Relevancy of the video content to your brand helps link the cognitive side with receiver involvement (Source: Wright, P.L.). In other words, this could help determine whether a user might actively share the video or not. Not only that, but relevancy in terms of alignment of the brand need with the audience reached and context provided by the publisher, increases the chance the right person at the right time is seeing your video (Source: Gigaom).

The Evian Baby advertising campaigns are an excellent example of this. According to Evian, there is a history of its brand being connected with babies which dates back to 1935. Evian was first recommended as the perfect water for babies in France back then, and still to this day it is the number one water used by mothers for the same reason due to the pH-neutral mineral composition (Source: International Business Times).

Evian’s “Roller Babies” campaign in 2009 currently holds the official Guinness World Record for most viral video of all time (Source: Business Insider). This year, they are back with their “Baby & Me” campaign and if the views on YouTube  and mentions on Twitter are any indication of this year’s campaign success, Evian is well on their way to another viral video success.

Preview Networks is delighted to have been involved in contributing to the campaign’s audience relevancy and reach outside of YouTube on premium publisher sites in 11 different countries in addition to a dynamic image creation on top of the custom player created specifically for YouTube. A combination of on and off YouTube syndication strategy ensured the campaign received maximum exposure. However, at the end of the day sometimes great content speaks for itself.

About Preview Networks

Preview Networks is a content marketing platform for brands and content aggregation and syndication platform for publishers. We provide the tools for brands to centrally distribute and manage marketing and PR content across media destinations, devices, and commerce platforms; allowing media partners to automate content acquisition delivering audience and advertising revenue growth. Acquired by Rightster in February 2013, our combined offering strengthens video distribution, marketing, and monetisation services globally.

Fashion Weeks have turned into a social event offline in many cities and Sydney is no exception. This year’s focus is on public engagement with the Spring Summer 2013/14 runway shows live-streamed on a giant screen in outdoor pedestrian mall Martin Place with a pop-up bar nearby (Source: smh.com.au). In terms of online activity, the designers are also focused on the consumer by offering live-streams of the shows on their websites for the first time, as shown here by Camilla & Marc, who opened up the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia (#MBFWA) on Monday. In addition to runway show availability online, local ecommerce site JASU.com is offering pre orders of the fashions online, many of which will not be available for months in retail stores (Source: Rightster).

How long the Spring Summer 2013/14 collections will be available for pre order online is unknown, but we have seen this sort of fashion innovation before by none other than digital innovator Burberry who we have blogged about many times in the past. In the September 2012 runway shows in New York, Burberry offered guests from over 35 events to be able to purchase the runway collection exclusively for one week immediately after the show, or eight weeks before the products went on sale around the world (Source: Forbes).

Runway shows are moving from exclusive fashion events for a select audience to marketing and sales opportunities for the designers and online audience. While this is all very exciting for the average consumer and digital marketers alike, there are some fashion critics that argue that “live video could ruin fashion week and leave us with ugly clothes” (Source: The Atlantic.com). Their fear is that by allowing video of the runway shows online, there will be no more seasons or fashion weeks (Apparel Executives.com). Any time there is innovation and change there will always be resistance, but those first movers who embrace it will have the chance to reap the benefits and lessens learned, pushing them further ahead of the fashion innovation curve.

About Preview Networks

Preview Networks is a content marketing platform for brands and content aggregation and syndication platform for publishers. We provide the tools for brands to centrally distribute and manage marketing and PR content across media destinations, devices, and commerce platforms; allowing media partners to automate content acquisition delivering audience and advertising revenue growth. Acquired by Rightster in February 2013, our combined offering strengthens video distribution, marketing, and monetisation services globally.

Netflix has been said to use Big Data to predict the shows success before it even began using algorithms combining the popularity of director David Fincher and actor Kevin Spacey and using peak period and content type data streams (Source: The New York Times.com). However, it has also been argued that Big Data can only report past preferences and not predict what people will like in the future. According to John Landgraf of FX Networks, number-crunching would never have predicted the success of shows like The Sopranos, South Park, and Mad Men for example (Source: NYTimes.com).

Does the same theory apply to music? As a personal user of Spotify myself I get huge amounts of satisfaction by using their radio service based on an artist I like to find and listen to new music. Why wouldn’t Spotify then use data from their 5 million paying subscribers and 20 million active users to begin producing their own music based on consumer preferences (Source: Spotify.com)? Why the move to online video? While we know it’s a hot space to be in, the competition is tough and one could question whether this would fragment the landscape even more. Many a musical artist has been found and even discovered via YouTube (e.g. Justin Bieber) which combines both video and music, so how Spotify will distinguish themselves by creating original content remains to be seen (Source: Mashable).

While the Netflix move and Spotify news are all very exciting to speculate about, brands have been producing their own video content for some time. We all know about the emergent trend of brands becoming more like media companies, particularly with the production and distribution of online video (Source: Preview Networks Blog). Major fashion labels like Chanel and popular consumer products such as Red Bull have been producing their own content marketing for years, distinguishing themselves from advertising centric strategies. Even B2B companies are joining the ranks of online producers with Rightster Studios’ launch of their online comedy football show “Off The Ball” which can be seen on YouTube and ESPN making their model more of a B2B2C (Source: Rightster.com). Instead of physical products or subscriptions however, the break-even point lies in distribution and advertising.

About Preview Networks

Preview Networks is a content marketing platform for brands and content aggregation and syndication platform for publishers. We provide the tools for brands to centrally distribute and manage marketing and PR content across media destinations, devices, and commerce platforms; allowing media partners to automate content acquisition delivering audience and advertising revenue growth. Acquired by Rightster in February 2013, our combined offering strengthens video distribution, marketing, and monetisation services globally.

Image courtesy of pcworld.com.mx

For a slow holiday week, there are a couple of big news stories that could potentially change the landscape of the online video space. It could all be speculation, but anyone that pays attention to what’s happening in online video or is in charge of digital marketing for their organisations should probably take note nonetheless.

The Stories:

On March 25th the Business Insider and Fast Company both released stories about major players looking to do some interesting things with video. First up is Spotify, the digital music service that allows users to play music wherever and whenever they are online, via computer, tablet, or mobile, for a monthly fee. The service also has a social element to it which allows users to create playlists, see what their friends are listening to, and share great new song discoveries. While Spotify is popular with many consumers, their margins are relatively low due to the fact that they have to pay the music labels each time a user listens to a song. Therefore, they are looking for ways to create exclusive content to increase their margins and turning to video. Whether that means they become another on-demand video service such as Netflix or HBO creating successful series such as House of Cards or Sex and the City remains to be seen (Source: Business Insider).

Another interesting development in the online video space this week revolves around Yahoo. They are in talks to buy Dailymotion, a relatively small YouTube competitor which, according to Fast Company proves “that the future of the Internet lies squarely in video” (Source: Fast Company). The article makes some pretty impressive points in terms of how the web is shifting from text to online video which makes the potential Dailymotion purchase by Yahoo all the more interesting. While YouTube is for the moment the “single point of upload and playback for web video” other major players such as Facebook, AOL, and Amazon have made an impact in the video space. Most notably for those of us in the video syndication space, is AOL’s revenue jump in part due to their 5Min acquisition.  This has allowed them to build a video network with a mix of created, curated, and live video with the ”understanding that they need to be both a destination and a distributor of video to third party sites” (Source: Fast Company).

The Trends:

The three trends the Dailymotion acquisition and/or the Spotify video business model move could validate for the growing popularity of the use of online video revolve around: audience, devices, and money. The holy trinity for lack of a better term. Video drives website traffic and the increasing use of mobile devices increases the use of video, which ultimately brings in advertising revenues. Here are a few fun facts to chew on keeping those trends in mind:

Audience: The sum of all forms of video (TV, video on demand [VoD], Internet, and P2P) will be approximately 86 percent of global consumer traffic by 2016. (Cisco)

Devices: 93% of smartphone users use their devices in the home, and almost 50% of users watch videos on their smartphones. 90% of smartphone searches result in an action such as a purchase or a visit to a business. (Google Blog, April 2011)

Money: Online video is the fastest growing ad format in 2012 with nearly 55% growth. (eMarketer, January 2012). The online video industry will reach $28.72 billion in 2017, soaring from the $3.79 billion recorded in 2010 and the $11.14 billion expected in 2012. (Digital TV Research). Source: Fast Company

About Preview Networks

Preview Networks is a content marketing platform for brands and content aggregation and syndication platform for publishers. We provide the tools for brands to centrally distribute and manage marketing and PR content across media destinations, devices, and commerce platforms; allowing media partners to automate content acquisition delivering audience and advertising revenue growth. Acquired by Rightster in February 2013, our combined offering strengthens video distribution, marketing, and monetisation services globally.

With over 5,000 videos and 50,000 photos, Red Bull Media house has become a case example of the emerging trend of brands becoming more like media companies (Source: Mashable, Preview Networks Blog). Digital content has become the currency that drives audience, engagement and eventually revenue opportunities. It begins with the development of a good story and then capturing content worth sharing (Source: Econsultancy). Whenever there is interesting content, it increases the options a brand has to capitalise on it according to the Content Marketing Maturity Model from Altimeter Group (Source: Mashable). However, the key is subtlety, or developing contextually relevant content around the brand itself.

“Red Bull has introduced its content marketing around and about the product, but it is never directly correlated to the drink itself. Nobody is going to go to a website and spend 45 minutes looking at video about a drink. But Red Bull has aligned its brand unequivocally and consistently with extreme sports and action. They are number-one at creating content so engaging that consumers will spend hours with it, or at least significant minutes” Rebecca Lieb, Altimeter Group.

The energy drinks latest adrenaline-junkie event series is the Cliff Diving World Series 2013 events happening around the globe. It kicks off in France in May, stops by our very own in Denmark in June, and continues onto Portugal, Italy, USA, UK, Brazil and ending in Thailand in October (Source: RedBull.com). Check out the video above for a taste of that great content marketing everyone is raving about which we have syndicated to sports and entertainment publishers in Denmark such as On Side, Kino.dk, and EkstraBladet.

About Preview Networks

Preview Networks is a content marketing platform for brands and content aggregation and syndication platform for publishers. We provide the tools for brands to centrally distribute and manage marketing and PR content across media destinations, devices, and commerce platforms; allowing media partners to automate content acquisition delivering audience and advertising revenue growth. Acquired by Rightster in February 2013, our combined offering strengthens video distribution, marketing, and monetisation services globally.

Brand Marketing

One of the big trends on the rise is brand marketing. Why is marketing your entire brand becoming the preferred method over simply pushing a product? It’s because brand-based marketing is more appealing to social users. You can be a professional business, all about the sale, but still be about customer service, trust and loyalty, and offering people something of value. But advertising products cannot get this message across; only your brand image can.

Mobile Social Use

Another huge trend out there is social mobile usage. Because so many social sites are playing directly to the mobile crowd, the average mobile user has a great experience logging on via their iPhone or Galaxy or tablet. The graphics are great, the content and interface is typically streamlined, and they can access this material anywhere they have a signal. That’s exactly why catering to a mobile market is a trend you should think about following.

Real-Time Data and Third-Party Apps

Receiving your data in real-time to make corrections is something that’s trending in a big way, and that’s coupled with Facebook advancements and third-party apps that enable campaign splitting and instant monitoring to improve your overall social network advertising methods. Using more tools to reach more people and the ability to track your results more accurately and in live time is a self-explanatory trend.

Action-Oriented Campaigns

The type of campaign that’s becoming more popular on sites like Facebook is an action-oriented campaign, wherein you seek to induce actions from people. This all ties in with brand-building and relationship-building. By inducing actions, it enables you to separate your fans and other visitors and to more directly drive traffic into a conversion funnel. Having each separate piece of material drive a user toward making an action isn’t as fragmented as it seems. It all ties in with the greater point of building up an interested user base.

Why You Need to Follow these Trends

As you can see from the trends themselves, they’re helping people come together more efficiently. They’re helping advertisers to target markets more effectively. They focus on everything from basic connectivity and a wider reach to specifically targeting users in an area or by their profile page. Following these trends is how you’ll ultimately succeed in social media marketing if you’re a small business. Just remember that these few trends listed are far from the only trends out there. Keep up on your research and pay attention to the market. When it comes to social media, emerging trends can soon become the norm.

About Preview Networks

Preview Networks is a content marketing platform for brands and content aggregation and syndication platform for publishers. We provide the tools for brands to centrally distribute and manage marketing and PR content across media destinations, devices, and commerce platforms; allowing media partners to automate content acquisition delivering audience and advertising revenue growth. Acquired by Rightster in February 2013, our combined offering strengthens video distribution, marketing, and monetisation services globally.

About the Author

Eric Taylor is a social media enthusiast, business developer and a freelance writer for Qwaya, a Facebook ad campaign tool. As a guest blogger, Eric’s opinions are his own and do not necessarily represent those of Preview Networks.

Where articles or blog posts in the past may have speculated on future trends to come in regards to pay-TV, the Informa report shows hard numbers for the first time since the launch of the industry in the 1980s. ”In total there were 92.6mn pay-TV subscribers in Western Europe by the end of last year, according to Informa, with a total of 384,000 lost during the course of 2012″ (Source: IP&TV News). The majority of the loses were in Spain and Italy which one could speculate might have more to do with economic conditions versus industry trends. Regardless, pay-TV revenues were forecasted to remain flat between 2011-2016 by a report by Digital TV Research in 2011 (Source: Broadband TV News). Was that report premature or is this just a sign of the times? Will the number of pay-TV subscribers continue to fall in 2013 or go back up once economic conditions improve?

While various reports indicate that consumers are simultaneously online with laptop, tablet, and mobile devices while watching TV, whether those 384,000 former pay-TV subscribers get used to the various digital options available for their viewing pleasure remains to be seen (Source: Preview Networks Blog, eMarketer). Either way, the industry seems to be prepared for this trend. Around the same time the Informa report was released, Nielsen announced that they are redefining their ‘television’ measurement mechanisms to include non-traditional sources of TV viewing such as Internet-connected devices like game consoles and tablets. These changes will take affect during the 2013-14 television season beginning in September (Source: The Hollywood Reporter, MediaPost). Interesting timing indeed!

New to the debate? Here are some other posts we have done you may be interested in: The Connected TV Debate and To Plug or Unplug: The Internet TV Question.

About Preview Networks

Preview Networks is a content marketing platform for brands and content aggregation and syndication platform for publishers. We provide the tools for brands to centrally distribute and manage marketing and PR content across media destinations, devices, and commerce platforms; allowing media partners to automate content acquisition delivering audience and advertising revenue growth. Acquired by Rightster in February 2013, our combined offering strengthens video distribution, marketing, and monetisation services globally.

A recent blog post from iStrategy gives a good introduction to how the seasonal fashion weeks work for those marketers used to reading about digital media content. Kate Magrath makes a very important point in her post which is “the gap between the high-end fashion houses and well-known high-street stores is beginning to lessen” which opens up an entirely new audience for consuming this content online. This makes the digital savvy consumer a smarter shopper, while also building a link between brand and consumer online as well as offline (Source: iStrategy Blog).

We have written about and complimented both Burberry and Ralph Lauren in past blog posts for their digital innovation addressing the emerging role of “brands as media companies” and it appears the rest of the industry is catching up. At least when it comes to the fashion week runway shows. In coordination with IMG Fashion and Rightster, live streams were available for both New York and London Fashion Week (LFW), while video on demand (VOD) was, and is currently available for Milan and Paris for premium publishers in our network throughout Europe.

The Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Fall 2013 in New York received record numbers in terms of online turnout for this season’s shows, increasing traffic by 170%, making it the largest audience delivered over the five seasons Mercedes-Benz has been live streaming their shows (Source: IMG, Rightser). For LFW, Rightster partnered with the British Fashion Council and managed their YouTube channel where content was shared to various social sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest (Source: Rightster, iStrategy).

Where there is audience, there is also advertising opportunity. While traffic numbers are still being collected for the Milan and Paris shows, it will be interesting to see how many monetisation opportunities were also available across all of the “Big 4.” A win-win-win for consumer, brand, and publisher.

About Preview Networks

Preview Networks is a content marketing platform for brands and content aggregation and syndication platform for publishers. We provide the tools for brands to centrally distribute and manage marketing and PR content across media destinations, devices, and commerce platforms; allowing media partners to automate content acquisition delivering audience and advertising revenue growth. Acquired by Rightster in February 2013, our combined offering strengthens video distribution, marketing, and monetisation services globally.

However, when it comes to accessing The Oscars award show itself, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences doesn’t make it that easy for the average viewer online. Even though the show is set in the U.S., its popularity is increasingly global, as are movie lovers worldwide. While most countries have a real-time television broadcast, the Oscars app only works for U.S. residents. As an American living and working in Europe, this has been a challenge for not only shows like the Oscars but many other entertainment events offered only in the U.S. Which begs the question, when will international audiences and online opportunities begin to be recognised by the industry? Particularly when the “second screen” is quickly gaining momentum and works in coordination with television, as we saw from the many Super Bowl offline online strategy examples.

The Associated Press (AP) has made swift steps in the right direction by offering a live-stream of the red carpet event with former E! host Michelle Marie scheduled for distribution with major publishers in Europe. After all, for many of us average viewers and movie lovers, the red carpet is part of the overall experience. We are proud to be working with Rightster and AP as the rights holder, to offer this to our premium publisher network. For more information on which publisher sites in your country will be offering the red carpet live-stream, contact your local country manager. For those that want to have a little fun pre-show, Google has made a destination website dedicated to the Oscars recapping the best movies of 2012 and other fun games (Source: The Next Web).

About Preview Networks

Preview Networks is a content marketing platform for brands and content aggregation and syndication platform for publishers. We provide the tools for brands to centrally distribute and manage marketing and PR content across media destinations, devices, and commerce platforms; allowing media partners to automate content acquisition delivering audience and advertising revenue growth. Acquired by Rightster in February 2013, our combined offering strengthens video distribution, marketing, and monetisation services globally.

Founded in May 2011, Rightster has become YouTube’s ninth-largest partner and its second fastest growing one (Source: FT.com). The deal extends Rightster’s YouTube services across Europe making Rightster the leading entertainment distributor in key  markets. Rightster will welcome the addition of Preview Network’s client roster that includes many major movie distributors, mainstream media agencies, and brands such as Disney, Havaianas, MTV, Peugeot and Sony. The deal will allow Rightster to extend its YouTube management and direct media sales capabilities while also enriching and strengthening the solutions it offers to the movie industry.

Rightster has grown to employ 220 people in 12 offices from the UK to India, the US and Australia, with revenues of $1.5m a month as of December 2012. The company has secured the rights to offer live and on demand Australian Football League games outside Australia and New Zealand. Other customers include IMG Fashion, which has given Rightster exclusive rights to stream the high-profile fashion week shows in New York live online and ITN, for which it distributed footage of the royal wedding to 1.5m viewers in 12 countries. Rightster will manage subscription packages as well as the technology required to provide content to computers, tablets and smartphones (Source FT.com).

Charlie Muirhead, Founder and CEO of Rightster comments, “Our mission is to simplify the complex business of online video by providing the very best distribution, marketing and monetisation services in the industry. The acquisition of Preview Networks strengthens Rightster’s YouTube video syndication strategy by providing access to local networks in Europe and will allow us to extend the reach of our solutions for Fashion, News and Sports industries.”

Andy Chen, CEO of Preview Networks, comments “The Rightster acquisition is a significant milestone in the story of Preview Networks. Over the past two years we have successfully leveraged our film and entertainment content syndication expertise into the branded content and online advertising space, where video will continue to evolve and dominate. This compliments Rightster’s verticals and overall global strategy. We couldn’t be happier to join forces with the Rightster team.”

About Preview Networks

Preview Networks is a content marketing platform for brands and content aggregation and syndication platform for publishers. We provide the tools for brands to centrally distribute and manage marketing and PR content across media destinations, devices, and commerce platforms; allowing media partners to automate content acquisition delivering audience and advertising revenue growth.