Electronic Retailer - May 2012 - 36

Using Long-Form Infomercials
As much as producers and marketers love their own creative work, it is important to understand the difference in online viewing habits versus television, at least for now. Online viewing is more of a “snacking mentality.” Video snacking is a term for watching 1-minute to 5-minute video clips rather than the full program, or meal. YouTube is the video snack capital of the world. More than 10 billion video snacks are served weekly now, most of them less than 4 minutes. It is difficult getting audiences to sit still online to view content for 28:30, let alone sitting to view a half an hour advertisement. Forget about the false notion of build it and they will come. This sort of thinking was great for the internet circa 1999, but those reading this should be folks who want to make money. It is enormously difficult to scale views of long-form infomercials.

use real people from customer service department and our product managers go on camera for a “folksy” style.

bait is that you can generate a lot of traffic; however, the intention of that traffic is to watch video snacks and not purchase – a definite negative.

Video Content as Bait
The line between entertainment and selling has been pioneered by Time Life with its great infomercials selling classic rock music collections. Another noteworthy pioneer, Guthy-Renker, has been selling vintage classic television programs such as the old Dean Martin Roasts. The idea behind these was to blur the line between entertainment and solicitation. Well, online this is also being tested. Branders are ahead of DR folks in this category with “branded entertainment” productions. The idea is to embed the brand messaging inside the videos, using entertainment as bait. Our e-commerce company PulseTV has used licensed video to attract clicks/visitors and entice them to purchase. We have done this with Elvis video clips being streamed on a landing page selling branded Elvis Ear Buds. We generated a lot of traffic, but sales were miserable. We were successful with Amos n’ Andy video clips selling the old Amos n’ Andy video collection. We sold about 10,000 units in 10 months before it ran its course. Not a home run, but a modest success. The advantage of using video content as

What about Distribution?
OK, once you cross the Rubicon and decide to utilize existing video assets or, even better, create new ones for the online experience, how are you going to get your videos seen? Creating landing pages on your site is primary. This helps conversion rates, but it is hardly scalable. So how can you generate more views? The first thing is forget about thinking that your videos will go viral. You have a better chance of winning the lottery. Distribution is actually the most difficult part of an online video strategy. You can upload the videos on YouTube of course, and you should. YouTube generates more than 60 billion video views per month, and more than 48 hours of new content is uploaded every minute. While uploading to YouTube is free, you get exactly what you pay for here. You will be lucky to get 1,000 views per video per month, and, worse, the click-to-order feature seems like it was designed by the same powers that designed a camel. This is not a serious DR distribution strategy … at least not yet. Working out PI deals (CPA for those online folks) is great in theory, but publisher websites are not eager to jump on this bandwagon because online audiences often view videos of products and then “shop” for it cheaper somewhere else, and these consumers usually find your product discounted online for 25 percent to 35 percent off from what you are trying to sell it on television. Nobody has cracked the video distribution code for video ads at a costefficient mode that scales. And what I mean by scale is having your videos seen by millions of people. Utilizing video is a game changer when it comes to conversions, but we need the best and brightest minds working on distribution. This is ultimately where the pot of gold lies and separating the hype from reality is essential. Otherwise, you will only be digging for fool’s gold.

Video Demonstrations
These are short vignettes that feel like HSN or QVC. Zappos and our own e-commerce site – PulseTV.com – use this style. The danger though is time creep. You want to keep these video demos under 2 minutes if at all possible. LocalDealFinder.com has a trick to keep people watching; it uses sexy models. We

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Electronic Retailer - May 2012

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