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WHAT MAKES A GREAT ONLINE VIDEO PLAYER?

bsp-admin-1 on December 22, 2022

Streaming platforms are only as good as their online video players. Research any of the top providers and you’ll find comparisons on everything from pricing and packaging to bells and whistles. But at the end of the day, none of these things have anything to do with a player’s primary purpose: providing a quality viewing experience.

Before settling on the best platform for your business, take a look under the hood and make sure the player can deliver a proper experience. The following are some of the player features we think are essential, many of which we prioritized for our new player, Brightcove Player V7. Thanks to meticulous upgrades and internal refactoring, it’s our lightest and fastest player yet. If you’re a Brightcove customer, read our Migration Guide to learn how to upgrade your player.

LOAD TIME

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In the streaming business, you can measure a player’s speed in revenue. From media companies combating churn to enterprises battling bounce rates, video load times can make the difference between happy and frustrated viewers.

Yes, internet speeds continue to increase globally, but so has streaming quality. Furthermore, waiting until all your customers have gigabit home internet or 5G cellular service isn’t a business plan. Your streaming platform needs to be committed to maintaining engagement for all types of viewers.

A great online video player will be lightweight and regularly updated. Just like apps and operating systems, players need to support the latest technology without getting bloated with legacy code. Great players should not only be lean and efficiently coded, they should be striving to decrease load times (for example, Brightcove Player V7 is 15% faster than Player V6).

VIEWABILITY

For media companies, saving on content delivery costs is just as important as acquiring new customers. This is why Netflix displays its well-known “Are you still watching?” dialog after three auto-played TV episodes or 90 minutes of uninterrupted viewing. By forcing the viewer to engage, Netflix saves on delivering content to viewers who have left the room or fallen asleep.

In the same way, the best video players today will offer a feature called viewability. Viewability is an advertising term that also applies to video and refers to whether your content was “viewable” by your audience. A player with viewability enabled can pause the stream when the player isn’t viewable, significantly cutting delivery costs.

Beyond the obvious implications for video advertising, viewability can also improve the accuracy of video engagement. For example, when viewers browse with multiple pages open, any videos playing would report having 100% engagement. Players with viewability could account for the unviewed videos and prevent inaccurate engagement from skewing your content strategy.

Brightcove Player V7 includes viewability out of the box, with configurable options like pausing playback when not viewable or logging a “video impression event” after two seconds of playback with 50% visibility.

ACCESSIBILITY

Digital accessibility has been around almost as long as the internet has been mainstream. The first Web Content Accessibility Guidelines were established in 1999 by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Today, WCAG 2.1 is the international standard to meet the legal accessibility requirements in many countries (ADA in the United States, EEA in Europe, JIS X 8341 in Japan, etc.). Of the three levels of compliance, most businesses try to meet the second (AA), as even W3C recognizes the highest level (AAA) isn’t possible for some content.

Because companies are legally required to be accessible, most streaming players—including Brightcove Player V7—are WCAG 2.1 AA compliant. However, platforms provide different levels of transparency on their compliance.

Players like Brightcove also provide a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT), a comprehensive analysis of the platform’s adherence to accessibility standards. Though they’re only required by U.S. federal government agencies, VPATs allow businesses to assess the level of accessibility for themselves.

CUSTOMIZATION

Today’s brands recognize the importance of coherent viewing experiences. Markets are saturated, and content is stuffed into seemingly every corner of the internet. Standing out from all the noise and competition means crafting an unforgettable experience that is unmistakably on brand.

As HTML5 players became standard, so did player customization. In fact, many online video platforms (OVP) provide easy-to-use options for editing everything from colors to controls. So instead of looking like every other brand with an embedded YouTube player, your OVP can match your brand colors.

That said, some brands need next-level customization. They want to completely reskin the player to look like nothing else. Great players like Brightcove Player V7 are built on Video.js, an open-source platform that allows you to build skins completely from scratch using HTML and CSS.

PLAYBACK SUPPORT

Thanks to a plethora of devices and manufacturers, digital video playback isn’t a given. From Apple vs. Android to Roku vs. Smart TVs (not to mention web browsers), different devices often require different codecs and streaming protocols. Understanding which streaming protocols support playback on each device is key to reaching your target audience.

For example, HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) supports playback on most mobile devices, the most popular web browsers, and many set-top boxes like Roku. However, to reach the entire mobile market, particularly if you’re using DRM, you’ll need a player that can also stream MPEG-DASH. DASH is also supported on many of the most popular Smart TV brands (a rapidly growing segment in the CTV market).

Players that use the VHS 3 playback engine, like Brightcove, can play both HLS and DASH.

LOW-LATENCY LIVESTREAMING

One of the biggest challenges with digital video is the immense amount of data it takes to stream. In fact, high-definition digital video came with a hefty price tag beyond storage and bandwidth costs.

While cable could broadcast live with less than five seconds of latency, streaming protocols like HLS were often well over 20 seconds. For brands investing in live events like sports, and especially in online betting, high latency was a nonstarter.

Some protocols now offer a low-latency version like LL-HLS (low-latency HLS), which offers three to eight seconds of latency. So if livestreaming is an important part of your business plan, make sure the player can play LL-HLS, not just HLS. Like Brightcove.

ADAPTIVE BITRATE

HLS and DASH are streaming protocols built on adaptive bitrate (ABR) streaming technology, meaning they can adapt video quality to available bandwidth. The player encodes several renditions of a video asset to fit different scenarios and uses an ABR algorithm to select one and switch it as needed to reduce buffering.

Every player has its own encoding ladder to determine the quality of each rendition, and different ladders can have a dramatic effect on the viewing experience. For example, sports content requires a ladder skewed to higher quality renditions than animated content. So if most of your content is animated, a sports-quality encoding ladder wouldn’t look much better, but it would cost more in storage and bandwidth.

Just like a video player’s code needs to be regularly updated, ABR algorithms need to be refreshed to reduce rebuffering while maintaining high-quality playback. Not only does Brightcove’s new Player V7 reduce rebuffering, it’s less wasteful in throwing away already-buffered data, reducing bandwidth usage and delivery costs.

ADVANCED SECURITY

Media companies understand the importance of content security. That’s why you don’t see any of them publishing their most valuable content on YouTube (unless it’s part of a marketing gimmick). The meager security afforded by unlisted or private links can be easily bypassed by accidentally sharing links, emails, or credentials.

Whether you’re streaming licensed content, gating product demos, or sharing confidential board meetings with investors, great players like Brightcove offer advanced security features like DRM and entitlements.

Digital Rights Management (DRM) provides industry standard AES-256 encryption that blocks hackers from intercepting network traffic. Entitlements restrict access at the user level, preventing your content from leaking because a colleague was too quick on the draw with their email forward.

DEVELOPER RESOURCES

As video players evolved and capabilities improved, it signaled more than a new era of player customization. The digital space was maturing, and with it came more advanced monetization and marketing strategies.

Media buying on CTV is much more targeted than broadcast advertising. Interactive e-commerce video provides a streamlined customer experience light years beyond QVC. Even business websites feature tons of custom elements far outside the box any standard CMS can offer.

To meet the needs of the latest digital strategies, streaming platforms need more than out-of-the-box features and integrations. They need robust developer resources.

Businesses with advanced strategies want to be able to build their players into their own bespoke ecosystems. To do that, OVPs need to have APIs for every component: ingest, player, playback, analytics, etc. Not to mention SDKs for every supported platform. Brightcove not only offers all of these, we have over 1,000 pages of product documentation in several languages.

Streaming video has come a long way, and with proper developer support, your business will be ready for where it goes next.

Learn more in our PLAY episode, “APIs That Maximize Your ROI.”

VIDEO PIRACY’S IMPACT AND THE TECHNOLOGY TO STOP IT

bsp-admin-1 on December 12, 2022

As a content creator, your work is your passion, your art, and in many cases your livelihood. And with faster broadband, the ability to stream across devices, and a greater number of distribution channels, the potential to reach a large audience has never been greater.

However, this golden age of video brings challenges as well as opportunities. As we continue seeing barriers to video creation fall while mass distribution opportunities rise, we’re also seeing a spike in video piracy.

Whether through illegal downloads, password sharing, or torrent websites, we’ve seen the numbers climb year over year. In fact, from January to August of 2022, video piracy spiked by 49%.

Much of this spike can be attributed to the nature of advancing technology. Simply put, there are more and easier ways to pirate content as the number of sites dedicated to piracy increases. Add to that the growing normalization of sharing passwords to streaming sites, and you can see how content creators have never been more vulnerable.

And it’s not just sophisticated hackers looking to create the next Napster or Pirate Bay. Content piracy has become so normalized that everyday people like your neighbors, colleagues, family, and friends are engaging in it. While many of them wouldn’t consider themselves content pirates, we see stats that show 25% of people who use streaming services are accessing them through someone else’s login.

THE IMPACT OF VIDEO PIRACY

4444So how big is the problem? It’s hard to definitively quantify the impact, especially on a global level. Even the most diligent reports often show different figures or have different methodologies for reaching their statistics. However, several stats paint a sobering picture.

While the numbers above are eye-opening, the potential damage could have a much greater impact on smaller creators, emerging artists, and up-and-coming videographers. Effective protection for these artists can often be the difference between continuing to pursue their passion and having to abandon their goals to find other ways to support themselves. Left unchecked, video piracy can severely stifle the creative industry.

Beyond the economic impact on artists and creators, businesses also suffer heavy losses from the spread of pirated content. In addition to billions of dollars in lost revenue, damages can range from tarnished brand reputation to privacy concerns and even data breaches.

WHO DOES VIDEO PIRACY IMPACT?

Who is most susceptible to video piracy? The short answer is anyone who creates and distributes content. However, there are a few categories of content owners that tend to see higher levels of piracy.

  • Streaming services. By far the most common unauthorized access to content comes through illegal streaming, accounting for up to 80% of global online piracy. Beyond voluntarily sharing passwords, accounts can also be hacked and login credentials sold on black-market sites.
  • Businesses. Sensitive company content is constantly under threat from hackers. This could include internal video meetings, private virtual events, or a variety of confidential internal content. As mentioned above, even content that is meant for public consumption can be pirated and show up on unsavory sites, which can create lasting brand damage for the companies.
  • Content creators. From local creators to international producers, pirates threaten their livelihoods by using software to illegally download content or screen recorders to capture content and resell or distribute it.

HOW TO PROTECT YOUR CONTENT FROM VIDEO PIRACY

The good news is that there are a number of anti-piracy measures that can significantly increase the security of your video content. We’re not talking about video DRM and basic content encryption; that should be standard for all content owners. When choosing a video streaming platform, make sure it includes these advanced security features.

  • Playback restrictions. Geo restrictions limit which countries or locations can access your content, allowing you to blacklist or whitelist where your content can be viewed. Entitlements at the video or video library level temporarily restrict access at the user level, preventing the wrong users from requesting licenses and delivering licenses based on terms you dictate (such as duration or device).
  • User limits. Concurrent stream limits help restrict multiple users from sharing the same password or access to your content. Device limits allow you to regulate how many devices a single user can stream on.
  • Forensic watermarking. Forensic watermarking helps you protect your content by preventing activities like screen-recording content, editing content, or recording with other devices. However, this feature also allows you to identify the pirates who may be leaking your content. This feature is particularly valuable for exclusive and embargoed content that you may need to share with a select group of people.

Even as piracy and its impact on creators and companies continue to grow, advanced security measures and technology can help protect your content and maximize your revenue. The key is being aware of how widespread piracy is and understanding your options for making sure that security is engrained through your entire process, from creation to distribution.

HOW TO BUILD A STRONG EMPLOYER BRAND WITH VIDEO STREAMING

bsp-admin-1 on November 21, 2022

Despite concentrated efforts, managers and HR agree that it can be challenging to attract and retain key talent. The post-pandemic shift in employee priorities, coupled with an uptick in candidates’ access to online job resources, has only intensified the war for talent.

Sound familiar? So, how can you win the war for talent?

One foolproof strategy: Strengthen and promote your positive employer brand using video.

In this blog, we’ll discuss what an employer brand is, why employer branding matters, and how to use video streaming to enhance your employer brand with two key audiences: candidates and employees.

WHAT IS AN EMPLOYER BRAND?

An employer brand is how your company is seen as an employer: your reputation and what you stand for. It’s how people—employees, candidates, contractors, and even consumers—perceive your company as a place to work.

Multiple factors shape your employer brand. Your culture, core values, work environment, management practices, growth opportunities, and employee benefits all influence the extent to which your company is viewed as an attractive employer.

It’s important to remember that employer brand is an essential part of your company’s overall brand perception. Think of it this way: Corporate branding is how your company markets itself to customers, and employer branding is how your company markets itself to your prospective and existing workforce. The two brands may be managed by different teams, but they need to work hand in hand.

WHY IS EMPLOYEE BRANDING IMPORTANT?

A great employer brand helps attract and keep exceptional employees. In a tight job market, companies that prioritize employer branding have an easier time building a skilled, high-performing workforce.

What’s more, 96% of businesses believe employer brand impacts revenue—for good or bad. That means employer branding can affect both your talent pipeline and your bottom line.

Here are a few of the measurable benefits of employer branding.

It’s clear a compelling employer brand pays off. So, how does video fit in? Let’s look at the ways you can use video to build a top-notch employer brand with candidates and employees.

USING VIDEO STREAMING TO ENHANCE YOUR EMPLOYER BRAND WITH CANDIDATES

Did you know that three out of four job seekers research an employer’s brand before applying for a job?

When considering employers, candidates want to know what it’s really like to work there. They want to get a feel for the company culture and day-to-day work experience. And they want to understand—and identify with—an organization’s purpose and values.

That’s where employer brand videos come into play.

EMPLOYER BRAND VIDEOS

Videos that tell your employer brand story are a powerful way to attract and engage in-demand talent. Well-crafted employer brand videos strengthen your position as an employer of choice, prompt job seekers to apply, and result in a bigger pool of qualified candidates.

Employer brand videos should showcase the best aspects of your company culture and employee experience.

  • Core values. Build a positive connection with candidates by communicating your company’s mission, purpose, and values. Follow the “show, don’t tell” rule to establish trust and authenticity.
  • Company culture. Highlight your company’s unique personality and work environment to attract like-minded candidates and differentiate your employer brand in a crowded job market.
  • Employee testimonials. Use employee stories to give candidates a credible insider’s take on what it’s like to work for your organization. Job seekers trust employees to give them the straight scoop.
  • Hybrid workplace. Does your company support remote working? Appeal to candidates looking for flexibility and work-life balance by showing how remote work fits into your company culture.
  • Diversity and inclusion (D&I). Share your efforts to make the work experience better for underrepresented groups. Sixty-four percent of candidates say D&I is an important factor when evaluating an offer.
  • Job perks. A pet-friendly office. Paid volunteer days. The chance to win a two-week sabbatical. Shine a spotlight on employee benefits that make your company a better, happier place to work.

WHERE TO POST EMPLOYER BRAND VIDEOS

Activate your employer brand by pushing video content through the channels most likely to reach target candidates.

  • Your career site. Posting employer branding content on your career site is a no-brainer; it’s the go-to resource for job seekers interested in learning more about your company. Plus, video content can increase the time candidates spend on your site by over 100%.
  • Social media properties. Social media sites are the second-most-visited resource for people researching potential employers. Use sites like Facebook and LinkedIn to broaden audience reach and promote your employer brand organically with relatable, shareable videos.
  • Employer review sites. Nearly 80% of job seekers use review sites when evaluating employers. Show candidates why you’re a great place to work by adding employer brand videos to your company profile on Glassdoor, Indeed, and other popular employer review sites.
  • Job boards. Get your employer brand in front of active job seekers and increase the conversion rate for job postings. Research from CareerBuilder found that job ads with embedded video get 800% more engagement and yield 34% more applications.
  • Email campaigns. Market your employer brand to current and past applicants by incorporating video into email nurturing campaigns. Adding video to email can rekindle a candidate’s interest in your company and improve click-through rates by 300%.

USING VIDEO STREAMING TO ENHANCE YOUR EMPLOYER BRAND WITH EMPLOYEES

Employees are just as important as candidates when it comes to employer branding. A robust employer brand engages and retains internal talent, which is crucial for sustained business success. Plus, employees are the ones influencing your company’s reputation with comments on social media and employer review sites.

The employee experience is full of opportunities to use video to bolster your employer brand. Let’s review three: onboarding, internal communications, and learning and development.

ONBOARDING

Onboarding influences your employer brand by setting the tone for the employee experience.

An onboarding process that makes new hires feel welcome and engaged, that immerses them in your culture and arms them to excel on the job, will boost your position as a top employer. It can also increase retention rates by more than 80%.

Here are four ways to improve your employer brand by integrating video streaming into employee onboarding.

  1. Strengthen the cultural connection. Use welcome videos to reinforce positive impressions made during the recruiting process. Revisiting your company story, including your values, culture, and mission, ensures that new hires are in sync with who you are and what the company aims to do.
  2. Meet the team. Videos introducing colleagues, company leaders, and the CEO help build rapport and are especially valuable in remote or hybrid workplaces. Clips of employees discussing their career trajectories can inspire new hires and establish your company as a place for growth.
  3. Systems and tools training. Get new hires up to speed with simple how-to videos on company systems and tools. Employees will feel more at home once they can schedule a conference room, submit an expense report, and access relevant Slack channels.
  4. Explain company benefits. In a Brightcove survey, employees said that of all onboarding videos, a video describing employee benefits was most likely to increase their confidence in their employment decision. Relatable employee stories can illustrate the value of your benefits and perks.

INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS

Your internal communications program significantly impacts the employee experience and, consequently, your employer brand.

Effective internal communications can energize your culture and deepen employee engagement. Informed employees feel valued, trusted, and more connected to your company culture—all positive outcomes for your employer brand.

Consider these opportunities to use video to maximize the brand-building power of internal communications.

  • Deliver effective executive communications. Company leaders can use video to deliver a steady stream of messages in a more human and transparent way. In our survey, 81% of employees reported feeling more connected with leadership through video communications. Top requests for executive videos included business updates, crisis communications, and policy changes.
  • Connect a hybrid workplace. Bring remote employees together by livestreaming town halls, quarterly kickoffs, and other company meetings. Livestreaming builds a sense of community—a feeling of “we’re all in this together”—that’s impossible to achieve with an email or intranet post. You can also record virtual events for people to stream later so no one’s left out.
  • Activate your employer brand internally. Remind employees why you’re a terrific place to work by keeping your employee brand story at the forefront. The videos that attract candidates to your company can also galvanize current employees and encourage retention. Plus, arming your people with the right messages and anecdotes allows them to be powerful ambassadors for your employer brand.

LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT

Training programs improve the employee experience—and by extension, employer brand—by giving people a chance to learn and grow at work.

Employees feel motivated and supported when they can master new skills and take on new challenges. They’re also more inclined to stay put. According to Harvard Business Review, the top reason people look for a job elsewhere is a lack of learning and growth opportunities at their current employer.

Training programs are critical to employee retention, and integrating video streaming enhances them for several reasons.

  • Employees prefer video learning. Video is how today’s workforce likes to consume information. Our survey revealed that employees prefer live or on-demand video for policy training (76%), product training (68%), and product demos (75%).
  • Video learning is more engaging. Video is more effective than text at grabbing and holding attention, as anyone who’s ever nodded off while reading a manual knows. Adding interactive elements to videos makes learning more memorable and fun for employees.
  • Video learning is more accessible. Video enables learning from any place, at any pace. Employees can stream training videos when and where it’s convenient, whether that’s on a computer at home or on a mobile device during the commute.

Video benefits many learning and development programs, including upskilling/reskilling, sales enablement, leadership training, and compliance courses. Of course, an employer brand that celebrates learning and growth also appeals to candidates. People want to join companies where their careers will take off.

SEIZE THE OPPORTUNITY TO BUILD A STRONG EMPLOYER BRAND WITH VIDEO STREAMING

Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic caused many people to rethink their employment options, an effective employer branding strategy has become a must. Candidates have more information about prospective employers than ever before. And it’s all too easy for frustrated employees to check out other companies on Glassdoor and LinkedIn.

Video streaming is a valuable and versatile tool for employer branding, with applications in recruiting, onboarding, training, and internal communications. Using video to strengthen and showcase a positive employer brand can improve how your company attracts, engages, and retains high-quality talent in today’s challenging job market.

3 REASONS FOR FINANCIAL SERVICES TO INVEST IN VIDEO MARKETING

bsp-admin-1 on November 14, 2022

One of the most effective ways for financial services firms to connect with customers is through video. Video is hands down the best medium for engaging, educating, and encouraging consumers to act.

Although many banks have integrated some video content into their marketing, changes in consumers’ expectations and banking habits have made a robust, well-conceived video strategy more important than ever.

In this blog, we’ll cover:

  • Three reasons why video marketing is so valuable for banks
  • Ideas for harnessing the power of video in your marketing programs
  • Advice for overcoming obstacles to video marketing in the financial services industry

1. BUILDING A TRUSTED, STANDOUT BRAND

Trust is a bank’s lifeblood. For most financial marketers, earning consumer trust involves brand building and offering educational resources on money matters. Video can help you achieve both of these objectives.

ELEVATE FINANCIAL EDUCATION

About 90% of banks offer educational content to their customers. Helping consumers increase their financial literacy is a way to promote loyalty and achieve a trusted advisor status when people are making critical life decisions. In a study by J.D. Power, 59% of consumers said they want banks to help improve their financial health.

Video is the ultimate medium for creating digestible, engaging content about complex financial topics. A consumer researching budgeting strategies might be turned off by a long webpage of text. But a 60-second video on “5 Steps to a Better Budget”? It’s so much easier to sit back, watch, and learn.

With the right content strategy, you can use video to engage consumers at all life stages—from recent graduates to first-time home buyers to retirees. This will keep your brand top of mind as consumers navigate their financial affairs over time.

Educational videos are also a smart investment for appealing to Millennials and Generation Z, who are looking to banks for more guidance on how to best manage their money, according to the 2021 Consumer Banking Report.

STRENGTHEN BRAND IDENTITY

Telling the bank’s story with video is one of the most effective ways to build and differentiate your brand.

Video excels at evoking an emotional response. At a time when fewer people are visiting bank branches, video can deepen the connection consumers have with your brand and their understanding of your unique promise.

You can establish a strong rapport with consumers by using video to bring to life your bank’s values, personality, and culture. Videos that showcase philanthropic activities—such as employees volunteering at a local food bank—can further strengthen your brand. Today’s consumers want their bank to demonstrate strong social responsibility.

Video testimonials are also extremely powerful brand builders and very credible. Clips of customers describing how they fulfilled a financial dream—like starting a business or paying for college—inspire trust in a bank’s ability to meet consumers’ needs.

2. WINNING MORE BUSINESS FOR THE BANK

Whether your goal is to attract new customers or cross-sell existing ones, video gets results. Video offers new opportunities to grab consumers’ attention, convert viewers into leads, and leverage rich insights for customized follow-up.

GENERATE MORE LEADS

Video is a valuable addition to any campaign selling financial products and services.

For starters, nearly three-quarters of consumers prefer to learn about products and services through video—way more than the 11% who prefer text or the 4% who’d like an infographic. In fact, 56% of consumers reported that video played an important role when purchasing financial or investment products.

Second, financial products and services can seem intimidating and complicated to consumers. With video, you can convey a clear product message quickly and convincingly, often in a fun or entertaining manner. Explainer and teaser videos can demystify financial products and vividly illustrate how they fit into the consumer’s financial plan.

Finally, you can use interactive video elements to capture prospect data and guide consumers to the next step in the buying process. In-video calls to action increase consumer engagement and conversion rates. For example, a video on investment products can become a lead-generating machine by adding a link to a brokerage account application and a form to sign up for a meeting with a financial advisor.

ACT ON NEW CUSTOMER INSIGHTS

Video enables a more personalized, data-driven approach to marketing and cross-selling that benefits both the bank and your customers.

When consumers click play, they reveal a lot about their needs and interests. Was the video they streamed about building wealth or paying off debt? Did they watch the entire video on auto loans, or did they abandon it after only five seconds?

With the right video platform, you can track who watched what video, when, and for how long, and then feed that data into your CRM or marketing automation software. This gives you new information for lead scoring and the ability to make relevant, well-timed product recommendations based on an individual’s viewing history. If a consumer streams several videos on home-buying, it’s a good bet they’d be receptive to a promotional offer on a mortgage loan.

In the crowded financial services sector, increasing customer loyalty and lifetime value is the name of the game, and the insights gained from video interactions can help you win.

3. ENHANCING THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE, DAY ONE AND BEYOND

Retaining customers requires your bank to deliver an amazing customer experience from the get-go. While there are many options for customer engagement, video should be at the top of your list when it comes to onboarding new customers, then supporting them over time.

IMPROVE CUSTOMER ONBOARDING

Onboarding sets the foundation for a lasting customer relationship, and video content can be a valuable building block in that process.

Using video, you can welcome new customers in more personal, engaging ways, such as adding a “meet the team” video to a new account email. This creates a positive first impression and helps consumers feel like valued members of your community.

Videos are also useful for familiarizing new customers with the features of your products and services. Imagine serving up a 2-minute video on what’s included with a small business checking account or a short clip on how your credit card rewards program works. Videos like these help reinforce the value of your products and give customers the information they need to make the most of them.

Informative videos on mobile banking and digital payment apps can increase the uptake of these innovative technologies, moving new customers towards a more cost-effective, digital-first relationship.

STREAMLINE CUSTOMER SUPPORT

Support is a huge opportunity area for using video to improve the customer experience.

Many consumers would rather solve problems on their own than call an 800 number and wait on hold for an agent. How-to videos make self-service support easy and convenient, especially when the content is organized in a knowledge base or online resource center.

Help customers find the answers they’re looking for with video tutorials for everyday banking tasks, like how to send a wire transfer or request a stop payment. Videos that address common concerns like fraud and scams are also worthwhile. Sending these out at the first sign of an emerging threat protects your customers’ financial wellbeing and demonstrates the bank’s commitment to security.

Modernizing your support experience with video can boost customer satisfaction while reducing the burden on your customer service team. In fact, 93% of video marketers say video has reduced the number of support calls they receive.

OVERCOMING OBSTACLES TO VIDEO MARKETING IN FINANCIAL SERVICES

Now that you’re sold on the value of video in financial services, it’s time to secure some funding. When presenting your business case, you’ll need to defuse issues raised by budget owners and IT partners.

Here is some ammo for countering the most common concerns about video marketing in the financial services industry. In many cases, the answer lies in selecting a video streaming platform that meets the strict requirements of financial institutions.

  • We already use YouTube. Isn’t that enough?

Many banks publish videos to YouTube. It’s a solid strategy for extending reach, but you have little control over the customer experience. Viewers have to sit through annoying ads, and your video can appear next to a competitor’s—not a good look for your brand.

A video streaming platform lets you create carefully curated customer experiences. You have complete control over branding, with options like customizing the video player with your logo and corporate colors, setting up a branded video portal, or going big with your own streaming channel. Plus, you get richer, more actionable data about your audience and content than YouTube’s basic video views.

  • Any technology the bank adopts must have strict safeguards for content and users.

Enterprise-class video streaming platforms provide the security measures and controls needed to comply with the most rigorous regulatory and corporate requirements. Brightcove’s comprehensive, multilevel approach to security protects your video assets, customer data, and brand integrity. On top of that, the company submits to an annual third-party audit of our security protocols.

  • What about ADA video compliance? We don’t want a lawsuit or a PR black eye.

Brightcove’s Marketing Studio helps banks meet compliance guidelines for the Americans with Disabilities Act. Features that increase video accessibility include closed captioning, live captioning, transcription, audio description, and compatibility with screen readers for the blind or visually impaired.

  • We’ve invested heavily in our marketing tech stack. How will a video streaming platform fit in?

Solutions like Brightcove integrate with popular marketing automation platforms (MAPs) and CRM systems. Sharing data between these systems is a ROI win-win. You can use video analytics to better segment, target, and convert prospects. On the flip side, you can employ marketing analytics to determine—and increase—video’s contribution to pipeline and revenue.

UP-LEVELING FINANCIAL SERVICES MARKETING WITH VIDEO

There are many compelling reasons for financial services firms to integrate video more fully into their marketing and customer engagement strategies. Financial services marketers are embracing video to build brand trust and loyalty, increase campaign performance with new consumer insights, and enhance the customer experience from onboarding through ongoing support.

Of course, you need the right video platform to address the unique needs of financial institutions. But video marketing delivers results that you can take to the bank.

HOW CAN YOU ENSURE A SUCCESSFUL LIVE BROADCAST?

bsp-admin-1 on November 14, 2022

The coronavirus pandemic has led to a move towards the active use of live streaming not only in the entertainment field, but also in business settings. On the other hand, because there is pressure to “not fail” when it comes to live streaming, the tension on the part of the operators is extremely high. I would like to consider some of the causes of this tension and think about countermeasures.

VIDEO STREAMING TRENDS TO WATCH IN 2023

bsp-admin-1 on November 7, 2022

No quarter of the year moves faster than Q4. By the time you’ve finished next year’s budget and developed your H1 plans, the holidays are upon you. When are you supposed to have time to research future trends that could impact your business?

The answer is right now. At Brightcove, we’re always keeping an eye on the changes in the market with a potential effect on our customers. Whether you’re in media, marketing, or communications, below are the trends we expect to change how you do business. If you want to learn how to incorporate them into your plans for next year, start streaming PLAY Season 1.

MEDIA COMPANY INSTINCTS

 
HOW DO YOU IMPLEMENT THESE TRENDS? WATCH PLAY SEASON 1 TO FIND OUT.
LEARN HOW

In 2007, a marketing research firm estimated that a person living in a city was exposed to up to 5,000 ad messages a day. Compared to 2,000 ads per day 30 years prior, one can only imagine how many ads each of us see today.

All of this content has resulted in more than wearying the consumer (nearly 70% of adults worldwide actively avoid ads, according to eMarketer). It’s wearying marketers.

If your target audience is consuming several thousand ads a day—let alone other content—how are you supposed to reach them? It’s hard enough to stand out among that much content. It’s even harder when most are trying to avoid your efforts in the first place.

Marketers are just as frustrated with all the noise as consumers are. Attention is at a premium, and the current best practices and tactics just aren’t cutting it. It’s time for a new approach. It’s time to act like a media company.

Media companies learned the secrets to retaining audience attention long ago, and they did that through video. If you want to grow your business, you need to follow the example set by the media giants and embrace the power of streaming.

Learn more in our PLAY episode, “Why Every Company Needs to Act Like a Media Company”.

ADAPTIVE CODEC SWITCHING

Remember film cameras? There was a time when no one thought digital cameras would ever be able to compete. The data and storage needed were too great for a consumer device. And that was just for stills, not video.

Look at how far we’ve come. Digital cameras are taking billboard-sized photos. Smartphones are making Oscar-contending films. Even 4K video can be streamed almost anywhere in the world without a cable.

Indeed, many of us have come to expect the same level of visual fidelity on our phones as we do on big screens. But all of our technological advancements haven’t changed the fact that streaming high-quality content involves an immense amount of data.

Delivering content that meets viewers’ increasingly high expectations isn’t cheap. In fact, the cost of streaming often means that scaling up your business will require you to scale down your quality. In an age where quality is a selling point, growing your business is quickly becoming a catch-22.

Bandwidth costs aren’t coming down anytime soon, so waiting out the market isn’t an option. If you want to scale your business without compromising the quality your viewers expect, you’ll need to invest in adaptive codec switching.

For many years, delivery costs were the same for every customer, regardless of their available bandwidth. But why should you pay to deliver 4K video to every customer when many lack the bandwidth to stream it? With adaptive codec switching, you don’t have to.

Learn more in our PLAY episode, “High Quality Video vs Reducing your Bandwidth Costs”.

FIRST-PARTY DATA

In 1994, digital marketing was changed forever.

Websites were growing rapidly, email was beginning to take off, and social media was still in the future. During these formative years, one simple innovation would lay the groundwork for what would become a $600 billion industry: the third-party cookie.

Unlike traditional marketing tactics, cookies turned advertising into a precision instrument.

Renting billboards was costly, buying media was competitive, and neither of them guaranteed visibility with the targeted audience. Cookies allowed marketers to track customer behavior with such granularity that CPMs were soon overshadowed by the remarkable efficiency of PPC.

For years, digital marketers enjoyed bidding for clicks down to the penny, and the future of marketing never seemed more certain. But we already know how this story ends. And we should be grateful for it.

Third-party cookies may have spoiled us with pristine ROAS projections, but they also made us lose sight of their original function. Cookies were supposed to help us serve our customers better by helping us understand them and their needs better.

We don’t need to mourn the death of the cookie; we need to celebrate the refocus on customer relationships.

With first-party data, we have a chance to increase both our value to our customers and their value to us. And with the depth of detail provided by video data, that value will never be clearer.

Learn more in our PLAY episode, “Don’t Bury it—Use it—First Party Data Management”.

QUALITY OF EXPERIENCE

What do users experience when they view your content? Does the video start quickly? Does the picture look crisp and clear? Is the video playing smoothly?

All of these questions impact users’ perceptions of your content and their likelihood to return in the future. Understanding your users’ quality of experience (QoE) and when it might require intervention is a key element to growing and maintaining an audience.

Streaming platforms should be working relentlessly to ensure that the QoE they provide is great. But they should also provide more insight into this, beyond a general feeling that it “just works,” as one of our customers recently quipped.

Subjective customer experiences are hard to define and identify. However, research-based, objective criteria can be used to both understand QoE and recognize when it affects the business.

Remember, not every service improvement or issue has a noticeable effect on the customer experience. This means that customer engagement and retention can’t be reliably correlated to Quality of Service (QoS). It’s much easier and more effective to correlate a customer’s experience with their satisfaction.

The great news is that QoE doesn’t have to rely on ad hoc customer observations. Streaming solutions offer an abundance of data that can be aggregated to give you a picture of the overall customer experience. All you need are the tools and expertise to harness that data and transform it into actionable insights.

Learn more in our PLAY episode, “Quality of Experience and Its Impact on Your Business”.

HOW TO BUILD CUSTOMER TRUST WITH VIDEO STREAMING

bsp-admin-1 on October 31, 2022

Building customer trust has never been easy, but it used to be relatively simple. Make a great product or service and your customers will trust you. Make an awful product or service and you won’t have any customers. Those days are over.

The information age has fundamentally changed how businesses need to think about customer trust.

Before the internet, the only things most customers knew about the businesses they patronized were whatever those businesses shared with them. Today, your CEO’s salary, investments, charitable donations, criminal record, and even high school GPA are accessible (legally or otherwise).

With politics and values more divisive than ever, any information about your business can be used as a weapon. That’s a narrative not even the best product or service can control.

Thankfully, there’s a silver lining amid all the distrust. According to Edelman’s 2022 Trust Barometer, business is the most trusted institution, ahead of the media, government, and NGOs.

Distrust might be “society’s default emotion,” as Edelman put it, but customers are looking to businesses for societal leadership. This presents a huge opportunity. If businesses can address the concerns of today’s customers, they will not only win their trust, they will inspire more trust for business as an institution.

Trust is no longer a transactional relationship between business and customer; it extends into social issues and values. To earn that kind of trust, businesses need to address not only how their customers engage with them, but how their customers engage with society. And the best way for businesses to engage customers is through video.

WHY VIDEO?

Because it’s more engaging. Because it’s more effective. Because it’s the 21st century.

There are plenty of reasons why businesses should engage customers through video, but the most important is because video builds trust and confidence.

According to recent Brightcove surveys, 93% of B2B buyers say that video builds trust in a brand, and 85% of consumers say videos are essential to online shopping. It’s the go-to medium that customers use to evaluate a business.

Sure, video isn’t the only way to build customer trust. But not using video today would be like not having a website in 2010. Customers expect it. And if you’re gonna use it to earn their trust, you’re gonna need to use it right.

INVEST IN A SECURE VIDEO STREAMING PLATFORM

Social media is quickly becoming a cautionary tale in how not to build customer trust. According to eMarketer, user trust declined year-over-year on all of the Top 9 social platforms in 2022. Furthermore, nearly all saw a corresponding decline in platform use as well.

A major key to social media’s fall from grace is security, with 78% of users naming it among their top three trust factors. Data and privacy protection had been making headlines for several years. (Remember when Apple refused to unlock an iPhone for the FBI?) But the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal brought the issue too close to home for most people.

Tech companies have been hurriedly addressing privacy issues ever since, from Apple empowering users to block open rate tracking to Google deprecating third-party cookies.

For marketers who relied on data for their digital strategies, privacy changes reinforced the need for first-party data. And against the backdrop of declining customer trust, securing first-party data needs to become part of every business’s brand promise.

Most businesses already store customer data in secure CRMs, but that isn’t enough to secure first-party marketing data. Every potential ingest point needs to be secured, including marketing automation platforms (MAPs) and streaming platforms—especially if you’re using interactive video for name capture.

Not all streaming platforms provide the same level of security. If you want to earn and keep your customers’ trust, make sure your platform offers these minimum security features.

  • Encryption. Data should be encrypted using the industry standard AES-256 algorithm and enforced via TLS when in transit. Furthermore, each user should be identified with a unique session and stored in a secure, encrypted session cookie.
  • Single Sign-on. Single sign-on through an Identity Provider (IdP) should include identity mapping (based on full email addresses, not just email domains), streamlined user provisioning (allowing new users to inherit the SSO setup), and password requirements.
  • Privacy Compliance. Business policies should be compliant with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).
  • Certifications and Assessments. Certifications should include the Digital Production Partnership’s Committed to Security program as well as Privacy Shield. The platform should also engage third-party security research firms to perform annual vulnerability scans and penetration testing.

If your streaming platform offers all of these security features, consider adding a security watermark to your name capture videos. Statements like “Secured by Brightcove” can reassure your customers that you take their privacy seriously.

BUILD A CUSTOMER TESTIMONIAL VIDEO PAGE

Another important part of earning customer trust is accepting that you can no longer control your own brand narrative.

Customer testimonials used to be a marketing tactic that businesses manufactured, but smartphones and social media changed all that. Videos about your business can be produced and distributed at any time, without your involvement.

It can’t be overstated how influential the customer’s voice is on your business. According to Brightcove’s study, Using E-Commerce Video to Drive Sales, customer videos were the most trustworthy type of video according to over half (51%) of global consumers.

In other words, your customers are more likely to trust a poorly shot customer video about your product than any of your well-produced product demo videos. Slick advertising doesn’t impress them anymore, and they’re more and more likely to scrutinize who’s making the claim and why.

If customers are more inclined to trust each other over brand communications, it’s time for businesses to democratize their brand narratives.

Rather than letting customer testimonials breed trolls on social media, what if you brought them onto your site? You heard that right. Embrace what your customers are saying about you and package it for everyone to see—warts and all.

Showcasing customer testimonials demonstrates transparency, but it’s also an opportunity to address your customers’ concerns. Customers are more likely to trust businesses that listen to and act on their feedback. Brand page social comments aren’t enough, but a repository of resolved feedback builds the kind of track record customers want to see.

Enterprise-grade streaming platforms offer several features that can make a branded customer testimonial video page easy to build and maintain.

  • Web Portals. Portals for videos should include customizable, responsive templates in a no-code environment. They should also offer lead forms, social sharing, and MAP/CRM integrations and allow users to configure SEO settings.
  • Dynamic Ingest. Upload options should include pull-based retrieval (pulling source files and metadata from HTTP/HTTPS, S3, and FTP systems) as well as media RSS feeds for continuous ingestion monitoring and integrations for push-based workflows.
  • Smart Playlists. Playlists should not only have manual options but automatic options that build and grow playlists based on tags, custom fields, descriptions, and dates.

If your streaming platform offers all of these features, consider adding interactive elements like viewer sentiment. Letting viewers “like” a video will allow you to quickly see which issues are most important to your customers.

Learn more in our PLAY episode, “Getting to Know Gallery”.

PROMOTE ETHICAL VALUES WITH LIVE VIDEO

Building customers’ trust requires more than securing their data and addressing their concerns. Those things are just the minimum requirements for not being untrustworthy. If you want to set your business apart as worthy of customer trust and loyal patronage, you’ll need to talk social issues.

Customers don’t just shop for products anymore; they shop with their values. And they don’t just want businesses to share their values—they expect those businesses to demonstrate their support.

While Edelman noted that businesses were the most trusted institution, they also found that the public doesn’t think businesses do enough for society. Climate change (52%), economic inequality (49%), access to healthcare (42%), and systematic injustice (42%) are all top issues that people expect businesses to do more about.

Paying lip service to the social issues of the day isn’t enough to earn customer trust. Customers are looking to businesses to lead in areas where they feel the other institutions are failing. The occasional press release on your business’s latest charitable donation won’t cut it either. Businesses need to show that they live their values beyond token photo ops.

Chances are, your business is already living your values, just in ways the public can’t see. Perhaps you’ve organized company volunteer trips, attended cultural events, or engaged in other charitable activities. Those things aren’t just good for your employer brand; they show customers your values in action.

Livestreaming is one of the best ways to promote your values. Sharing an event after the fact has less of an impact than telling your customers you’re doing it live, right now. The best streaming platforms should have all the features you need to do it successfully.

  • Live Redundancy. Livestreams should include multiple backup streams with automatic failover to ensure uninterrupted, reliable playback.
  • Cloud DVR. Playback should include the option to pause, play, and rewind livestreams with a single click.
  • Direct-to-Social. Publishing should not only include social media platforms, but the option to publish to multiple platforms at one time.

One advantage of using a streaming platform rather than social media is you can create an on-demand library to memorialize your business’s commitment to its values. This can easily be created using the same features used to create customer testimonial pages.

Furthermore, you can choose to keep customer interactions on owned channels, rather than social media. Streaming platforms like Brightcove offer a number of event-based interactive features, including moderated Q&A, chat, surveys, and polls.

CENTRALIZE YOUR VIDEO STREAMING STRATEGY

Building customer trust through video in today’s climate is a non-negotiable for businesses. But it doesn’t have to overextend marketing teams cobbling together several products and workflows. Brightcove’s Marketing Studio has all the features you need to ensure customers feel secure, heard, and supported in their values.

3 MYTHS ABOUT VIDEO MARKETING ANALYTICS

bsp-admin-1 on October 24, 2022

When was the last time you did a reality check on your video marketing KPIs? If you’ve been using the same benchmarks to measure success for more than a couple of years, the truth is that you’re probably not getting the most out of your data.

The digital environment we operate in is one of constant change, driven primarily by evolving customer behaviors and expectations. This means marketers need to be on their toes, taking advantage of all the information and insights that can help them keep pace.

Advancements in both available user data and a more precise understanding of what those metrics mean are helping make it possible. Amid this innovation, many common perceptions about measuring the impact of video marketing—and improving it—are no longer accurate.

Here’s a look at some of the biggest video marketing analytics myths to shine a light on which metrics and tools will get you the insights you need.

MYTH #1: VIEWS ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT METRIC IN VIDEO MARKETING

Going viral was once upon a time seen as a golden ticket—the magic moment when your brand achieved internet fame and fortune. Racking up video views was the key to making it big.

If that was ever truly the most valuable aspiration for a video marketer, it isn’t anymore. Yes, going viral still happens, but rather than the explosive exposure it once afforded, it’s more of a flash in the pan.

REALITY CHECK: DIFFERENT METRICS MATTER AT DIFFERENT TIMES

Video is a mainstay of our current digital culture. People have grown accustomed to engaging with video as entertainment, education, and part of the purchasing process.

That path to purchase consists of a few distinct inflection points. At each of these points, different metrics hold more weight.

ANALYTICS TIP: KNOW WHICH METRICS TO WATCH

Want to know what’s working at each point along the path to purchase? These are the key metrics to watch for by stage.

Awareness: While views are not the most important metric overall, there are points in time at which view totals are a valuable KPI. The awareness stage is one of those points.

Consideration: Watch time, or engagement, is the key metric for measuring the impact your video has on viewers. Engaged audiences watch longer. If your audience is checking out at the same point in time, it might be worth recutting the video to ensure it doesn’t lag and is driving quickly to what’s most valuable.

Conversion: Viewing the full customer journey through touchpoint mapping can help you understand the role your video content plays in earning conversions. Interactive video is especially helpful for ROI analysis because it yields specific details about how audiences engage with your content and can drive directly to shopping carts or lead gen forms.

Retention: Engagement data will tell you a lot about how invested customers are in your product or service. You will want to look at engagement metrics for videos that focus on training, add-ons, and upselling.

Learn more about using metrics to measure success throughout the buyer’s journey.

MYTH #2: SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS PROVIDE ALL THE ANALYTICS YOU NEED

Ah, the siren song of native video statistics, lulling marketers into believing they’re sailing toward a wealth of KPIs.

But what are you really learning from viewing these isolated analytics? At best, you can tell how your content is performing for the audience on each specific platform, but are you really getting the full picture of reach and impact?

REALITY CHECK: ANALYTICS VIEWED IN ISOLATION DON’T TELL THE WHOLE STORY

In order to truly understand how your content performs across channels, you need to have a single view that pulls analytics from every platform where your content is published. Only then can you see how various versions of your video perform for different audiences, what works across the board, and where you’re seeing the most success.

ANALYTICS TIP: INTEGRATE YOUR SOCIAL DATA

Why bounce between platforms, manually extracting data and trying to make sense of it on your own, when you could simply empower a single analytics platform to do the work for you?

By integrating your social accounts with an enterprise-grade streaming platform, you’ll be able to dig deeper into the data, do side-by-side comparisons, and discover new insights that will improve future campaign performance.

Learn more about how to repurpose existing content with a strong social video strategy.

MYTH #3: MEASURING VIDEO ROI IS TOO HARD

Calculating ROI has always been a bit of a headache for marketers, but it is a necessary step. With convincing ROI data in hand, you can prove the impact of your video marketing efforts and secure future investment into your video marketing strategy.

It’s understandable that marketers struggle with their confidence in measuring ROI. Marketing is about drawing the crowd, creating the experience, and eliciting desire for what you have to offer. Not exactly easy to measure the effectiveness of a single asset that ties directly to results. But there’s good news.

REALITY CHECK: IT’S GETTING A LOT EASIER AND MORE STRAIGHTFORWARD

New technologies and integrations have opened the door to richer video marketing analytics. With machine learning and AI technology powering attribution modeling, marketers can assign sales and conversions to touchpoints in conversion paths.

With each new data point, we gain a better understanding of how customers discover brands, engage with content, and decide to purchase.

By integrating your streaming platform with your CRM, you can access insights that track audience behaviors throughout the full buying process, from awareness to purchase.

Some metrics that deliver a more accurate ROI include:

  • Touchpoint mapping, which shows the number and types of videos watched at different funnel stages and sequences.
  • Engagement behaviors, such as dwell times, skips, and rewatches of specific sections.
  • Interactive video behaviors, including in-video navigation, poll submissions, and click-through rates from video to a landing page.

Learn more about interactive video and ROI.

Looking for some dependable sources to stay on top of what really matters in the fast-changing world of video marketing analytics? Here are a few we recommend:

  • Martech.org: They specialize in marketing analytics technology, including video. Especially valuable to follow as the upcoming transition to Google Analytics 4 looms.
  • Social Media Today: A reliable source for the latest in social media, with regular updates on new measurement features.
  • Wyzowl Video Marketing Blog: This frequently-updated blog covers everything from creating videos to measuring their impact. Wyzowl also has a dedicated resource page for video marketing data.
  • Adweek – Video Marketing: The well-regarded news outlet has a dedicated feed for video marketing, but requires a subscription.
  • Marketing Dive: Keep an eye on both the Video and Data/Analytics feeds for quality coverage of both.

Moving from fiction to fact, here are the important trends you should be familiar with in the ongoing evolution of video marketing analytics:

  • AI-powered video analytics are changing the industry in a big way. Machine learning enables precise touchpoint mapping and ultimately enables more accurate ROI figures.
    Who’s leading:JUMP Insights is an AI-powered analytics integration that puts your data to work for you.
  • Single-source livestreaming across all channels. Broadcasting wherever your brand has a presence means your audience finds you where they’re at, producing rich engagement insights.
    Who’s leading:Accedo One is an over-the-top (OTT) system that delivers your content across all channels without congestion and at high quality.
  • Interactive video. Enabling more meaningful engagement between customers and your video content improves brand recall and, as mentioned earlier, leads to more nuanced measurement capabilities.
    Who’s leading:Wootag is an integration that lets marketers add business triggers as interactivity within their videos.

INVEST IN A TRUSTED PLATFORM

Investing in an online video platform with robust video management and analytics capabilities will open doors to analytics you might not have even considered. Don’t forget: the centralized management piece is essential to producing meaningful omnichannel analytics.

The dashboard of this platform will give you an at-a-glance feel for how various campaigns are performing across all channels. With a platform designed specifically for managing videos and measuring video performance, you can get the latest insights and stay on top of video analytics trends.