Nikolas Severidt’s Blog

Vimeo has launched an analytics suite for Vimeo Plus.

In the month of November online video views in the U.S. continued to grow, surpassing 30 billion for the first time ever.  That’s according to recent findings from comScore.  They also found that more than 170 million U.S. users watched online video in November.

Google led the way with 40% of all videos watched coming through Google, while Hulu finished a distant second at around 3%.

Top U.S. Online Video Content Properties* by Videos Viewed November 2009 Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations Source: comScore Video Metrix
Property	Videos (000)	Share (%) of Video
Total Internet : Total Audience	30,986,670	100.0%
Google Sites	12,215,994	39.4%
Hulu	923,805	3.0%
Viacom Digital	499,497	1.6%
Microsoft Sites	479,638	1.5%
Yahoo! Sites	470,804	1.5%
Fox Interactive Media	446,460	1.4%
Turner Network	336,952	1.1%
CBS Interactive	287,588	0.9%
AOL LLC	227,797	0.7%
MEGAVIDEO.COM	201,199	0.6%

*Rankings based on video content sites; excludes video server networks. Online video includes both streaming and progressive download video.

Of the more than 171 million views, almost 95% were viewed on Google sites followed by Yahoo at around 8%.  Amazon had a big jump in views but that was most likely due to this data being collected so close to the Holiday shopping season.

Top U.S. Online Video Content Properties* by Unique Viewers November 2009 Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations Source: comScore Video Metrix
Property	Unique Viewers (000)	Average Videos per Viewer
Total Internet : Total Audience	170,647	181.6
Google Sites	129,037	94.7
Yahoo! Sites	55,145	8.5
Fox Interactive Media	49,981	8.9
CBS Interactive	47,460	6.1
Hulu	43,738	21.1
Microsoft Sites	43,280	11.1
Viacom Digital	42,572	11.7
FACEBOOK.COM	31,107	5.1
AOL LLC	30,992	7.4
Amazon Sites	27,169	2.6

*Rankings based on video content sites; excludes video server networks. Online video includes both streaming and progressive download video.

Other notable findings from November 2009 include:

• The top video ad networks in terms of their actual reach delivered were: Tremor Media Video Network with 20.0 percent penetration of online video viewers, BBE with 17.5 percent, and BrightRoll Video Network with 16.6 percent.
• 84.8 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
• The average online video viewer watched 12.2 hours of video.
• 128.1 million viewers watched more than 12 billion videos on YouTube.com (94.3 videos per viewer).
• 38.6 million viewers watched 333.4 million videos on MySpace.com (8.6 videos per viewer).
• The average Hulu viewer watched 21.1 videos, totaling 2.1 hours of videos per viewer.
• The duration of the average online video was 4.0 minutes.

There is absolutely no better time than now to showcase your business with online video.  People are using the internet and video more and more to find what they are looking for.  With online video people can create an automatic connection with you or your product, which makes them want to do business with you that much more.

Tags: comScore, Hulu, Online Video, Yahoo Video, YouTube

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 at 9:01 pm by Nikolas Severidt and is filed under Expanding Your Business, Social Media, Video Marketing, YouTube. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Patrick Moran is chief strategy officer at Fuze Box, the company behind Fuze Meeting. He was also chief marketing officer at Mzinga, a leading social media and white label community provider, and led online marketing at Cisco WebEx. Fuze Box is one of the leading providers of real-time video collaboration tools today.

It’s no secret that online video is hot. A recent study by comScore revealed that in October 2009, more than 167 million viewers in the U.S. watched an average of 167 videos each, while YouTubeYouTube

reached 1 billion views per day – or 41 million views per hour – in the same month.

At my company, we’ve seen our own surge in video viewing. Videovideo

now accounts for the largest number of files uploaded into online meetings on our platform.

Given that many of our customers work in sales and marketing, what I infer from these numbers is that video marketing is poised for a huge year in 2010. The reason is clear: video simply engages people in a way that static text and images cannot. There are dozens of studies that show the power of video to boost customer interaction, drive sales, encourage viral sharing, and build brand awareness. And according to MarketingSherpa, 95 percent of the companies that have used online video marketing are happy with the results and expect to use it again in the future.

Luckily, it’s never been easier to create marketing videos. You can create videos for free using stock images and still photos on services like Jivox, or even transfer existing TV spots to the Web. You can also create screencasts on sites like Screenr in under an hour by recording voice over still images, screenshots, and slides. If you want to shoot your own video, you can edit the footage using sites like Pixorial or JaycutJayCut

. Of course, you can also hire a video production agency to create the videos for you.

Whatever type of video you create, make sure it’s short – under two minutes is usually best, but 30 seconds is even better. Simplicity is also key. Keep voiceovers straightforward and music at a minimum. If you want an example of the power of utter simplicity, check out the unique videos that explain hundreds of complex subjects produced by Common Craft.

Here are some great ways to use video to boost your business next year:

1. Punch Up Your Web Site

The easiest way get started is simply to embed your videos on your Web site. You can use YouTube to do this, or alternatives like VimeoVimeo

or Sorenson Media. Once you’ve got the videos playing on your site, make sure they are easy to share by adding a “share this” button on each video so that viewers can pass them along via TwitterTwitter

, FacebookFacebook

, and other viral channels. Already on Twitter, 8 percent of all shared URLs are links to videos on YouTube.

2. Use Video to Sell

We’ve found that our sales reps see 20 percent higher close rates when they play a video at the beginning of their virtual sales demo. Other online services report similar results: Jivox, an online video ad platform, used this video demo on their web site to increase registrations by 25 percent – they even embedded a signup form right on the demo page to collect registrations. You can also use services like Wistia to share a video with prospects and track how they interact with the video.

3. Use Video in Your Online Ads

Online video ads are growing in popularity because they are effective in driving sales. According to a study by the Online Publishers Association, 52 percent of people who watched an online video ad took action after viewing the ad, such as visiting the advertiser’s website (31 percent) or searching online for more information on the product (22 percent). A full 12 percent went on to make a purchase – giving video ads one of the highest conversion rates in the industry.

4. Help Customers Get More Value Out of Your Product

The power of video is that you can show prospective and existing customers your product instead of just telling them about it. At our company, we developed a short video that explains how to use our product. This has dramatically increased product usage for both online and mobile customers. Another great example is Jigsaw: they use crowdsourcing to gather and vet business contact information, a new approach that relies on customer participation. They’ve created a whole set of slick video tutorials on their site to make it easy for people to fully utilize the service.

5. Go Mobile

Make sure your videos can be viewed on many different devices. A good rule of thumb for whether you should modify your videos to work on mobile devices is: “If a video is worth sharing on Twitter, it’s worth making it mobile-phone-friendly,” since 40 percent of Twitter users access the service via mobile devices, according to an October 2009 study by Crowd Science. Already, there are more than 4.1 billion mobile phone users worldwide – at least 10 percent of which are video-enabled smartphones. Make sure these mobile warriors can view your videos.

The Bottom Line

Online video is a powerful tool in today’s marketing arsenal. With 2010 fast approaching, make sure your company has a clear video strategy in place that works alongside your online, social, paid media, PR, and other marketing strategies. Your customers want video, so give it to them!

More business resources from Mashable:

- 5 Important Web Video Lessons for Small Business Owners
- Mashable’s Social Media Guide for Small Businesses
- 4 Ways Social Media is Changing Business
- 5 Advanced Social Media Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses
- 6 Must-Follow Steps for Selling in Any Economy
- 5 Easy Social Media Wins for Your Small Business

Image courtesy of iStockphotoiStockphoto

, fotoIE

Businesses are missing out if they are not using video to get customers.

As consumers continue to use online video as a source to get the information they are in search of, it is imperative that businesses enable themselves to be found online.  Nielsen’s latest A2/M2™ Three Screen Report – a quarterly analysis from their Anytime Anywhere Media Measurement™  initiative – shows considerable year over year growth in terms of time spent for online video (up 34.9%) in Q3 2009.

Why should a business use online video to market themselves?

1.   YouTube gets well over a billion views a year

2.  Viewers watched on average 53 more minutes of video online Q3 of 2009 compared to Q3 of 2008

3.  Video views were up 98% on social networking sites from October of 2008 to October of 2009

4.  Video views among people 35-49 has increased 37% since 2008

5.  15.7 million Americans viewed video on their mobile phone in Q3, an increase of 53% over last year

These are staggering numbers and it is very evident that people are using the internet and video to find what they are looking for, whether it be a plumber or a new car.  The businesses that use video to find their ideal customers will be the ones growing year after year.

Tags: Internet Video Marketing, Social Media, YouTube Marketing

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 12:25 pm by Nikolas Severidt and is filed under Expanding Your Business, Social Media, Video Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

Quick guide to publishing video content online. Is there any other source out there that you have tried and had good results with?