I’ve just returned from the 2010 Video Commerce Summit hosted by my company, Liveclicker. This is the second time the summit was held in Seattle, WA.  In all, the summit was 2X the size of last year’s with 75 onsite attendees from many of the top e-commerce sites including Amazon.com, Bed Bath & Beyond, Zappos, Microsoft, Costco, Nordstrom, REI, Overstock.com, and over 20 others.  REELSEO was onsite for videography.  Throughout this week we’ll see interviews on REELSEO.com highlighting learnings from the speakers and attendees.

I’m still digesting all of the information from the summit so beware the below thoughts are somewhat stream of consciousness as I reflect on the state of the video commerce industry.

• The manner in which retailers are using video varies widely today, however most e-commerce sites seem to be concerned mainly with product videos.  It wasn’t universal, but the focus on product video was unmistakable.
• Scaling video in e-commerce is a hotter topic than ever before, and it seems clear no one method of scaling is poised to dominate.  Automated video (e.g. SundaySky, Treepodia, DynamicVideo, Stupeflix) is preferred by Overstock.com (which uses SundaySky), but other retailers like REI choose to use a system like TalkMarket which automates much of the traditional filming process without creating artificial/computer-generated looking slideshow content.  Still other retailers are scaling through user generated video: Beautychoice.com scales through its YouTube “Beauty Stars” program while drugstore.com is using ExpoTV’s new integration with Liveclicker’s Video Exchange Marketplace to broaden access to user generated videos.  Zappos, which initially began using TalkMarket, has chosen to instead hone its own in-house production process to make video scale as they race toward producing 60,000 videos in 2010.
• I’m more convinced than ever before there is a direct response TV play for many retailers, especially lifestyle brands.  The reason is simple: TV offers reach.  Reach is the #1 problem faced by retailers today in their video programs.  It’s not about the number of videos, but rather making sure the investments in video are targeted enough that they reach a wide audience and focus on hot products that generate lots of revenue (HSN model, which btw is total opposite of the auto-video model in my view).  I’m unsure whether my view is shared by many retailers, but seeing HSN’s stats for the lifetime value of their multichannel shoppers for TV and web (~$1,250) is nearly twice the value of the shoppers that are only on TV or only on the web looks like a major opportunity for most traditional “web only” e-commerce sites.   Plus, smaller retailers like PFI have been able to make TV work with close to “zero” budget, funding efforts through vendor co-op programs.  Still, the lack of video as a core competency for most retailers, plus the inability of most retailers to make a sizable direct response TV play without direct CEO level support will probably hold most back for now although I do expect to see a couple of interesting announcements over the coming 12 months that are likely to propel the industry in this direction and further blur the distinction between TV direct sales and traditional e-commerce.
• Video SEO continues on as a hot topic in online retail.  This is the subject of a multi-part blog post, but suffice it to say many retailers see a big part of the immediate video opportunity comes in the form of better SEO.
• Guided video shopping is poised to become an emerging trend in the second half of this year entering into the busy Q4 season.  We’ll likely see several interesting cases from top retailers that are working to bring interactive video to the next level during the upcoming holiday.
• We held a ‘future of video’ panel with Dan Greenberg (Founder/CEO Sharethrough), Xavier Casanova (Founder/CEO Liveclicker), Yaniv Axen (Founder/CTO SundaySky) and Mark Robertson (Founder/Publisher REELSEO).  Some of the views held in common by the panelists included a) each person sees a rich future in automated, personalized video, although it wasn’t clear what form that would ultimately take b) successful video platforms will take open approaches while providing the right amount of rich functionality to appease the partner ecosystem while remaining highly competitive in the core product c) there is going to continue to be a blurring between brand and direct marketing with video, but the two worlds are still far apart.  It’s clear though that video is blurring the worlds of branding and e-commerce in new ways that are likely to have significant impact on the ways we shop and interact with brands.
• This video commerce industry feels like the e-commerce industry felt in 1998.  The future is bright for all of us in video commerce.  We’re still in the top half of the first inning in an exciting baseball game.  Until next time… Happy Selling!

Like many others, yesterday I huddled in line for close to 11 hours to pick up the coveted iPhone 4 (much to the chagrin of my wife, I’ll add). After playing with the phone now for half a day, I’m more convinced than ever that this phone is going to have a meaningful impact on the online video world.  Here are just a few initial predictions:

• More people are going to want to watch video on their phones because of this phone. Watching video on the iPhone 4 is actually pleasant.  While video on the older iPhones was a ‘game changing’ step forward in terms of quality, the higher resolution screen of the iPhone 4 pushes it to a new level.  Even skeptics are going to have a very difficult time arguing that the quality improvement made possible by such rich pixel density doesn’t make a significant and noticeable difference when watching video.

• HD video recording for the masses will drive user generated video into a ‘new era.’ The iPhone 3GS brought video recording capabilities, yes, but the 3GS was always a ’stepping stone’ phone for Apple and its users.  It certainly didn’t generate the same level of excitement in the market as the iPhone 4.  When waiting in line to get my hands on the phone, one of the things that immediately struck me was the diversity of the crowd.  It wasn’t just a bunch of programmer geeks, design snobs, and urban hipsters that one might expect to show up for an Apple Fanboy rally.  People from all walks of life were represented.  The guy standing in line behind me was a landscaper who said, “I’ve never geeked out this hard for anything in my entire life.”  That sentiment was repeated over and over again when I asked others in line about their attitude toward the phone.

• FaceTime will advance the cause of interactive video. Apple has outdone itself with FaceTime, but there are major problems with this service.  Everyone knows about the wifi only limitation, but I’d argue that’s not the biggest issue (the iPhone released next year will probably solve it anyway -  phones like the HTC Evo 4 already support video calling over 3G).  To me, the bigger issue that that in order to participate in a FaceTime conversation, the receiver of the call has to be an iPhone 4 user.  If video calling becomes the ‘killer app’ of mobile, this could prove a critical misstep for Apple as it squares off against rapidly improving Android phones that take a more open approach.  I’m sure we’ll soon see video calling on iPhone for Skype and many other uses for the front facing camera in the App Store, but FaceTime itself needs to be more open.  The mobile world is moving toward more open standards.  If Apple isn’t careful, it will become a niche player in the smartphone market while Google becomes the Microsoft for mobile phones.  The PC v. Mac battle tells us that it’s the more open standards that usually win.

Whether the ultimate impact of the iPhone 4 on online video is large or small, the phone clearly sets a new benchmark for video playback on a smartphone.  This quality is sure to drive more mobile video consumption and push other device manufacturers to build more video-friendly displays.

Even if FaceTime ultimately loses out  to more open approaches, enough people will use it (and enough other smartphones will launch competing services) that retailers will need to seriously consider possible uses (customer service calls, shopping assistance onsite, more mobile video reviews).

And finally, the macro-trend, the one of an ever-expanding mobile audience, is one that online retailers ignore at their own peril.  Consumers want video, and if my 11-hour wait in line yesterday is any indication, they also want the iPhone 4.

Until next time,

Happy Selling!

About a month ago I moderated a panel on video commerce in New York alongside panelists Scott Anderson of Vitamin Shoppe, Robert Schwartz of Ogilvy, and Jason Arend of PFI Western.  Scott shared his vision for video commerce at Vitamin Shoppe, which is just now launching an online video effort.  Robert shared examples for both Sears and IBM.  Finally, Jason closed the panel by highlighting the results of PFI Western’s multi-channel video commerce strategy.  Questions ensued - please enjoy:

This year REELSEO is attending the IRCE in Chicago.  The VCC is assisting REELSEO in identifying any retailers that may be interested in being interviewed for an upcoming article on online video in e-commerce.  If you or one of your teammates is attending the Internet Retailer conference and is interested in an interview opportunity, please drop me an email at justin [at] video [dash] commerce [dot] org.

This week I co-presented a webinar on HTML5 video in e-commerce with Walt Mann, Founder/CTO of Liveclicker. The material is very best practices focused so I thought it worthy of posting up on the VCC blog.  You can listen to the audio by downloading the HTML5 video webinar material, or you can thumb through the slides on Slideshare.

The webinar covered:

- Overview of what HTML5 video is

- HTML5 video adoption curves

- Browsers and devices that support HTML5 video (and those that don’t)

- The state of HTML5 video codecs (OGG Theora, H.264, WebM) and why they matter

- Flash v. HTML5 video

If for some reason you were living on a remote uninhabited island for the last week, you probably didn’t hear about Steve Jobs’ blog post highlighting Apple’s position on why it’s not planning to support Flash on the iPhone or iPad anytime soon.  Otherwise, you’ve probably at least heard of Apple’s position if you didn’t read the post in its entirety.  For the sake of brevity, I’ll provide the short version:

1. Apple has no plans to support Flash on the iPhone or iPad.
2. Ever.

As an online retailer, why should you care?  For starters, over 1 million iPads have already been sold since its launch (in 28 days).  That is twice the pace of sales as the original iPhone, despite the iPad’s higher price tag.  Love it or hate it, the iPad is a hit.  With a bigger screen, consumers may quickly make the iPad a strong force in e-commerce for the simple reason that it can be easier to shop on a screen with larger dimensions. Second, iPhone sales are booming. Apple sold 9 million iPhones in the second quarter alone.  In 2009, it sold around 25 million iPhones. A new iPhone will likely be announced this June.  Apple is on a tear.

We posted on HTML5 earlier on the VCC and its relevance to video commerce, but since that time several important developments have taken shape in the industry.  MPEG-LA extended free licenses for the H.264 codec through 2016, providing the marketplace with additional certainty around the viability of H.264 (what happens after 2016 is anyone’s guess).  Second, Microsoft announced HTML5 support will be included in Internet Explorer 9.  HTML5 video is already supported in Firefox (3.6), Chrome (3+), Safari (3,4).  Now that Microsoft is in on the HTML5 party, all the major industry players in the browser game are aligned.

If you are not supporting HTML5 today on your site, it is something to consider strongly.  With surging iPad sales, soaring iPhone sales, and what is likely to be strong next-gen iPhone sales (many purchasers of the original 3G iPhone have expiring plans with AT&T this June and may look to upgrade their phones subsidized with a new plan), retailers can expect to see more shoppers using these devices.

Until next time -

Happy Selling!

In my last post on video distribution, I outlined the foundations of a smart e-commerce video distribution strategy.  Today, we’ll build upon those lessons by further detailing something I call “smart channel enablement.”  We’ll look at video+SEO best practices but branch beyond search to show how to maximize the value of video distribution regardless of channel.

To start, I’ll posit the three pillars of a successful video commerce distribution strategy are as follows:

1.  Interactive Opportunities: your off-site e-commerce videos must embrace interactivity to drive purchases.  Without interactivity, it’s difficult to connect shoppers with e-commerce opportunities.

2.  Broad Reach: a large enough audience must see your e-commerce videos, or top line revenues will suffer.

3.  Rich Relevance: your e-commerce videos must be seen by the right audience, or not enough people will buy to make the program worth its while.

If any of these pillars are missing in your video distribution strategy, it is destined to fail.  Learn why and read tips to ensure your strategy pays off:

Interactive Video

Video distribution to video sharing services can help with video discovery and SEO, but unless your videos are driving viewers to your site, the value for online retailers remains limited to  branding (awareness, consideration).  In addition, it’s important for marketers to realize that videos distributed for SEO purposes can actually cannibalize product page search rankings if programs are not well managed.  Killing product page SEO has ROI implications and needs to be factored into video distribution decisions.  Here are concrete steps marketers can take to maximize the opportunity of interactive video across channels:

1.  Let consumers share interactive videos over Facebook and to blogs and other 3rd party site embeds.

2.  Participate in YouTube’s CPC program w/overlays.  Despite the hype around YouTube being the 2nd largest search engine, I’ve yet to meet a marketer that’s driving meaningful revenue from YouTube even with this program.  However, with a  CPC model it might be worth a try.

3.  Link videos in your email campaigns to your site.  In-house email distribution provides built-in reach, another of the key pillars behind successful video distribution.

4.  Allow affiliates to share your interactive videos.  Just make sure affiliates are still able to collect commissions.

5.  Video-enable your ad retargeting program.  Make sure people can click through your videos to your site!

6.  Make interactivity obvious regardless of channel.  Strong calls to action in-video let consumers know they’re expected to click.

Achieve Broad Reach

Beyond making video interactive, marketers need to consider the issue of reach.  Reach is a concept all online advertising professionals understand.  You can create a video with the coolest creative and the most whiz-bang interactivity, but if no one watches, who cares?  This is especially challenging with e-commerce video because most e-commerce videos are NOT viral; they’re persuasive messages describing products, services, and merchant selling propositions.  Here are some ideas to help with reach:

1.  Use your in-house email list with video.  It’s simple, doesn’t require technical integration, and in many cases can allow your video to reach a large audience that’s already receptive to your message.  Just make sure you understand some of the limitations that still exist with in-email video.

2.  Take control of your video SEO:

• Include relevant permalinks for all videos
• Include transcripts with your videos (services are cheap)
• Link to your video pages from other reputable sites that feature relevant content
• Feature relevant meta descriptions and keywords for all pages featuring video
• Make your videos downloadable
• Show only one video player per page
• Show related and featured products on your video pages
• Use Ping-O-Matic when you publish new videos
• Create mRSS feeds for your videos
• Publish Google Video Sitemaps
• Include relevant, keyword-rich descriptions for your video content
• Ensure *all* your videos are interactive - as long as they aren’t on the product page
• Measure site traffic from syndicated videos.
• Measure your page rank for videos vs. product pages.  Monitor video SEO closely to determine objectively if cannibalization is occurring.
• If cannibalization happens, compare site traffic from the relevant videos vs. organic search for product pages to see if syndication efforts should be fine-tuned
• Use your own domain for video SEO efforts when possible
• Don’t ignore video SEO if you are stuck on needing to implement product page changes.  Set up a video SEO program around video (e.g. buy.com/tv, kiddicare.tv)

3.  Consider video advertising.  Most retailers are ROI-driven as opposed to brands which tend to make ad spend decisions based more on awareness or consideration concerns (this isn’t always the case obviously, I’m generalizing here).  To drive reach without sacrificing ROI, consider video retargeting to broaden the impact of your videos.

4.  Share your videos to the right video sharing services.  The “right” services are the ones that support interactivity and allow videos to linking to your site.   While there are many video sharing services beyond YouTube where online retailers can share videos, carefully consider if the benefit of added reach is going to do anything to help ROI.  Potentially broader reach can also cannibalize SEO.

5.  Promote videos to your affiliates.  Affiliates are attracted to offers that perform well.  Studies have shown videos drive higher clickthrough than static ads.

Create Rich Relevance:

Video commerce is still in early stages of development, but combining reach with relevance will drive up response rates and total video program revenues.  Here are some tips to make video more relevant:

1.  Feature video on your product pages.  Shoppers on the product page are already pre-qualified to some extent.  Video can be used to tip the purchase decision.

2.  Serve video to people who view products that have video associated with them.  This can be done through behavioral targeting via email or retargeting.

3.  Use video to cross-sell related products.  This can be done without creating new video content by incorporating related product descriptions and images into the video player to drive shopping behavior.

4.  Use site personas in conjunction with automated video production to vary the order and presentation of video content to drive higher response rates (note this is just now emerging as a trend, we’ll cover it more in the coming months).

5.  Implement video where your customers shop.  This is one of  the easiest tactics to implement yet many in video commerce overlook it.  Be honest with yourself - are your customers going to YouTube to buy your products?  Maybe they are.  For most e-commerce sites, I’d argue they’re not.  Video on your own site or retail destination is more likely to prompt shopping behavior.  Measure the results and find out.

6.  Discover what drives video engagement with your core customers.  Video platforms and web analytics tools are becoming more sophisticated at measuring engagement to go beyond simple falloff cliffs.  Now marketers can measure how interactive elements perform v. one another, benchmark video content site wide, brand-wide, category-wide, etc.  Look for patterns and use information discovered to create content that converts.

Until next time -
Happy Selling!

YouTube’s announcement last week that it would begin supporting automated video captioning caused a lot of excitement in the video commerce and video SEO worlds.  Then the balloon popped.

Automating speech-to-text has long been a goal of those seeking to make video more search engine friendly.   Unfortunately, the YouTube technology isn’t ready for prime time.  Google says the technology is in “beta,” but applying that moniker might be going a little far.  The technology is so bad it’s almost embarrassing.  I’d go into details, but in this case, a video’s worth a thousand words.

1.  Click on then hover your mouse over the arrow in the lower right hand corner of the player, then hover your mouse over the small arrow directly to the left of the CC icon.

2.  Click “transcribe audio.”

For now, the best practice in transcribing speech to text is to have a person do it. Until next time…

Happy Selling!

For some time we’ve touted the merits of video distribution in video commerce.  I believe video distribution is more important now than ever for e-commerce merchants.  Unfortunately, I also think most online retailers misunderstand video distribution and therefore are at risk of implementing poor video distribution strategies.

Why distribute e-commerce video?

Video distribution is important because it enables retailers to multiply the effectiveness of video assets without additional investment in video production.  I often tell e-commerce merchants, “a video on the product page and the product page alone is a terrible waste of revenue potential.”

Over the last year and a half, my thinking around video distribution has become increasingly nuanced as I’ve witnessed more retailers employ distribution in their video commerce strategies.  While I remain a huge proponent of video distribution, there are now more case studies to draw upon that illustrate where video works, where it doesn’t, and why.  Here are some of my key findings:

Video distribution multiplies the positive or negative impact of video on site traffic.

This point can not be overstated.  While a good product video (one that produces higher conversion rates, engages viewers to make a purchase, and delivers incremental revenue) can be especially effective when syndicated across channels, poorly performing videos can harm a site’s conversion rate and reduce the number of buyers.  Distribution enhances the impact either way, making it a dangerous tool for e-commerce sites that don’t know how to make videos that sell and an incredible revenue driver for those that do.

The first key to making video distribution work is to figure out what makes video work.

Figuring out what makes video “work” requires testing and optimizing video content.  Generally, I believe a retailer with enough budget to produce 10 videos would be better off creating 5 videos of the same product, each with different production styles, length of video, host (if applicable) or order of content presentation.  Once the best formula is found, that production “template” would then be rolled out across five different products in the same category (for a total of 10 videos, 6 of which actually make it to “go live.”).  Then, the winning videos would be syndicated.  It isn’t necessary to get content perfect the first go-around.  Optimizing video is an incremental process.  The name of the game is test, test, test.

The use of automated e-commerce video optimization technologies can help improve a product video’s performance, and I recommend retailers adopt them aggressively as a way of improving distribution value and overall video performance.  Still, retailers need to be careful of growing overly reliant on video optimization tools.  Optimization can’t solve underlying problems with video content. Lipstick on a pig is still lipstick on a pig.

Intelligent video syndication is different than vanilla video distribution.

Beware of SEO “experts” who tout the benefits of distributing product videos to many different video sharing services without strong knowledge of the e-commerce space.  While the positive impact of placing videos on sharing sites like YouTube may be clearer for media companies or entertainment content intended for the broadest possible audience, I think retailers should remain wary of video sharing sites.  When done improperly, distributing product videos to video sharing services can dilute a retailer’s SEO initiatives.  That’s because positive SEO value for a video on video sharing services like YouTube, Metacafe, Google Video, Viddler, Vimeo, Dailymotion and others can drive traffic away from a retailer’s e-commerce site by placing videos outside the purchase path of a shopper.  Worse, some sites will run ads in your content, potentially driving viewers to a competitor’s site.

The two exception sites I still consistently recommend syndicating retail product videos to are a) YouTube, but only if the retailer is participating in YouTube’s promoted video program ($$) with CPC overlay links enabled ($$), or b) a retailer’s own branded video destination site optimized for SEO.  Such sites may feature interactive videos that place shoppers on the path to purchase.

I will also sometimes recommend that retailers syndicate product videos to YouTube - even if the retailer is not participating in the YouTube Promoted Videos program with CPC links enabled.  In these cases, it is because SEO value can still be achieved for a retailer’s product pages by linking from the YouTube video page (in the “More Info” section) back to the retail site itself.  However, SEO value gained for product pages needs to be carefully weighed against possible YouTube-originated SEO cannibalization and the relative paucity of YouTube video viewers that will click to product pages from the “More Info” section on the site.

Other video sharing services may help a retailer increase awareness and generate some SEO “value” (quotes intentional) but I have yet to see a Top 100 retailer driving any amount of consequential revenue from other video sharing sites (e.g. Metacafe, Dailymotion, Viddler).  In fact, I have yet to meet a Top 100 retailer driving any amount of INconsequential revenue from these sites.  Even YouTube Promoted Videos with CPC links seem to yield only small amounts of revenue for most retailers (anyone that has a different experience, please comment).  In fairness, I’m sure clicks will improve over time as retailers create more persuasive content.

The lesson here?  Syndicate to video sharing services at your own peril and always seek out sites that allow you to place the shopper on a path to purchase.

We’ll follow up this post with Part II: “Smart Video Channel Enablement for Online Retailers.”

Until next time…

Happy Selling!

Video in email is a topic we’ve covered recently on the VCC blog.  On February 24, Google made in-email video closer to reality for email recipients who maintain Gmail accounts.

Previously, Gmail users could view Youtube videos in their webmail client, but only when Youtube previews were enabled via the Labs tab available under the Settings menu in Gmail.  In other words, very few Gmail users actually took advantage of this functionality.  Now, Google has rolled Youtube previews out across all Gmail subscribers.  All that is required to view video in Gmail is to include a Youtube link.  There are still issues email marketers will want to be aware of:

1.  In order for videos to display, they must be on Youtube.

2.  Videos do not display “in” the email, but instead show up as expandable thumbnail players at the bottom of email messages.

From the video commerce perspective, this is really only a semi-significant advance in the quest to enable in-email video.  Far more interesting, I think, is the growth potential for HTML5 to enable in-email video viewing experiences.  Since Google is one of the largest proponents of HTML5, Chrome 3+ now support HTML5, HTML5 is an open standard that’s video platform agnostic (Youtube hosting isn’t required, any email client that runs an HTML5 compliant rendering engine supports it) and, perhaps just as important, use of HTML5 doesn’t require email marketers to segment lists by domain in order to be auto-enabled inline, I’m still waiting to see more.

Until next time…

Happy Selling!