As online video sites are growing in popularity, web video marketing is becoming more and more of a necessity for brands looking to get their name and message out there. But web video marketing isn’t what it used to be – simple video commercial spots, sidebar ads and pop-ups are being replaced with more technologically advanced breakout ads, interactive video campaigns and more, and analytics and ad targeting are becoming more comprehensive as well. Read on to find out about five upcoming trends that you can expect to see from web video marketing and that you should become familiar with if you want to maximize your brand’s web video marketing success in the future.
Interactive Video Will Become The Standard For Advertising
As technological advancements are made in the field of web video, plain old commercial spots just won’t cut it anymore. Viewers are becoming less and less impressed with cut and dry video campaigns, now that more brands and companies are introducing interactivity to their video campaigns.
Interactive video advertising gives audiences the opportunity to click and engage within the video player itself – clicking to get more information, play games, download coupons and more. According to Zvika Netter, the CEO of Innovid, who I interviewed earlier this summer, interactivity in web video ads not only makes audiences feel more excited and engaged by the ad, but also gives audiences the opportunity to willingly spend more time with the brand online.
Companies like Innovid provide companies and brands with a platform for creating interactive online video campaigns, and YouTube annotations give brands the opportunity to make their own branded interactive adventures. As consumers see more and more of these types of interactive advertisements they will come to expect them in place of plain old videos. You can check out an example of one of Innovid’s interactive campaigns on our original interview post, and watch an interactive YouTube campaign from Blendtec below.
HTML5 Campaigns Will Offer More Creativity Than Ever
HTML5 video is new on the scene, and we are only just beginning to see the types of campaigns that it can be used for. Earlier this week, indie band Arcade Fire released a HTML5 music video with Google Chrome. The video, The Wilderness Downtown, is a truly amazing experience, giving viewers the opportunity to enter their childhood address, which takes shots of their childhood neighborhood and incorporated them into the video, choreographed pop-up video windows, sharing features and more.
Within hours of the video’s release, it was spreading like wildfire on Twitter, Facebook and the rest of the social web. People love to see new and innovative campaigns, and HTML5 video is definitely opening up new doors for interactivity and creativity. The technology is still new, but I am sure that as more and more brands and creators get wind of the possibilities offered by this technology it will become a standard for advertising campaigns.
Brands Will Break Out Of The Box With YouTube Breakout Campaigns
One of the coolest new trends in advertising is YouTube breakout campaigns. Brands are partnering with YouTube to create cool branded advertising pages that literally break out of the box, taking over the entire YouTube interface. We have covered a variety of these campaigns, including the first ever YouTube game by Samsung; a promotion for The Expendables, in which Sylvester Stallone literally blows YouTube to bits; a Cadbury campaign with round YouTube video players; and, most recently, a Tipp-Ex whiteout campaign that lets viewers interact with a hunter that doesn’t want to shoot a bear.
Viewers love seeing brands break out of the box and get creative. When you are watching what looks like a typical YouTube video and suddenly vines grow out of the screen, or a character reaches out of the video player you are pleasantly surprised and want to share the link with your friends. There are already a growing number of these YouTube breakout campaigns and we are likely to see many more in the near future.
Augmented Reality & 3D Will Let Consumers Explore Products From Home
One of the coolest things you can offer your customers is the ability to explore your products in a new and exciting way from the comfort of home. With 3D manipulation of images and augmented reality, brands can let users check out their products from all angles from their computer screen.
Earlier this year, Olympus launched a cool augmented reality campaign to give viewers the opportunity to explore their PEN camera using a paper marker that could be downloaded and printed out from the site. When held up to a web cam, the marker was turned into a 3D camera that users could use to explore how the PEN camera worked. Check out the video below to see how the PEN campaign worked.
Enhanced Analytics & Targeting Will Increase Effectiveness of Video Marketing
As video advertising becomes more mainstream, analytics are becoming more involved as well. Advertisers can find out not only how many people are viewing their ads, but what part of the world they are in, how old they are, whether they are male or female, and even data about what websites they are visiting, videos they are watching and more. This is allowing video advertisers to gauge the success of their campaigns like never before.
Advertisers are also able to target their ads with much more specific targeting tools. On YouTube, for instance, advertisers can target campaigns to specific viewer demographics, specific tags or categories, and even to specific videos. YouTube also recently added a feature that allows advertisers to put age restrictions on their videos to target their audiences even more specifically.
As more and more technological innovations are made in web video, we are likely to see a huge increase in creativity and innovation in online video advertising. What would you like to see more of in the world of video marketing?
