Contribution. Sharing. Interests. Passion. Talent

The new faces of social media are sharing their passion and talent in forums that make the seemingly impossible possible. How do you go beyond words to express your love of something? How do you connect your contributions to those from people in over 100 countries simultaneously? How do we obfuscate technology and deliver community experiences that create engagement levels never before seen and at the same time give people a reason to stay up late, practice their potential and ultimately share this with the world?

We do it by delivering an experience that resists the urge to describe itself, and instead offer a single point of entry and action (similar to the iPod 'wheel' or the Google Search button) that allows for a common and shared experience that is immediately accessible - in this case "Create Your Own".

I give you first exhibit A - the new faces of social media - and if you click on any one of them (below) you will see what they shared just minutes or hours ago at the Jonas Brothers Vocal Booth. Forget the technology for a minute and focus on what was going through the minds of these very passionate community members from all around the world as they sang along with their favorite boy band, crush in, and hearts out.

Consider a few things as you ponder this - this wall of faces represents a very small 1-2% of the actual tens of thousands of participants who engaged in the experience. Beyond the bravery to share their version of a song sung by their heroes with their heroes and thousands of fans who are tuning in to watch the versions (many visitors now watch as many as 20 or more of the videos) they also overcame network, technology, bandwidth and hardware issues that would daunt most of the leaders in this space that are more than twice the age of our contributors here. It is one thing to soapbox, but it is indeed quite another level of sharing to sing when you are up on it.

These days we too often focus on the why or the how and not the what of social media. And when we think about the who, it would be great to focus on who really benefits from all the work, theory, technology and effort that goes into building great experiences.

These are a few of the new faces of social media. As a parent we can be proud of our children safely sharing their talent and passion with the world at large, and in my very humbled opinion they are worthy of nothing less than a standing ovation of heartfelt applause for their considerable effort and passion.

(reposted from http://bitpakkit.com )

experiences · faces · Jonas Brothers · Overlay.TV · sing · social media · technology · Video · youth

Not only is ELLE Canada the online home of the synonymously titled print mag (and the Canadian gals fashion bible), it is now the home of interactive videos, thanks to a partnership with Overlay.TV. For many print publications who have forayed into the dot-com fashion arena, video is becoming an increasingly huge part of the make-up of these sites, everything from runway shows, to how-tos, to behind the scenes footage, and ELLE Canada is no exception. What's lacking from most online video, particularly fashion and style based video, is the interactivity, the ability to find out what products they are using, info about the clothes and accessories, and the ability to shop. Now ELLE Canada, being a trailblazer of sorts in the fashion universe, is one of the first dedicated online fashion sites to offer this level of interactivity. You can now shop, find out info,  and much more, all while watching a video. It's just a matter of time before the rest of the online fashion community follows suit. Watch the video below and experience the interactivity for yourself.

ELLE Canada · interactivity · online magazines · Overlay.TV · partners · shop · Transcontinental · Video

Overlay.TV is proud to preview the first episode of The OverView (click for all episodes) with Amber MacArthur, our new weekly series for online video fans.  Enjoy and be sure to leave any suggestions or feedback in the comments.

In this embed I have disabled the create, on/off function, and carousel to give an example of a cleaner implementation of our player.

Thanks for watching!

creator · eepybird · lighting · online · overlay · Overlay.TV · overview · stickynotes · The OverView · Video · viral

One of the overlooked features of Overlay.TV is how easy it is to integrate us with your existing analytics package, be it Omniture, FireClick or any package that utilizes transparent gifs to deliver the tracking pixel.  This can be done in a couple of minutes to any video, and of course you have the option of adding other widgets to the same video (product, clipart, text, etc).

To do this you first need to generate the report or goal in your analytics package and determine the increments of engagement.  For example, if you have a 3 minute video, you probably want to measure how many people made it to 1 minute, 2 minutes and 3 minutes respectively.  Whatever page you embed the video in will record the number of views the player gets, and the player itself will measure how many people hit play.  This last stat is available in any Overlay.TV video by clicking on the info pane at the bottom right.

Once you have generated the 3 pixels, you simply advance your video to the appropriate point in the timeline and open the Link widget.  In the Image field, paste in your transparent pixel.  Complete this for each of the pixels you have created.  Now you go ahead and embed your video in your page, start building traffic, and let the pixel and your analytics package do the rest.  To get the most of your experiment I would create a custom report that graphs usage statistic across the 3 pixels.  This will measure drop-off engagement etc.

If you are using other widgets like the products in our affiliate catalogues I would suggest placing them near that pixel, either right before or right after based on what you want to measure or understand better.  This will then give you a map between engagement and revenue or referrals, which will make your report even more powerful from an ROI perspective.

I am planning on building an example of this with a report - so if you would like me to do it to your video, leave a comment here with a link to your video and a way to contact you and I will work with you on this.   If you have other ideas or analytics issues you are trying to sort out, let me know and I would be more than willing to work with you on them.

analytics · engagement · tracking pixel · Video

For a lot of reasons, I've been thinking a lot about video lately - not only in terms of how it can help build brands and community through social media and PR, but specifically how we can understand what the results of this brand and community building mean.

In most cases, unless you're spending a ton of money on analytics packages and hosting videos internally, you get one metric about your online video efforts - views.  In many cases, what a "view" means is not even particularly clear - is it based on people watching a whole video or just the first few seconds?  How are offsite views counted?  In general, measuring views of a video is a blunt metric that gives a general idea of how many impressions a video gets.  Once again, we're measuring eyeballs.

Katie Paine, of KDPaine and Partners, often calls out measurement companies and consultant for focusing on impressions in online media, when what really matters is action, and I think it's just as important for understanding how online video fits into the architecture of persuasion.  Consider which is the more valuable insight - knowing the number of people who watched some part of a video, or knowing how many took action at a specific point in a video, and the percentage of people who took action as a result of one message versus another.

One of the reasons that this has been on my mind in the past few months is due in large part to the fact that one of my clients - Overlay.TV - is making this type of measurement possible by allowing content producers to make any video interactive by adding links, text, animation or even video-in-video and in-video chatting.

So now, in addition to measuring impressions, by simply adding a few elements to a video, content producers can measure, through their existing analytics software, how many of those viewers actually took action and visited a site, purchased a product through an affiliate, or entered the sales funnel as a direct result of the video.  By using the chat widget, they can also gauge real-time reactions to a video and begin to understand more about the content they're producing and how it relates to the audience.

Overlay.TV came out of beta late last week, and is now available for public registration.  It currently offers a number of widgets that make it easy to add measurable interactivity to any video in just a few seconds.  If online video is part of your marketing mix, I highly recommend checking it out and experimenting with the tools.  Overlays can be as complex or simple as you need, so it's easy to add a few quick links or create a fully interactive video, and even easier to measure the actions that come out of it.

As online video evolves as a marketing medium, measurement that goes beyond impressions and allows marketers to better understand how a video drives action will be more important than ever.  To see it in action, check the newly-launched Overlay.TV or read about the company on TechCrunch.

[Originally posted at http://www.ryananderson.ca]

kdpaine · measurement · techcrunch · Video

CHOICE - OPT-IN

The original idea for Overlay.TV was conceived while watching my wife watch TV. She would sit down to a line-up of shows that had been PVR'd the night before and be delighted with the fact that the next few hours of her evening would be spent happily viewing the shows she had selected. Of course, there would be the occasional commercial interruption that she would fast forward through but at least it wasn't like the bad old days where she was forced to sit through several minutes of advertisements.

My wife wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary. Everyone I know has their own variation of on-demand content consumption. Some people pause a show when it starts, make dinner and then resume viewing when dinner is done allowing them to skip past all the commercial breaks. Others fill their content plates using clips or full length shows found on video sharing sites, torrents and other peer to peer networks. With the Internet-oriented method of viewing content, users also shun the “traditional” advertising. Banners, pop-ups and the like have very low click through rates and the minute that a video sharing site introduces the television model of interrupting content to show an ad, many of their users become upset and simply move on. For whatever reason, the new generation feels entitled to free content. Free, as in not costing money or time.

The common attribute among these viewers is that they are watching content without paying any attention to the advertising. Traditional advertising models have not kept up with advances in technology and are severely broken. Any new model would need to work in the world where the user expects to watch what they want, when they want it. This was the first ingredient for the idea.

THE CONTENT IS THE AD

The second ingredient was this: Although people will choose to disregard the interruptive type of advertising that has been chosen for them, product placement is still partially working. My wife will watch a video or show and make a comment about the shoes, handbags, hairstyles or the lifestyles of the rich and famous. She might simply be curious about what an item is or she may actually be interested in buying something just like it. Other people have similar thoughts about the things they like to watch from tools, to gadgets to vacations. Given the right timing, the right mood and the opportunity to dig deeper into what is being shown, these people would most certainly either read more about or purchase items on the spot. If the mood or timing isn’t perfect, they might just set the thought aside for another day. If only they knew exactly what thought to set aside. What were those shoes that the celebrity was wearing? What was the name of that resort that the cast of the reality show were staying at? And where can I get me one of those diamond studded circular saws that was used on that home improvement video?

USERS

Assuming that you could come up with an unobtrusive system that allowed people to delve into what they were watching, how would that system know what the objects in the video are? Artificial Intelligence isn't even close to being able to identify objects in video at the detailed level required. Viewers want to know what brand, where it can be purchased and what is comparable. To do that, you need either the people that were involved in creating the content or people who know about the subject matter. That leads me to the third ingredient: the users.

Users would be able to identify, classify, tag and comment on objects inside the content. Users could be professionals working for advertising companies with obvious access to product placement details or they might be outside the advertising world looking to monetize content on their own site. There could also be users looking to be paid to use their familiarity with snowboard gear or their knowledge of fine china in exchange for marking up content. Getting users to identify objects in video would be straightforward in the specialized world we live in. All they would need is an incentive and that was simple too. Since companies pay for referrals, especially when they result in a sale, sharing that money with the user would be the perfect incentive.

CHOICE - OPT-IN. THE CONTENT IS THE AD. USERS.

Building a system that combines those concepts is what we've been doing for the last year and I know you're going to love it. Overlay.TV's model works with today's culture of choice where you get to choose when to watch advertising and what that advertising consists of.

advertising · concept · user-generated · Video