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 a couple of examples of auto-video produced by auto-video vendor SundaySky to illustrate the technology.
Example auto-video in use by Overstock.com
Example auto-video in use by AdventureLand.com
November 9th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
One of the biggest drawbacks for our smaller clients is they don’t have the budget for video. Auto-video is something that anyone can do to help engage their customers without having to shoot, edit and post videos to e-commerce sites. How would you optimize an auto-video?
November 9th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
[...] proposition for a small business. But there’s another way. According to a recent post by The Video Commerce Consortium, there’s a quick and affordable solution that anyone can imlement for their website. [...]
November 9th, 2009 at 11:19 pm
Hi Justin,
Thanks for that concise report about automated video solutions.
For honesty’s sake i’d like to start with disclosure - I’m associated with automated ecommerce video solution http://treepodia.com.
After watching your clip I felt some points warranted commenting:
1. It’s a scalable solution
Auto video is being adopted eagerly by some of the largest online vendors for the simple reason that their product turnover and the variety of their stock makes it, for all practical purposes, impossible to cover it with production video.
2. It’s an effective solution
Interestingly, because we’ve had the opportunity to work with quite a few top-500 ecommerce sites, we’ve been able to crunch significant amounts of data and test how automated videos affect conversions.
The fact is automated videos rival, and at times beat, production videos, in terms of their positive effect on conversion rates and vendors’ bottom-line. I realize, given my earlier disclosure, you might view my comment with some reserve, however the web is rich with statements by satisfied autovideo clients (our own and others) to back me up. I’ve provided a snippet from an article on InternetRetailer.com quoting Roy Hessel, the flamboyant founder and CEO of Eyebuydirect.com (a top-500 ecommerce site):
“EyeBuyDirect.com…is finding it pays to present & test different formats, says founder and CEO Roy Hessel.
Since launching online videos earlier this year…the retailer has experienced an overall 30% increase in product page conversion rates” (source: http://www.internetretailer.com/article.asp?id=31655)”
3. It’s a cost effective, fairly priced solution
By virtue of the low production costs auto-video providers can be creative with their pricing models. Our own model is modeled on the PPC model pioneered by Google’s Adwords. We let clients “Pay-Per-View”- start your account, make an initial deposit, and pay us only when your visitors actually click to view a video. Clear, fair, and above all MEASURABLE!
All the best,
Mike Darnell
@pop_art
November 19th, 2009 at 4:57 am
My GOD that Overstock video is boring. And vague. And lacking in anything remotely resembling credibility. Or actionable information. And the voice, gak! The images? Oy! It’s the very definition of useless content, no doubt created by a committee that included marketing, IT, legal, branding and a dozen other suits. Donkey. Committee. That kind of thing.
Now I’m not going to say anything unkind about your instructional video, but I will say this: how do you know what products and what product features of those products to sell via video? Isn’t this just another shotgun sales technique? Or, put another way, flying blind is an excellent method for crash landing.
Why use the world’s most interactive device without interactivity? Anyone remember early DVD-based videogames? The basics of video interaction were sorted out in 1983. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_Lair)
I would think a 360 spin around the product would be more effective than the Overstock mini-TV-ad “solution.”
Am I wrong?
December 16th, 2009 at 10:24 pm
Wow, lots of people to respond to here.
@Enzo - there are solutions that can take an auto-video and alter elements within the video based on a template model to detemine the optimal conversion rate. You may want to contact Mike Darnell (who also commented here)
@Mike - thanks for sharing your perspective. I think I’d agree with you that auto-video is definitely here to stay and will have an important role to play in the e-commerce video world in the years to come. I stop short of viewing auto-video as any kind of panacea or savior technology. It’s an important catalyst for video commerce but I’m not really sure how significant the technology is in the long term. I also think the per-view pricing model for any kind of video creation solution will eventually succumb to a per-video model or other model based on content creation since, at its core, that’s the value an auto-video solution provides (content creation, not content distribution).
@Robert in fairness, there is technology at work behind the scenes to recommend products in these auto-videos. Not saying it’s always good, but give ‘em some credit for trying
You make a good point about the ‘compelling nature’ of the video. Retailers will have to balance the need to maintain brand integrity with the need to achieve scalability with any video. I think auto-video will reveal a lot of valuable data regarding what does and doesn’t work. Lessons learned from auto-video will likely reveal insights retailers in the future use in other, more traditional methods of video production.
@all In closing, I do think while the cost of video production is a major force in today’s video commerce world, and while cost of production will always be an issue in video commerce, that in the future the value of video will be so pervasively accepted in e-commerce that organizations will become more focused on achieving revenue in ways that allow them to integrate their core selling messages in memorable, lasting, and more ‘human’ ways.