How do you reach, engage, and convert customers with video?
Limbik, the company I work for and helped found, recently did an interesting piece of research, about which, I’d like to tell you.
A little bit of background first…
A few months ago, my business partner (Zach Schwitzky) and I, started a new business. Armed with a cache of problem interview data (thank you Lean Startup Co.) we set out to build a platform which would power content and audience analytics to measure and drive attention with digital video. This is literally what we decided to do. Verbatim.
We now have a product in beta and are speedily acquiring users and solving product/market fit.
Because startup life is full of justifying-whatever-it-is-you-do, we along with LogoBar Enterprises commissioned research to understand how consumers were engaging with online video content. So we (read: Neilsen) corralled 1115 adults who watch more than 60 minutes of video content per week (not hard to find) and asked them a bunch of questions. Here are some of the results:
Unsurprisingly, people, on average, spend more than seven hours a week watching video online. The vast majority of this still happens on laptop/desktop (68 percent).
One third of people in the US though, use ad blockers. And if a pesky advertisement happens to slip onto the screen, 52 percent of people will skip it, 20 percent will close the video, 15 percent will do “something” offline until the ad is over, 12 percent will mute the ad, and 9 percent will do something online until the ad is over.
So, literally no one is watching the pre-roll ads. People will do anything they can to avoid them, skip them, not listen to them or get through them. Pre-roll ads cause adults to act like 5 year old children, covering their ears, closing their eyes and yelling “la la la la la la la” until the ad is over.
And yet we continue to serve up these ads. Because that’s what our consultants, agencies, and marketing pros tell us to do.
That’s not to say we’re not slowly learning and adapting. We are boldly moving into an era of native advertising — the product placement of the 21st century. There was a great article in The Huffington Post, by Eli Schwartz which details six companies which are setting the benchmark in that arena.
But the heart of this story is about how you know if people are paying attention to your native video content? How do you know if people are listening? Or if they have the video playing in an open, active tab? How do you get them to engage more deeply with content? How, how, how?
Enter Limbik. My company that I told you about before (yes, this blog post is essentially native advertising. Very #meta, I know.).
Limbik breaks all of that data down for you and allows you to instantly see if your audience is seeing, hearing, and engaging with your content. And yes, you can compare your results against your industry.
The point of all this is that “views” don’t tell you much at all. If your audience are full of those aforementioned 5 year old children with their eyes closed and hands over their ears, you will get views. But how much are those views worth if no one actually saw or heard your message? In my opinion, not very much at all.
Take 3 minutes out of your day and sign up for our beta. Play around with it and let me know what you think (josh@limbik.io).
Speak with you soon.
