Video is one of the fastest growing areas in social media. Almost every major platform including Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter now encourages video to both its users and advertisers. A recent study by Cisco predicted that by 2017, Internet video traffic will more than triple to an astounding 17.1 exabytes per month.
Video advertising has grown enormously and is now viewed by many in the advertising industry as being more effective than traditional advertising. Several intriguing findings have also been recently reported relating to video advertising.
An August 2013 VideoHub study reported the surprising result that the completion rate of video advertising was largely unaffected by the length of the digital video. (The completion rate is defined as the number of people who remained for an entire advertisement). A video advertisement of fewer than 30 seconds had roughly the same completion rate (84 percent) as a video lasting 30 minutes (82 percent). (I assume that latter video was a promotional video.) Surprisingly, while the duration of the video had little overall effect, the size of the video did matter. The smaller the video, the smaller the percentage of completion by its viewers. Videos with fewer than 300 pixels had a 66 percent completion rate while videos with 800-plus pixels had a 93 percent completion rate. Some of this disparity, however, might be attributable to the size of the viewing device: mobile vs. platform.
Video size also affected the click-through rate. Videos of fewer than 400 pixels had a 0.2 percent to 0.4 percent click-through rate while videos of 400 pixels or larger had at least a 0.9 percent click-through rate, a significant difference. These results do emphasize the facts that size really does matter ”“ at least for video completion and performance.
What is it about video that attracts our attention? Is it that we have been conditioned by movies or television? Many people believe that its biggest benefit is engagement. As an audience, we want to be entertained. There is so much going on in our lives and our attention is so easily distracted that video provides a means of reaching out and grabbing our attention and holding it. Video (and webinars) allows an audience to connect with a presenter in a way that can start to build a relationship. Using stories and creating compelling and interesting content can also build trust. In fact, when I create content for my webinar and social media clients, one of the key elements I consider is how to provide great information and insight while keeping the audience engaged and entertained.
I recently asked the members in several of my LinkedIn groups a series of questions concerning the effectiveness of video. Almost all of the people who responded said that they would respond faster to a video than to some written text. My findings were similar, although stronger than the results of another study in which 60 percent of the respondents stated they would watch a video on a web page before reading any text on that page. Both results denote the importance of video for gaining and retaining traffic.
Videos are most effective when they are part of an overall marketing campaign. Being able to provide a consistent message to your audience that enhances your brand and almost always includes some call to action (which may be something as simple as driving people to your website or landing page) will effectively help grow your business.
The most successful marketing campaigns are highly planned and able to reach their target audience through different “angles.” These can include white papers, coupons (if applicable), webinars, social media postings and videos. If you utilize just email marketing, for example, it will be far less effective than an integrated approach. In most instances, I recommend employing at least one video or webinar toward the beginning of your marketing sequence since it will generate interest and build traffic while facilitating successful interaction and relationship building.
Note: In an upcoming article, I will discuss video and webinars, YouTube and SEO (search engine optimization).
Bruce Newman is the president of wwWebevents.com, a division of The Productivity Institute L.L.C., and the creator of The Complete Webinar Training Course, an online course that helps companies create and promote highly successful webinars. He can be reached at bnewman@prodinst.com.
