Check out my guest blog post on REEL SEO, discussing Style Agents and the first Canadian online web series for a shopping mall!

Original Web Video Series = Success for Retail Shopping

-Marina

Yesterday we came across a study that was recently released by Turnhere.com on what the top priorities are (in terms of communication channels) for marketers and advertisers in 2010. As we expected from our own first hand experience in 2009, online video is at the front of the pack for most marketers and shows no signs of stopping. Now, more than ever companies are recognizing the tremendous potential and ROI benefits of web video marketing. Online video’s acceptance into the mainstream marketing fold has been a strange process over the last few years fraught with starts and stops, hype and hoopla and inexplicable successes and failures. But 2010 looks to be the year this medium comes into its own as a powerful brand communication channel.
What this study reveals and what we have always been advocates of, is how democratizing online video marketing can be. The study polled 116 respondents from companies that ranged from Fortune 500 brands, regional brands, digital, and PR. The marketing budgets of the respondents ranged from the tens of thousands to the millions and yet all said that online video was a must have in their communications mix for the coming year and beyond.
So why is the fever catching on now almost four years after YouTube hit the big time and the concept of “viral” became a household term? Well in those four years we’ve had what I call a “maturation of the medium,” experiments were conducted, audiences were tested, the model was built up, torn down, re-built and refined. The end result? Well to put it simply, online video passed the test. It survived the hype and came out the other side as a incredibly powerful medium capable of crossing genres and cutting through the clutter and growing ineffectiveness of print and TV.
Perhaps the most revealing aspect of the study was that an overwhelming percentage (81%) of respondents ranked internal marketing teams as being the key players and decision makers in pursuing online video. Not the agencies, not the big PR honchos, but the people inside the companies and behind the brands who know their message the best. 2010 will be the year marketers take back the power and get their message to the consumers. Online video and the genre of branded entertainment will be the way they do it, and VMG will be there to help.

Full review of the study from Reel SEO:

http://www.reelseo.com/video-marketing-top-priority-2010/

Cellphones have surely come a long way since their first days….

Recently, mobile video has been dominating industry news with definite promises of growth, expecting to generate roughly $16B in revenues worldwide by 2014. Similarly, “Mobile Video Services: A Five Year Global Market Forecast” states that mobile usage will rise by 135% over the next 5 years due to more people embracing mobile audio and video. Not to mention the number of users are vastly increasing worldwide – mobile subscribers in Latin America and Central/Eastern Europe are predicted to be 50% 3G converted up from 5% in 2008.

Cellphone displays are getting larger and more powerful making it obvious that video is going to continue expanding in both usage per person and amount that is available. With more companies beginning to offer flat rate mobile data plans, mobile video is more accessible to the general public assisting the growth of mobile data.

Is there a valid explanation for this fast paced increase? The recent stimulated mobile video growth most definitely ties into the launch of iPhone 3GS. Since the launch, YouTube has stated that mobile uploads have been soaring over the last six month with over a 1700% boost. The daily uploads alone have increased 400%…. YouTube believes that the growth is mostly due to more mobile phones with video capabilities on the market, which makes sense of course. If you provide people with advanced technology, they will use it.

By the looks of it, the mobile industry looks bright but what effect does that have on online video? Are we able to co-exist together or will one form of video eventually rule out the other?

In order to understand similar relationships better, I found a few quantitative case studies.  For example, in a relationship between those who listen to music with online streaming vs mobile phones,  the numbers indicate that when one goes up, the other goes down. This means there is only room for one of the above …

However, on the contrary the analysis for mobile video vs. online video streaming states that the two do not compete. In fact, not only do they not compete but they correlate strongly (on a coefficient of .57 to be exact). This is the unique role of video in digital progress and we are all right in the middle of it. People want more video, through more devices, in more places and times – the possibilities are unlimited. That’s definitely great news!