It’s safe to say that having online video as part of a company’s marketing efforts is finally universally accepted. 

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 have been hanging out with a lot of kids lately. It’s my age, it seems. The tables have turned and there are no longer get-togethers with friends and family in which small offspring are not involved. I have been watching them, in their new lives, as my parents and their parents before must have also, with fascination. Marveling at how different the realities of their childhood will be from my own. A case in point, my parents didn’t own a computer until my later years of elementary school and Duck Hunt was the biggest, most technologically advanced thing to happen in my living room!

Children of the current generation are already on Facebook just days, sometimes minutes (serious social media dedication on their parents’ part) after birth. They comb through playlists searching episodes of Dora the Explorer from their strollers in the grocery store. They sit tucked in bed curled up with an iPad alphabet game instead of a book. This is reality and, understandably, new parents are wondering: is this ok?

In chatting with friends and in researching more scholarly debates, schools of thought on the subject of social media and kids are as varying as Twitter handles. Some believe that children should be shielded from social media, and media overall, for as long as possible. They argue that social networks fail to really educate kids about the real world, substituting video games for books, cyber chats for community or human interaction and promoting mindless consumerism over serious learning.

Others feel that media-savvy kids are genuinely unavoidable and necessary. They feel that it is a modern parent’s responsibility to allow their children to be on social networks, because children should learn about the world and technology – and media and the worldwide web are highly effective and realistic ways of doing so.

Of course in any debate there are many sides. I do appreciate them all and not being a parent myself, I have yet to come to any truly definitive social media child rearing intentions. However, having invested a career in marketing and social media communication, I appreciate and recognize the fact that it is only going to play more of a role, not less, in the future of our society. This being the case, perhaps efforts to keep children from it might be fruitless?

I was most surprised by the concerns about “reality” (and social media’s detachment from it) that came up in some of the perspectives I uncovered on this topic. I recognize that video games and TV are not reality, and that children should be taught the difference. But online social interactions with other individuals, be they Facebook comments, YouTube responses, or general emails, are very much real. Rather than shy away from social media, for fear of it not being a meaningful interaction, shouldn’t children be encouraged to recognize that what they put out into cyberspace is in fact received by other people in the real world? Most importantly, they should be taught that there can be both positive and negative repercussions when interacting via online forms of communication, which can mirror those of speaking face to face.

Like any other lessons in life, the next generation will need to be taught the values and risks of social interaction online. How to be safe. How to communicate, yet at the same time harbor discretion for personal protection and privacy. How to embrace it, as an enjoyable and positive element of their social development, a forum for creativity and expression. Most importantly, we should help our children understand that they can all hurt, anger, influence and inspire with the messages they send and persona they project online.

At times kids can surprise us, in their ability to digest information and entertainment with an exceptional level of candid maturity. They have the ability to distinguish reality from fantasy, right from wrong. This is made evident through one of my subscribed YouTube shows, “Kids React to Online Videos”. Their responses are not only hilarious, but also showcase how easily they recognize non-sensical entertainment for just what it is.

Charlie Sheen

Fred

Undoubtably there are media dangers: teens posting unmonitored material, lost cognitive skills through video game comas, and it is true that these are unique to our generation as parents. However, risks in child rearing are not new. My grandmother, in the mid-fifties, used to let her children out for the day into the once suburban woodlands of Mississauga and just hoped that they would show up for dinner. That must have been a bit concerning too!

In summary, a child can be safeguarded for only so long. After all, documentation of their formative years no longer live in dusty basement albums, but rather on their parents’ Macs or, more likely, Mum or Dad or even Grandma’s social media page. What hope do they really have of avoidance? So for now, I aspire to offer my future children opportunity, confidence and wisdom in all aspects of their life. With some diligence, if such principals are applied to a strong and dedicated Social Media upbringing, perhaps my kids might just blog and tweet for the better!

I have to admit I haven’t heard of Greg Jarboe before, but I sure as hell liked what he had to say in this video. And yes you should check out the Monty Python YouTube case study he mentions because it is truly eye opening to the potential of YouTube as a direct marketing and sales conversion tool (Monty Python DVD sales went up 23,000%!).

Here’s the link to the full Monty Python case study

Check out my recent Q&A in Toronto Marketing Blog with Sandra Bekhor on the topic of marketing professional service firms with online video: http://torontomarketing.blogspot.com/2009/09/marketing-professional-service-firms.html

- Evan

YouTube is the premier destination in watching and sharing online videos. Increasingly companies have been jumping on the bandwagon and using YouTube in order to reach their target markets, as well as develop interactive relationships with their audience. It appears as though everyone has migrated online.

The core reasons for YouTube’s success lay in unique areas that cannot be covered by traditional marketing methods. YouTube is more effective for both the consumer and advertiser because of an instant lead to a product/service through a website, an interaction with the audience (unlike TV + print), cheaper cost,  and it’s unrestricted availability 24/7 at the consumer’s convenience. What other method of advertising can you say that about?

Success stories:

“ Family Guy”
Seth MacFarlane of “Family Guy” and Media Rights Capital knew they needed to be creative and break through the online cluster so they created a web-only collection of episodes called ‘ Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy’. Instead of simply building a website and hoping people stumble upon it, they pushed the content to the public by creating YouTube channels that were distributed through out YouTube and Google’s Content Network.
End result? In just a short time, ‘ Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy’ became one of the most popular phenomena on the web.

Lionsgate
In promotion of “ Forbidden Kingdom”  Lionsgate  did not simply want to be airing trailers on TV. They also made sure to take their Internet presence beyond simply the film’s website. The Google ad network extended the reach everywhere from search ads to buzz targeting. It gave a reason for the audience to “come back” to view the brand. And come back they did, 3 million times.

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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.

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Nintendo has an interesting spot up on their Experience Wii YouTube channel. It doesn’t seem that special at first, but give it 30 seconds – it’s pretty surprising.

How do they do it? Well without getting too geeky on you…

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YouTube just launched a new addition to their Insight metrics package called “Hot Spots”

Hot Spots lets you drill down into your video’s timeline, giving you an unprecedented look at how audiences feel about each moment of your content. (more…)

Two examples for you. First, a childhood hip-hop mashup:

Second, a drunken twist on historical docu-drama (after the jump)…

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Something I missed mentioning in the annotation post: Samsung is out ahead in the commercial annotations game with their campaign for the Samsung Instinct.

Follow Your Instinct is an annotation-powered choose-your-own-adventure movie in which you (a young heterosexual male office worker) must make a series of choices between (1) having sex and (2) doing boring shit. You’re rewarded for following your rebellious instincts (jury’s out on how the compulsively boring dudes out there feel about this).

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