Archive for the ‘Video Ads’ Category

Surprising Findings From the DoubleClick Rich Media Report

Tuesday, September 1st, 2009

It took me a while, but I finally got to one of the key items on my summer reading list: DoubleClick’s report on The Brand Value of Rich Media and Video Ads. And I wasn’t disappointed by what I found. For the first time in years, DoubleClick dug into their server logs and gave us a bit of hard data on what types of rich media are being served. They also worked with Dynamic Logic to conduct real live brand surveys (rather than tracking those overly simplistic ‘engagement’ metrics so many rich media vendors have become enamored of) to study the brand metrics that matter to advertisers: things like brand awareness, brand favorability, message association, and intent to purchase. And what they found was sometimes surprising:

  • There’s a lot of rich media being served – but most of it’s not very rich. DoubleClick says that in 2008, less than 40% of the impressions it served were GIFs or JPEGs. So does that mean the other 60% were rich media? Not according to DoubleClick: it says 55% of its 2008 impressions were “simple Flash” ads. Just 6% of the impressions served in 2008 were rich enough to be labeled “rich media.”
  • Rich media ads that incorporate video are usually your best choice. This creative format was most effective on nearly every brand metric, including aided and unaided awareness, brand favorability, and purchase intent. The only time not to use rich media with video? Surprisingly, when you’re looking to build message association an old-fashioned GIF or JPEG is by far the most effective format.
  • If your Flash ads don’t include video or interaction, don’t bother. When you add up  performance across all the brand metrics studied, simple Flash ads provide less brand impact than any other format – even GIFs and JPEGs. It turns out all those advertisers who served simple Flash ads through DoubleClick last year could’ve saved themselves some time and hassle by simply producing animated GIFs.

If you’ve had a look at the report, let me know in the comments below what you found interesting or surprising – and whether you’ll change your creative strategy based on the findings.

Posted in Video Ads | 6 Comments »

New Research: Online Video Contests Can Help Marketers Listen To And Energize Their Customers

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

[cross-posted to the Forrester Interactive Marketing blog]

Chances are you’ve seen an online video contest lately. In fact, you’ve probably seen a lot of them: more than 20% of interactive marketers — including category leaders like P&G, Nike, Coca-Cola and Sony — tell Forrester they’ve run campaigns asking users to submit online content in the past year. I’ve been collecting a list of dozens of great video contests, and one contest clearinghouse site says there are 115 user-generated video contests accepting submissions right now, across a huge range of categories:

Types of marketers offering online video contests

Some of these contests — like Tourism Queensland’s Cannes-Lion-winning “The Best Job in the World” contest, or Doritos’ “Crash the Super Bowl” contest — generate a lot of media coverage. But there are many hundreds more each year, promoting everything from steak sauce to psoriasis research, that don’t get as much notoriety.

Why are so many marketers running online video contests? Because users love online contests almost as much as they love online video — and because user-generated video contests can help marketers achieve a huge range of marketing objectives.

Video contests let marketers listen to their customers and learn about their needs — like student loan provider Access Group, which asked law students to enter videos about their concerns and then used insights from those videos to create its “Student Loans, No Worries” ad campaign. Contests can help marketers energize users an drive a viral marketing effect — like Servus Credit Union, which encouraged entrants to develop their own marketing campaigns to drum up votes, and found the three finalists generated as much publicity as the credit union’s PR firm did. And they can give marketers access to cheap, original online video content — like ski resort Sunshine Village, which used its contest to generate a video library of its mountain’s trails and terrain.

Of course, not every video contest succeeds. They often take months to plan, they can cost anywhere from $10,000 to $250,000 or more, and they usually require the coordinated efforts of several internal departments and external vendors. And if you don’t get the “three Ps” right (choosing the right premise, offering the right prize, and picking the right promotional strategy) you could fall flat on your face.

I’ve spent the last two months studying hundreds of contests, and have just published two new Forrester research studies on the topic. User-Generated Video Contests: Best Practices For Driving More Entries And Creating Viral Impact is designed to help marketers understand which users they should target with video contests, what goals they can achieve, and how to get the most value from their contests. Video Contest Checklist: How To Choose The Right Premise, Prize, And Promotion For Your Contest contains a checklist that guides marketers through every single step in the contest process — including choosing a contest premise, selecting a prize, planning a promotional strategy, choosing a voting structure, picking a vendor, setting a schedule, establishing a budget, getting internal buy-in, and measuring the results.

Over the next few days, I’ll be publishing some of the most important lessons I’ve learned in my research — including the best promotional strategies I’ve seen, and mini-case studies on what makes contests successful — here on my personal blog.

In the meantime, if you’ve been thinking of running a user-generated video contest — or if I’ve convinced you it’s a good idea — drop me a line (nelliott at forrester dot com). I’d be happy to work with you on making your video contest a success.

Posted in Social Marketing, Video Ads | 4 Comments »

Carl’s Jr. Brings Sponsored Conversations to Video

Monday, June 1st, 2009

[cross-posted to the Forrester Interactive Marketing blog]

My Forrester colleague Sean Corcoran stirred up a bit of controversy recently with his research on sponsored conversations — a.k.a. paying bloggers to discuss your products. (The 20,000-foot view of that research: the practice is here to stay — in fact it’s growing — so everyone involved must ensure there’s full disclosure, and follow other best practices.) But until recently, I’d only ever heard of sponsored blogging and sponsored twittering. So I was fascinated to hear that fast food chain Carl’s Jr. is running a new sponsored YouTube video campaign.

Carl’s Jr. — no stranger, of course, to pushing boundaries in online video — recruited YouTube stars and gave them a simple mission: make a video about how you eat hamburgers, and mention the chain’s new portobello mushroom burger. They won’t say how many video creators they’ve engaged for the campaign, or how much they’re paying each. But they expect the videos to generate a total of more than 10 million views.

Considering how difficult it is to launch a successful viral video campaign, this approach makes a lot of sense: the marketer is guaranteeing itself lots of reach, and the videos will carry a reasonable level of authenticity and trust. And they appear to be following the best practices that Sean laid out in his report — which might just be enough to keep the critics at bay. I’ll be watching to see how this campaign works out for Carl’s Jr. — and whether YouTube finds a way to take control of this practice and turn it into a viable revenue stream.

What do you think — how do sponsored YouTube videos compare to sponsored blogging and sponsored twittering? And would you pay YouTube stars to make a video about your product?

Posted in Social Marketing, Video Ads | 2 Comments »

The Best User-Generated Video Contests I’ve Seen

Sunday, May 31st, 2009

I’m in the process of researching and writing two Forrester reports about user-generated online video contests [8 July 2009 update: I've posted some of the research findings], so I’ve spent a lot of time recently talking to contest vendors and to marketers who’ve run video contests. I’ve also been reviewing every contest I can find online.

In the course of my research, I’ve been keeping track of the best contests I’ve seen. Of course, “best” is subjective, and it doesn’t always mean “most entries” or “most video views.” I’ll be honest: of the hundreds of contests I’ve reviewed, I’ve seen far more failed efforts than successful ones. But some contests do a wonderful job of finding the right premise, of choosing the right prize, or of engaging in the right promtional tactics. And a select few — including Shakira, Doritos, and Tourism Queensland — are lucky enough to get all three of those pieces spot on.

I’m still working on my research — and will continue to look for other great examples of how marketers have used online video contests. So if you have an example you’d like to see on this list, please leave it in the comments below, and I may add it to my list. But for now, these are the best I’ve seen:

Media & Entertainment

Consumer Packaged Goods

Food & Beverage

Financial Services

Travel & Tourism

Retail & Apparel

Consumer Electronics

Information Technology

B2B

Other

Again, if you know any other great video contests that should be on this list, tell me in the comments below. And if you’re looking for a more comprehensive list of video contests, check out OnlineVideoContests.com, or contest vendors like Meme Labs, Votigo and Strutta.

[Updated on 24 September 2009 to add new contests from Google, Sandisk, 3M, Okanagan Spring, Baskin Robbins, Microsoft, TCBY, and the Olympics.]

Posted in Social Marketing, Video Ads | 7 Comments »

Call for Participation: UGC Video Contests

Friday, March 6th, 2009

I’m starting to look into user-generated online video contests for an upcoming report on the topic — recently I spoke to German video-sharing site myvideo.de about some of their video contests, and yesterday I had a fascinating conversation with the women behind Vancouver-based video contest platform Meme Labs. I’ve got a lot more research to do — both survey work and industry briefings — before this turns into a report, but I wanted to call for participation now.

If you’ve ever worked on a UGC video contest, or run one of your own, I’d like to hear about it — either by e-mail (nelliott at forrester dot com) or in the comments below. What product or service was the contest for? What type of video did you ask users to submit, and what prizes did you offer? How did you promote the contest? How many entries did you get? And how else did you measure success?

Even if you’ve never worked on a video contest, I’d love to hear about the video contests you’ve come across online. There are a lot of crazy video contests out there — like this one for wrenches, or this one for psoriasis — and I want to hear about the best or the worst you’ve ever seen.

Thanks!

Posted in Video Ads | 1 Comment »

At Forrester: The Easiest Way To a First-Page Ranking on Google

Thursday, January 8th, 2009

Posted on the Forrester Interactive Marketing blog: a recap of my recent research on SEO for blended search — including my take on the easiest way to get yourself listed on the first page of Google search results. Learn the secret, and leave your own advice, on the Forrester blog post.

Posted in Search Marketing, Video Ads | No Comments »