THOSE expensive videos on your company’s website could be viewed 70% longer if people found them worthy enough to share with their friends, a new study suggests.
The report (or download PDF) by video syndication service TubeMogul and web video hosting service Brightcove found that viewers watched brand marketing and e-commerce video an average of just 1:04 minutes per stream when viewing the information on a company’s own website.
That compares to average views of 2:00 minutes per stream for online videos from news or entertainment media companies.
However, brand marketing videos are watched much longer when they are shared on third-party sites or when people refer their friends to them via Facebook or Twitter.
The average length of brand video views via embedded players on third-party sites was 1:42 minutes, more than 70% longer than views on the brands’ own websites. Average views from Twitter referrals was 1:18 minutes and via Facebook 1:25 minutes.
However, the study found that people are less likely to share brand marketing or e-commerce videos than video from media companies. Only 2.6 % of views for brand marketing and e-commerce video content was viewed off-site through embedded video players on third-party sites, compared to 6.5% for media companies.
This suggests that companies and marketers should be creating video content that people will want to share, possibly by emulating the content that media companies are producing. And companies should obviously make sure that their videos are easy to embed or share via Twitter and Facebook.
The report also suggests that companies and marketers need to do a better job promoting their video content via search and social media. Fully 92% of brand video streams were discovered via direct traffic or within a brand’s own site. Of the 8% of traffic coming from third-party referrals, 40.1% came from Google, 16.8% from Yahoo, 13.1% from Bing, 7.9% from Facebook, 2.7% from AOL and 0.9% from Twitter.
The report also includes results of a survey of more than 300 North American and European brand managers, including dozens at Fortune 500 companies, about their on-site video initiatives. Results include:
- 60% say they plan to invest more in on-site video initiatives in the next 12 months.
- 66% indicate that branding and awareness is the primary purpose for their on-site video initiatives, followed by direct response / lead generation (21%) and e-commerce / sales (12%).
- 80% include video on their own brand sites as well as YouTube.
- 90% distribute video through Facebook.
- 70% plan to add video to their mobile apps over the next 12 months.
What role do you see for video in your IR program? Have you produced short video content with the specific purpose of having people share it? Let us know in the comments below or in our LinkedIn Group.
Dominic Jones (bio) created IR Web Report in 2001. He is a consultant to leading public companies and investor relations service providers worldwide. You can contact him via the contacts page.
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