
Winner:
SolarWinds
Finalists: Applied Predictive Technologies,
Prophix

Video is a key component of the SolarWinds marketing strategy, helping
the company create a unique, relatable voice that stands out for IT
professionals. The video team is a big contributor to brand, social,
product and demand gen creative campaign strategy and leverages a
multi-channel distribution strategy to reach its audiences across the
web. Its videos have been featured on Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, Reddit
and other media sites. SolarWinds’ customers are IT professionals, and
the company uses a snarky, geeky tone to connect with its audience. Top
examples include “Happy
IT Professionals Day” “Free
Tool Brack-IT-ology”, “Meet
the Head Geeks,” and their newly released parodies of hit show
Stranger Things called “Stranger
IT.”

Results: The SolarWinds content has helped the business reach a
wide array of new audiences and boost engagement with its current
customers and prospects. Its YouTube channel features nearly 1,000
videos, and the top 15 each have more than 50,000 views. SolarWinds
continues to invest in video as a primary content medium for marketing
and communications, brand and social media to build and engage its B2B
buyer’s audience.

Breakout Video Marketer of the Year
Winner: Jonas
Construction Software
Finalists: RL Solutions, ExamSoft

Jonas Construction Software started out a year ago with no video content
but a goal to provide prospective clients with a more personalized and
dynamic digital experience to guide them to content that addressed their
existing needs. In its “Why
Jonas” video, the company created a video that explained to
customers how Jonas could help them. The used pop-out features in the
video to direct viewers to product pages. Viewers who made it to the end
of the video got a final call-to-action pointing them to a product tour.
The company has invested in a series of product and testimonial videos
and is tracking audience engagement to help identify, qualify and
convert more leads.

Results: Jonas Construction Software quickly noticed improvement
in the quality of its leads, and prospective clients are more engaged
with its content. Now roughly 50% of all Jonas’ leads from its website
come directly from video content. 20% of closed business comes from
deals that originated with a video view. Conversion rates on email
marketing programs with video content are 200% that of traditional email
campaigns. Sales velocity also has increased, the amount of time needed
to convert a lead to an opportunity has been cut in half, and the time
need to close new business is down by 30%.

Small Business, Big Bang
Winner: Terminus
Finalists:
Social123, Xenex

Terminus employed a video marketing strategy to raise awareness for
account-based marketing (ABM), which was just a buzz word for the B2B
marketing industry a year ago. Terminus launched its #FlipMyFunnel
campaign with personalized
videos aimed at B2B marketing and sales thought leaders the company
wanted to attend its first conference of the same name. They wanted 200
people to attend the first event in Atlanta. CMO Sangram Vajre created
an individual video for each recipient with an opening “Hi
(first name). Sangram here!”. Based on the early success of video
content, Terminus now leverages custom and personalized video for
outbound prospecting, ABM, event awareness, customer testimonials and
product demonstrations.

Results: Besides getting 300 people to attend that first
#FlipMyFunnel, Terminus credits video as a huge part of its ABM strategy
and success. The company has produced eight customer testimonial videos
this year with four more in production. They integrated Vidyard with
Uberflip to track engagement and attribution of its video content. The
unique video stream of content has proven to be an important asset for
the sales team, especially to move deals through the pipeline more
quickly. Sales development reps also have started producing their own
personalized videos to use in outreach to help them cut through the
clutter and increase connect rates.

Video Marketing Impact Award
Winner: Tradeshift
Finalists:
Rapid7, BenefitMall

After working primarily with large corporations, Tradeshift recently
started expanding into the mid-market categories and needed help
generating demand. Enterprise Marketing head Travis Bickham recognized
that Tradeshift’s traditional demand gen model didn’t scale to smaller
companies, and he needed a new way to stand out in the competitive
mid-market. Already using Vidyard, Bickham could see from the platform’s
analytics that customers watched a lot of video before ever talking to
sales teams. He saw that using video as the basis for all demand gen
efforts would help Tradeshift accelerate leads and accounts down the
funnel by providing engaging content and lead scoring at every stage.
With Vidyard’s integration with Marketo, Bickham could track metrics on
leads, conversions and opportunity revenue that his team helped drive
through video content. Bickham later used Vidyard’s personalization
technology to send out holiday videos with each prospect’s name featured
in the video they received.

Results: 100% of active opportunities that convert to deals are
exposed to video before and after sales qualification. In outbound
emails promoting customer success stories, video has double the
click-through rate compared to PDFs when both versions were tested.
Leads who view videos reach qualified status 4X faster than those who
don’t. Tradeshift’s personalized holiday video campaign resulted in a
230% increase in click-through rates, an 88% increase in eBook downloads
and a surge in qualified pipeline development. More than 10% of
marketing-sourced qualified leads in the first half of 2016 came from
that personalized video campaign, resulting in a cost-per-opportunity
that was lower than the average cost-per-lead of other campaigns, an
unheard-of set of results in the world of demand generation.

Video Marketing Trailblazer
Winner: Bisk Education
Finalists:
Cisco, Marketo

Bisk Education partners with universities to help finance, develop and
support online degree programs and with businesses to offer training and
education programs. The company recently began investing in video
marketing and created Bisk Studios to handle all video strategy,
production, marketing and distribution. Bisk Studios contributes to
several campaigns at a time, supporting multiple brands and the overall
Bisk brand. Usually their videos are a piece of a larger marketing
campaign or content strategy but sometimes they comprise the entire
campaign. Bisk Studios also drives internal communications programs,
brand awareness, training, and other video-based programs across the
organization. Investing in Bisk Studios has transformed the way the
company markets its own business and partners with other organizations.
Going beyond traditional marketing and social videos, their production
of a full
documentary with Notre Dame shows what can happen when an
organization gets serious about video.

Results: Bisk’s video series with Florida Institute of
Technology, “Study
Snacks” drove the most Facebook shares of any of its social efforts
to date with more than 2,000 views. Their “Spartans
Will” project with Michigan State University influenced many
students to commit to a specific degree program. On a broader level,
Bisk employees are now engaged in using video initiatives across the
entire company. Employee events are now covered by the video crew, and
one internal company culture video had a 85% click-through rate and over
70% engagement – even after the video was already shown in a group
meeting.

About Vidyard

Vidyard
(Twitter: @Vidyard) is the video intelligence platform that helps
businesses drive more revenue through the use of online video. Going
beyond video hosting and management, Vidyard helps businesses drive
greater engagement in their video content, track the viewing activities
of each individual viewer, and turn those views into action. Global
leaders such as Honeywell, McKesson, Lenovo, LinkedIn, Cision, TD
Ameritrade, Citibank, MongoDB and Sharp rely on Vidyard to power their
video content strategies and turn viewer into customers.

Rubicon Project said the battle between red and blue had it seeing a lot of green.

The nine-year-old ad tech company said it cashed in on Election Day as well as the day after, setting company records for the amount of revenue generated from video advertising. Nov. 8 brought in the most video advertising ad dollars in its history, and Nov. 9 got the second-most, it said.

Most of that video money came via desktop browsers as usual, but there was a shift within mobile. Rubicon said 85% of its mobile video revenue came via apps and 15% from mobile browsers. Normally that split is 50-50. The suggestion is that people turned en masse to apps from the mobile web to follow election news.

The bulk of ad dollars came from news apps similar to ones like CNN and the New York Times. A Rubicon Project insider told Ad Age the increase was « so significant it was more than twice our daily average of video ad revenue. »

Rubicon Project has been getting pummeled by investors after it said in July that it had been late in adopting a header bidding product; the company’s stock has tumbled more than 40% since. It introduced its header bidding solution, called FastLane, last year. Rubicon Project is banking on bringing a header bidding solution to apps and video on a large scale, something that has yet to be achieved by any major ad tech platform. (The tech is predominantly practiced on desktop websites.)

In-app advertising is poised for significant growth, according to the analytics firm App Annie, which estimates that gross revenue across all app stores will exceed $101 billion globally by 2020. Meanwhile, video advertising on smartphones and tablets in the first half grew 178% over the year-earlier period to $1.6 billion, according to a November report by the Interactive Advertising Bureau.