“When was the last time that a paid search listing or banner ad raised your blood pressure or induced you to forward something to a friend?”
Online video, like television, has the power to immediately engage your audience. However unlike television online video advertising is extremely cheap and video hosting sites such as YouTube have proven that production values for video does not need to be high in order to be successful.
Video hosting sites such as YouTube are an excellent yet surprisingly under utilized resource for product marketers. A keyword such of many large brand names shows that many companies currently have a web video blind spot. In some cases where brand marketers have turned a blind eye consumers have uploaded content that degrades the brand in question. For more on the threat potential of internet video check out “Is YouTube putting your brand at risk?”.
YouTube and its more European focused competitors like DailyMotion provide a free hosting services for video with low latency streaming – even lower end broadband connected users receiving almost instantaneous video. More importantly (to marketers) these hosts also provide the ability to embed their hosted within any website.
It is this ability to embed video hosted for free by providers such as YouTube and DailyMotion which we at Infection believe represents an as yet un tapped resource for product marketers.
In order to appreciate the value that this embedding feature can bring it is best to start with a description of Internet video embedding process. The following is a step-by-step illustration:
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Video content is uploaded to the video host – YouTube
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After successful upload and acceptance of the video, the host makes available embed code for all (see following image). N.B. Currently there is no ability to restrict the embed code for a hosted video.
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This code string is copied (the following example is the embed code for the Deakin University TVC) <object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ZCMfhE3imVk&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ZCMfhE3imVk&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>
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The copied string can then be added to any web page. The following shows the Deakin University TVC embed code added to an infection media video development blog post editor in Blogger.
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The following is how the final embedded video looks inside the published web page. To this page in situ go directly to the blog post itself.
The above sequence illustrates clearly the simplicity of the embedding process. The final embedded video object comes with a set of interactive controls, which allow the user to view the video hosted (in this case by YouTube) from within the Infection blog with no need for the user to link across to the YouTube site and away from the Infection website context.
This ability to view the video content while keeping the current website context is very powerful. It is the feature which Infection believes holds to potential for product marketers to seed the internet with rich compelling video content of their products.
The following is an example of an ecommerce site Antec that utilizes Internet video to help persuade users to buy its products:
In this case the video is being served directly by the Antec website. However it could potentially be served by any video host with an embed capability. The video demonstration is quite compelling and adds considerable life to an otherwise standard ecommerce product presentation.
It is envisioned by Infection that product manufacturers seed the internet with video content on their products – upload it to video host providers such as YouTube and DailyMotion and make the embed codes available to resellers to use in their websites.
This hosted content will have the effect of adding value through both populating the search results of video host sites with positive sales orientated viewing material and providing distributors and re-sellers with rich content to easily integrated into their individual marketing efforts.
