Jivox

Archive for August, 2009

28 August 2009

Study: The Whole World Is Watching (Online Video)

With the web moving to more rich media formats, consumers will be further unresponsive to banners. It’s like watching a television program interrupted by a slide show with no sound, it just doesn’t fit with the medium. Jivox is making it fast, easy and free for publishers and businesses to create and provision video ads, thereby enlarging the addressable online advertising market…

by Gavin O’Malley, Media Post

A whopping 158 million U.S. Internet users — or 80% of the nation’s online population — watched online video in July, according to new data from comScore Video Metrix. A total of 21.4 billion videos were viewed during the month.

The duration of the average online video was 3.7 minutes, while the average online video viewer watched about 500 minutes of video, or 8.3 hours, according to the research company… Read the whole story > >

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27 August 2009

Simple Ways to Measure Your Online Marketing Programs

by Jivox

OK, so you don’t have a big budget for online marketing, but you’ve still managed to put together a little of this, and a little of that – perhaps some paid search ads, banner ads, paid directory listings, video ads and emails. But ask yourself this: what exactly are you getting out of your online marketing program, and is it actually getting people to walk through the door?

We talk to a lot of small business owners who are struggling with this question. They feel like they’ve launched all the right programs, but still have little idea if their campaigns are working to attract new customers.

Sure, everyone measures click-through of banner and search ads. But unless you do most of your business online, it’s tough to figure out if those clicks resulted in someone actually making a purchase, signing up for a service, or booking an appointment. Or even if they clicked on your ad, maybe it was actually the positive reviews they read, or your video on YouTube, that really propelled them to make a purchase.

Here are some simple ways to measure the effectiveness of your online marketing programs:

1) Analyze your web traffic. This seems obvious but many companies aren’t taking advantage of site analytics to understand where their traffic is coming from.  If your site hosting provider doesn’t offer analytics of their own, try Google Analytics.

2) Include a different offer with every campaign. Offer $10 off with your email campaign, a 20% discount with your video ad campaign, or a free trial for people who find you on Yelp.  As people redeem the coupons or offers, you’ll know which campaign led them to your business.  [see also "I Love Beer – And Other Great Video Ad Promotions."]

3) Ask people how they found you. Sometime the best way to get feedback on your programs is simply to ask!  For example, Clean Air Smog Check in San Francisco asks customers where they heard about the company in the registration form, and then also offers $20 off for people who found them on Yelp.

4) Track all of the above.  Keeping a record of how people typically find you will let you know if something has improved or declined.  For example, if Yelp has historically driven 30-40 new customers a month to your business but this suddenly drops to 10, you’ll know something is wrong.  Maybe a new review is putting people off, and it’s time to ramp up your reviews program. Conversely, if you typically get 5% redemption on a coupon in an email newsletter but this spikes to 15%, you’ll know you’re doing something right – figure out what it is and try to repeat it!

We’d love to hear what’s worked for you when it comes to tracking sales from online marketing – let us know!

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24 August 2009

Video In Rich Media Ads More Likely To Lead Customers To Purchase

by Laurie Sullivan, Media Post

Video in rich media ads can make or break a campaign. The DoubleClick benchmark study scheduled for release by Google Wednesday suggests that rich media ad formats that contain video “overwhelmingly” outperform other types of creative media ad, such as images and simple animation Flash.

The study, “The Brand Value of Rich Media and Video Ads,” measures purchase intent, but not necessarily through the ad. Findings suggest that people who see a video in a rich media ad are more likely to make the purchase. Google commissioned the study because of the lack of information on how creative ad formats correspond and produce results for brands. Read the whole story > >

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21 August 2009

SMBs Put Deflated Ad Dollars Online

by Laurie Sullivan, Media Post
Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) decreased the amount spent on advertising and promotions by 23.5% to $2,092 this past year, compared with the prior, according to a study released Thursday. Despite the overall decline during the past 12 months, on average SMBs increased spending on Web sites and profile pages by 26.8% to $769 in 2009, up from $608 in the prior year. … More are experimenting with online video advertising… Read the whole story > >

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17 August 2009

Is My Video Ad Working?

by Jivox

So you took the plunge and created a video ad – but how do you know if it’s working?

Early search and display advertising focused on measuring impressions, which was a measurement borrowed from the TV world. But impressions were not a very effective way to measure ads online, because, as advertisers soon found out, the fact that an ad is displayed on a Web page doesn’t mean someone actually saw it. That’s why search and display advertisers moved to focus on measuring clicks rather than impressions.

But even clickthrough is becoming outmoded: clicks don’t measure engagement – the most important barometer of whether an advertising program is working in today’s ad-saturated world. Every marketer has experienced a campaign with good clickthrough rates that does not end up sending customers to your door – mostly because the clicks were an attempt by users to get rid of the ad rather than engage with it!

The great thing about video ads is you can actually measure audience engagement.  Here are some of the audience engagement metrics you should track, above and beyond clickthrough, to see if your online video ads are working:

  1. Ad Replays:  This metric reports how many views of the ad resulted in a “replay”. A replay of an ad means a user wants to see it again — indicating interest in the product or service being advertised or simply that your ad was fun and engaging.
  2. Ad Pauses:  An ad pause is an important engagement metric, because it often indicates a person pausing the ad to view it later. To be truly accurate, you should track “unpause” events to make sure the person has come back to the ad.
  3. Ad Listens:  Most websites require video ads to be played with the sound turned off so as not to distract or annoy people who came to the site for another purpose than watching the ad. Video ads are usually set up to have the sound come back on when a user mouses over the ad or clicks the un-mute button.  Either activity shows a person was interested enough in your ad to want to listen to it. 

But these simple-to-measure engagement metrics are just the beginning.  Another way to track engagement is by including click-to-action features in your ad – something Jivox offers to every advertiser. Click-to-action features, such as an email link, chat button, coupon downloads etc., directly capture leads and indicate precisely how the viewer has interacted with your ad. Here are a few examples:

  1. Email, SMS, IM, Chat: Allows audiences and potential customers to contact a business in real time while still watching a video ad or clip.
  2. Play a longer version of the ad (infomercial): Allows audiences to engage at a deeper level by providing more information.
  3. Coupon redemption: Captures user interest at its peak by enabling consumers who see a video ad to take action on a special offer or share it with friends. [see also "I Love Beer – And Other Great Video Ad Promotions."]

Measuring ad engagement isn’t hard – now that you know the basics. In a future post, we’ll look at ways to test different ads to see which ones are the most engaging. Stay tuned!

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