Nielsen devises online video measurement tool

Nielsen has unveiled the first industry-endorsed tool to measure online video viewing on home and office computers by audience size, demographic, location and the time spent watching streams.


It is claimed the VideoCensus tool will help advertisers target particular demographics by offering information about the types of sites and genres certain age groups prefer and the average times of day they watch video.

Brands including Unilever, Marks & Spencer and Yahoo! have all championed video content as the key to building online engagement with consumers in recent months.


Nielsen says 26.9 million people in the UK viewed video streams from home or work computers in April 2011.

Men view 78% more online video than women, according to the first set of figures released from Nielsen’s VideoCensus.

VideoCensus is accredited by the UK Online Measurement Company, which is run by the Association of OnlinePublishers and the Internet Advertising Bureau. Dick Stroud

Retailers making the most out of video

Ecommerce video has been a fast-growing feature on online retail sites over the past year. Retailers are quickly finding that adding product video to their sites increases conversions, but ecommerce video is still maturing as they continue to discover best practices.

eMarketer has published a report on the subject that found that nearly three-quarters of US retailers featured video on their sites in Q4 2010. This percentage was up significantly from the 55% of retailers who reported using video on their sites a year earlier.

A bit of a no brainer really. Dick Stroud

Google makes a play for the Web video standards

Google’s free video format is set to be baked into phones and other devices.

This sounds amazing stuff. Technology Review reports that Google is making a play to for the new standard of Web video.

Google's video format is known as WebM. It was created by combining the preëxisting audio format Vorbis with VP8, a video format that Google bought last year with the intention of making it free for all to use in WebM. Google wants WebM to become the default for Web video and join the wave of new, powerful, and, crucially, free-to-use Web technologies such as HTML5 that enables Web pages to act like desktop applications.

I am sure the other players in the Web video space will have something to say about this but then Google is Google. Dick Stroud

Don’t use online ads with older business people

I have never been a great fan of in-stream video ads. Looking at this analysis I shouldn’t be surprised since neither are most others of my age group.

If this type of advertising is something that you are considering then it might be a good idea to read this article in eMarketer. Dick Stroud

A do it yourself guide to video marketing

This guy has just been on a course about video marketing and relates what he learnt. Talks a lot of sense. Dick Stroud

An offer you cannot refuse from Adobe

When Adobe makes a claim like this..

Get the definitive guide for deploying video to maximize your online business!

...you cannot refuse.

Adobe claims that retailers deploying the Adobe Scene7 video solution have reported more than 2X sales increases, 30% conversion lift and 19% higher average order value among shoppers who view videos.

This must be worth 30 secs of your life to download. Dick Stroud

Executives embrace the non-text Web

Forbes has done some research to understand manager’s attitudes towards receiving information in a non-text format (i.e. in a video stream).

You can read a summary of the document on eMarketer or if you want the original document you will need to register on the Forbes web site. If video is your thing then it is well worthwhile.


This is what Forbes had to say

A majority of the businesspeople surveyed by Forbes in October 2010 said they watched more online video than a year earlier. Nearly 60% of all respondents said they would watch video before reading text on the same webpage, and 22% said they generally liked watching video more than reading text for reviewing business information. Three-quarters of all executives said they watched work-related videos on business websites at least once a week, and more than half did the same on YouTube.

As you can see from the image, there was a considerable difference in the attitude of the respondents depending on their age.

But hold on a minute. In the methodology section it states that the number of people interviewed was 300. These are spread over three age groups. It doesn’t say how these were split by age group. Let’s say that the divided the sample equally (i.e. a hundred per age group) then these conclusions are based on 100 people aged 50-plus.

Now we know that there is a big difference in the way older people react to technology, from the age of 60-65 onward. So what we have is an average that will cover the tech savvy younger and less tech aware older old. This makes me think you should be careful in drawing too many conclusions from the results. Dick Stroud