Just got back from an event hosted by TheFunded at Tesla Motors in Palo Alto.  The event is designed for entrepreneurs of startup companies, and I have to say the energy was pretty awesome – always inspirational to be around people that have big ideas working hard to make them realities.  It just made me want to blog, goshdarnit!

While there, I met Frank Han, former EVP & GM at HSN.com, Founder of Glimpse.com, Co-Founder of eToys and SVP of Caesars Entertainment.  Frank is currently an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Redpoint Ventures &

Justin: Hi I’m Justin Foster with the video commerce consortium and we’re very lucky to have with us here today at the streaming media west conference in beautiful sunny San Jose, CA, Ms. Alison Jeske from drugstore.com. Alison, if you would just take a moment and tell us who you are and what drugstore does?

Alison: I’d be happy to. I’m Alison Jeske. I’m the director of product management for drugstore.com and the family of our brands, which includes drugstore.com, beauty.com, and visiondirect.com. My team is responsible for site features and site enhancements and overall site experience on our…

PART 1: Video Commerce: Don’t Forget the Commerce Part!
Using online video to drive site conversion.

E-commerce video, when done correctly and approached strategically, can and does boost on-site product conversion rates. Leading online retailers like Circuit City, QVC, Ebags, ShopNBC, Tiger Direct, and HSN already know this. These retailers use video to educate the consumer and tip the mind of the buyer toward purchasing, while they also remain careful not to erode the number of coveted transactions through sloppy user experiences.

Videos on Product Pages:

In general, videos placed on product pages boost conversion rates more than videos…

Video commerce is not a buzzword.  Video commerce is the act of selling online with video.  With an economy on the rocks and marketing budgets in many organizations taking a hit -it’s more important now than ever that each dollar of marketing spend be held accountable.  And while online video is relatively new to the online marketing party, it doesn’t deserve a free ride.

Hence, I’ve decided to blog a new 6-part series called: “Video Commerce: Don’t Forget the Commerce Part!”

This new blog series, beginning tomorrow, will take a critical look at online video as a persuasive sales medium for e-commerce.…

Karmaloop (no. 359 Internet Retailer Top 500, est. ~$40MM in 2008 sales) has always been an aggressive adopter of new technology. As an online retailer catering to the younger set (18 – 35 years old), moving primarily apparel and accessories where success is heavily dependent on fast-changing trends, Karmaloop established itself as a video commerce leader when it dove into video with the launch of Karmaloop TV in November 2007. This section on Karmaloop.com features Karmaloop produced videos including “The Daily Loop,” partner videos, and a slick navigation with prominently featured player:

Browsing the videos on Karmaloop…

Today, eMarketer released some new online video consumption stats from Veoh Networks and ComScore:

I found the Veoh Networks stats interesting for a couple of reasons:

- Among active online video consumers, the audience skewed female (though only slightly). Conventional wisdom is that the biggest active consumers are 13 – 17 male and 18 – 24 male.

- Perhaps more interesting, the 35 – 54+ demo (M&F) constituted 30% of the active online video viewers. 30% may not sound like much, but what makes it really interesting is that this figure is for those 35+, meaning…

I thought we’d have the first non-housekeeping related post focus on some of the resources out there for video commerce.  Here’s a short list, please feel free to add others in the Comments section (if you have a blog you think would be valuable for our readers, or links to other articles or studies on video commerce).  Thanks guys!

What is Video Commerce?  Here’s the official definition, according to Wikipedia.

VideoRetailer.org – this is my personal favorite retail blog dedicated to using video in an online retail setting.  It is maintained by Xavier Casanova, Founder of Liveclicker.

Looking…

All, welcome to the video commerce consortium blog.  I’m Justin Foster, founder of the VCC and let me first say how excited I am that we now have a group of e-commerce professionals, online marketers, and technologists that are coming together here to learn about and advance the use of video in e-commerce.

I’ve blogged before, but I wouldn’t call myself a hardcore blogger.  I’d really like this blog to be a valuable industry resource to complement the efforts of the video commerce consortium forum.  I’ll blog here, but we’ll also…