Elements for increasing demand

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Increasing both how much an online video is in demand and how often it is demanded depends on several factors (numbered for ease of explanation):

1. Entertainment value (yes, even political online video needs to entertain)
2. Color usage and placement in the video and on the page
3. Where the video is placed on the screen
4. What else is on the screen while the video is active
5. What is the video's message
6. What is the page's message, and how well does it synch with the video's? (Anybody remember the national news story of the elderly having to eat dog food because of social security cuts being followed by a commercial for dog food? How about the news story of someone being attacked by sharks being followed by an ad for a special, "Swimming with Sharks"? You get the idea.)
7. The video's run length
8. Does the video match the target audience's ability to become motivationally aware of the "message" in the video and on the page
9. Reinforcement (branding elements on the page reinforcing branding elements in the video and vice versa)

Drilling down deeper on the 9 factors above we find:

• Items 7 and 1 are tied together because the longer a video is the more it must entertain. Entertainment? Yes, as in "you must give viewers a reason to watch." Regardless of content, viewers must believe they got something for their time investment. Leave them with nothing and that's what you'll get in return.
• Item 2- Movies fade to black after the credits. Online video should not. A final "success" image -- people laughing, sharing, hugging, doing something they want to do -- must be the video's final image. Even if a "play again" button appears, leave the success image and you'll have a reason for people to play the video again and again and again.
• Items 3 and 4 are tied together because the worst thing you can do is have competitive videos on the same page. "Competitive" means "two or more dymanic images," not competitive products. Placement is best handled by answering a group of questions I'll get to later. Competitive placement is even more dependant on answering those questions.
• Items 5, 6 and 8 are tied together because viewers will not act unless the video is motivating them, and they will not be motivated unless the various messages on the page and in the video work together to give the target audience the desired message.

Knowing information such as that listed above helps determine several factors including:

1. Where and how the brand/logo needs to enter the video
2. How large the brand/logo needs to be in relation to the video
3. How many times a brand/logo needs to appear in a video in order to be remembered

Questions needing Answers
I mention above that answering the where's and how's of branding in online video and ad placement ties lots of things together. A question I was asked more than once at iMedia's Agency Summit last December was whether or not there was a way to determine where an ad needed to be on a webpage in order to maximize ROI. Well, yes, there is. It requires answering about fifteen questions at present. The challenge is that the questions anthropologists, sociologists and such ask may not be the ones marketers and advertisers can answer.

Right now at NextStage, we're testing an ad placement tool, and this new tool emerged out of an attempt to provide some simple answers to "Where does something need to be on a webpage in order to increase ROI?"

Currently Avenue A | Razorfish, Casale Media, Underscore Marketing and others are providing NextStage with feedback on how the tool would be best used. Please feel welcome to join in this discussion.

Summary
It doesn't matter whether something is a static image or a video; the first question has to be, "What response do you want from the viewer?" Do you want them to respond immediately? Do you want them to remember this information for later in the buying cycle? Do you want them to provide contact information so you can further qualify them? Answering that first question can be complex. Hopefully the information in this column will make it easier by providing some guidelines for your next buy.

Additional resources:
Directing Your Customer's Gaze
Homepage as Bookcover
NextStage's Ad Placement Tool
Pavlov's Eyes: Get Customers to Respond 
Reading Virtual Minds
2 Strategies for the Future of Online TV 
Usability Studies 101: Brand Loyalty

Note: I'll be speaking at the San Francisco April '07 Emetrics Summit on Quantifying and Optimizing the Human Side of Online Marketing on May 7, 2007. Come on by and say hello.

Joseph Carrabis is CRO and founder of NextStage Evolution and NextStage Global, and founder of KnowledgeNH and NH Business Development Network. He is also author of the Biz Media Science blog. Read full bio.