Social Startups: Viewbix Turns Your Videos Into Ads, Converting Viewers Into Customers
'Tis the season to push your holiday marketing plan. If you started planning it as early as September, you've been reaping the benefits of the 23 percent of consumers that started shopping in early fall, according to a 2014 report by Accenture. On the other hand, you may need a quick, creative outbound communication campaign to capture shoppers through year's end.
At this point in the season, online video marketing is probably the most practical use of your marketing time and energy. That is unless you have time to write 1.8 million words-the equivalent to a one-minute video, according to Dr. James McQuivey of Forrester Research.
Viewbix makes it really quick and easy to create interactive videos. With five minutes, and your YouTube or Vimeo video, you can customize your video in terms of colors, size, and call to action. The interactive features include music, additional videos, and photos from services such as Facebook, Flickr, and Picasa. You can even add a Twitter feed, eBay auctions, coupons, and Skype integration. Then all that is left to do is embed and share your video everywhere, including on Facebook, Twitter, websites, blogs, and mobile devices.
"Having spent a number of years in the digital video space, we saw there was a huge opportunity to work with companies who understand a video's performance is tracked by more than just views," said Jonathan Stefansky, co-founder and CEO of the Israel-based platform. "Video consumption habits shifted tremendously, and companies quickly started to search for a better way to measure true ROI from their video content. We built a quick prototype, which got covered by a small blog, and were blown away by the number of businesses who signed up for our service. This was our 'ah-ha' moment because it truly validated the need for a better way to engage with consumers through videos, and for companies to measure results by engagement."
Another "ah-ha" moment was when Stefansky and his co-founder, Hillel Scheinfeld, COO, looked at the increase in engagement Viewbix-enhanced videos get when shared on social channels. For example, clients have seen a 35 percent uplift in engagement for Facebook campaigns with Viewbix-enhanced videos.
"Cuisinart is a great example of a brand that was looking to drive email signups, click-throughs to their product pages, and social followers from their videos," Scheinfeld said. "We started by running Facebook video ads using our video platform and drove engagement rates of more than 25 percent. In other words, more than 25 percent of viewers who watched Cuisinart's videos took at least one of the calls to action they were looking for, which were opting-in to email sign up, clicking through to their site, or becoming a fan or follower on social."
You can add a call to action at various points in your video to drive the specific engagement you want from viewers. While you drive measurable ROE (rate of engagement) from your videos, you get detailed, actionable analytics to understand how and where they're performing best.
"Our brands can see when and where viewers opt-in to the call to action, where they share the video, how long they watched the video, and more," Stefansky said. "You can also quickly change the placement of your creative or call to action based on how and where viewers are engaging. Essentially, you don't have to wait until after the campaign wraps to measure performance; you make changes in real time based on real-time feedback."
Since Viewbix launched in April 2011, it has seen the rise of mobile viewing coupled with the effectiveness of running videos on social networks. As a result, Viewbix' default player is on HTML5, though it still supports Flash.
"We hope to be able to extend our distribution reach to other social networks such as LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Instagram," said Scheinfeld. "These platforms are a natural fit for social video advertising, and the shift in consumption habits coupled with the shift in ad dollars reflects that."