Video Marketing: Data, Data, Data

Guest Editorial - National Mortgage Professional Magazine

September, 2014

Have you watched a video on a web page, LinkedIn or some other site lately?  If so, a knowledgeable marketer with business-grade video hosting now knows this about you:

• How much of the video you watched or re-watched, and when you clicked away.
• Where you were, down to at least the city.
• Which device, browser and screen you were using.
• What other videos you’ve watched, on what other sites.
• The URL of the page(s) where you watched.

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If they sent you the video link, they may also have tied your name and email to your viewing activity.  It’s just a short step from there to behavior-pattern marketing - “Looks like the Smith family is considering a qualified mortgage.” Wow.

Video yields more data, better insights and broader correlation than other forms.  That’s a result of two things - the nature of video content, and the attributes of video-delivery technology. 

Video content is chronological and sequential; images and sound, over time.  Web video generally runs between 15 and 30 frames per second.  So, for data purposes, a 60-second video has 900-1800 measurable entry/exit points.  When you rewatch a video, a business-grade video platform records the start, stop and rewind points. 

Some video-marketing platforms use the term “engagement” to describe viewing patterns on one or more videos.  Do people usually start at the beginning?  Do they exit early, or do they watch nearly to the end?  This is boiled down to a % measure. In our service, if every single viewer watched every second of a video, it would get a 100% engagement measure.  (Generally, engagement above 60% is considered good.)

The technology attributes that power all this data-gathering are - frankly - somewhat accidental, because online video is a relative latecomer format.  Images and text are usually copied; video, in general, is usually embedded.

That seems like a tiny difference, but it’s profound.  If you’ve got a marketing infographic, and I want to put it on my blog, I can just right-click and download the file.  That new copy is disconnected from its source; you don’t get any data from that copy. 

By contrast, if your company has a video, and someone clicks the LinkedIn “Share” button to pass it along to their contacts, they’re actually putting your hosted video on LinkedIn.  (Technically, they’re actually putting a bit of software - your video player - and a specific piece of content for that player - your video.  That’s what “embedding” means.)

Because of that, the player and video content are coming from your video hosting platform.  So you get all that rich data, which your video platform should correlate and summarize for you.  

Properly managed and deployed, a video library (custom video or content-as-a-service) can give you unmatched customer insight. If you’re just starting to grapple with video content, download our free white paper.  Video Strategy:  Content Meets Technology at http://fastforwardstories.com/video-strategy