Nach der Premierenveranstaltung im Vorjahr hat vergangene Woche in Seattle erneut der Video Commerce Summit von Liveclicker stattgefunden. Die zentralen Erkenntnisse vom US-Branchen-Treff hat Mitveranstalter Justin Foster nun nebenan beim Video Commerc…

I think in this industry we too often compare methods of production as if they were competitors to one another when in fact each method of production has its place. It is best to take a holistic view.

For example, you won’t see a video-centric retailer like QVC/HSN/ShopNBC porting automated video to air (or even on their most important products on their sites) any more than you would see Overstock.com or one of Treepodia’s many clients investing millions of dollars in producing feature-film quality video for low-selling, low-margin products.

Automated video -in its current state – is a valuable tool in the online retailer’s toolkit, but in my opinion and my opinion alone, it’s a far cry from a paradigm-shifting, ground-changing breakthrough technology. There are simply too many variables at play that automated video is unable to address: production quality, flexibility in presentation at the product level, scalable voice compilation, personality, trust-building, reputation, etc.

I don’t mean to dismiss automated video by any means in case you misinterpret this reply. Our panel unanimously agreed that both automation and personalization in video production would be important to the future of video commerce. Some of the advantages you mention, such as the ability to dynamically swap presentation order of items featured in-video and test versions will become even more important as technology evolves. Still, e-commerce merchants need to remain wary of the reliability of any “winner picking” technology that is unable to reliably predict a winner, as is the case with many long tail products on an e-commerce site where there are few video views. Again, in my opinion, this is where automated video does best – with long tail products. So the value of any winner picking is going to be limited (not useless) unless the technology is used on products with many video views. Even in those cases, I really am not convinced that the presentation automation is ideal beyond simply informing “better quality” video production. At least for now.

Lest you think this is a biased response to your post, I can assure you it is not. We are already working with automated video technologies and see a lot of potential in the production method. But for today, it’s really not a game-changer. Again, only IMO.

Justin

Thanks for mentioning us in this post. Scaling is indeed one of the biggest issues facing video for ecommerce. I’m very interested in hearing how scale is coupled with a/b testing in the other methods you listed.

It would appear that at least in this respect fully automated video should have an advantage as there is little or no cost in creating & testing multiple versions for every video.

Mike
@treepodia