Do hotspots increase engagement with your 360 videos?
Case study summary
- RTV Slovenia, the Slovenian national broadcasting company, uses VR technology to improve engagement with their online content.
- Immersive news viewing has been proven to hold more attention than traditional desktop viewing.
- RTV recorded more than 5,000 views over 48 hours with an average of 2 minutes of engagement time per session.
The challenge
With information saturation, even the online news media organizations need to provide engaging content to keep or grow their market share. RTV Slovenia needed to find a new way to win over millennial news readers. Virtual reality was an opportunity to put people into news stories like never before.
It’s no secret that news media are experimenting with 360 journalism and cinematic virtual reality to tell better stories. Pioneers have demonstrated the power of immersive storytelling. Back in 2012, Nonny de la Peña invoked intense emotional responses in viewers with her groundbreaking film “Hunger in L.A.,” a fully immersive experience that relied on simple, low-resolution computer-generated graphics.
Immersive storytelling can deliver a powerful message and provide more viewer engagement than any other type of digital media before now. The growth and adoption of 360 media, spherical camera sales and increasing consumption of VR stories show us that the market is waking up to the possibilities of this “new” digital medium.
In November 2015, The New York Times became one of the first major media providers to introduce VR storytelling for mass consumption. The news organization launched the first in a series of 360 stories, packaged the series in a mobile app and distributed 1.3 million Google Cardboard viewers to Sunday subscribers. The response was huge — not only from viewers but from other brands scrambling to catch up.
In fact, the NYT VR app was downloaded over 500,000 times and recorded over 1.5 million views with an average of 6 minutes of engagement time per session.
The NYT VR campaign claimed the mobile Grand Prix at the 2016 Cannes Lions. “It went beyond the initial wow factor to unlock levels of empathy and excitement no other medium could,” said mobile category jury president Malcolm Poynton, global chief creative officer of Cheil Worldwide.
Since then, all kinds of big brands have adopted this new medium for telling stories. The Huffington Post acquired RYOT, a VR production studio, and The Guardian, CNN and the BBC have all set up VR departments with strong storytelling capabilities.
In May 2017, RTV Slovenia launched a pilot project with a VR publishing platform. Like many news organizations in Europe, RTV Slovenia wants to use VR storytelling to enrich the experience of readers/viewers.
The producers, Matej Praprotnik (assistant director of radio strategies) and Matjaz Celic (senior motion designer), used the VR platform to build the first interactive VR news source in Slovenia.
The pilot project is a virtual tour of Planica, an Alpine valley in northwestern Slovenia most known as a ski resort. Planica’s pride, Letalnica bratov Gorisek, is the second biggest ski jumping hill in the world, surpassed only by Vikersund in Norway.
The project’s objective was to tell the story of the Planica Ski Jumping Finale through the eyes of the reporters covering it, by allowing the viewer to go behind the scenes to areas that are normally off limits to the public. The film allows the viewer to experience the story either in 360 panoramic mode or inside a VR headset (for a more immersive experience).
The story starts with an introductory message from Slovenian reporter Anja Hlača Ferjančič. She instructs the audience to choose one of two paths to continue the tour. The viewer can either take a closer look at the ramp and TV stands or hop a helicopter flight from Kranjska Gora to the Ponce valley.
The producers combined 360 images and videos and connected them to provide an experience where the viewer chooses where to look. The visuals alone are impressive enough, yet these are enriched by the ability to interact with the story and make decisions that shape the experience.
You can check out the whole Planica 360 VR experience here.
What are the actual stats and results of the experience?
Planica 360:
Dates: Saturday 5/27/2017 and Sunday 5/28/2017
Total 360 media files used: 42
360 video files: 21
360 image files: 21
Total image media views: 5,640
Total story views: 5,640
Total number of hotspots (interactive elements): 182
Total number of interactions with the story: 14,530
Total story sessions logged: 4,433
Total story session time: 715,685 seconds = 198.8 hours
Total story session average time: 161.44 seconds
Total story bandwidth: 665,350.67 MB = 665.35 GB
In the first 48 hours after RT Slovenia published the story on their online news site:
- The story received 5,640 views from 4,433 sessions logged. This means that 27% of viewers returned to the story and watched it again.
- The average user interacted with the content 3.3 times.
Praprotnik says that people who watched the story with VR headsets spent twice the time or more in the experience than users who watched it on the web browser.
Celic and Praprotnik discovered an additional insight by running an extra experiment. When they showed the story to viewers wearing VR headsets, they not only measured the actual time spent in the VR experience; they also compared it to the viewer’s perception of time spent.
Participants wore Samsung Gear VR headsets or branded Google Cardboard alternatives. After they finished the video, they were asked how much time they thought they had spent watching it. On average, viewers thought they’d spent half as much time in the VR experience as they’d actually spent. For instance, some said they’d watched the story for 5 minutes, when in fact they’d watched it for 10 minutes or longer. This gap between perceived and actual time spent suggests intense engagement.
Since the analytics counted total views from all devices, we cannot entirely compare the session lengths of VR headset experiences with those of browser experiences or calculate how many more interactions were done in VR mode than in regular panorama mode. One thing is for certain: The difference in engagement between traditional video and VR/360 video is vast.
With the heat mapping tool, the producers gained insight on where the viewers focused their attention.
You can clearly see that the viewers were following the ski jumper in the 360 video. This kind of insight shows you where to place hotspots for maximum engagement.
The effectiveness of 360 video has already been confirmed by a Google study with Columbia Sportswear. Although the number of views is not necessarily higher than for traditional videos, 360 stories show an increased level of engagement and are more likely to be shared among peers.
In VR stories, viewers can choose to interact with the environment. This new medium allows storytellers to create a completely new experience and possibly an even deeper engagement.
Praprotnik emphasizes the importance of building an experience that is natural and organic for the viewer: “There were a lot of questions in postproduction on where to place hotspots and transition points to have the story feel as natural as possible. We had to be careful with the selection and choosing the right graphical material. One of the main questions was if the viewer wants more freedom to choose or less. We haven’t looked at the analytics yet — and that’s where we can learn from the actual users’ feedback.”
According to Praprotnik, VR’s immersive power can move journalism forward: “There’s a great opportunity to use this medium in storytelling as well as in education. Instead of classic storytelling, VR places the viewer at the heart of the experience and the environment around him. The viewer becomes a participant within the story. When you step into the Planica 360 story, the journalist Anja Hlača Ferjančič talks directly to you.”
Praprotnik also sees VR technology as opening a new chapter in sports journalism: “This might be next chapter in sports journalism and we might see it at the next Olympic Games. The technology is already being used, but not many people have had the chance to experience it yet. It’s a new medium and a new industry, which will first find its place in the entertainment sector before it finds a way in education and learning.”
