Many leading companies are turning to interactive video as a new type of media to engage customers and meet their digital marketing objectives. A large majority of marketers think that interactive video engages consumers “well” or “very well,” and a further majority, 68%, except that it will continue to grow in importance in contemporary marketing mixes as time goes on.
But what exactly is an interactive video, and how does it work?
If you’ve heard of this new type of video media but aren’t sure what it is or how to use it, we’ve put together this short article so you can understand it further.
Linear versus interactive video
You’re probably most familiar with traditional video, often known as linear video. A linear video starts when you click “play,” and you have the ability to stop, rewind, fast forward, and restart the movie while you’re watching it. This is how linear videos work. There’s not much you can do to engage with a linear movie apart from those few options.
Through the use of various technologies, a viewer may engage with the video material in an interactive video. Users may interact with the video’s content by clicking, dragging, scrolling, hovering, gesturing, and performing other digital activities. This is similar to how users engage with online information.
You may add a variety of features in an interactive video, but the most popular ones are as follows:
- These clickable places in a video may lead a viewer to another web page or display information right inside the video itself, such as product price. Hotspots:
- A 360-degree view allows the viewer to look around in any direction by dragging the video frame.
- There are many branches that a person may take to customize and control what they view.
- Users may submit information such as their name, age, and other personal characteristics in form fields.
- The use of buttons and branching in quizzes results in an evaluation and the display of a unique result at the conclusion of the movie.
With these tools, viewers will have a more pleasant and interactive video experience, making the video more memorable, entertaining, and interactive.
What are the benefits of using interactive video?
In a short period of time, interactive video has established itself as a powerful marketing tool. Twenty percent of marketers claim to have utilized it, and seventy-eight percent of those marketers believe it was a successful approach. In addition, the interactive video will be used by 28% of marketers in 2018. Those figures will continue to rise as companies experiment with new strategies to see which ones work best with their intended market.
The primary reasons why many businesses are including it in their digital media toolkit should help you decide if an interactive video is appropriate for your company.
A lot of people like it
Media that customers want to engage with, like interactive video, are the most effective marketing tactics. The brand and customer behavior both demonstrate its ubiquity. Interactive video is being created by brands at an alarming pace; in fact, 36% of all video content is being produced in this manner. On the other hand, consumers are reacting positively to the interactive video, spending 44 percent more time watching it than linear video.
It can be tracked
For a long time, marketers could only measure the performance of a video by looking at the number of people who watched it. When it comes to proving the worth of their video initiatives, many people struggled since there was no connection between video activity and conversions.
Video metric monitoring has become considerably more powerful because of interactive video. You can now monitor video clicks, examine various branching routes, gather data using video form fields, and a lot more with this new technology. These indicators may be tracked using a variety of technologies. The following are a few well-known instruments:
Interactive video production tool WIREWAX monitors a broad variety of data from the time a video is released, including dwell time, interactions, shares, and ‘add to carts.’
An analytics dashboard integrated into Rapt, a cloud-based video production and publishing platform, tracks user demographics, plays, and routes taken by users.
DilogR, a video hosting platform that connects with CRM and email marketing systems to examine the effect of interactive video on the end-to-end user encounter video player and video management solution Sportful, which uses analytics to monitor video viewer engagement and conversion rates.
It’s a lot more interesting this way
It’s easy to become sidetracked when viewing a linear video. You’re already competing for your audience’s attention, with 87% of viewers using several devices at once. By making watching an interactive experience instead of a passive one, interactive video engages viewers. It leads to a 591 percent increase in user engagement — an opportunity that most businesses simply cannot afford to miss.
It’s a win-win situation
When compared to other forms of digital video advertising, interactive videos convert at a far greater rate. Banner advertising, Google display ads, and YouTube annotations all convert at less than 1% rates. All of those other methods pale in comparison to the interactive video, which converts at a rate of over 11%.
It’ll stick in your mind longer
Users are more likely to remember your brand if they can interact with the information in an interactive video. Viewers who don’t engage with the video are 32 percent more likely to remember it than those who do.
It makes the user happy
Furthermore, interactive video is more pleasurable than linear video on its own. It’s a fantastic approach to give your users a pleasant surprise while they explore an interactive narrative and learn more about your company.
What characteristics distinguish a top-notch video game-like experience?
Despite the fact that interactive video may be used for a wide range of purposes, the greatest examples always have a few characteristics. When deciding how to use this media in your marketing strategy, keep these guidelines in mind.
They make careful use of interaction
Great interactive films are, first and foremost, well-conceived. The end-user must be considered while creating an interactive video, just as you would when designing a digital product or website user interface. If you want to create a fantastic video, don’t include interactive elements just for the sake of including them. In other words, it utilizes interaction to make the user’s experience better, not to impress.
