Million Dollar Web TV News

How can we utilize video in this new buyer-led world?
To engage today’s customers, we must forget nearly everything we’ve learned about the video of the “past” and reinvent it as an interactive marketing medium. Here’s how:

1. Become “Video-Active”
Thanks to technology, we no longer need an army of well-trained people to shoot, edit, and produce video content. Sure, it’s not entirely easy just yet, but Cisco’s Flip cameras and a host of others are a great way to quickly capture that customer testimonial you’ve been waiting for.

2. Make your video personal
In digital marketing, we’ve seen the benefits of identifying and targeting messages to buyer personas — and video is no exception. With interactive technologies, we can now assemble a personal video story on the fly that maps directly to each persona’s needs. How cool is that?

3. Roll with your own rock stars
You and your own employees can create effective and authentic video content. Look for individuals in your company who connect with people and can tell your story the best way. Use LinkedIn and Twitter to enable direct connections between your rock stars and prospects.

4. Keep it short and sweet ( Not that KISS … )
In this consumer-led world, time is precious — so don’t assume that someone will sit through a 30 minute company presentation on video. Find juicy, bite-sized bits of video snippets and create fun, memorable content out of them.

5. Build calls-to-action into your video
Strike while the iron’s hot. If you have prospects engaged in your video, provide the next step directly within the experience, rather than sending them off to another Web site.

6. Focus on the ROI
Absolutely! Do NOT think of video as optional Web site eye-candy, but a way to add rocket fuel to your current lead generation, lead nurturing and sales enablement programs. Recent studies show that adding video to e-mail campaigns can increase conversion rates by 2 to 3 times. This is an ROI that’s hard to beat.

Last but not least…

Video is Google Juice
According to Forrester Research, optimizing video content is one of the easiest ways to get a first-page organic ranking on Google. Submitting video content to YouTube and other video portals will help you raise awareness, but driving prospects to your door is the ultimate goal.

Surprise, surprise … news web sites are looking a lot less like newspapers and a lot more like TV today.

Why?

Predictably, the major reason is commercial. At a time when other categories of advertising dollars are shrinking, video ads are booming. News sites are adding more and more video to keep pace with the demands of advertisers, from the higher cost-per-thousands, or C.P.M.’s, that ads on these videos command.

For example, CNN and ESPN are featuring video much more prominently on their home pages, even prompting visitors to press “Play” before they begin to read. The Wall Street Journal has moved its video player front and center too, with a twice-a-day live newscast on WSJ.com.

The attention to video mirrors changes in how viewers are experiencing news. Major events, be it the presidential election or the death of Michael Jackson, bring a surge in streaming video viewing by new users, and each time more of them stick around.

“Every watershed event leaves video more popular than before,” says Charles W. Tillinghast, the president of MSNBC.com, a joint venture between NBC Universal and Microsoft.

K. C. Estenson, the general manager of CNN.com, a unit of Time Warner, observes: “People are using the Internet in a different way now. With broadband becoming ubiquitous and more and more sites having this easy capability, people expect video to be there.”

While media companies typically do not break out figures for video advertising, data available from other sources indicates that video revenue currently pales next to search and display advertising. But the growth — especially notable under the dismal economic conditions we’ve had in the last two years — has spurred investment and interest in video production.

Among Web sites operated by newspapers, The New York Times, Gannett and Tribune each reach more than a million viewers a month with video streams, comScore says. The home page of The Times sometimes streams live video of events; it carried a news conference Friday about the shootings Thursday at Fort Hood, Tex.

Beyond news sites, video is now the fastest-growing segment of the Internet advertising market. Digital video amounted to $477 million in revenue in the first half of 2009, up 38 percent from the same time period in 2008, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

The research firm eMarketer projects 35 to 45 percent growth for online video advertising dollars in each of the next five years, topping out at $5.2 billion in 2014. (Search advertising ie projected to be a $16 billion business by then.) They also predict that video ads would be the “main channel” for major advertisers seeking to increase their online spending. Already, video ads for companies like Johnson & Johnson and Unilever can be seen on all major news sites.

While advertising dollars have not always kept pace with growing view counts, video is currently the strongest ad format for WSJ.com, according to Mr. Quinn.

So who am I to argue? Bring it on and over to Million Dollar Web TV!