January 28, 2008

Online Video Engages Audiences

With HD and digital TV now in full swing, you might begin to think the old "box" has a new lease on life. Well, not according to a cross-media study by Simmons, a unit of Experian Research Services, found that viewers are 25% more engaged in the content of TV shows that they watch online than on a TV.

The study defines "engagement" according to six characteristics that respondents identify with media: "inspirational," "trustworthy," "life-enhancing," "social interaction," "personal time-out" and ad receptivity.

Survey participants were asked, for instance, to rate TV shows, magazines and Web sites based on how "inspiring" they were or how much they provided fodder for conversation. Ad "receptivity" was gauged on how willing people were to view or read advertising in a given medium because of its relevance.

TV aside, the study found that people are 18% more engaged in ads online, as opposed to print versions, of magazines--and that they are also 15% more engaged in magazine articles online than in print.

The growing interest in original programming on the Internet is encouraging brands to produce their own web series and other short-form projects that they can own outright and exploit in various ways. Online ad spending is expected to grow by 16.5% this year.

Brands are also producing more live events and flocking to video games in order to court consumers with entertainment.

Aussie Filmmakers Gettin' Jiggy wit it!

Cha-ching! is the sound Aussie filmmakers now want to hear. Australian filmmakers have estimated in order to profit from Australian made films, a producer must return four times its original investment, in order to cover the costs of marketing, production, royalties and distribution.

The Federal Government last year introduced new tax benefits for Australian filmmakers, amid falling production and a lack of locally produced movie content.

The government has also directed the industry's peak bodies, namely The Australian Film Commission, Film Australia and the Film Finance Corporation Australia to amalgamate under one banner to be known as Screen Australia by July this year.

The moves are a welcome change for those producers focused on the business of filmmaking.

This has spurred a number of key industry participants to put in place their own competitive arrangements, notably the Screen Producers Association of Australia (SPPA) and a superannuation group plan to set up a $50m special-purpose fund to cash flow the new production offset.

Likewise, International Film Group (IFG) will lend against the offset, bankrolled by the Royal Bank of Scotland and helmed by former Macquarie Bank exec Jennifer Hughes. We're keen to hear from anyone who has heard anything more on the Mullis FLIC entity.

Media Funds Management (MFM) is another outfit with a planned $100m film fund to finance a slate of projects led by James M Vernon. The board boasts Bruce Beresford and Kevin Jacobson as members of its board.

The Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS) has itself set up a Centre for Screen Business.

Australian films last year netted just 4% of the total national box office revenue, with leading movies including Happy Feet and Bra Boys making up a significant portion of the total box office.

The Australian Film Commission who released the figures, showing that locally produced films netted just $36 Million of the nearly $1 Billion total box office takings.

Happy Feet was the highest earning film, grossing $20.7 Million to add to its previous year's earnings.

The controversial documentary film Bra Boys also became the highest earning documentary film in Australian history.

Other films contributing to the total box office also included Romulus My Father, Rogue and Razzle Dazzle.

With U.S reports Gatorade having ponied up a third of the $10 million budget for soccer drama "Gracie," and Dove set to contribute to the $20 million budget of femme-skewing "The Women," it is hoped that Australian filmmakers will also begin to get saavy and harness the power of product placement and entertainment marketing as part of the new industry repetoire.

Brands line up for Kate Modern

Bebo is hoping the explosive start to the new series of Kate Modern will continue to hold the attention of the show's massive fan base and its sponsors.

The second series will run for 24 weeks. About 120 episodes will be made and uploaded at an average of five per week.

Second series sponsors - which get to see their products placed within the video - will be Cadbury's Creme Egg and Toyota's youth-targeted car Aygo. Sponsors of the first series included Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, Warner Music, Paramount and Orange, which each paid up to £250,000 to appear within the show.

The first series, which was made up of 155 episodes, lasting between one and four minutes each, that ran from July 16 until January 1, drew a total audience of more than 35m videos viewed - an average of 1.5m per week.

No figures have been revealed about what each company might pay to be involved with the second series. However, each company stumps up cash based on the amount its brand is integrated into the storyline, which includes monitoring the number of times it appears in the video and is mentioned in the script.

Warner Music, for example, used its sponsorship to put its act The Days into the show, while Paramount used the series to promote movie Hallam Foe by featuring actor Jamie Bell.

The popularity of the first series of Kate Modern, produced by LG15, the company behind the internet TV hit LonelyGirl15, has led to the development of other programmes for social networking sites.

Bebo has since commissioned two more series, the Sony-made Sofia's Diary, and "interactive online reality drama" The Gap Year, produced by Big Brother maker Endemol.

Online Video Brightcove Forecast

As video content owners and website publishers walk into 2008, we expect several major trends will shape their strategies in the Internet video market.

Branded Destinations
Nothing about the Internet changes the fundamentals of media—value is created by controlling the content or controlling access to the audience. Media companies with established brands and new start-ups will continue to build successful branded destinations so they can control the access to audiences. We expect these destinations will leverage Internet TV Platforms, Community Platforms, and Ad Platforms to compete with the major aggregators by offering consumers a more focused and differentiated experience, including exclusive content, and by giving advertisers a better environment to build their brands.

Audience Networks
Because of the power of the big aggregators to reach new audiences, content owners will continue to develop distribution strategies that place elements of their content library into wide distribution, in most cases with advertising attached. Because there won’t be a one-size-fits-all solution, content owners will depend on Internet TV Platforms to help them manage the complex policy and technology challenges associated with implementing Internet distribution strategies. They will use audience networks to bridge the gap between aggregators and their own branded destinations, which will make the web as a whole a much more interesting place.

Audience Monetization
To date the advertising focus in the Internet TV market has been on monetizing video streams. But this focus is both shortsighted and not nearly as effective as thinking about how to monetize audience. By developing audience-centric strategies, content owners will look for new ways to blend ad formats, insertion policies, and targeting tactics across pages, short-form video clips, long-form shows, and open distribution. While they are more difficult to plan and execute these ad strategies deliver greater yield and a much better user experience, which means better sustainability. These strategies will also take advantage of both direct selling and integration with Uber Ad Platforms.

Contextual Publishing
One of the key insights from the last two years is that short-form online video does best when it’s placed in a context. The context could be created by pages in a website, comments from users, line-ups in a player, etc. Regardless of how it’s done, getting the context right means you can put the right video clips in front of a viewer, which makes everyone happy. We expect that contextual in-page video publishing will grow, and that it will be extended to slideshows and audio content as more and more rich media is brought out of silos and into the core of websites.

High-Quality Video
The explosive growth that has happened with the major network episode players, and the increasing access that consumers have to long form, high-quality video will push Internet TV closer to traditional broadcast TV, and widen the opportunity for brand marketers that covet the deep engagement created by a full-screen, immersive experience.

Extract by Jeremy Allaire, Founder/CEO & Adam Berrey, SVP Marketing, Brightcove

Online Video Vernacular

Below is a glossary of some online video terms frequently in use:

Alpha video
Animations that pop up on the page without affecting its other content or functionality. An alpha video can be a sponsor’s mascot or spokesperson, for instance.

In-stream advertising
Ads that run within the video content, either as a pre-roll, post-roll or mid-roll.

CPM (Cost Per Thousand)
The amount of money an advertiser pays for every 1,000 times an ad is seen on a Web page.

Mash-up tools
Editing software tools that let a user to take the video they are watching and combine that with other video or other content to form new content. For example, a user could take clips of a certain video and combine them with other video to make a new video.

Overlays/Flash overlays
Ads shown on the bottom 1/3 of the video screen consisting mostly of text with minimal graphics. The overlays can be clicked on to take the user to other content, such as a sponsor’s Web site or a full-length ad.

Post-roll
A video advertisement shown at the end of the video a user has selected to view. Typically 15 or 30 seconds in length.

Pre-roll
A video advertisement that plays before the start of a video that a user has selected to play shown prior to the user's selected content starting to play. Typically 15 or 30 seconds in length.

Pre-roll bumpers
Short pre-roll video ads or content previews shown before a user's selected content starts to play. Typically 8 seconds in length.

Product and brand integration
A video that includes identifiable products or logos embedded into a video’s content, such as a character in the video is holding a brand-name can of soft drink.

Rate card
The price list of the various forms of advertising on a particular Web site.

Reminder unit
A static ad that runs outside a video player, below a video ad from the same advertiser.

Reservation-purchase basis
An advance reservation for an ad, meaning the ad must be bought and reserved in advance.

Roadblock
Full-screen ad that usually takes over the home page of a Web site when a visitor lands there. The ads, which can usually be bypassed by users who can find a “skip this ad” message, can run for any length of time. Most run 15 or 20 seconds. Alt. def: An advertising package that gives a sponsor all the ad units on a Web site.

Video ads
Ads in the form of a video, rather than a banner, display or text ad.

Video buy
An ad buy involving video.