The latest and greatest thing to happen to online video is the ability to add active links and other interactive features right inside your video.  Interactivity also allows you to embed documents like PDFs or Power Points as well as inserting an email “contact us” form.

Here is an example of an interactive video I did recently as a promotion for this blog.

Interactivity is really catching on and lots of people are talking about it. My favorite SEO expert, Nick Stamoulis, had an article on his blog today wondering whether links inside video will create more spam.  Interesting question.  As someone who has used a lot of interactivity in my videos, I told him I had not noticed any increase in spam at all.

Now I know they can get pretty sophisticated with this stuff, but the email address is actually buried fairly deep inside the interactivity so it might be difficult for spammers to extract.  When I add my email address inside of a video, it is only one of about six different bits of info inside the single interactive spot.

Even if links inside video does result in a bit more spam, the benefits derived in terms of increased sales and conversions makes it worth it.  Research shows that on average, interactive spots inside of a video result in a 24% click through rate.  That’s the average.   One guy got an unbelievable 63%.

The service I use for interactivity and online video management is Veeple.  They offer not only the best and most comprehensive video interactivity, but somehow they manage to do it for a smaller fee than any other online video management system.

Veeple is constantly improving their service.  Today they are doing a major upgrade and adding all these features.

• Veeple’s interPlay API – Now get all of Veeple’s interactivity an analytic capabilities in your own player or content management system.
• 3rd- Party CDN Hosting – Use any Content Deliver Network with Veeple by simply pointing to where the video content is already stored on your CDN. No re-uploading to your CDN.
• Interactive Spot Scaling – You now can edit your spots once and deploy your video at any size and the interactive spots will automatically re-size. Great for editing and embedding.
• Upgraded Veeple Media Bin – We have improved the look of our icons, added new ones, and made them all vector-based so they will scale to any size without any loss of quality – Beautiful!
• Native Customer Image Upload – All uploaded customer images now come in at their native size with no loss of quality. You can also upload any image without limitation on size – Great for full screen slates and post-video call-to actions.
• Unlimited Information Panel Text – Enter as much text as you wish into the Interactive Information Panels and extend your messaging as deeply as you wish. Prefect for sharing additional information with your viewers without having to send them to another website link or download additional information, it’s all in the panel.

Every single one of these new features is a fantastic addition, but probably the best is the first one listed, the interPlay API.  This allows you to use Veeple’s interactivity even if you do not use the rest of their video management system.  The best part is they are giving interPlay away for FREE.  Now there is absolutely no reason to not add interactivity to all your online videos.  Ain’t life grand?

If you would like to watch a video giving some real world examples of how to use video interactivity, check out this interview I did with Scott Broomfield, the company CEO.

Thanks for reading video Production Tips.

Lorraine Grula