According to the *IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada) in 2010 out of the $2.23 billion in online advertising revenue (2011 stats were estimated at $2.6 billion), approximately $428 million or 19% were from French websites (2011 stats were estimated at $500 million, 17% increase) with a predicted continued steady growth for 2012. The article also goes on to state that 2010 was the year that online ad revenue officially beat out newspaper ad revenue, therefore bumped up to place second and looking to be number one in the coming years. So basically, if you aren’t creating marketing content for online use yet, that’s your first problem. However, if you are…start transcribing! These stats give an idea into how large of a market French-Canada really is when considering online advertising revenue. The chart below sourced from IAB, shows the French proportion of ad revenue in display advertising vehicles (ie. Banners etc.)

French Canada, mostly of course located in Quebec are some of the top rated Internet users and growing each year. What does this mean? There’s a huge market, not being spoken to in their own language! How can this be? As companies and brands begin to merge their marketing efforts online and get more comfortable using this as an ongoing platform its not that shocking that areas become overlooked or forgotten altogether. A critical mistake being made by many companies and brands worldwide is forgetting to translate their videos and other online content. If I haven’t convinced you yet, here are some more Quebec stats that might get you to say “sacré bleu”.

• 43% of Quebecers have a Facebook account;
• Of those, 49% access it at least once every day;
• Only 3% of Quebecers have a Twitter account, but this number is expected to significantly increase in the next few years;
• 15% of Quebecers follow a company on Facebook and 6% on Twitter.
**source: http://www.adeointernetmarketing.com/news/social-media,-a-growing-movement-in-quebec-59.aspx

Just a few examples pulled from our own library of companies tapping into French-Canada and beyond.

*All IAB statistics sourced directly from: http://www.iabcanada.com/blog/2010-internet-revenue-survey

Things are looking very bright in our industry based on some recent reports from comScore, Google and MediaCT.

If you’ve noticed more videos being shared via smartphones, it’s no coincidence and the trend is looking up. In Canada, video is accelerating in the mobile world with half of Canadians watching more online videos than they were last year. Specifically, 35% smartphone owners, 56% tablet owners, and 75% laptop owners in Canada are regularly watching videos on their portable and mobile devices.

Even further, Canadians watch an average of eight videos per week. What percent of our nation is still not willing to engage? A small portion – only 13% of Canadians do not watch any online video content. This is all pretty remarkable and the diversity and easily accessible nature of online video inevitably makes the medium more entertaining than live TV (according to 26% Canadians to be precise).  It’s all about convenience and on demand content with none other than YouTube leading the way.

For those who are using media dollars for the traditional media outlets – you may want to rethink your strategy as leading networks such as CTV and CBC, were popular with only 25% or less of Canadian online video watchers.

Last but not least, Canadians also don’t just watch videos – they take action. Out of those surveyed, 18% follow up after online video watching whether it’s searching for more information, social networking, sharing, visiting or purchasing.

Also, some great news from our neighbours down South:

US has reached a new record of video advertising impressions in one month! 

It’s true, online video advertising impressions surpassed 8 billion for the first time on the record with 181 million Americans watching video online in March.

YouTube is dominating but take a look at who is next in line:

Great month in our industry!

Let’s keep this up,

VMG Team.

Sources: TechVibes & REELSeo
Images:  DigitalTrends, Klaszter.

Measuring online video Return On Investment (ROI) is not much different than a traditional marketing campaign. If anything, it presents opportunity for analytics that a traditional campaign would not be able to deliver with a much more targeted reach. When videos on YouTube are able to receive millions of views within days and Comscore releases reports stating that on average a person watches 14.8 hours of online video a month; it’s not the matter of trying to prove that online video marketing is effective.The quick pace of new media in today’s marketing landscape has us trying to keep up with the latest trends more often than not with C-levels wanting to see numbers justifying these efforts. The C suite wants to know that the marketing dollars are achieving the highest value and ROI while receiving the desired results.

So how do you measure ROI of online video?

No matter what kind of video initiative your company wants to execute – whether it’s internal communications or consumer oriented – you’ve got to be able to show the results. Here are some tips that can help you.

1. Know your objectives.

The most essential component of executing a campaign successfully is having clear goals. The simplest way to measure return on what you’re investing is knowing your target audience and what message you are trying to deliver.

Your objectives may vary. For example, if you’re trying to promote product sampling, your objective may be to have individuals register for a coupon on your website after viewing the video. On the contrary, if you’re executing an online video for internal communications between various offices, your objective may be saving on travel costs. Whatever it may be, figure it out prior to execution.

2. Use Available Analytics.

With various analytics tools, it is easier than ever before to evaluate how others are interacting with your video. You are able to examine which videos are being watched until the very end, at what point others may drop off, the demographic of your audience and how far the video is shared.

You are also able to create a model to calculate what the engagements are worth based on your messaging objective and how others are interacting with your video. If you’re looking to promote sampling and want to calculate what the engagement is worth, assigning a value for each sign up is a great way to measure success. For example, every person who watches your video and engages fully by registering for your sampling promo can each equal to $100 of investment. Working with these numbers will make it easier to draw comparisons between media channels.

Similarly, ROI doesn’t necessarily have to equal a dollar figure. It can be social interactions, conversations around your brand and those very important recommendations by your brand ambassadors. If your video is getting shared by your target demographic and this audience is recommending your video to their friends, the reach and engagement is just as valuable as a dollar figure.

3. Partner up with experts.

There is no point in producing expensive high quality content without a distribution strategy. Online platforms have an advantage over traditional platforms in being able to target the right demographic and this is something your campaign should benefit from.

It’s rare that a video goes viral and is shared without a push and without a doubt, a successful online video campaigns require the same level of planning for a targeted distribution to ensure desired exposure to a relevant audience.

If you are able to, it’s beneficial to partner up with experts to help your campaign achieve maximum return – whether it’s perfecting your analytics or helping your video receive the target views it needs. Video marketing agencies like VMG Cinematic specialize in not only producing broadcast quality content for the web but also ensuring that the video gets in front of targeted eye balls.

Let’s take Canadian luxury fashion retailer, Holt Renfrew, as an example. At one time, The HR YouTube channel hosted 22 videos with a total of 92,000 video views; however 84% of those views came from only 2 of the 22 videos with the help of VMG. Furthermore, these two videos have also accounted for total of 84% of total consumer interaction on brand’s channel. 

Partnering up with online video industry leaders can provide you access to numbers and reports that provide in depth analytics and more importantly, results that justify your online video ROI.

4. Don’t be afraid to get creative.

Measuring online video ROI isn’t always an exact science and with a non traditional platform, you have room to come up with creative and different ways to validate your efforts.

Online video can often drives traffic back to your website and one way is to look at what that traffic would have cost if it had been acquired by a push advertisement.

For example, comparing the pay per click model and the received traffic you can use the following:

Running banner ads on a website with $3 per click which results in 300 unique visitors to your website. This traffic of 300 people to your website is then worth $900.

Although this approach offers an easy dollar figure, it’s crucial to note that the difference in pay per click banner ad traffic and organic post video engagement differs greatly and the value through organic engagement is much higher.

To conclude, online video enhances and creates the most engaging online user experiences. When it comes to ROI, the measurement metrics differ greatly depending on the specific goals. However, success lays in in the ability to target a specific audience based on demographic, geographic and contextual parameters.

I recently read an article from the Wall Street Journal about Viral Video that instantly sparked some interest. It focused mainly around Judson Laipply, or as most would know him, the guy from “The Evolution of Dance” video. The article explains that when he uploaded his video on YouTube in the spring of 2006 he had little to no idea what a viral video was or the amount of success he was about to receive. Without any advertising at all the video spread across the Internet eventually reaching 100 million + views.

In Laipply’s own words he describes, “It was all just pure luck”, one of those word of mouth phenomenon’s that cannot be analyzed or mapped for future benefit. We all know in 2009, the likely hood of such a success story is beyond staggering. Possible, but your more probable to win the lottery or have the Leafs win the cup. Not only has the field of content increased beyond imagination, but also the process of marketing videos has expanded immensely past a simple upload. As a matter a fact, the article relates only uploading videos to YouTube without the aid of further marketing comparable to “dropping a grain of sand on the beach ” and hoping to have it discovered.

With the knowledge of this, Laipply moved forward with his next video releases “Evolution of Dance 2”, needless to say he took a far different approach. His first angle, find partnership, Laipply reached out and the sponsors answered overwhelmingly. His two major partners PeopleJam Inc. and Saveology.com have put fourth tens of thousands of dollars in marketing money to promote the upcoming viral sequel and pay such overhead as song rights.

Saveology, a company that advises people on finances and PeopleJam a self help company, have teamed with Laipply, himself a motivational speaker with the overall theme of self improvement and positive human spirit. With their product integration users are able to interact with various flash games and activities such as placing their head on Judson’s body among other Internet content.

Laipply knows the severity of his luck first time around and hopes to benefit from his new marketing techniques and something that most viral marketers don’t have from jump street. An extremely large following base! The video has been out since mid January and has close to 4 million hits. Coupled with the hype that it received on its countdown to launch it may very will be the best marketed Viral Video of all time.

It is quite evident as mentioned before on this vary blog that Viral Hope has gone the way of the Dodo and Viral Science is the wave of the future. If you want be successful you no longer only need great content, but it must be packaged with great marketing (SEO, building fan base etc…) and long-term commitment.

Well ok, maybe the Dodo reference is a little bleak, perhaps a better analogy would be the Siberian Tiger cause we’ve all seen one of those in the Zoo at least once and apparently there are only 200 left in the wild. Yeah think about it like that there are perhaps 200 great Viral Hopes left in the massive wild archives of Viral Science.

-Ty Huggins

Look at that, a two month gap in between posts… shameful.  On behalf of VMG to our many thousands if not hundreds of millions of loyal VMG blog readers I offer our humble apologies and our promise- nay our easily broken agreement, to put up at least one new, insightful, or at the very least incoherent blog post per month.  In the meantime thank you for your patience and without further ado, Today’s subject: “Viral Hope”

What is Viral Hope you ask?  Viral hope is something we’ve identified many brands, companies and individuals from suffering from.  It’s a condition brought on by misunderstanding the extent of the online video ecosystem.  Put simply there’s a lot of video online.  A lot.

Fact: It would take you 600 years(!) to watch the entirety of the YouTube video library.  There are 13-15 hours of video submitted to YouTube every hour.

Now, Viral Hope occurs whenever a company, brand or individual puts up a video in the “hope” that it will go viral.  There was once a time when you could argue that content was king.  Upload a funny video or a strange video or a video of someone caught lighting their pants on fire and you stood a relatively good chance of  finding a big audience online.  This unfortunately is no longer the case.  Even the best content, with the most viral potential, from the very best talent needs cajoling to get it in front of the right eyeballs. The problem is, no matter how good your content you’re still throwing a needle in a haystack hoping someone (with a lot of friends) will find it and share it.

Doing the old upload and hope is now an exercise in futility.  So what to do? We’ve been asking this question since our earliest days (and the earliest days of YouTube) when we first started experimenting with viral video distribution.  Now with much trial and error under our belts we can confidently say that we are quickly becoming masters, not of Viral Hope, but of Viral Science.  And yes there is a science to going viral online.  Certainly quality and relevance of content is still important but just as important is how that content is optimized for discovery.

In our strange economic times many brand and marketing managers may find themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place. Shrinking budgets mean the cost of broadcast spots are becoming less and less feasible.  Print readership is disappearing and advertisers are jumping ship like rats on sinking galleon (sorry advertisers).  Online video has always held a great allure but little in the way of guaranteed or quantifiable returns.  That no longer needs to be the case.  With our latest viral distribution efforts we’ve achieved our viewership volume goals and then some.  But the buck doesn’t stop at view counts.  In our opinion a successful viral campaign is a blend of views generated and discussion started.  We aim to get people talking, whether on blogs or as video comments or direct video responses.  Internet communications is a two way street after all and the success of online media, whatever it’s form is largely dependent on how well it’s been optimized for consumer dialogue.  A video with 200,000 views and 2 comments is a failure in our opinion while a video with 50,000 views and 220 comments could be considered a great success.

Check out our last two viral efforts:

Volkswagon Jetta TDI - (we did distribution only, not production so please be kind)

Current stats:  248,140 views – 235 comments - 1302 ratings totalling 4.5 stars - 5 distinctly seeded blog link backs.

Originally seeded for a target viewership of 150k to 200k. Target viewership goal was surpassed 2 weeks after upload.

Motorola – MotoReel Phone Films – The Sacred Orchid - (Production and Distribution)

Current stats  187,154 views – 178 comments – 1 video response – 529 ratings totally 4.5 stars – 6 YouTube Honors including 5th most viewed video in Canada for the month of January 2009.

The Sacred Orchid was originally seeded for a target viewership of 100k.

Both spots achieved their target numbers within 3 weeks of being released, viewership and comments continue.

These were not accidents, they were not flukes, our viewership numbers are not artificially generated (no astroturfing here).  These are real viewers, making real unbiased comments, leaving unbiased ratings and sharing as they see fit.  We have become online media agriculturists, planting seeds in the right places to get the right amount of viewership nurishment.  It is a process that can be repeated, measured and refined.

Viral doesn’t have to be a dirty word anymore, online video can be embraced as a viable alternative to broadcast and print, especially when targeting niche audiences.  This is what we’re doing. This is what we’re all about.  Great creative production with quantifiable results.

Leave hope at the door and embrace viral science.  Also, tell your boss you’ve found a company that can maximize your marketing budget for 2009, you’ll probably get a promotion.  You can thank us later.

- Evan Aagaard

Partner/CD – VMG Cinematic

As a rule I generally have a low opinion of buzz words and corporate market speak.  It’s a vocabulary too often used by the uninformed trying to pose as the overly informed and in the end those fancy words we come up with to describe new trends grow stale and wind up ridiculed by just about everyone in the know.  Well at the risk of ridicule I’m going to break my own rule and become a contributor, nay a revivalist to the buzz word lexicon with “Advertainment.”  Sure it’s not my own invention and you’ll find it floating around on the blogosphere here and there, maybe in a few industry articles etc. but it hasn’t really found a catch yet.  I’m using it now because there really is no better word to describe the growing trend I’ve been seeing from big brands experimenting with long-form-video-entertainment-advertising (see why we need a buzz word?).

Of course, this is something we at VMG have always been strong advocates of, first as conscientious consumers and now as industry participants.  It really comes down to a simple conclusion that we reached many moons ago when we first cobbled our little group together: The 30-second spot is dying out, people are becoming desensitized to the repetition, the format, the chaos in volume.  In short consumers have been shutting their brains off to TV commercials for years, and yet big brands are only now starting to take advantage of the fantastic opportunities that exist online for consumer communication.

What if brands made, films? TV shows? Short films? Animations, Characters that people liked, storylines that people found genuinely compelling???? What if brands started telling stories instead of hard selling products and services?

The consumer is wise. The consumer has seen all the tricks, they know all the bargains, they’ve heard all the lines, and if they don’t they have an unlimited information resource to find them out.

Let’s imagine a future where consumers judge brands not by the full page sale announcement they see in their paper or the forgettable commercial they see 17 times a day on their TV, but on the emotional connection they have to the most recent short film or online series that brand has released. And I’m talking soft sell here.  A genuinely entertaining piece of content, humor, drama, sci-fi whatever the genre, something authentic and enjoyable to watch where you might not even see a logo or credit at all (trust the intelligence of your audience).

So there’s my deep thinker for the day, the brand-as-studio concept, creating the mutant child “Advertainment” and reaping the rewards of a truly emotional connection with consumers by entertaining them first, and selling them as a distant (and sometimes non-existent) second.

“Hey Joe did you see that new film from Heineken today?”

“No George, I’ve been hooked on that series from Panasonic… it’s awesome.”

Sound ridiculous?

Just wait and see.

-Reid

Now, they also have the option to partner with YouTube and share in ad revenues from the videos. The problem was always more about YouTube’s profit than it was about the uploaders. YouTube has become a kind of de facto public medium where consumers share and react to mainstream media images, which is often helpful for brands. This kind of arrangement could help to reduce the tension between the owners of those images and the host site.

-Nick

-Nick

-Nick