by Alecia Wright
In our previous blog post, we examined the powerhouses YouTube and Facebook and how their online video analytics work. Without question, these are robust platforms that can help optimize your video marketing campaigns. However, despite their popularity, YouTube and Facebook aren’t the only options for video analytics.
Brightcove:
At Matchnode we like Brightcove’s Video Cloud, which “Leverages video analytics for better business decisions.”
Brightcove’s Video Cloud offers:
- Real-time Video Analytics
- Viewership Tracking
- Content Analytics
- Custom Report Creation
We use Brightcove’s Video Cloud for one of our clients, which gives a comprehensive breakdown of the account’s:
Performance (segmented by):
- Video
- Player
- Sources of Traffic
- Display Domain
- Country
- Device
- Device Type
- Device OS
- Day
Engagement and Utilization (segmented by):
- Video
- Player
- Day
Performance Analytics are helpful because we can see total video views, video impressions, and viewed minutes as well as each day. Below we see that the video had highest views on June 9th and 10th, which we can trace back to our ad campaigns:
Here is a visual breakdown of the account’s Sources of Traffic, showing the bulk of traffic coming from referrals with a 94% play rate:
Note the righthand column called “Engagement Score,” which is unique to Brightcove. Engagement Score is a calculation based on the views recorded for each 100th of the video over the number of unique views. For example, an Engagement Score of 80 listed above is greater than a score of 41. You can also see that a higher play rate correlates to a higher engagement score, which makes sense.
Brightcove is a credible tool in the industry of online video analytics. It offers rich insights that are just as valuable as YouTube or Facebook video analytics platforms.
Vimeo
Vimeo is another video-sharing website where users can upload, share, and view videos. Vimeo is known for its high definition videos, lack of ads, and supportive community. In fact, in 2007 Vimeo became the first video-sharing site to support consumer high definition playback. It’s not just about viewing in high definition: Vimeo is the first Web site to make HD available for user-generated videos.
Vimeo’s community is impressive, with 35 million registered users and 170 million unique visitors per month.
Advanced Statistics for video analytics are limited to Vimeo Pro and and Video Plus members, with yearly fees $59.99 for Pro and $199 for Plus, respectively. Benefits include a breakdown of general, embedded, and geographic statistics:
General Statistics break down comments, likes, total loads, and total plays by week, month, year, or all-time. Here is a monthly example from Vimeo’s website:
The Embed feature is unique in that it shows the domain sources of traffic of Vimeo videos embedded in other websites such as Tumblr and Facebook. Below we see that Facebook and Myspace have the highest total loads in the yellow bars:
Like YouTube, Vimeo also has geographic statistics of where your video is most viewed:
Overall, Vimeo is a specialized resource for filmmaking lovers with robust statistical analytics available to broaden audience reach. Vimeo is perfect for anyone looking to launch a high-quality, creative video on a budget.
Social Video: The world of Snapchat, Instagram, and Periscope/Meerkat
Social video platforms like Snapchat, Instagram, Periscope, and Meerkat are undoubtedly rising in popularity. Video marketing on social networks is becoming a key marketing strategy. However, it is important to note that the above social platforms either do not have video analytics or have very limited metrics.
Snapchat
Snapchat has 100 million users, with 60% containing the coveted Millennial and tween age group. “Snapchat Live” stories promote cities, events, and festivals. For example, the weekend of June 12th in Chicago featured Blackhawks games, Blues Fest, Rib Fest, and Spring Awakening Music Festival.
In January 2015, Snapchat debuted the “Discover” button, which allows brands to show 10 second video ads that cost $0.02 – $0.10 per view. Snapchat ads are seen anywhere from 500,000 times a day to a million times a day from an engaged audience, with publishers sharing a portion of revenue with Snapchat.
For example, the women’s magazine Cosmopolitan posts videos of feature articles. Snapchat, however, lacks a third-party analytics tool, meaning marketers must process their data manually. Marketers using Snapchat can see the total Snap views but not a breakdown of viewer demographics such as gender, age, or location. Additionally, these metrics are only available for 24 hours, so marketers must take note of this information quickly.
How do marketers using Snapchat define successful campaigns with limited metrics? This is certainly an avenue to explore in the near future.
In June 2013, Instagram became another video platform, integrating videos with its previously photo-exclusive app. Unlike competitors such as Vine (6 second videos), Instagram offers 15 seconds of video footage.
Brands know the value of advertising on Instagram:
- Instagram has 200 million users
- Engagement on Instagram is 15 times that of Facebook’s, with users spending an average of 257 minutes per month.
- Instagram Paid Social ads have helped retailers increase ad recall by 32% and brand message lift by 10%.
Instagram’s ad staging tool, released in late 2014, gives marketers real-time data about their campaigns: impressions and reach, weekly visual summaries, and how the target audience responds. Below is an example of Graham’s Coffee, targeting males and females ages 25-54. The campaign ads have strong impressions (400,000 each) with active engagement via likes.
(source: http://blog.business.instagram.com/post/95314562151/businesstools)
The above Instagram analytics breaks down a visual campaign. Instagram video analytics gives an active summary of engagement totals of photos vs. videos as well as performance over time.
(source:http://simplymeasured.com/blog/2013/06/24/fully-filtered-new-instagram-video-analytics-from-simply-measured/#i.1qen893xyie8xu)
Ironically enough, Instagram founder Kevin Systrom’s announcement of Instagram video was uploaded on Vimeo, as referenced above. Video platforms are announced on other video platforms! With its high quality videos and extensive community, Vimeo does well as a creative network for filmmakers.
Periscope (owned by Twitter)
Periscope is a smartphone application that lets you broadcast live video, allowing others to discover your world. It has been called “consensual voyeurism.” When you log in, Periscope gives a grid of live broadcasts of people you follow. When you start streaming from your camera, your followers get a notification to tune in and they can watch in the app or from a web browser. Viewers can also comment or leave “hearts” on the livestream they’re watching. Additionally, you can save your live stream for up to 24 hours after you post it.
Meerkat
Meerkat, a livestream video app similar to Periscope, launched on February 27, 2015 and quickly gained traction. This year, it was named music festival South by Southwest’s “sweetheart,” and Jimmy Fallon even livestreamed his life on the app.
Meerkat is easy to use and Twitter friendly, linked to your account. Meerkat tweets when you’re live streaming, and you can make comments on the live stream via Twitter. Also, everything on Meerkat is live (no reruns). Downsides are that Meerkat is limited: you cannot save live streams and it has had spam complaints in the past.
Shortly after its launch, Twitter shut down Meerkat’s access to its “social graph.” Previously, Twitter connected Meerkat users who mutually followed each other on Twitter. In this way, Meerkat users could grow their network. Twitter quickly put an end to this. Now, Meerkat users can still log in and distribute their live streams via Twitter, but the automatic “follow” option of Twitter’s social graph has been disabled. Also, Meerkat followers will not get an automatic notification when someone is live streaming.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the increasing importance of online video analytics is apparent in the marketing community. Videos are a popular form of media, with active engagement. As a result, understanding relevant metrics behind your viewers is essential to crafting your campaigns. With the immense popularity of social videos such as Instagram and Snapchat, hopefully their video analytics will be up and running soon.