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The most dominant form of online video advertising is still a nuisance to a large portion of consumers, according to a study* from analytics firm TubeMogul.

Right now pre-rolls are largely dominated by marketers attempting to monetize old TV creative, which exists in abundance, and which can be repurposed for online ads with relative ease. To consumers this is nothing more than the next generation of pop-up ads.

Just how bad is it, you ask?

Nearly 16% of viewers click away from a pre-roll video ad rather than watch it through to get their video content. In sites where interruptive advertising isn’t the norm, such as news and magazine sites, the statistic is almost 25%.

If asking someone to watch an irrelevant 30 second pre-roll ad is too high a price for free content, what are publishers to do?

For an industry that trends toward a more targeted future, the internet provides promising answers. But how do we get from here to there when the technological solution we need is perpetually “just around the corner?”

Here are three ways to make pre-rolls easier to stomach.

Solutions

1) Use shorter pre-rolls. A :10 or :15 pre-roll (with visible countdown timer) will turn off fewer viewers at the onset, allowing advertisers to run longer ads deeper in the content. Once the “hook” is set, viewers are less likely to disregard their investment and stop watching.

2) Better targeting with keywords. News and magazine stories pertain to different industries. Tag those stories with industry-relevant keywords. Standardize those keywords. If you’re a news or magazine website with monetized video content, play pre-rolls that are relevant to the subject matter of your videos based on keyword data.

Eg: If I choose to watch a video on the BP oil spill, which has a clear element of environmentalism tied to it, am I more likely interested in a Toyota Prius or a Ford pickup? Am I more in a frame of mind to see an ad for a non-profit or the NBA playoffs?

Publishers don’t need to provide answers. They just need to supply the data points. Marketers will find the best way to connect the dots.

3) Run internet ads, not stale TV ads. There’s a certain delivery structure to a :30 tv commercial that speaks to the frame of mind one is in when he’s watching TV. With TV, you’ve made the investment to put your butt in your chair at the appropriate time, so your probability of leaving at the first annoyance is low.

Not so online. It’s like being in the universe’s largest candy store — that oh-by-the-way happens to be completely FREE. If the first bite of any candy bar isn’t great, how long before you toss it and grab the next?

In other words, stop advertising by interruption. Tell us one thing, try and make it new and exciting. And show us, in seconds, how much longer we have to listen before we get what we want. Then hit us with longer ads after we’ve invested in the substance of what we’re watching.

But not before.

* The study sample was gathered over 48 hours and included nearly 1.8 million impressions. Networks involved include but are not limited to Tremor, BBE, Google and AdTech. It included high-quality short-form content on the top TV, news and magazine sites online.

From The Ad Contrarian via the Economist:

…one of the oddest and most consistent findings of television research: that people seem unaware of their own behaviour. In surveys they almost always underestimate how much television they watch, and greatly overstate the extent to which they watch video in any other form. In particular, they underestimate their consumption of live television… a 27-year-old man, claimed to watch recorded television 90% of the time. In fact he watched live TV 69% of the time.

Efforts to improve the TV-watching experience have often gone wrong because they took people at their word. The past ten years have seen a parade of websites and set-top boxes—Apple TV, Boxee, Joost, Roku—offering a huge range of content and interactive features. All promised to deliver TV the way people (that is, individuals) really want it…. Efforts to turn TVs into personal e-mail devices and home-shopping outlets have fared no better. “The killer application on television turns out to be television,” says Richard Lindsay-Davies, CEO of the Digital TV Group.

It always amazes us when people say “they don’t watch TV anymore.” Now we know why.

Here are a couple photos from a recent shoot end-client Service Brands International. We’re going to be shooting 300 videos just like this one with online marketing partner Local Inbound Marketing at Molly Maid’s yearly conference in Las Vegas in October (tentative).

Uploading video to your Google Local Business Listing account, and tagging it with the appropriate keyword and geographic metadata, is a great way to boost your organic search results. Service Brands International is deploying this strategy to all their Mr Handyman and Molly Maid franchises in the United States.

Whether you’re a professional video producer, or editing video for the first time, understanding “Bitrate” is essential to producing top-quality video. Here’s everything you need to know about bitrate and YouTube.

Bitrate As Defined By The Layman
A “bit” is simply a piece of information processed by a computer. So, bitrate literally means the number of “bits” processed per interval of time. In the case of online video, bitrate is most commonly measured in kilobites per second or “kbps”.

Put a more technical way, bitrate is the amount of pixel information in each frame of video. so, the more bitrate you add, the more detailed and vibrant each frame of video will be.

It’s also directly related to file size, so the higher your bitrate, the larger your video file.

Marinate on that for a sec …

Bitrate’s Role In Exporting Video
Now, to determine where to put your bitrate setting when exporting, you need to consider how the end-user will be viewing your creation. If the video is going to be viewed online (outside YouTube and the like), then it’s important to take into account bandwidth speeds.

As a general rule of thumb:
• Cable downloads at 6,000-8,000 kilobites per second (kbps)
• DSL: 2,000-4,000 kbps
• Dial-up: 56-128 kbps

So, if you set your bitrate export settings to, say, 1,200 kbps, your video will play immediately on DSL and cable connections, but will buffer if being viewed via dial-up.

Fortunately, over 2/3 of the US has broadband, so you can exclude the dial-up connections when setting bitrate.

Exporting For YouTube
Even though you and I may have bandwidth speeds between 6,000-8,000 kbps, YouTube streams at 700-800 kbps (non-HD). That means no matter what the bitrate is of the file you upload, it gets compressed and sent out at 700-800 kbps!

So be prepared. Since you know your video will get compressed anyway, upload a file that’s really good quality (i.e. has a very high bitrate).

When I’m uploading a 1-3 minute video to YouTube, I’ll typically set my bitrate between 3,000 kbps – 6,000 kbps. That way it’s pretty good quality, and the file won’t be so large that it takes a lifetime to upload.

Make sense? Cool.

Don’t Forget: Junk In, Junk Out
Remember to consider the camera you’re shooting with. If you’re shooting with a canon pocket SD500 photo camera on video mode, there’s only so much you can do to improve the quality using bitrate. The camera’s CCD’s are too small to shoot anything of quality.

Adjusting bitrate is a lot like life: put junk in, get junk out.

Tamarac Inc. is the leading provider of sophisticated, scalable portfolio management technology that enables investment managers to provide customized, tax-efficient, individual account management to a multitude of clients.

They contacted RedGrey Concepts to produce video content that supplements an interactive flash presentation designed to teach current and prospective clients incredible new features of their Advisor 8 product. Below is a successful case study of the resultant work product.

• Interactive Websites

• Video Production

Our launch was decidedly quiet. We didn’t create any fanfare because our content was (and still is) a work in progress. Sure, we may not “dazzle” every early visitor, but this approach allows us to test and improve our online marketing strategy over time.

That being said, in the 7 days since we launched, web traffic has increased 105%! More importantly, the average time spent on site has jumped from about 12 seconds to 5 minutes! And whereas our bounce rate once hovered in the mid-70s percent-wise, it is now a very respectable 42%.

The reasons are obvious. The addition of a persuasive online video on each page of our website is directly related to the increase in time people spend on our site. Properly tagging and distributing our videos across multiple video sharing platforms is directly related to our increasing traffic and our decreasing bounce rate.

You may ask, how’s all this relating to new business? Well, in the first four days after our new site launched, we were asked to submit four proposals. Three of those requests were from clients with whom we’ve had no prior relation. One was a national advertiser. We’ll find out the results in the next 2-3 weeks.

Granted, it remains to be seen how much new business we acquire over the long-run as a result of our online video marketing strategy, but considering all we’ve done so far is “flip the switch,” the odds are clearly in our favor.

Here are a few ways video enhances your marketing results:

SEO: Adding video to your website gives your SEO campaign a lift because it increases the amount of time people spend on your website — a key factor in search rankings.

Organic Search: Video is also great for long-tail universal search. Now that google returns thumbnails and videos in it’s primary search results, people’s eyeballs go for the first image they see as opposed to the first link.

Social Media: YouTube is now the 2nd biggest search engine on earth, after Google. The amount of people who watch video on Facebook increased 1,827% in Oct-Dec of 2009. Most importantly, 60% of everyone who watches a video and likes it will share it with someone else.

Email Marketing: In a survey of over 1 billion emails sent out that compared open and click-thru rates between video and non-video emails, video emails had a 5.6% higher open rate and 96.4% higher click-thru rates than non-video emails.

Lead Conversion: When it comes to one of the most crucial aspects of any marketing campaign, a properly placed video can increase conversion on your website by a consistent 3-4 times. And you’ll pay nothing for distribution.

What does all this mean? In a nutshell, it’s important to upload and distribute your video to multiple video sharing sites like YouTube, Vimeo and AOL Video, social media sites like Facebook and MySpace, and finally, include it in all your marketing communications going forward. It’s the best way to ensure your video gets seen, which is the best way to ensure your video generates sales.

Also, TV watching is not being cannibalized as much as once predicted. A campaign that includes both TV AND online video can produce shock and awe.

Going Viral with User-Generated Content

Some of the funniest viral video advertising of the past few years has been created by brands that encourage the masses to produce content for a big money prize. Doritos has been on the forefront of this trend, buying millions of dollars worth of Superbowl air time and filling it with spots produced by their customers.

In the vast majority of cases, these “customers” are in fact professionals who produce work made to look like it was created by amateurs. Nonetheless, the beauty of these spots is in their simplicity, and of course, their ability to NOT look like traditional advertising.

Utilizing a viral/user-generated approach to video content gives your customers a chance to be your cheerleaders. It allows them to encourage peers to try your product or service without it looking like chest-thumping. And it does so without ceding creative control to true amateurs, so you can be very strategic about the business problems you choose to solve.

For more information about video production and pricing, click here:

• Video Production

• Production Packages

As we move further and further along the digital path conventional newspapers just cannot keep up with internet in terms of providing up to the minute news that we crave in our negative attention span society. Many of the headline news stories I read in newspapers I had already read the day before from an online news source.

In today’s world no one has time to read things twice (though we would be much better off if we did and would hopefully understand a lot more of the issues). With advertisers recognizing this digital shift, it has left ALL newspapers struggling for cash flow, and they are all high on the economic endangered species list.

The scary part for newspapers is we are not even close to reaching the potential that online news can offer. With the ever-changing enhancement of handheld devices, the ability to read online news on-the-go will continue to grow. I hate to say it, but in ten years the greatest use of newspaper will be for packing boxes and wiping off windshields.

Luckily this does not mean that newspaper people will be the ones out on the street corner wiping said windshields. As conventional newspapers continue to shrink, the demand for higher quality digital news reporting will be needed. There will of course be casualties, but good newspapers have set a standard that people want in news reporting, and in order to maximize the digital news phenomenon, these reporters and staff will be the part of the foundation.

My hope is that with this transition we will not lose the personal and local unity that newspapers provide. Though it was never what you bought the paper for, the small local stories were always what I ended up liking the most. On your third cup of coffee maybe you didn’t read the whole LifeStyle Section, but you could persuse through and come up away with something that bonded you a little more with the Seattle streets we walk each day. It made the world seem a little smaller and I hope that the digital version of newspapers can continue this bond.

Let us not totally mourn the death of the conventional PI, in the long run I believe they will be ahead of the game. If they can keep their quality up and gain momentum in the digital news format, they have the opportunity to be a shining example of what a digital newspaper can become.

(Submission by Dave Hayes)

CoreWerks seating devices are truly revolutionary. A CoreWerks chair can treat and prevent low back pain, while prolonging periods of alertness, from a typical seated position. It does this by promoting unconscious “micro-movements” in your lower back.

RedGrey Concepts produced a “How To” video to show users how to calibrate their new CoreWerks chairs, and a “Sales Video” (featured above) to promote their seating products to potential customers and investors. The outdoor/indoor shoot took place over a period of four days, and included model talent and lots of fun equipment.

Click below to see behind-the-scenes production photos:

For more information on video production and pricing, click below:

• Online Video Production

• Production Packages

RedGrey Concepts has provided online video content for the Boeing Classic at TPC Snoqualmie Ridge for two years. The Boeing Classic is the premiere golfing event in the pacific northwest, and is regularly attended by over 60,000 fans per year.

The Saturday Highlight Video featured here is one of the most successful videos we have ever produced. 40% of all visitors to the Boeing Classic website viewed this video, and of that 40%, nearly 70% watched the entire thing. Those are some incredible numbers, even for online video, which is the most popular form of online meda.

For more information on video production,which includes event coverage, please click on the links below:

• Online Video Production

• Production Packages

RedGrey regularly posts client work to all these sites and more as part of our World Wide Upload Service.

• YouTube (YouTube.com): Biggest of all video distribution sites
Avg Traffic: Nearly 70 million monthly uniques; 74 page views/person; 0:55:52 minutes spent on site.
Demographics: Surprisingly, the audience only slants slightly younger; roughly even male/female; relatively less educated.

• MySpace (MySpace.com): Primarily a social networking site, but video is widely used
Avg Traffic: 12.5 million monthly unique visitors; 23 page views/person; 0:07:03 minutes spent on site.
Demographics Only slightly younger; even male/female; relatively less educated.

• Revver (Revver.com): This site employs an ad sharing revenue system similar to Google AdWords, but for video
Avg Traffic: 8+ million monthly uniques; 16 page views/person; 0:08:07 mins on site.
Demographics: Slightly more male; age relatively older.

• Veoh (Veoh.com): Focus on full-screen online video for broadband users.
Avg Traffic: 3.6 million monthly uniques; 30 pages viewed/person; 0:41:29 minutes on site.
Demographics: slightly more male; even age.

• Metacafe (Metacafe.com): Popular worldwide distribution. Quality over quantity distinction.
Avg Traffic: 3.5 million monthy uniques; 15 pages/person; 0:07:10 mins on site.
Demo: Almost 3:1 male to female; relatively even education and income.

• Yahoo! Video (video.Yahoo.com): Sleek, entertainment-oriented video site (not fully integrated w/rest of Yahoo!’s community destinations)
Avg Traffic: 3.2 million uniques/month; 4 page views/person; 0:03:16 mins on site.
Demo: Slightly more male; slants older.

• blip.tv (blip.tv): Publisher-friendly video sharing and distribution site
Avg Traffic: 1.3 million monthly uniques; 3 page views/person; 0:02:43 mins spent on site.
Demo: Slightly more male; higher education and income.

• Vimeo (Vimeo.com): Hip, user-generated content
Avg Traffic: 1.3 million monthly uniques; 5 page views/person.
Demo: 2:1 male-to-female ratio; high income and college educated.

• Google Video (video.google.com): One of the first video sharing sites to offer ad revenue sharing w/publishers
Avg Traffic: 436,000 monthly unique visitors; 3 page views/person; 0:02:34 mins on site.
Demo: Unavailable.

• Viddler (Viddler.com): Newer site with cool features like comments tied to a particular time in the video and automatic webcam sync.
Avg Traffic: Unavailable.
Demo: Slightly more male; college educated.

• Facebook (Facebook.com): Another major social networking site with over 100 million users. 4th most-trafficked website in the world.
Avg Traffic: See above.
Demo: Wide-ranging and segmented.

Online video does a great job of not just furthering a business objective. It also exposes your personality and art to others who may not otherwise see it. A good video can inspire you just as much as it inspires others, so take advantage of it!

* Rod’s Top 12 Video Distribution Sites, Page 89, Layers Magazine, November/December 2008

But it’s not the end of the story. In fact, well over half of what makes a video successful happens AFTER it’s been produced.

YouTube isn’t the only game in town. In addition to displaying your video on your own website, make sure you leverage other online video sites to reach a much larger audience. There are a host of other online video sites that have different, more segmented, audiences worth reaching. In fact, some of these sites are known to have more sophisticated viewers than YouTube, making the content space more valuable to you as an advertiser.

Best of all, uploading to these sites is entirely free!

Here’s the list of video sites to consider when making your video content “live”:

YouTube – http://www.youtube.com
Google Video – http://video.google.com
Yahoo Video – http://video.yahoo.com
Vimeo – http://www.vimeo.com
Viddler – http://www.viddler.com
Veoh – http://www.veoh.com
Wonder How To – http://www.wonderhowto.com
5 Mins.com – http://www.5mins.com
HowCast – http://www.howcast.com
Blip – http://www.blip.tv
Flurl – http://www.flurl.com
BoFunk – http://www.bofunk.com
Flixya – http://www.flixya.com

Whether you’ve shot and edited your own video masterpiece, or paid a production company or agency to professionally produce one for you, a video in isolation helps no one. For the advertising investment to be realized, you need to display your content in as many places as possible, tag it with the right keywords, and use social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook to direct viewers to your media online.

When deployed correctly and intelligently, online video is one of the most persuasive tools in an advertiser’s toolbox.

Questions or quotes? Contact me at: jeremyd@redgreyconcepts.com

(Submission by Jeremy J. Dodd)

Printa Systems is the leading manufacturer of Screen Printing Equipment and Machines for the Advertising Specialty Industry.

Duke Goss, Founder and President of Printa Systems, wanted a video that highlighted what has made his company successful for over 20 years, and that separated Printa from the competition. RedGrey Concepts provided script writing, storyboarding, production and post-production work to complete this task.

Click here for more information on video production:

• Online Video

• TV Commercials

• Production Packages

I have to admit that at first i thought Twitter was utterly useless, and much more of a distraction than a tool. however, as i’ve expanded my network and started following people in the field of advertising, i’ve found it to quite valuable. Here’s why:

One of my favorite quotes about marketing/advertising is from a book called “The Cluetrain Manifesto.” It reads:

“Markets are conversations;
and conversation is fire.
Therefore, marketing is arson.”

Twitter allows you to search the millions of conversations people are having online the same way google allows you to search information. So, if you want to learn about the migratory patterns of bottle nose dolphins, google it. But if you want to learn what people are saying about a product or service right now, search for it on twitter. you’ll be amazed what you find.

For example, i just twitter searched “Blackberry Curve,” and saw that someone named MarinaMartin recently said, “i have a problem in that i check email on my blackberry even when my computer is open to gmail.”

Is that something blackberry should build an ad campaign around? surely, no. but is it a valuable consumer insight? of course. if you’re trying to visually tell the story of how addicted people are to our blackberry’s, i think this would do the trick. and it didn’t cost me a focus group to discover it.

It’s all about who you follow, and what sort of information is valuable to you. here’s a quickstart guide to Twitter. I wish I had read it before i started Tweeting myself:

• Download a desktop application to run twitter. I prefer TweetDeck, which can be downloaded here: www.tweetdeck.com
• Using TweetDeck, use the Search function to search industry relevant terms to track who’s talking about things you care about. For example, every time somebody makes a tweet including “Rich Media Advertising”, i can see who that person is and follow them if i like what he/she has to say.
• Perhaps most importantly, check out twitterpacks.pbwiki.com/. This is a great site to help you find Twitterers based on a variety of groups, such as location, industry, interests, company, etc.

Lastly, once you get all set up, don’t forget to say something!

Oh, and be sure to check out twitter.com/RedGrey_Jeremy!!!

(Submission by Jeremy J. Dodd)

You can have all the latest, greatest and most expensive golf toys, but nothing takes strokes off your game like having a fundamentally sound golf swing. And that’s the approach taken by Rick Plank and eSwing Golf Technologies.

The eSwing Golf Analyzer allows golfers to turn any environment into an interactive driving range with real-time golf instruction and feedback. RedGrey Concepts was tasked with capturing the unique technology of the eSwing Golf suite of products into a single video to raise awareness and aid fundraising.

Video production involved advanced 3D animation mixed with driving range footage and an owner testimonial. We look forward to working with Rick and eSwing Golf Technologies in the promotion of his upcoming product, the trailer-mounted “Drivin Range”.

For more information on video production and pricing, click here:

• Video Production

• Online Video

I’m co-leading the volunteer team responsible for putting the panel together and selecting a moderator for the event, which is Jan 14, 2009, from 5:00 – 8:30 pm at the Bellevue Hyatt. The moderator will lead the discussion, with well-informed panelists chiming in on our topic, which is a timely one:

MIT TECHNOLOGY FORECAST: Successful Advertising in 2009 and Beyond

The event will look to answer a lot of the questions advertisers are facing given the context of the economy:

• With so many mediums, how do I pick the right technology to hit my target audience without spending a boatload of money?
• What roles will traditional media play over the next few years?
• When cutting back an ad budget, how much is too much?

Without question, if you’re a media buyer, media creator, or an entrepreneur working on the ad platform of tomorrow, this is a must see event!

And if you don’t fit into one of those molds, MIT events are a great opportunity to meet entrepreneurs, investors, and corporate decision-makers in the Greater Seattle Area. RedGrey will be producing a viral video leading up to the event, and will be sure to preview it here.

Lastly, I have to say, in talking with some of the great advertising minds in the seattle area (Wunderman, ParkerLePla, Don’t Blink, GoGoMo, Caliber Data, LiveClicker) AND their clients (Nintendo, AT&T, REI, Starbucks, Nike), I get the feeling that while the days are indeed dark, a new dawn readies on the horizon, and it will be brighter than ever.

So, if you’re starting a new business, running an old one, or find yourself working in your garage on tomorrow’s greatest technology, come to this event and learn a few tricks on how to get people’s attention in a meaningful way. It will be time well spent.

(Submission by Jeremy J. Dodd)