OMG a Good Article About Viral Video Marketing?
Oh it’s so rare when someone writes an intelligent article about online video (aka viral) marketing. And it’s pretty funny when you’ve never heard of the author but she happens to work for the digital agency you employ in your day job.
Anyway, here’s “Strategies for Making Video Ads Go Viral,” by Christine Beardsell (Digitas) via ClickZ. Christine explains paid and organic “seeding” of videos, which is not very well understood. She references two companies I hadn’t heard about: Kontraband’s The 7th Chamber and Viral Manage, which apparently seed videos, and offer tiered plans that include viral tracking and blog/forum seeding.
She also observes that a little money can go a long way with smaller video sites, and I’ve also found that to be true. I once got a promotional video past one million views by throwing a modest media buy to a second-tier site for some premium placement.
I’m not sure I agree that online video banners aren’t effective. In general, it’s true that banners are ignored. And auto-play banners are repulsively annoying. But I do believe there’s a role for embedded video in interactive, rich media ads. I found her thoughts about RSS and videos interesting, but caution people from thinking too many people will RSS for commercial videos. Get a well known YouTuber to mention your brand and you’ll get exponentially more visibility for far less money than your agency will charge for a FedEx.
I’m with you, Nalts. I think video banners are effective. It’s regular banners that are a waste of time, space and money. I recently blogged about the bane of bad banners.
interesting…Thanks
Video banners = Argghhhhh!!!!
I agree with her on that. The minute one pops up on the video I instantly “X” it out. To me it’s like when you’re watching an interesting TV program or movie and the telephone rings just to find out it’s a telemarketer. Ruins the whole experience. Just like the “rollovers” where your mouse mistakenly crosses over and ad and it blows up to 3 times its size and engulfs your whole viewing plane often obstructing important links and such. I don’t know much about YT’s partners program and I understand they need to make money, but I think if they had a banner ad permanetly fixed to the bottom of the video player would be much more appealing and would fruit more interests/clicks. I don’t mind ads and understand the necessity and will click on ads that interest me, but will totally ignore ones that I “feel” have invaded my space.
Just my $.02 :o)
Intresting article – i think advertisers play an intresting game online, too much exposure and annoying placement and it can really work against them. On the other hand, too subtle a message and the whole thing can get missed by the audience – the balance is forever changing as well, so only the very on-the-ball agencies can keep up with the trends. Saying that, i still feel the only long-term way of getting attention of surfers is to get your creative into the area that people want to look at. I would gladly watch a well executed viral over an expandable, video-playing, pain-inducing banner anytime.
Nalts,youre up to 25 million views now? That was a quick jump from 10m to 25m! im about to hit 100m myself! just joking with ya,its actually pretty difficult to total every video from every account/website huh? Btw heres an email i just got from youtube: “Thank you for your interest in the YouTube Partner Program. Our goal is to extend invitations to as many partners as we can. Unfortunately we are unable to accept your application at this time. The current level of viewership of your account has not met our threshold for acceptance.
Applications are reviewed for a variety of criteria, including but not limited to the size of your audience, country of residence, quality of content, and consistency with our Community Guidelines and Terms of Use. Please review http://www.youtube.com/partners for a complete list of our criteria.
As we continue to expand we hope to be able to accept a broader group of partners. We have registered your interest and will continue to monitor your account for potential future acceptance.
Thank you for your understanding.”……..my reply to youtube is of course: F*CK YOUTUBE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!