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Web-based Video Advertising Is
Red Hot
The following
article can be found on imediaconnection.com at the link below:
The
news from AD:TECH is that TV audiences are migrating to interactive
broadcast and broadband.
Eager to learn the keys to success for converting TV viewers into
Web-based video viewers, marketing executives packed like sardines
into the AD:TECH San Francisco Conference session focused on
leveraging interactive broadcast and broadband in today’s
complicated media environment.
TV advertising has indeed provided reach and emotion, but
interactive video advertising promises those two benefits plus
another: metrics. All forms of Web-based video advertising, such as
streaming, embedded, viral video distribution, desktop push and
long-form video, are murdering the traditional 30-second spot and
demanding that “time-spent” become the new ad measurement.
The state of the industry shows a positive trend in acceptance of
broadband advertising -- to be exact, 39 percent of all
Internet-connected households claim to use broadband. But challenges
still loom for the industry’s growth. Clients seek “interactivity
beyond the click-through” -- using the Internet for interactivity
other than simply allowing consumers to click straight through to a
particular site. Agencies, who feel an enormous amount of pressure
on creatives to make advertising work harder and to be more
effective, complain that they still have to bring clients up to
speed on broadband’s advantages.
“When we educate clients about broadband video, we convince them
first that it is similar to TV and then second that it offers more
benefits than TV, such as powerful interactivity,” says Karim
Sanajabi, Carat Interactive’s EVP Creative Technology.
Several panelists described their broadband solutions, how their
products are being embraced in the marketplace and the
attractiveness of their customers.
Personalization and positioning build TV audiences online
ESPN didn’t want people to miss out on its favorite sports
highlights, so it introduced ESPN Motion, which provides free online
video with no streaming or buffering built into the pages of
ESPN.com. It offers four content packages a day and has a wealth of
programming assets in its arsenal. Approximately 85 percent of its
user base has a broadband connection, with at-work users comprising
the largest segment. This group is especially hard to reach other
than through the Internet.
The division is introducing personalization through two ways:
user-initiated personalization (a user wants mainly football and
baseball content) and implicit personalization (ESPN Motion tracks
where a user spends the majority of his time). Convenience and
customization is provided by allowing customers to manage their own
playlists and on their own time. By monitoring how customers use the
site, the company’s executives have realized that motion content
could exist in tandem with static content, such as headlines, as
long as it would not compete. The far right of the screen was
determined to be the most ideal location for movable content.
“Users may not realize that we’re personalizing the content, but
it’s financially rewarding for the company’s revenue stream,” says
Ed Davis, ESPN Motion’s director and general manager. “Our site’s
impressions will increase because we’re sending inventory to
customers that they are far more likely to interact with and
appreciate.”
ESPN Motion has positioned itself as a service that tells stories
of major events. For example, this past season it offered customers
:30 vignettes of a certain football player just seconds after he was
drafted. Mixing original programming, such as a Fantasy show, into
the site informs consumers that Motion is not just “Sportscenter”
placed online.
Since ESPN Motion’s target market is made up of Web-savvy sports
fanatics, its marketing team can feel confident in offering
downloads and advanced products to its users without intimidating
them. On Davis' agenda is continuing to enhance the user experience
in order to improve the retention rate. In two weeks this will
include, among other things, offering Fantasy game subscribers a
“send to a friend” function attached to certain video clips. This is
an attempt to leverage viral marketing’s strength in driving usage
of the site.
The division not only uses development resources from both the
Disney Internet Group and ESPN.com, but also collectively
brainstorms with other Walt Disney unit marketing departments about
which mediums to use to achieve its goals.
Davis says his team has no plan to license Motion in the near
future because 100 percent of its time is allocated to improving the
product versus building the customer service needed to manage the
licensing process. The company is, however, spending a bit of time
chopping down 30-second ads into 15-second ads and reviewing new
advertising opportunities like sponsored content. He described
interest in one potential application that would involve pausing a
video for a brief ad or sports trivia quiz since these offerings
lend themselves well to the online medium.
Broadband video is viral and “sticky”
CEO Mika Salmi was right on when he predicted his company would be
“the pioneer in video advertising.” Drawing both viewers and
marketers to its full-screen Internet video service, AtomFilms in
2003 served 33 million video ads that had a 9 percent average
click-through rate. At the Sundance Film Festival this year,
AtomFilms and Maven Networks, a broadband media software company,
debuted a Hi-Def, free and advertising-supported service that
enables enhanced online viewing of independent films. The Hi-Def
service, which delivers three films a week to a user’s desktop, also
boasts an extremely high click-through rate.
For 20th Century Fox’s request to build an interactive video Web
site for “Master and Commander,” Maven Networks developed a handful
of videos that included a trailer, behind-the-scenes footage and
interviews with the director and crew. The wide selection was
effective in driving “stickiness”: Browsers spent on average 15 to
20 minutes viewing video content on the site.
To satisfy another client request, this time from Virgin, Maven
Networks built a viral video campaign for Ben Harper’s CD release.
When the video is opened, users are prompted for the names of five
friends and promised an MP3 video in return for supplying them. The
campaign increased Virgin’s email database by three times and
supported on-going relationship-building with customers.
So there’s proof that video ads are being embraced, but what about
ads embedded in video content? As one example, MSN Video has
developed an advertising marketplace around the emerging rich media
platform.
Let consumers control, condense and combine
Microsoft developed MSN Video as a “bridge product” to solve
clients’ need for video that acts like TV but takes advantage of IP.
With goals to provide actualization, fresh reach, targeting and a
solution to clutter, brands like P&G, McDonald’s, Pfizer, Revlon and
Disney have been lining up at the door. MSN Video touts the
demographic desirability of the broadband audience: The tech-savvy
young and middle-aged adults that make up the heaviest users of
streaming media are the higher-income earners that advertisers seek.
But this demo also makes more demands.
“Consumers want to control, condense and combine their viewings, so
we allow them to do that” says Todd Herman, MSN’s streaming media
evangelist. “Already MSN Video has seen a 40 percent consumer
adoption rate.”
Herman believes concurrency is advertising’s biggest change to
date. MSN Video relies on an advertising model that includes
15-second video spots and stationary ads that provide links to an
advertiser's Web site and other information. However, only one
minute of spots is allowed for every 30 minutes of content.
Its team hasn’t had time yet to explore creative possibilities
since the product was just recently launched in January. As an
end-to-end communication, MSN Video will be used on Microsoft’s
Portable Media Center PC.
Look for more AD:TECH coverage next week.
Rebecca Weeks, a strategic marketing executive, offers consumer
businesses innovative solutions for both developing customer
acquisition campaigns and strengthening existing relationships. She
is known for her exceptional research, analytical and trend-spotting
skills.
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