Last week I had the great fortune to moderate an all-star panel of video commerce pros at the StreamingMedia West conference in San Jose.  StreamingMedia is a show that draws online video innovators, technologists, and a large contingency from the media and advertising industries.  Dan Rayburn, industry guru, organizer of the show and EVP of StreamingMedia.com shared last night that the video commerce session was among the top 3 ranked sessions of the entire show.  So first and foremost, congrats to the panelists: Jason Arend of PFI, Mike Sullivan of Hot Topic/Shockhound/Torrid,…

If you’re an online retailer, I have a challenge for you.

When a consumer navigates to a specific product page, it’s fair to assume that he / she has moved pretty far down the purchase funnel, right?  If that’s the case, then the role of the product video is to educate, describe the product, and show multiple features that cannot be displayed in a few product pictures.  That’s according to a recently released Forrester report.  And I agree.

In my opinion, videos that are straightforward, clearly describe features / benefits, and explain who the product is for…

It’s been a while since the last VCC TV episode and with the holidays fast approaching it is once again time to kick into high gear.  This go around, we are re-examining an emerging trend in video commerce we’ve touched on before: auto-video.  Auto-video, which I’ve also referred to as “artificial video,” is the practice of taking product metadata displayed on your site (e.g. price, description, ratings & reviews, related products, etc) and featuring this information in a visually appealing slideshow, often with background music and a human or computer-generated voiceover.  We’ve also included…