Streaming Learning Center

Ten years ago, a streaming video player performed one function - it played your video. Today, the features of your player are critical to achieving the maximum return on investment from your video. Specifically, a well featured, properly designed player should increase your site's stickiness, improve your site's visibility, increase the amount of time viewers spend watching your video and help streamline your company's sales cycle.

If you're in the process of creating a new player, or choosing an online video platform, these are the features you should be considering.

Screencams are a wonderful tool for demonstrating software operation. In many cases, producing them can almost be a real-time event—you capture and narrate simultaneously, import the result into Camtasia Studio, add titles and such, export the finished file, and move on to the next project.

However, when you’re producing tutorials for a client, or otherwise seeking a more polished look and feel that maximizes the marketing potential of screencams, you may have to take a different approach.This article details how to create a screencam script for maximum impact, how to capture at maximum quality and how to edit your screencam most efficiently in programs like Adobe Premiere Pro.

If you're looking for hard data that proves the effectiveness of video advertising over other rich meda formats, look no further. A new Doubleclick study entitled "The Brand Value of Rich Media and Video Ads" found that rich media ads containing video appeared to increase purchase intent by 1.16%, compared to .26% for those who viewed a simple Flash animation.

I've never been that great at math, but that appears to translate to about a 4.5 times higher chance of selling with video than with Flash. Plus you don't have to deal with all those quirky and cranky Flash animation types (us video folks are just plain nicer). That's my story, anyway, and I'm sticking to it. 

You can read more about the study in the Online Media Daily.

I found this snippet on the Really Practical Marketing website. It's third hand information, but it shows the results of some user polls taken by online video company Vzaar. Specifically, Vzaar polled their customers on how using streaming video improved their product sales, and produced a report you can download at the bottom of the Vzaar page linked above.

Some of the results included:

• Diamond Jewellery United based in Antwerp Belgium, saw their sales increase by 65% four months after implementing product videos.
• Industry Recycles who sell second hand equipment, saw an increase in sales over 12 months by over 307%,
• Yesil, an online furniture website, saw a 50% increase in web traffic transferring to a rise of 30% in sales over the same period.

The report, which I recommend that you download, concludes that "the experiences from all four businesses have echoed two main benefits to adding product videos: Improved turnover as a result of video driving conversions and fewer product returns as a result of better product understanding."

Sounds accurate to me. If you're looking for a reason to ramp up your streaming video activities, perhaps this data will help.

I recently gave a half-day seminar to the greater Wisconsin chapter of the Media Communications Association—International, and I devoted the last hour to creating effective marketing videos for businesses and other organizations. In pulling the materials together, I reviewed 50 or so product-oriented videos from the likes of HP, Apple, Cisco, Microsoft, and IBM. As many of you have already discovered, creating videos for small to midsize businesses gives videographers a nice opportunity to branch out into new markets. In this column, I’ll share the key points from that last hour.

It's been impossible not to notice the increase in the number of internet video viewers and the increased length of time they spend watching. Still, a look at the actual numbers, and the impact on advertising, is profound. You can learn all about this and more in a new report on the Global Online Media Landscape by The Nielsen Company Online.

In April, 2009, I gave a half day seminar before the Greater Wisconsin Chapter of the Media Communications Associates, International. I spent the fourth hour describing how video is being used by organizations to market their products and services. This series of articles captures details the information discussed during that last hour.

I presented a half day seminar for the Greater Wisconsin Chapter of the MCA-I on Thursday, April 9. I wanted to thank all the folks who made that possible and made my stay enjoyable, including Dick Kenitzer, Sue Reetz, Pam Rucinski, and especially Colleen Parquette, who graciously shepherded me to and fro the airport (and asked great questions).

This presentation was particularly fun because I presented two brand new topics, on distribution options for streaming media, and using streaming media for customer acquisition and retention. It's wonderful to synthesize thoughts on a new topic and then present before a knowledgeable and engaged group of professionals and get their input.

Some of the attendees requested that I post the full slides from the presentation to supplement the printed handouts that the MCA-I supplied at the seminar, so I'm doing so. For those who might wander by by chance, I also present the agenda for each hour of the presentation in the main article.

Shooting product videos is an emerging market that should interest many videographers (and folks who sell products as well).