Watching things grow is such fun. Whether it’s children, flowers or online video, I personally get an incredible kick out of watching them develop and grow.
My baby is now a senior in college, but online video is still in the toddler stage.
My precious daughter, 22 short years ago.
My daughter stopped growing a while back, but online video will no doubt grow exponentially for years to come, not just in numbers but in style, quality, and functionality.
The audience for online video is now an incredible 80% of everybody who goes online. That adds up to 158-million people in just the USA. During the month of July, that huge group watched 21.4 BILLION videos!
That’s 21,400,000,000 videos in just one month!
- That’s over 713 million a day
- Nearly 30 million an hour
- Almost half a million a minute
Needless to say, that is a lot of videos. And it’s just going to get bigger!
Thank goodness my own child didn’t grow that large. I never could have kept her clothed and fed!
As incredible as I find those numbers, what impresses me even more is how online video is destined to grow in functionality.
Video as we have known it is a totally passive thing, unless you were a producer like me. Viewers merely watch.
As online video grows, viewers will interact. Viewers will control. Viewers will make the video work the way THEY want it to, not the way TV providers want it to. Of course the smart TV and video providers will be several steps ahead, learning and utilizing new ways to engage the viewer.
Viewer choice with online video goes way beyond the ability to control what they watch and when they watch it, although that is certainly the major form of control exercised today.
As this techno-toddler grows up, online video interactivity gives viewers an entirely new way to control their video watching experience. Using video interactivity, viewers can choose to dig deeper into the video or not. Give them something to dig for. Add a link to your video that takes them to the relevant information they seek, like that product you are selling.
Interactivity also means viewers will be able to use the video to contact its owner in any one of half a dozen different ways. By email or as a stepping stone to following them on Twitter or Facebook.
Interactivity also gives viewers the ability to more easily accept the call to action. If a video has a “click here to buy this shirt” button right on top of the hunkster model showing it off, sales are guaranteed to increase.
In so many ways, video interactivity effectively doubles, or even triples the content of your video without making it any longer. Speaking as a video producer with a lot to say, THAT is a welcome development. Interactivity allows me to embed the extra content right there in the video and leave the choice over whether to access it up to the viewer.
I see video interactivity being accessible more and more often. So far, not much standard vocabulary as emerged so everybody tends to call it something different. You Tube offers interactivity and calls it annotations. You Tube’s interactive capabilities are limited though.
My favorite interactivity provider is Veeple. Not only is their service much fuller and more complete, giving you more interactive features and better tracking abilities, Veeple has geared their service toward the business crowd, not just those watching cute puppy videos. (Nothing wrong with cute puppy videos, that’s a link to mine!)
If you are interested in online video for the purpose of marketing your business, Veeple gives you the ability to greatly enhance the functionality of your video and thereby increase its effectiveness.
At my new membership site selling pre-made marketing videos, Video Marketing Express, Veeple interactivity is part of the package. It’s fun for me to be able to offer the most highly advanced online video technology available. Here is an example of a veeplized video which you can get at the Video Marketing Express.
SIDE NOTE!
To get this picture of my daughter, I disobeyed doctors orders and moved the furniture. I’d delivered by C-section and was not supposed to lift anything, including the baby. But I just HAD to get this angle on my angel. Totally worth it! I just knew you wanted to see it again. 
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