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MAKING QOE ACTIONABLE FOR VIDEO STREAMING

bsp-admin-1 on April 14, 2023

Earning trust is at the core of Brightcove’s efforts to grow our leadership position in the streaming technology industry. That’s why we launched QoE Analytics, a suite of features focused specifically on Quality of Experience (QoE). There’s no better way to build trust with our customers than helping them monitor our performance in the arena where it matters most: the viewing experience.

WHY MONITOR QOE?

Quality of Service (QoS) and QoE are often lumped together, which can seem like a lot for many media companies to take on, both in complexity and cost. However, they are fundamentally different. QoS focuses on key network performance metrics at an operations level, while QoE provides a sense of the viewing experience from a user perspective.

We believe that QoE is more meaningful and often more actionable for most media companies, given the direct correlation to user satisfaction.

WHAT QOE METRICS ARE IMPORTANT?

Brightcove collects a massive amount of data on behalf of our customers. This allowed us to narrow our QoE measurements down to the ones with the most significant correlations. We then cross-checked these findings with our own research team as well as several leading media companies who have studied this carefully. Based on this, we believe the following four metrics are the most important to track over time.

1) VIDEO START TIME

Video start time measures the average number of seconds elapsed between the play request and the stream start. High start times correlate with abandonment before streaming even starts and can indicate issues with the CDN, player plug-ins, and initial stream bitrate where intervention makes sense. Low video start times mean your audience is watching video quickly, which is what they expect.

2) STALL RATE

Stall rate is the average number of stalls per hour, calculated by comparing total stalls to total hours viewed in the selected time range. Unlike other rebuffering events, video stalls directly affect playback. This can manifest as single stalls of significant length or frequent stalls of varying length. Thus, a low stall rate means smoother playback and a better viewer experience.

3) ERROR RATE

Error rate is the percentage of all play requests with errors preventing playback (as opposed to background errors the viewer doesn’t notice). These errors typically occur before playback begins, but they can also happen during playback. Low error rates mean that customers are usually able to watch the content they select.

4) UPSCALING TIME

Upscaling time measures the average number of seconds per hour of viewing that is spent in an upscaled state. Upscaling occurs when a video rendition is streamed at a lower resolution than the playback device can display, often resulting in fuzziness or pixelation. This is particularly noticeable when a lower resolution stream is played on a large-screen device. Low upscaling time generally means your viewers are enjoying smooth, crisp video playback.

While upscaling time is critical in monitoring quality of experience, there are times when it may not affect the viewer. For example, upscaling often happens when high resolution content is streamed to a 4K TV but not encoded at 4K. Since most viewers won’t notice this, it’s important to dig into the data to determine the reasons behind low upscaling times.

WHAT DIMENSIONS AFFECT QOE?

QoE metrics can be affected by a number of different factors, from mobile app updates to content delivery network (CDN) changes. Breaking down those metrics by different dimensions makes it easy to compare performance and identify issues and opportunities.

DEVICE TYPE

Looking at metrics by device category allows you to see device-specific issues and trends over time. The imaginary example below shows a spike in error rate for Android devices that could be correlated to a recent app update.

Error Rate

STREAM TYPE

By comparing the QoE metrics of VOD against livestreams, you can isolate mode-specific issues or trends. In the fictional example below, there was a jump in upscaling around a live event that resolved quickly.

Upscale Time

PLAYER

Looking at QOE metrics broken out by player is a great way to isolate player-specific issues. For example, there can be significant differences in load time, depending on the plugins that load at play request. There can also be issues in specific players that result in increased error rates. Seeing these differences makes them easier to isolate and act on.

COUNTRY

For customers who operate internationally, viewing QoE metrics by country can assist in isolating regional issues. Imagine a media company adopted a new content delivery network for their Asian consumers. From the example below, it’s clear that the CDN underperformed when looking at the stall rate.

Stall Rate

QOE ANALYTICS IN CONTEXT

To properly track trends, it’s also important to see metrics and dimensions in context with each other. For example, Brightcove’s QoE solution not only provides charts for each metric, it includes a table with all metrics for a more comprehensive view. In addition to the key metrics, it also includes view count, video resolution breakdown, rebuffering time, and average bitrate for additional context.

The table is sortable by any of the columns and responsive to dimension selection, making it easy to explore and identify outliers. In the fictional example below, the device dimension was selected.

Summary by Device

QUALITY OF EXPERIENCE YOU CAN TRUST

On most days, Quality of Experience reporting will be a testament to the high quality video streaming that Brightcove is known for. However, issues can arise and we want to ensure that we’re helping our customers see them. This is a big step forward in our mission to be the most trusted streaming technology company in the world.

THE DAWN OF THE PRODUCER ECONOMY

bsp-admin-1 on April 10, 2023

The internet and streaming have democratized the landscape of video creation and distribution on a broad scale.

Creators can produce and distribute video to the masses with little or no cost. Major film, TV, news, and sports producers can reach their audiences much more directly. Even brands are beginning to share their stories with their audiences through video.

But something else is emerging and defining itself adjacent to these trends: the producer economy.

THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF VIDEO

The democratization of video has been facilitated by three things.

  • Mobile evolution. It put a computer connected to the internet in everyone’s hands.
  • Connected TV explosion. It put the internet in our living rooms and has us engaging in a different, mostly passive lean-back capacity.
  • Social media revolution. It connected us all and made it a conversation instead of a monologue. Many-to-many, versus one-to-many.

We now have much broader access to all types of content, including content from our friends, from influencers, from creators. All on-demand, all the time, via the internet. As a result, three significant trends have coalesced over the past decade.

  • Creator economy. Anyone could express themselves, share it socially, have an algorithm amplify it, and make money on it via automated advertising on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and more.
  • Streaming wars. As new streaming platforms like Netflix were born, they stepped in between studios and networks and combined those into one. Eventually, every media company followed rather than be disintermediated.
  • Brand wave. Brands and companies initially jumped on board the social media train, some with video. Now they’re beginning to build robust, video-first content strategies to tell their stories.

Each of these trends began because democratization allowed them to bypass traditional middlemen and reach consumers more directly.

For example, look at the music business and independent musicians like Macklemore or Doja Cat. They honed their craft, created amazing work, released it directly, got discovered, and built a following—all through YouTube.

YouTube creates massive amounts of value for many artists and creators, but is it truly democratized? Or did the music industry trade a certain type of middleman, a label, for another one that’s based on algorithms and programmatic advertising?

THE TWILIGHT OF THE CREATOR ECONOMY

Creators have had a good run. Millions are out there, and thousands of them are making real money.

With most major social platforms, those revenue-sharing agreements come out to roughly half for the creator. This makes sense for small upstarts building their audience. There are no technology costs, no marketing costs—they can just launch it. And if you hit the social graph and the algorithm just right, the money follows.

But not everyone can be Mr. Beast and build billion-dollar businesses. Further, it’s not clear that those large YouTube audiences can help creators do what Mr. Beast has done and launch other businesses, like his burger chain. It’s more likely that creators will need to diversify.

To insulate themselves from changing algorithms, content guidelines, monetization policies, and other fluctuations, what if creators built multi-channel businesses across multiple platforms on social media? What if they created their own direct-to-consumer channels, from apps to FAST channels?

THE FUTURE OF CREATING IS PRODUCING

Here’s where the producer comes in.

Producers generally supervise a production and are responsible for raising the money and hiring the artists, technicians, staff, and other resources needed to stage it. But we might expand this a little: Producers are now the creators of the creator economy.

They’re the showrunners and creators of major TV shows. They’re the film directors. They’re the CMOs deciding how to represent their brand in videos distributed broadly on social media. And they’re the production team inside your company making videos for internal and external use.

What the internet and streaming have done is create the ability for all of these producers to have a voice and real agency in the distribution of their stories.

So if you’re a producer with meaningful brand awareness and audience following, what’s holding you back? The audience is there. The technology is there too.

Streaming is a robust market, but it can also change quickly. A platform can update an algorithm any time, changing the audience. A funder of content can cancel a show and move on to the next one. (Just ask all those one- or two-season-and-out creators on Netflix). Brands need to tell their stories with video content soon, or they won’t have the customers they have today.

Producers can own their content and their distribution and monetization too. It’s not just for Hollywood anymore. Creators can do it. Companies and brands can do it. All of these producers have the opportunity to reach their audiences on multiple platforms, including directly. This is the producer economy, where producers own their own digital future.

Watch the full episode on PlayTV.

GROW AUDIENCE LOYALTY WITH ACCESSIBLE VIDEO

bsp-admin-1 on April 5, 2023

For today’s creators, video accessibility has become much more than a checklist item for regulation and compliance.

With diverse audiences of varying abilities, languages, and viewing environments, delivering accessible videos is a clear indicator of your respect and commitment to your viewers. It demonstrates that you are dedicated to championing inclusivity, embracing non-native speakers, and providing the best possible user experience (UX).

Content producers understand that these experiences are the core of building a strong sense of loyalty and appreciation among viewers, customers, and the public at large. When viewers feel valued and included, they are more likely to become dedicated fans, engage with the content, and share it with others.

WHAT MAKES A GREAT USER EXPERIENCE?

But what creates an engaging, yet accessible UX? In Peter Morville’s user experience honeycomb, he outlines seven qualities:

  • Useful
  • Usable
  • Desirable
  • Findable
  • Accessible
  • Credible
  • Valuable

While he intended it for website experiences, many have used his framework for a variety of user experiences. For example, a number of these qualities can be applied to premium video platforms like Brightcove. Our ad monetization solution is useful, our Player V7 update makes our product more usable, and our industry-vetted ROI makes our platform valuable.

In the same way, Brightcove’s partnership with 3Play Media helps our customers make their content more accessible, furthering our commitment to providing the best user experience. In fact, Brightcove customers can achieve true, accessible equivalency by ordering accessible video services from 3Play directly within our platform.

Serving over 10,000 existing customers, 3Play Media is the premier media accessibility provider in North America, delivering services with 99% accuracy and SLA-guaranteed turnaround. Content creators with a global audience can also receive localization support through 3Play’s translation and subtitling services in over 45 languages.

WHAT ARE THE KEY COMPONENTS OF VIDEO ACCESSIBILITY?

Digging a bit deeper into the services you now have at your fingertips, let’s look at four ways you can start today to enhance your videos accessibility.

CLOSED CAPTIONING

A key feature that improves accessibility for those who are deaf or hard of hearing, closed captions provide an on-screen transcript of the audio content. Additionally, it increases engagement by allowing viewers in noisy environments, or those watching with the sound off, a way to still experience the video.

Closed Captions File Example

Example of a Web.VTT Closed Captions File

LIVE CAPTIONING

Depending on your use case, you can consider two different types of live captioning: Automatic and Professional.

  • Live Automatic Captioning. This can be a practical approach for providing baseline accessibility when professional captions aren’t feasible. For example, internal video meetings or informal presentations and webinars don’t necessarily require human captioning. Live automatic captioning can also be beneficial for social media livestreams to make the content more accessible to a wider and more diverse audience.
  • Live Professional Captioning. This is an ideal approach for important and high-profile live event streams where quality and compliance are priorities. These could include academic videos where accuracy is crucial to ensure students with hearing impairments and non-native speakers can access and comprehend the content. Similarly, Live Professional Captioning can ensure all viewers of large events and conferences or investor and customer presentations can have a high-quality experience.

TRANSLATING AND SUBTITLES

This accessibility feature is important for reaching a global audience of non-native speakers. It not only fosters inclusivity but also expands the potential audience to viewers from various backgrounds.

AUDIO DESCRIPTIONS

For visually impaired audiences, audio descriptions are a valuable tool for making video content accessible. By providing verbal depictions of key visual elements, any viewer can understand the context and follow the narrative effectively. It not only showcases the creator’s commitment to inclusivity, it enhances the overall user experience for those who rely on alternative ways to consume visual media.

HOW GREAT UX GROWS AUDIENCE LOYALTY

In a digital landscape with so many content options, generating loyalty is an investment. And if one thing is clear in the creator ecosystem, it’s that audiences will invest in brands when brands invest in them. This means they are more likely to engage with your brand, share your videos, and become devoted fans or customers.

By prioritizing accessibility features, such as captions, audio descriptions, and multi-language subtitles, content creators ensure that their content caters to a diverse range of viewers. And offering them the tools and features they need to fully experience your videos is perhaps one of the most effective demonstrations of your investment in them.

 

3 WAYS TRANSCRIPTS ELEVATE VIDEO SEO

bsp-admin-1 on April 3, 2023

Online video has long been a stronghold of content marketing strategies. Video accounts for 65% of internet traffic, and 91% of businesses use video as a marketing tool in 2023. As the most dynamic content medium, video allows marketers to show off their brand and products in more ways than static web content.

Not only does video content have the potential to reach new audiences, it can also drive engagement with your existing audience. By using video on landing pages and blogs or alongside products and services, marketers can delight customers, inform prospects, and drive fresh leads through the funnel.

However, for video to have the desired impact, it’s crucial that search engines can find, rank, and serve your content. Accessibility-based solutions like transcripts can promote search engine optimization (SEO) while making your content accessible to any audience.

HOW VIDEO TRANSCRIPTS ELEVATE SEO

SEO is a digital marketing practice aimed at promoting pagerank and driving overall site visits. The strategy can vary depending on keyword queries, but it’s important to recognize that video transcripts can bolster a site’s keyword density for relative search terms.

Search engines can’t “watch” a video the way we do. Instead, they crawl text associated with video files and use this information to index and rank results. Metadata and video tags are good examples of text elements commonly associated with video. But a high-quality transcript provides a more complete textual representation of all spoken content in a video.

Of course, marketers should always be wary of “keyword stuffing.” Overusing targeted keywords on site pages to manipulate pagerank has been penalized by search algorithms for many years. Fortunately, placing a transcript below a video is considered a natural way to integrate keywords or phrases throughout a page. It also layers secondary and tertiary search terms, creating a healthier and more diverse SEO strategy.

1) VIDEO TRANSCRIPTS MATCH LONG-FORM SEARCH QUERIES

If you’re working with longer videos like webinar recordings, transcripts can offer the same benefits as long-form blog posts. According to HubSpot, the ideal blog post length is over 2,000 words. This is because carefully-curated long-form content is more likely to appear higher in search result rankings.

Including a transcript on the same webpage as a video increases its chances of appearing favorably in search rankings. Users may only watch the video and not read the text, but the transcript will make it much more visible to search engines.

Transcripts contribute to your keyword strategy by naturally incorporating target words or phrases into a landing page, which boosts SEO. When selecting relevant targets, consider what kind of search query a user would enter in order to find your video. Then customize your landing pages so keywords and on-page content are aligned to each specific video. For example, the page’s URL, title, H1 and H2 headers, image alt text, and anchor text should all incorporate your keyword or phrase.

2) VIDEO TRANSCRIPTS ENGAGE YOUR AUDIENCE

By using video transcripts to boost SEO and build accessibility into the production process, you also harness the potential of improving engagement with your audience. Transcripts make your video searchable by end users and search engines alike, and more favorable search rankings means more eyes on your content. In fact, 85% of marketers say that video is effective at engaging their audience, with short-form and live video content being the leading formats of choice.

In Brightcove’s 2022 survey on the use of video in e-commerce, 84% of consumers are convinced to purchase after joining a livestream or virtual shopping event. Combined with the brand awareness and recall benefits offered by captions and transcripts, accessible video has the potential to boost audience engagement and influence behavioral intent.

3) VIDEO TRANSCRIPTS CAN BOOST TARGET METRICS

Searchable content served to an engaged target audience also has a positive impact on engagement metrics like view count and session time.

For example, content showcasing a product or service is one of the most engaging types of video, as well as the most likely to generate leads. From the research phase to the final purchase, video content is useful at any stage of the buying journey. When a user finds a product or service-related video, they’re probably looking for more information related to that topic. If there are reviews, support links, or suggested reading available on the same page as the video, it bodes well for average session duration and engagement.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPTS ONLY COUNT IF THEY’RE ACCURATE

One major condition of including video transcripts (and reaping the benefits) is accuracy. Just like high-quality transcripts have the potential for positive influence, inaccurate transcripts can negatively affect your standing with search engines.

Automatic speech recognition (ASR) engines are typically about 80% accurate, but the industry standard requires a minimum of 99% accuracy. While ASR technology has improved over the years, it’s not best practice to rely solely on automatically generated transcripts or captions.

Video has become the preferred method of content consumption by digital natives. So much so that 85% of e-commerce consumers find video essential to their online experience. When your brand provides a transcript or captions, you can ensure your content is effectively indexed and searchable to new and existing audiences. Accessibility is more than just a legal requirement. Prioritizing an equitable user experience brings SEO benefits like boosting keyword density and strategy.

Want to learn more? Read about the ROI Benefits of Transcription & Captioning.

This blog was originally written by Shannon Murphy in 2013 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

THE BENEFITS OF MAKING E-COMMERCE VIDEO ACCESSIBLE

bsp-admin-1 on March 27, 2023

Video dominates our online lives in ways that seemed impossible just a few years ago. The ill-fated “pivot to video,” based on overinflated viewership numbers from social platforms looking for their next monetization strategy, turned countless media companies away from experimenting with the format. But the pandemic brought video back in new and unexpected ways.

Marci Maddox, Research Vice President of Digital Experiences at IDC, shared just how true this is in a PLAY Season 1 episode. “By 2024, 80% of the world’s population will be online—many of whom are Gen Z with an affinity toward video. In 2024, consumers will spend upwards of $10.5 trillion online, of which video will be a growing factor in influencing those buying decisions.”

And it’s reaching people in more places than ever before, too. “The pandemic accelerated the use of video by 32%,” said Maddox. “This was everything from virtual events to personal messages. Video content continues to expand its reach to consumers in their everyday lives, at work, at home, or at play.”

As a result, the prevalence of video will require more companies to “think and act like a media company,” Maddox explained. “Video is entertaining. It’s informative. It can also be a way for us to communicate with one another—and try to communicate to our customers, employees or partners in a new, immersive way.”

EMBRACING THE MEDIA COMPANY MINDSET

The time is ripe for companies to start on this journey, because interest in video’s capabilities has expanded beyond marketing teams. “We saw interest in employee recruitment, in learning, in communications, and even in onboarding—some cases for employee onboarding and others for customer onboarding,” said Maddox. “Now, with remote workers, there was a spike in video usage to accommodate executive town halls. And salespeople turn to video to help in their communications in lieu of those traditional in-person meetings.”

To manage these growing use cases, companies have new technology at their fingertips. “More personalized video is going to allow us to use machine learning and real-time data to generate specific calls to action and to drive additional emotional connections,” said Maddox.

One use case for Maddox is in insurance policy renewal. “The marketing team could create a video with the client’s name, plus include historical claims that were made against the policy,” she explained. “You also may be aware of additional purchases of cars or jewelry that would benefit from additional coverage.”

From a customer’s perspective, it’s a no-brainer. “Who wants to go look up the number to call their agent? If we give the users all of that information at their fingertips, now we have not only an instructional video, but we have one that can be a call to action to close a sales deal.”

Further, what used to require expensive hardware and grand production studios now only needs a smartphone, a desktop computer, or cloud-based services. “Ten years ago, organizations that produced video, likely for marketing or entertainment purposes, still found it difficult to handle video consistently,” explained Maddox. “How do I find it? How is it searched? Can I stream it? Does it need to be cached? Does it have geographical reach? Today, organizations can work beyond physical boundaries to capture and produce video content faster.”

DEVELOPING A VIDEO CONTENT STRATEGY

Brightcove’s approach to video content strategy focuses on answering the questions behind “why” and “how” an organization should put video to work. The market tends to get too wrapped up in technology, but our customers ask for advice on how to get more from the video platforms they’re implementing. Our goal is to help organizations realize the business benefits from video, and Maddox offers some helpful tips on where to start.

First, companies need to look at who is creating and who is supporting video within their organizations. “The adoption of video content falls to multiple stakeholders within the company,” said Maddox. “C-suite users are in an ideal position to use video themselves to communicate information to external stakeholders, investors, customers, and to their internal employees.”

Customer support and education teams can also use video more. “Sales, field workers, and other lines of business can look at replacing email, which has been a common method to communicate with their customers,” Maddox added.

Second, review the types of communications that are being sent to customers and to their employees and identify whether or not video would enhance that experience. “It’s just getting into the mindset that these things are possible,” said Maddox.

“Think back to the idea of the renewal of the insurance policy. Would I rather have read a lot of documents on what that renewal looks like, or be guided in the renewal and click to buy at the very end? The latter is more immersive, still informative, and at the end of the day, the level of effort on the customer goes down.”

What does the future hold for companies who make the leap? According to Maddox, “media-oriented companies will work with a variety of video content, from single messages to full, on-demand streaming delivery. And it’s all for the purpose to engage audiences and to achieve specific business outcomes. As you advance, think about using AI and machine learning to assist.”

Creative teams and business users alike will be able to gain insight to customer preferences, said Maddox. “And they will find it just as easy to have a video-based conversation as they did with email, but now with added value for more visual and emotional connection.”

Finally, Maddox advised to continue to evolve your content strategy, using insights that further advance a company’s maturity in thinking and acting like a media company. “Push yourself to understand how video can support you and your customers in this next evolving relationship that you’re building between yourselves.”

At Brightcove, we help you break through the digital noise. Whether your goals are to build followers, drive brand recognition, create pipeline, grow revenue, or communicate with employees, you need a streaming-first strategy and a streaming-first partner.

ENHANCING EMPLOYEE AND CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES WITH STREAMING

bsp-admin-1 on March 20, 2023

Video dominates our online lives in ways that seemed impossible just a few years ago. The ill-fated “pivot to video,” based on overinflated viewership numbers from social platforms looking for their next monetization strategy, turned countless media companies away from experimenting with the format. But the pandemic brought video back in new and unexpected ways.

Marci Maddox, Research Vice President of Digital Experiences at IDC, shared just how true this is in a PLAY Season 1 episode. “By 2024, 80% of the world’s population will be online—many of whom are Gen Z with an affinity toward video. In 2024, consumers will spend upwards of $10.5 trillion online, of which video will be a growing factor in influencing those buying decisions.”

And it’s reaching people in more places than ever before, too. “The pandemic accelerated the use of video by 32%,” said Maddox. “This was everything from virtual events to personal messages. Video content continues to expand its reach to consumers in their everyday lives, at work, at home, or at play.”

As a result, the prevalence of video will require more companies to “think and act like a media company,” Maddox explained. “Video is entertaining. It’s informative. It can also be a way for us to communicate with one another—and try to communicate to our customers, employees or partners in a new, immersive way.”

EMBRACING THE MEDIA COMPANY MINDSET

The time is ripe for companies to start on this journey, because interest in video’s capabilities has expanded beyond marketing teams. “We saw interest in employee recruitment, in learning, in communications, and even in onboarding—some cases for employee onboarding and others for customer onboarding,” said Maddox. “Now, with remote workers, there was a spike in video usage to accommodate executive town halls. And salespeople turn to video to help in their communications in lieu of those traditional in-person meetings.”

To manage these growing use cases, companies have new technology at their fingertips. “More personalized video is going to allow us to use machine learning and real-time data to generate specific calls to action and to drive additional emotional connections,” said Maddox.

One use case for Maddox is in insurance policy renewal. “The marketing team could create a video with the client’s name, plus include historical claims that were made against the policy,” she explained. “You also may be aware of additional purchases of cars or jewelry that would benefit from additional coverage.”

From a customer’s perspective, it’s a no-brainer. “Who wants to go look up the number to call their agent? If we give the users all of that information at their fingertips, now we have not only an instructional video, but we have one that can be a call to action to close a sales deal.”

Further, what used to require expensive hardware and grand production studios now only needs a smartphone, a desktop computer, or cloud-based services. “Ten years ago, organizations that produced video, likely for marketing or entertainment purposes, still found it difficult to handle video consistently,” explained Maddox. “How do I find it? How is it searched? Can I stream it? Does it need to be cached? Does it have geographical reach? Today, organizations can work beyond physical boundaries to capture and produce video content faster.”

DEVELOPING A VIDEO CONTENT STRATEGY

Brightcove’s approach to video content strategy focuses on answering the questions behind “why” and “how” an organization should put video to work. The market tends to get too wrapped up in technology, but our customers ask for advice on how to get more from the video platforms they’re implementing. Our goal is to help organizations realize the business benefits from video, and Maddox offers some helpful tips on where to start.

First, companies need to look at who is creating and who is supporting video within their organizations. “The adoption of video content falls to multiple stakeholders within the company,” said Maddox. “C-suite users are in an ideal position to use video themselves to communicate information to external stakeholders, investors, customers, and to their internal employees.”

Customer support and education teams can also use video more. “Sales, field workers, and other lines of business can look at replacing email, which has been a common method to communicate with their customers,” Maddox added.

Second, review the types of communications that are being sent to customers and to their employees and identify whether or not video would enhance that experience. “It’s just getting into the mindset that these things are possible,” said Maddox.

“Think back to the idea of the renewal of the insurance policy. Would I rather have read a lot of documents on what that renewal looks like, or be guided in the renewal and click to buy at the very end? The latter is more immersive, still informative, and at the end of the day, the level of effort on the customer goes down.”

What does the future hold for companies who make the leap? According to Maddox, “media-oriented companies will work with a variety of video content, from single messages to full, on-demand streaming delivery. And it’s all for the purpose to engage audiences and to achieve specific business outcomes. As you advance, think about using AI and machine learning to assist.”

Creative teams and business users alike will be able to gain insight to customer preferences, said Maddox. “And they will find it just as easy to have a video-based conversation as they did with email, but now with added value for more visual and emotional connection.”

Finally, Maddox advised to continue to evolve your content strategy, using insights that further advance a company’s maturity in thinking and acting like a media company. “Push yourself to understand how video can support you and your customers in this next evolving relationship that you’re building between yourselves.”

At Brightcove, we help you break through the digital noise. Whether your goals are to build followers, drive brand recognition, create pipeline, grow revenue, or communicate with employees, you need a streaming-first strategy and a streaming-first partner.

DRIVING E-COMMERCE WITH VIDEO STREAMING

bsp-admin-1 on March 14, 2023

E-commerce continues to be a major contributor to overall global retail sales, and all indicators point to significant growth over the coming years. From 2014 to 2022 alone, e-commerce sales grew by 327% to $5.7T. Forecasts show no signs of slowing down and expect that figure to reach $8.1T by 2026.

While e-commerce has grown rapidly, it has always faced one significant challenge. Consumers have to purchase from online shops and marketplaces without ever touching, feeling, trying on, or experiencing the product. Thus, it’s critical to communicate the value, features, and benefits of a product so the customer can come as close as possible to experiencing it.

When selling through bulletin boards or during times when image quality was low, communicating and creating an experience through words was paramount. As marketplaces took off, getting the perfect set of photos has been a top priority for businesses and independent sellers alike. And now with the explosion in social commerce and the extraordinary growth of platforms like Shopify, video is quickly becoming e-commerce table stakes.

BENEFITS OF VIDEO IN E-COMMERCE

We regularly discuss the benefits of video marketing, but many of these benefits are amplified when strategically used for e-commerce. According to our research, 84% of consumers are convinced to purchase after watching a video.

E-commerce videos bring numerous benefits beyond simply selling a product. They can introduce your brand story to new customers and help build familiarity and loyalty for existing customers. In both cases, there’s a clear emotional connection that video fosters between your businesses and your audiences.

Video also provides the closest thing to creating an in-person experience. It gives customers around the world, on any device, up close and personal access to your product and brand. Whether showcasing the product in use, giving a 360-degree view, or broadcasting a live shopping event, video can break down barriers in ways that photos and text simply can’t.

For marketers to truly reap the benefits of e-commerce video, they need a video tool that integrates with their existing tech stack and the channels they use to market to their customers. Brightcove has the integrations you need to make this easier than ever.

USING VIDEO TO BOOST SHOPIFY CONVERSIONS

Shopify is the world’s leading e-commerce platform. Millions of merchants across 175 countries have used the platform to drive over half a trillion dollars in sales. While these figures show the vast opportunity the platform provides, it also means they face stiff competition from sellers across the web.

Luckily, Shopify merchants have several options for using video to boost sales, increase brand awareness, and grow their businesses. From a brand perspective, videos are a great way to introduce new customers to your company while building community and loyalty with existing customers.

One of the most obvious benefits is that videos provide an enhanced way to showcase your products. They allow you to go more in-depth about functionality, specifications, and other details that text and images simply can’t communicate. From feature highlights to visual storytelling to showcasing the product in use, an on-demand library of product videos allows users to truly experience the product before purchasing it.

Brightcove makes it easy to manage your videos in Shopify. Through our integration, you can connect to your video library and publish your videos directly to your Shopify e-commerce store. The integration eliminates the need for additional tools or apps by allowing you to seamlessly publish and manage your videos all from a single platform.

As with all video initiatives, understanding how your videos are being consumed will allow you to continuously optimize and boost performance. Using Brightcove analytics, you’ll be able to better understand which Shopify videos are most effective at engaging customers and driving conversions.

USING BRIGHTCOVE TO POWER SOCIAL COMMERCE

Social commerce has seen its popularity skyrocket in recent years. Between 2020 and 2022, social commerce grew by almost 70%, and the social commerce market is expected to top $2 trillion by 2025. According to Sprout Social, 68% of people have already used social media to make a purchase. They also report that an astounding 98% of users indicated they planned to make at least one purchase through social shopping or influencer commerce in 2022.

You may already be using Brightcove to publish content to social platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. With our Instagram integration, you can also leverage video to build brand awareness, increase conversions, and drive advocacy there as well. If you’re not already using Instagram for social commerce, there’s no better time to start than now. According to Instagram, 44% of people use Instagram to shop weekly, and as the stats above highlight, you can expect this number to continue to grow.

The Brightcove Instagram integration allows you to seamlessly manage, distribute, and track videos with the security and reliability that our platform is known for. In addition to the analytics from Instagram, you’ll also be able to dive deeper into key performance metrics through Brightcove’s native analytics.

LEVERAGING SALESFORCE TO EXTEND THE ROI OF E-COMMERCE VIDEO

Beyond boosting sales on Shopify and social media, e-commerce videos can provide you with valuable insights to both increase conversions and attract new customers.

For example, when you combine your video analytics with a powerful marketing automation platform (MAP) like Salesforce Marketing Cloud, your approach to e-commerce video becomes much more strategic, honed, and effective. Instead of simply asking which videos get the most engagement, you can take a much more targeted approach with questions like, “From whom specifically are particular videos getting the most engagement?” In a data-driven world, insights from the video performance of key segments or individuals are a competitive differentiator.

Extending the value of e-commerce videos through Salesforce Sales Cloud and into Marketing Cloud starts with audience segmentation. Salesforce allows you to segment audiences by a variety of criteria that make the most sense for your efforts. These could include purchase history, location, customer lifetime value, demographics, product pages visited, or any other information you collect on customers and website visitors.

Using the Brightcove Salesforce Sales Cloud integration, you can analyze the video viewing behaviors of customers as they engage with your content. All of that data syncs with your instance of Salesforce, allowing you to see which videos resonate with your highest-intent audience and leverage them with other potential buyers.

With Brightcove’s Audience Insights solution, you can further enrich Salesforce and turn all of this great data into actions:

  • Repurpose top videos. Top-converting videos can be reused in several places: your Shopify or Salesforce Commerce Cloud product pages, your Instagram Story Highlights, email promotion landing pages, or YouTube ads. This approach also works with top-engaged videos by customers with repeat purchases or high customer lifetime value (CLV).
  • Reach more customers. By understanding which videos are most popular with specific segments, you can create lookalike audiences and target them with ads that drive to these same videos. Similarly, you can use the video in email promotions to other members of that same segment who haven’t seen it yet.
  • Retarget or nurture customers. Customers who have viewed specific pages, products, or videos are particularly valuable because you know they are actively in the buying process. By retargeting them with paid promotions or emailing them those promotions, you can encourage them to take the next step in their journey.
  • Re-engage or convert customers. Identifying customers who didn’t complete most of a video (let’s say less than 20%) allows you to offer them a different video that may resonate better. You could also isolate people who watched more than 70% of a video but didn’t purchase. Since they expressed interest, you have an opportunity to offer them additional discounts or promotions to complete the purchase.

CENTRALIZE YOUR E-COMMERCE VIDEO STRATEGY WITH BRIGHTCOVE MARKETING STUDIO

Using video for e-commerce offers a wide range of benefits. Not only does it help drive sales, but it supports brand building, community development, and increased conversions.

Using Brightcove Marketing Studio, you’re able to manage all of your video e-commerce efforts, from Shopify to Instagram, through a single platform. Combine these with the power of Salesforce, and you’ll have an effective omni-channel approach for your e-commerce video initiatives. The ease of use and additional layer of insights will position you to maximize the opportunities that marketplaces and a quickly growing social commerce landscape provides.

BUILDING A BETTER VIDEO TRAINING PORTAL FOR EMPLOYEES

bsp-admin-1 on February 28, 2023

If there’s one thing that most business owners and managers realize, it’s that happy, engaged employees provide higher quality work. They’re also less likely to quit and, perhaps most importantly, they actively contribute to an overall positive company and workplace experience.

It’s also clear that employees want to work for companies that offer both personal and professional fulfillment. Office perks still play an important role, but more and more employees expect companies to offer a robust learning culture.

TRAINING ENHANCES THE EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE

Learning and development (L&D) has proven to be a key driver of employee engagement. By providing tools and resources to strengthen employee skills and knowledge, companies can build a more capable workforce while showing investment in their employees. Furthermore, addressing skill gaps not only allows the business to grow, it lets employees grow, which improves the employer brand.

From an employee perspective, they want to feel like their current job is helping them build their career by preparing for their next role. Many are eager to continue building skills and staying competitive within their fields. In fact, they’re much more likely to stay with companies who they feel are supporting this.

From a company perspective, learning opportunities offer a competitive advantage and help them stay ahead in a constantly changing landscape. It helps the organization retain top talent, attract new talent, and maximize the potential of their existing talent.

And while there are various learning methods such as instructor-led training, on-the-job training, simulators, job shadowing, and case studies, training videos remain a top choice for employees.

VIDEO ENHANCES EMPLOYEE TRAINING

According to our “Using Video to Improve the Employee Experience” study, employees prefer video for policy training (76%), product demos (75%), and product training (68%). Also, 45% say training videos for systems and tools would increase their confidence in their employment decision.

There are numerous benefits for companies to deliver their learning and development programs through video.

For starters, it can be much more cost-efficient, especially for companies with multiple offices in different cities. In addition to reduced expenses like travel and materials, video also has a longer lifespan. Once produced, it can be reused and viewed by employees around the world in the comfort of their own homes or offices. Finally, video can also help you significantly reduce the amount of overall employee training time and even provide microlearning experiences.

There’s also the fact that video is more engaging than other forms of delivery. Multiple surveys have shown that employees prefer video to text, and the visual stimulation helps employees retain the information much longer. For HR teams who have strong learning initiatives, it’s not a matter of if they use video, but rather, what’s the best experience.

A BETTER PORTAL ENHANCES EMPLOYEE VIDEO

It’s important to remember that the videos themselves are but one part of a comprehensive, corporate training experience.

As you develop, update, or optimize your learning initiatives, you’ll want to consider all aspects of the user experience. This ranges from how easily they can find, access, and navigate the online training to implementing active learning within the videos. The branding, layout, and functionality will also play an important role.

Similarly, you’ll want to make sure your program is as efficient and easily manageable as possible for content managers. A holistic and successful training program must consider the experiences of both the end user and the person responsible for maintaining it.

WHERE WILL YOUR VIDEO TRAINING PROGRAMS LIVE?

One of the first steps in creating a video training program is to determine where the videos will live and how employees will access them. There are several common ways that businesses house them.

  • Internal servers or cloud storage. This approach often aligns with a broader internal content management structure, particularly for working files and documents. However, internal drives or collaborative cloud platforms can be less intuitive and lack the branding that adds to the overall experience. Further, navigating folders to find the different videos and video courses is designed for digital librarians, not diverse employees with different learning styles.
  • Digital Asset Management platforms (DAMs). DAMs excel at managing high volumes of internal digital content, offering meta-tagging and versioning capabilities that allow for advanced search functions. But they’re not meant for content consumption. Not only do their interfaces lack branding, most can’t support high volumes of concurrent high-quality video streams.
  • Unlisted YouTube channels. YouTube is used by some companies who want to organize training videos by playlists. In theory, the videos can only be accessed by users through an unlisted link. However, most companies want better security, robust video content management, or hosting destinations they own and fully control. For them, YouTube doesn’t quite meet their needs.
  • Company intranet. Company intranets are perhaps the most common destination for training videos. They often combine one or more of the preceding approaches and act as a navigation overlay that users are already familiar with. So users get a much better, branded experience, and content managers get a waking nightmare. They not only have to manage all the places the content lives, they also have to manage the interface—ensuring every link is up to date and in the right place.

CREATING AN EFFECTIVE EXPERIENCE FOR THE USER

While each of the above systems have pros and cons, let’s look at some of the key features and benefits of today’s most effective learning experiences. With tools like Brightcove Gallery’s Immersion template, you can combine the best of the above approaches and create an all-in-one training portal that both the users and content managers will love.

The first consideration is the ease with which users can access it. An often overlooked but important part of the experience is a branded, customized URL that takes them directly to the training portal.

Once they arrive at the training portal, the layout should be a completely branded, intuitive gallery that features all of the videos in any particular series. With a layout similar to the streaming services they’re already used to, users can easily see, navigate, and watch all of the videos in a given series. Additionally, related series will be easily accessible with a single click—or, if needed, quickly found through a powerful internal search engine.

Keep in mind that training content doesn’t have to be a one-way experience. To be truly effective, you’ll need to keep your viewers engaged. Through Brightcove Gallery, you’re able to add an interactive experience to any video. For example, quizzes will help to ensure they retain the information. You could also have different paths within each video to give the user a “choose your own adventure” experience.

CREATING AN EFFICIENT EXPERIENCE FOR THE CONTENT MANAGER

Beyond the end user, it’s also important to ensure the content manager has the features and functionality they need to make the program a success. This includes ease of use and efficiency for ongoing use on a long-term basis. Take into consideration things like how quickly you can publish videos and how easily you can organize them. Choosing and adding videos to each collection should be a simple task.

For example, through the Brightcove Gallery you can select the videos you want by tags, existing playlists, or custom fields like keywords and search criteria. Similarly, if there are videos you want to exclude, those can be managed by tags as well. Finally, when it comes to creating the full training portal, you’ll want to be able to fully customize the look and feel of the page without the need for a designer or developer.

All of these features are easily accessible through the Brightcove Gallery template, Immersion. It’s ideal for companies with significant training and development needs and who want to provide users with the best experience possible.

In addition to having an effective and efficient way to create learning portals, it also offers insights into employee engagement that you haven’t been able to measure before. By reviewing the video analytics, you’re able to see how often the videos are being watched, the percentage of each one being watched, and which topics employees are most interested in. This information will be vital to use for future training materials to ensure their success.

Finally, like all Brightcove Gallery templates, Immersion comes equipped with critical business features like SSO and role-based access to ensure your content stays secure.

BRIGHTCOVE ENHANCES THE EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE

Delivering your learning and development programs through video is a simple, yet effective way to remain competitive as a company while retaining and attracting top talent. Brightcove’s Immersion template for Communications Studio makes it easy to customize the experience and create intuitive pages that mimic many of the most popular streaming services. By combining the power of enterprise-leading streaming technology with the interactivity employees want and security organizations need, you can provide the best experience for everyone.