Guest comment: When TV met the internet - the perfect love-child
- Added:
- May 19, 2010
Film, TV, video –the moving image has always been engaging to the point of being almost dangerous. The human condition it seems is as a moth to the flickering lamp of the moving image, often struggling to limit both our own time in front of the telly and our children’s “screen-time”. So what’s new? Tom Laidlaw, CEO at Videojug, takes a closer look at our changing viewing habits…
Well, for marketers something marvellous has happened recently. Video and the internet, surely the two most powerful marketing tools yet developed, have come together to create the perfect marketing love-child, ‘Online Video’.
Video content is now inexpensive to produce and online it is easy to consume, reaching the consumer where they are and want to be. All the stats show that consumer consumption of online video is exploding. In the UK the most recent numbers from ComScore (February 2010) show viewing hours are up 37% on the year. Using online video as part of your marketing mix allows you to reach the consumer where they are, with content tailor-made for your brand that they find truly engaging. It’s easy, surprisingly inexpensive and you get military-grade targeting and tracking. Today, now, with a couple of calls or emails.
Everyone knows YouTube, but there are myriad sites offering similar fare, some specializing in genres and with many more sites producing high quality, professional online video content on almost any subject. Of course the broadcasters are finally joining the party with their own online services, but simply watching TV online isn’t the half of it. Online video content is “portable”; consumers can forward it to each other, share it on pages or profiles they maintain (like Facebook) so that it fans out through the web. It is also already targeted: if the consumer is searching for something specific, they are served relevant video content in their results, via site search or a search engine like Google.
So unlike online, or “IP”-TV, online video is a truly “lean-forwards” experience that fits within the consumers own online journey. The consumer is taking the recommendation of a friend, choosing it directly or discovering it themselves whilst looking for something related and relevant. They are paying attention, wanting to learn more. It reaches them where they are and it engages them.
This is set to get even more exciting as the computer-in-your-pocket phones we now all have turn into iPads and who knows what next. Rich with multimedia capability and permanently connected these devices give access to the full power of the internet all day long.
Brands can create their own online video content at a fraction of the costs of TV production and . now that there is a good supply of high quality online video content available, they can also advertise around it. As you would expec t online video advertising is very effective and impactful - much more targeted than TV, with response rates typically of around 3-7%, or 10x traditional online media formats.
Smart marketers are keen to leverage the power of online video with figures from the Internet Advertising Bureau showing it to be the fastest growing online ad sector, with spend doubling year on year in the UK. But when you think about it, this shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. After all, what do you get if you cross TV with the internet?
By Tom Laidlaw
CEO
Videojug
********************************
Get Netimperative updates on Twitter
