I am embarking on a project for the VCC – a new whitepaper/research paper focused on the state of retail video in 2009. The focus is on video content as opposed to placement or channel – e.g. what video content “works,” and what doesn’t. In addition, we’ll mostly focus on on-site video as opposed to syndicated video or channel-specific uses of video in e-commerce.

If you’d be willing to contribute to the report by interviewing with me for 15 – 20 minutes, I’d like to learn about what’s working for you, what’s not, etc. You and your company can remain…

I’ve noticed more people asking me about the relative merits of Flash vs. Silverlight for e-commerce video, especially since the release of Silverlight 3.0 in July.  I am not a technical expert on the differences between Flash and Silverlight, so I won’t expose my ignorance here by pretending otherwise.  Besides, a simple Google search reveals no shortage of Flash v. Silverlight comparison reports for the curious.  Smashing Magazine’s writeup is one of the better ones.  Read it here if you’re so inclined.

For most executives in e-commerce, my general read is still that…

Earlier today, I finally got a chance to watch a presentation co-delivered by ReelSEO Founder Mark Robertson on the subject of video SEO.  The presentation was originally delivered on July 30, 2009, and I’m sorry I missed it.  The amount of relevant, insightful information pertaining to the state of video and SEO you’ll find here is the single best amalgamation I’ve seen on the topic to date.  Browse the PPT below, and follow on with commentary as the findings pertain specifically to the video commerce industry:

- Search engines today still rely primarily on…

Last week, I co-presented a webinar on the State of Video Email Marketing in 2009 for my non-VCC gig with Liveclicker (see embed below).  Here’s the webinar in its entirety, in case you’d like to pull any charts/stats/graphs/takeaways:

We spent a large portion of the time in the webinar discussing video .GIFs. What’s a video .GIF, you might ask?  Well, it’s basically an animated .GIF file that looks like video in the end user’s email client.  You can see an example here, here, and here. There are some important elements of…

One challenge I’ve noticed repeatedly over the last year in the video commerce industry is just how much harder it is for private label retailers to grow their video programs relative to mass merchants.  Mass merchants are often able to lean more heavily on their suppliers to produce video content, which means obtaining that content is often simply a matter of creating solid processes around video content curation and ensuring the business terms for acquiring content make sense.  Private label retailers don’t have such a luxury.  For companies like LL Bean, Gap, Crate and Barrel, J Crew and others, video…