5 things your online business can accomplish with a premium video platform that it can’t with YouTube

April 13, 2012 No comments »

Guest Post by Meghan Grosso

The debate over whether your business can benefit from video is nonexistent.  With new studies coming out every week on the growing reach of video, it’s clear that if your business has a website, video is an essential.  From 30 second demos to large scale UGC submission contests – the possibilities for capitalizing on the world’s rapidly growing consumption of online video are vast.

What is not always so clear is where your videos should be hosted. YouTube is the obvious option.  After all, even your seven-year-old cousin knows how YouTube works.  Of course, the fact that your seven-year-old cousin is posting videos on YouTube is the first big indication that YouTube may not be the service best suited to your professional content.

Here are five ways that a premium video platform can help your business tap into the full potential of online video that YouTube cannot:

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The 5 Essential Questions to Ask Online Video Hosting Vendors

February 28, 2012 No comments »

The following is a contributed post by Brightcove.

You already know how important it is to choose the best possible online video hosting solution for your business. The right platform will position you to win viewers, convert customers, and make money across every channel and device that matters to consumers. The wrong one will lead to a costly mess that stalls your success for years to come.

But the solutions available present a baffling array of choices in all shapes and sizes. How do you decide? Half the battle is knowing the right questions to ask.

It’s all too easy to get lost in checklists and spreadsheets of features, specifications, and value propositions. To streamline your vendor selection process, start by focusing on the five key criteria that will make or break any online video hosting solution. You’ll quickly find that the vast majority of vendors fall short in at least one area, and usually more.

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Online Video a Big Factor in Auto and Parts Sales for the Super Bowl

February 2, 2012 No comments »

This is a guest post written by Alex Polonsky, car enthusiast and the developer of VidCompare.com

Traditional television advertising is still the dominant way to get your message across when trying to sell a car. Automotive manufactures are relentless in trying to capture as much air time as possible. The grand meccah of tv advertising would be during the Super Bowl, where manufactures give it their all to capture the attention of about 70 million viewers. While this sounds like a lot, their lasting impact might be low. The Super Bowl commercial only lasts about 30 seconds, and is usually only seen once or twice. Manufactures have now started to release their Super Bowl commercials a few weeks early online, to gain viral support. By hosting their commercials as online videos, they can reach an audience for weeks or months as opposed to just a day or two. Some commercials like this Volkswagen commercial has almost 50,000,000 views!

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Don’t Get Left Behind on The Business Video Revlotion

January 13, 2012 No comments »

Business Video Conference

Guest post from Steve VonderHaar of Interactive Media Strategies

At the beginning of a new year, sometimes it pays to pause for a moment and reflect on the basics.

So much is happening in the Business Video sector these days, it can be easy to overlook the fundamental building blocks of what makes video a compelling tool for fostering engaging video communications.

Lots of people like to talk about social media and how to use it to draw viewers to business video content. Others are enamored with the concept of making video available on a mobile basis through users’ tablets and cell phones. Still others get excited about how today’s technology platforms make it possible for almost any desk-bound employee to upload their own videos and distribute them throughout a corporate network.

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2012 Online Video Predictions – OVPs

December 15, 2011 1 comment »

In our third annual OVP Predictions piece we look back on the online video space from a general practitioner’s view (mine) and ahead from a leader’s view (the OVP founders, CEOs, VPs, etc.). It’s been another amazing year filled with record breaking events, ups and downs, foundings and shutterings (neither of which are words) and the addition of 10+ new OVPs. It’s a crowded space indeed, a theme you will see often in the words below. Over the years at VidCompare we’ve watched over 100 platforms ebb and flow with the threat of commoditization while roughly 15 OVPs were acquired or rolled-up into other OVPs, and 13 shut their doors. All this while video viewership continued at a breakneck pace. In September 2011 comscore reported that 182 million U.S. Internet users watched online video content for an average of 19.5 hours per viewer. The total U.S. Internet audience engaged in 39.8 billion video views (Wow).

We’ve seen several OVPs begin to specialize in an attempt to pull away from the pack with one OVP in particular making a unique move into the world of cloud-based application management (Brightcove), while Ooyala honed in on analytics and monetization, RealGravity into the world of advertising and syndication, Unicorn Media and Twistage sharpening their workflow management skills, and Magnify.net dominating the world of curated content.

Enough of the obvious, let’s move onto the interesting stuff. This year we’ve culled together an impressive list of predictions from 10 OVPs, and 2 OVP gurus. Continue on to get the inside scoop from those whom have been in the trenches since the early days and don’t forget to leave your comments.

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