Online Video for B2B: Trends and Insights
Multimedia will continue to be king everywhere – in public and private, for corporations and government agencies, for small businesses and charities, for groups of whatever persuasion and for individuals.
Video is one of the most important driving parts of this multimedia experience. Although pictures are more easily accessible by viewers, video is more directly engaging and immediately persuasive. Its use will continue to grow explosively.
What does this mean for B2B companies?
Predictions and Trends
Most online video predictions and trend analyses address the Big Issues, where the big money is: What does 2012 hold for providers of infrastructure, services and content?
In between the lines of these reports, however, we can make out a very clear picture of what’s in it for B2B businesses.
In this white paper, I will show you big picture trends for 2013 and beyond. This picture has implications for how we have approach videos.
• What video format will we have to produce?
• Will videos have to go mainstream and glossy or will simple do?
• Do they have to be professionally produced or will home made carry the day?
• Do we have to invest in pro-level equipment and software?
These questions and more will be answered in this report. We’ll start with a look at the general framework for online video – Social Media and Internet Marketing – then look at more specific trends and predictions for online video for 2012. Finally, in the last section of this report, we home in on how even the smallest player can succeed on the biggest video sharing site in the world, YouTube, in 2013 and beyond.
Social Media And Internet Marketing
30 Social Media experts were asked for their predictions for 2012 by the Social Media Examiner. Four of the thirty experts went straight to video as THE central feature of social media in 2012 and beyond. This made video the single most important factor in the development of social media.
Here are a few pertinent quotes:
“Given that the camera on your smartphone is almost as good as your actual camera, the multimedia-driven social networks are here to stay and will be an emerging force for brands in 2012, too.”
“YouTube will (finally) get recognition and significant use as a major social network.”
“Video production is not required as YouTube members in the content curation and video aggregation space will hold as much sway, if not more, than their content-producing counterparts. Those who do both will, obviously, rise to the top quickly.”
“My prediction for social media in 2012 can be boiled down into one word: “video” …as in, more of it!”
“In 2012, video quality (picture and sound) and entertainment quality will rapidly increase across the board. This will inevitably result in higher standards and expectations from the average YouTube viewer and leave those who are resistant to using video in their marketing scrambling to catch up.”
“If your business is not there yet, make haste and set up your channel and start reaping the benefits of the second-largest search engine on the Internet.”
Moving from Social Media to Internet Marketing, Video, directly and indirectly, enters 4 of the Top 10 Internet Marketing Trends for 2012.
“Video is more important as the web moves mobile and becomes more interactive. Videos are now a bigger part of Google’s search results as Google learns to index video content. Videos account for 50% of all online traffic as of January 2012. Not only do videos boost your company’s visibility, but they promote engagement. Customers exposed to videos are 437% more likely to engage your brand.”
Another top trend, Google’s Rich Snippets, will also raise the value of videos. With Rich Snippets, Google aims to enhance the user’s search experience by providing more information in the search results and thus reducing the need to click through to the webpage. However, you can counter this trend and entice viewers to click through to your website by offering videos on your site. Videos and their thumbnails are known hotspots for search results.
Two further top trends, Mobile Marketing and Local Search Marketing, are not only intimately connected to each other but also to video. You’ll see shortly how important mobile video will be. Here are a couple of interesting quotes that highlight these close connections:
“Mobile marketing will continue to grow at an amazing rate. Customers are now using mobile search to do their shopping, especially for local products and services. As a result, mobile optimized websites are going to be a necessity for your success. 71% of users search after seeing a mobile ad, 53% purchase due to mobile search and 90% of mobile search results in action.”
“Local search and Google Local in particular will be more important than ever. … As a result of so many mobile users looking for local products and services, mobile and local are intertwined. …There are 4 Billion local searches on Google per month, 61% of all local searches result in a purchase, and 55% of consumers use their mobile device to buy local products/services.”
Online Video
Focusing now more specifically on Online Video trends and predictions for 2012, the scenario set out for the big players in the market, the telcos and syndicated content providers, reveals a clear and pretty amazing picture for our perspective, that of the “small” content provider.
In their report, 7 Online Video Trends to Watch in 2012, Skytide, an online video analytics provider, expects that online video traffic will grow more than 50% annually.
This will put a strain on networks. A lot is currently happening in the background as telecoms companies and cable companies are reorienting towards the implication of this growth in demand for bandwidth that is largely driven by video.
Network providers have already started to invest in and implement technologies and strategies that will help them benefit from this incredible growth in demand.
The flip side for the users of this improved infrastructure, that is the viewers and “small” content providers, will be a much improved quality of service. This means faster connection and smoother, continuous viewing of videos especially on mobile devices. And as the viewing experience improves, this, in turn, will create even more demand for videos and video services, and consequently will significantly increase the competitive pressure on those who do not use video.
In the words of the report:
“Unabated growth of online video traffic pushes telcos to develop their own CDNs (Content Delivery Networks).”
“For those who watch a lot of video on mobile devices, it is even better news. Currently, with progressive download technology, mobile data plans are dinged not just for the video that subscribers actually watch, but also for all the time that it takes to load. A subscriber might wait five minutes for a two-minute video to load and get charged for seven minutes of consumed data. Adaptive bitrate streaming [that is, the new technologies implemented by the infrastructure providers] can rectify this discrepancy and lower charges for data plans.”
Improved quality will lead to consumer expectations of at least the same level of quality in the future. Combine this with projected sales of smart phones, which, according to Nielsen, are expected to outstrip those of standard feature phones in 2012, and with the explosive growth of tablet sales, and you arrive at the following scenario:
• “Two-thirds of the world’s mobile data traffic will be video by 2015, doubling every year between 2010 and 2015.
• Mobile-connected tablets will generate as much traffic in 2015 as the entire global mobile network in 2010.”
Another set of Five Predictions For Online Video In 2012, published by Techcrunch, makes the implications of this trend even more explicit.
The enormous growth in online video that was to a large extent driven by mobile platforms – smart phones and tablets – in 2011 was merely the beginning.
At the end of 2011, with Apple dominating the tablet market, Amazon’s Kindle Fire moved competition to a higher level. Google is planning its own tablet for 2012. Advance and competition in this market are relentless. The implications for online video are every exciting:
Smart phones are high definition (HD) video enabled for viewing as well as recording. So are devices like the iPod Touch 4 and iPad 2. This will explode personal video production. Given that Apple and Android devices enable up to full HD (1080p) video recording, this format will start to dominate.
Another exciting trend emerges for the “small” content producer: the rapid expansion of video being viewed and created on mobile devices will see service providers include more features such as conversion and delivery to mobile. From a user point of view, this is very exciting because it means that complex technical issues will melt away.
In a nutshell, these trends mean one thing:
Barriers to entry for the “little guys” who want to post videos on their websites or Facebook pages are drastically reduced and will continue to fall. The trend is towards more, better and cheaper services because that is where competition among the big players drives the market.
With barriers to entry all but disappearing, the cost of promoting whatever you wish to promote is approaching zero at a pretty fast rate. No more expensive video production budgets. DIY or low cost services will abound. Easy to follow How-to information will be easily and inexpensively to come by, thereby slashing budgets to a barest minimum.
Let’s now relate these trends to the latest survey results of online viewing behaviour.
Mobile (tablet and smart phone) users are “better” viewers:
• Mobile viewers watch more of any video than desktop (including laptop) viewers.
• On average, mobile viewers watch videos 28 percent longer than desktop viewers.
• Desktop viewers just about beat mobile viewers for videos of under 3 minutes length.
• For videos of over 3 minutes, viewers definitely prefer to use mobile devices (tablets and smart phones).
For your online video strategy in 2012 and beyond, this means:
• Create HD videos (for YouTube, make them at least 720p).
• To achieve maximum exposure for your marketing videos, keep them short.
• If you create videos that are longer than 3 minutes, you must optimize them for mobile viewing.
YouTube
A report on online video in 2012 would not be complete without looking at YouTube. Here are some current YouTube facts:
YouTube is the Second Largest Search Engine after Google, ahead of Yahoo, Bing and all the others.
YouTube is the Third Most Visited Website in the World.
YouTube is the World’s Largest Video Sharing Platform:
In 2011, 48 hours of video were uploaded every minute, resulting in nearly 8 years of content uploaded every day.
Hours of Video Uploaded Every Minute To YouTube
Users upload the equivalent of 240,000 full-length films every week.
More video is uploaded to YouTube in one month than the 3 major US networks created in 60 years.
13 Million Hours of video were uploaded to YouTube in 2010.
In the USA, YouTube had more views than cable TV.
Over 3 billion videos are viewed a day.
800 million unique users visit YouTube each month.
YouTube reached over 700 billion playbacks in 2010.
There are more than 400 million views per day on mobile devices (tripling in the past year).
70% of YouTube traffic comes from outside the US.
YouTube is localized in 25 countries across 43 languages.
4 million people on YouTube connected and auto-shared to at least one social network. Among the social network sites, Facebook is more popular than Twitter, but the degree to which Facebook outshines Twitter varies from country to country. The following figures show how many times Facebook is more popular than Twitter:
Italy 17 times
Australia 14 times
Philippines 13 times
France 12 times
USA 8 times
Germany 6.5 times
UK 5.5 times
Japan 2 times
Business Use of YouTube:
2 billion video views per week are being monetized globally.
YouTube has 10,000 partners, hundreds of which make six figures a year (according to YouTube).
YouTube Demographics:
In the USA, YouTube reaches over 58% of total online audience for all age groups (except for over 65s where it reaches 48%). The share of Male and Female participants is at 58% for both.
Age Share
2-17 55%
18-34 67%
35-49 59%
50-64 52%
65+ 48%
YouTube Myths
YouTube is a giant. And as giants go, to reach all 800 million viewers on YouTube is impossible not just for the “little guys”.
But why would you want to reach everyone? Because you want your videos to go “viral”?
Calling YouTube a market place of 800 million customers or fans or followers – annualized: close to 10 Billion viewers – who are accessible at the push of a button is as much a myth as the need to create viral videos to be successful on YouTube.
In this section, I’ll dissect a number of YouTube myths for you and show you how you can be successful on YouTube by focusing on reality, not mythology.
The Myth of Viral Videos
“Viral” videos are not a deliberate, planned creation. They are a phenomenon, and like any phenomenon you cannot set out to create it to order. Whatever you may have been told, it simply does not work that way.
“Viral” videos happen when videos are found by the right audience in the right mood at the right time. They are not created and sent viral on purpose by the video owner or creator. If it were possible, you’d never see a Hollywood flop.
Yet people still persist. To get clarity, let’s look at viral numbers for a moment.
Videos go viral when they accumulate large number of views in a very short period of time. 100,000 in a few days, a million in a month or so is definitely viral. Hundreds of millions? Check out this example:
The Star Wars Kid
Here is the story of the video:
“On November 3, 2002 a Canadian student made a video of himself swinging a golf ball retriever around as a weapon. The video was filmed at his high school studio, and the tape left in a basement. It was taped over a portion of a basketball game (as seen extremely briefly at the end of the clip). The video was discovered and eventually became a viral meme. An edited version of the video was created, adding Star Wars music, texts, and lightsaber lights and sounds to his golf ball retriever. As of November 27, 2006 it was estimated by The Viral Factory that the video had been viewed over 900 million times.”
For good measure, check out The Viral Factory YouTube channel (as they are referenced in the story). How many of their 45 uploaded videos have gone viral on YouTube (and which ones)? If they really owned the secret to creating viral videos, why didn’t all their videos go viral?
Most importantly, though, you don’t need a viral video to be successful on YouTube.
The Key To YouTube Success:
Know your target audience and give them what they want. Successful businesses and promoters understand that they don’t need to connect with the whole of the YouTube audience. They just need to engage with the right audience. Go for those who want what you have to offer.
The Myth of Funny Videos
Funny videos are not suitable for every purpose. Fact is, you don’t have to make funny videos to be successful on YouTube.
Say, you are looking for information (YouTube is, after all, the second largest search engine on the internet). How would you react if a how-to video that you were looking for turned out to be full of jokes and hilariously funny?
Would you take this video seriously? Of course, not. You’d go elsewhere for the information, and the video, and probably also the brand would bomb. This type of video would be a mismatch between customer expectation and video content.
This does not mean that your information or how-to videos have to be dry, dull and boring. Not at all, they just have to be on target and relevant, so that they can create the desired impact.
The Myth That YouTube Is Only for Entertainment
Yes, entertainment is a very big part of YouTube. But this must be seen in proper perspective:
According to YouTube’s own figures, YouTube has more financial information seekers (10.9m) than entertainment buffs (6.4m).
3 times as many how-to searches are entered on YouTube than searches for music videos.
Correctly targeted and set up, information, how-to and other videos for any niche or interest group will find their audience on YouTube, and because of it, also on Google (yes, Google not only loves YouTube, it owns it).
The Myth of the Professionally Produced YouTube Video
This is simple and straight forward: You don’t need a professionally produced video to gain views.
Simple, home made videos are often more persuasive than glossy Hollywood imitations. But what you definitely need is to stand out from the crowd.
Given the rapidly growing popularity of online video, successful ‘home made’ certainly does not mean that these videos should be of poor quality, that they don’t need to be thought through, and that they don’t need at least a concept or an outline script.
Of course, they need these things. But from a technical point of view, things could not be easier and cheaper. And this trend will continue.
We’ve already seen that barriers to entry to the online video market are so low that they virtually disappear. The infrastructure (uploading, streaming, conversion and hosting) takes care of technically challenging network problems. Associated costs amount to nothing more than your monthly broadband subscription or mobile (smart phone or tablet) contract.
The same trend rules in both hardware and software markets. Simple camcorders like the Kodak Play Touch (regrettably, the Flip and Kodak zi8 have been discontinued), the video camera of your smart phone, iPod Touch, iPad 2 or other tablets and some very basic video editing software will definitely do a more than adequate job.
Technically, using these cameras is nothing more than a push button operation. There is also plenty of free software that will help create videos of all types.
All you need is the minimum know how to help you stand out from the crowd of millions of mediocre or poor videos.
This know-how is easy to come by. If you have the time, use YouTube as your search engine.
If you want a shortcut that saves loads of time and effort, use online how-to courses that will provide you with all the information you need.
There are a number of excellent and very inexpensive courses that show you in detail how to create home made videos with a professional touch. Sounds like a contradiction? Not at all. The professional touch will help you stand out from the crowd without the cost of professional video production.
Great examples are Big Videos For The Smallest Pockets for slideshow videos and more, and iPhone Video Hero for smart phone based videos. For a more comprehensive course that goes way beyond the iPhone but still remains affordable, check out Pocket Video Power.
All this will let you create videos for a fraction of the cost of the first Orabrush video. Orabrush is a prime example of the power of online video intelligently applied. After spending tens of thousands of dollars on traditional advertising and marketing method, a simple $500 YouTube video literally turned their fortune around and opened the flood gates for them.
If you don’t know Orabrush, here are links to the Orabrush story and to the Orabrush YouTube channel. Do Check them out.
Before concluding this report, I want to answer two important final questions:
It’s all well and good to dismantle YouTube myths, but what do successful YouTube videos look like and how do you create them?
As a first point of orientation, have a look at the courses recommended on the previous page.
If you want to test these waters and have your hand held, you can also use YouTube’s small business service, My Business Story.
YouTube’s ‘My Business Story’:
In YouTube’s own words, their “My Business Story” program “helps small business owners make a professional-quality video to encourage shoppers to patronize brick and mortar businesses that are small and local.”
Below is a selection of winners of YouTube’s “My Business Story” contest for “Small Business Saturday 2011”. These videos really should encourage you to have a go yourself:
Bridge House Restaurant, Milford, CT http://youtu.be/MglS6cIGNJg
Hyperlite Mountain Gear, Biddeford, ME http://youtu.be/NZU8abuRcUg
Schroon Lake Bed & Breakfast, Schroon Lake, NY http://youtu.be/X1gfO3jAoE4
Unicycle.com, Marietta, GA
http://youtu.be/9uG0y89tTVQ
Gifts With Humanity, Edgewater, FL http://youtu.be/sZu8O6rKB5g
Bayou Hot Wings of New Orleans, LA http://youtu.be/BPqzBrBNUGg
The My Business Story channel also encourages Social Media integration through its Facebook page where they provide additional resources for small businesses (these resources can also be found at http://smallbusinesssaturday.com/).
Summary
The online video trend in user behavior that became discernible over the last two years and the resulting market pressure and opportunities forced infrastructure and service providers not just to accommodate online video, they also offered them an unprecedented bonanza. Fortunately for us, they were able to capitalize on these trends.
The flip side of these market opportunities and competitive pressures created very exciting trends for the “little guys”: they virtually removed barriers to entry for video creators.
This, in turn, will give video users the competitive edge, and it will magnify competitive pressure on all those who fail to take advantage of this development. For 2012 and beyond, you need video. Period.
The main guidelines for online video creators for 2012 and beyond are:
• Optimize your visibility and Click Through Rate by focusing on the Mobile-Local-Video (MLV) combination.
• Create videos in High Definition (min. 720p)
• To achieve maximum exposure for your marketing videos, keep them short (under 3 minutes).
• Videos longer than 3 minutes must be optimized for mobile viewing.
• Just creating videos is not enough. You must stand out from the crowd.
Taken together, these guidelines provide solid foundations for anyone’s video platform.
References
(in order of appearance in the report)
30 Social Media Predictions for 2012 From the Pros
Top 10 Internet Marketing Trends of 2012
http://www.techjournalsouth.com/2012/01/the-top-10-internet-marketing-trends-of-2012/
Skytide
http://www.skytide.com/
Five Predictions For Online Video In 2012
Five Predictions For Online Video In 2012
Online Video Predictions For 2012
http://www.reelseo.com/online-video-predictions-2012-the-reel-web/#ixzz1jBComGE7
YouTube Statistics
http://www.YouTube.com/t/press_statistics
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2073962/New-YouTube-Statistics-48-Hours-of-Video-Uploaded-Per-Minute-3-Billion-Views-Per-Day
http://www.YouTube.com/advertise/
How to become a YouTube Partner
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2048385/How-to-Become-a-YouTube-Partner
YouTube Demographics
http://www.YouTube.com/advertise/demographics.html
YouTube, Your Business, and 5 Myths of Viral Video
http://www.nbcchicago.com/blogs/inc-well/YouTube-Your-Business-and-Five-Myths-of-the-Viral-Video-136385683.html
The Star Wars Kid
The Orabrush Story
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/orabrush-story-how-utah-man-used.html
The Orabrush YouTube Channel http://www.YouTube.com/user/curebadbreath?feature=watch