Interactive Video Becoming More Prevalent Marketing Tactic

About one in five marketers are already leveraging interactive video, and another 27 percent are starting to embrace the technology, according to a study by Demand Metric and sponsored by Brightcove. These statistics could indicate the medium is becoming a more prevalent tool in the digital marketing toolbox.

Interactive video is defined as any type of online video that includes some type of user-engaging feature, such as branching paths, viewer participation (in the form of quizzes or assessments, for example), or clickable areas or buttons.

Budget restraints, lack of expertise, and not enough knowledge about the technology and its benefits are the top reasons marketers are not adopting this type of content asset.

However, those that are employing interactive video are seeing results in terms of engagement (66 percent), longer viewing time (44 percent), and improved audience behavior tracking/understanding (39 percent).

While respondents named budget as the top reason for not implementing interactive video, in terms of creating and using interactive video, the survey found the challenges were more tactical. More than half named the time-consuming process of creation and integration with other platforms/systems as the top challenges. Making the video asset mobile-friendly was another significant challenge.

“Some would say that video is growing as the digital communication method of choice due to its singular ability to replicate one-to-one human interaction. Given that premise, then interactivity is the evolution of the form to achieve two-way conversations and even more effective results,” wrote Dana Fugate, Director of Content for Digital Marketing at Brightcove.

Mobile Video Viewing is Increasing Significantly

Creating video assets that are mobile-friendly is increasingly vital for marketers: Smartphone video views are up 55 percent year-over-year, according to Nov. 2015 Yahoo research. Tablet views increased 48 percent. For the first time, tablet and smartphone views are outpacing PC and laptop views, which have also seen a significant year-over-year rise (34 percent).

However, the study found when marketers take a cross-device approach in their content strategy, there is a positive effect on other areas – an 11 percent increase in online ad awareness and a 250 percent increase in brand favorability.