BtoB – Online Video Takes Off

Posted by jathey on July 2, 2010 0 Comments

rocketship

Articles touting the benefits of online video and research showing that online video is blasting off are a dime a dozen, so when an article from BtoB entitled “Online Video Takes Off” came across my desk my first inclination was to ignore it. I get it – every one watches videos online now. There are tons of benefits to it. Tell me something I don’t know.

But this article had one very important thing going for it: I soon found out it was my CEO who had passed me the article and, as you can imagine, my desire to read the article skyrocketed! The article turned out to be very good and had some pretty telling leading indicators in there that this online video craze is still in its infancy. For example, one of the biggest obstacles I see to every small business having video on their website is the cost associated with producing high quality video. Sure you can buy a webcam for $29 at walmart, but is a video of you in a cubicle with the cleaning staff behind you really the type of image you want to portray?

Luckily that cost has come down substantially. FTA: “Back in 2000, Sybase spent an average of $250,000 to produce one video, which included hiring a creative agency, using actors and voice talent, filming with high-quality video cameras and editing.” A quarter of a million-dollars per video? Wow! Lots of small businesses would be happy to have $250,000 in revenue in these times, let alone cash to burn on unproven marketing. Luckily these days that same company produces their videos for only $500 a video. What changed? Instead of high-quality video cameras they use lower-quality, but still HD cameras that are sub-$300 these days. Instead of paid actors they use their own executives, customers and employees.

Best line of the article? “The ROI on these is so high, because the ‘I’ part of the ROI is so low.”

Read the full article here.