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…

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The Video Commerce Consortium has just released a new whitepaper, “Creating E-Commerce Videos That Sell,” downloadable here. Included in the whitepaper:

- Conceptual Framework for Creating Videos that Sell
- Understanding Motivation, Simplicity, and Triggers
- Producing E-Commerce Videos that Get Results
- Conceptual Storyboarding Approaches
- Benefits and Drawbacks of Various Video Production Methods in E-Commerce
- Product Video ROI Calculator
- Selecting the Right Video Production Equipment
- Filming and Post-Production for E-Commerce Video
- Common Video Production Questions Asked and Answered
- Placing Videos on Product Detail Pages for Maximum Results
- Product Detail Page Implementation Results
- Results (10 examples - some are recycled from earlier papers)

Let me know what you think as usual. No feedback is too harsh!

Happy Selling!

Justin

If there’s one thing I think we can all agree on, it’s that online retailers and product manufacturers want to sell more stuff. So it stands to reason that retailers and manufacturers would do all they can to put video on their sites, right? If only that was the case!

We all believe video increases sales conversion rates. Yet adoption lags. In a September post, Justin suggested the lag is due to a lack of leadership. While that may be the case, I think there are number of factors in play. The one that has been on my mind is the question of “who pays?”

eMarketer and Internet Retailer report that video is a top priority for retailers, yet some (many?) feel the manufacturers should pay all the costs. Why is that? Why would retailers want manufacturers to pay for video that will…

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I just returned home last night from the Shop.org Annual Summit where I spoke about how e-commerce retailers could make more money with video “in a week.”  One of the more powerful moments of the presentation was the opening. I asked the 500 or so in attendance the following three questions:

First, “Who believes online video is an effective way to sell products online or persuade shoppers to buy?”

Nearly everyone raised their hand.

Then, “Who is using online video in some fashion today to sell?”

About 3/4 of the audience kept their hands up.

Last, “Who is using online video as extensively as you would like?”

Fewer than 10 hands remained up.  I think I counted 4 or 5.

For some time, I’ve been thinking about what’s been preventing video from taking off more broadly in the e-commerce space.  It’s a topic I come back to often here, but unfortunately it’s an issue that hasn’t yet disappeared.  The…

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I’ve noticed an emerging trend over the last six to twelve months among specialty and mass merchants with regard to manufacturer video.  The discussion over whether video “works” as a product merchandising tool began to shift away from one centered entirely on improving conversion rates.  In fact, as more retailers discovered manufacturer video content available in relative abundance, they began to view video as more than a simple conversion enhancing tool.  Now, some retailers see video as a new source of revenue unto itself.  What’s behind this behavior change?  Nothing other than the almighty co-op dollar.

Manufacturers have long paid retailers for prominent product placement in the offline world (think: supermarket shelves), and the trend certainly extends to the web.  Merchants routinely pay online retailers to run special promotions highlighting their products. Some retailers even have full-time staffers devoted to “vendor marketing.”  The advantage to…

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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 anonymous in the final published paper if you wish. Please drop me a line at justin [at] video [dash] commerce [d o t] org if you’re interested in participating in this project.  Ideally, I’d like to interview at least twenty-five “Top 500″ retailers for the paper prior to its eventual publication - a task I’m sure will be…

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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 the battle between Flash versus Silverlight comes down to one thing: market penetration.  No matter if Silverlight can offer slightly higher video quality playback than Flash, or if its support for languages like C# make it easier for developers to work with when building players or video widgets (as opposed to…

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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 video metadata to classify and display videos in search results. This means that if you are trying to have your video featured in organic search results, it’s important both to make sure that text on…

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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 video .GIFs that make them different from standard animated .GIFs that I’ll speak to below, then I’d like to put it to readers of this blog to see what you think: are video .GIFs used in…

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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 commerce is a ‘go it alone’ game.

Unfortunately, ‘go it alone’ isn’t always easy, especially for a retailer that’s still only dabbling with video (common).  Even those private label retailers with broad video programs already in place repeatedly run into some of the challenges inherent in private label video production:

1. Justifying the spend on custom video production.  It’s especially a…

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