It’s no secret that TV and video production is the passion of my professional life.  Lucky gal that I am, it gives me two completely different perspectives on the magic living room box that enthralled billions, revolutionized communication and influenced every nook and cranny of our lives.

As visual communication technology has evolved from the early flickers of Uncle Miltie to spectacular Hollywood blockbusters downloadable in seconds, it is clear to me that television is morphing into online video and online video is morphing into TV, depending on which end of the stick is in your mouth.

I love peering into the future to envision how the ever-expanding technology of visual communication will impact both my professional and personal life.

Wow!

A lot will change.  All of it for the better.  Better for the viewer in me and better for the producer too.

Here are my predictions.  Come back in ten years and tell me whether I am psychic! 

Let’s start with the viewer side of the equation.

Assuming it isn’t lost in the couch, the remote control is one my all-time favorite inventions.  Operative word being CONTROL.

We all like to control the TV watching experience; it makes a couch potato happy.

Cable TV is my other favorite invention because it led to enormous choice. As much as I loved dear hilarious Lucy, her historical rating of 90% watching Little Ricky’s birth was partly because it was one of only three things on.

As a producer, viewer choice certainly led to more job opportunities with broader, more diverse, in-depth subject matter.  Love that.

Video moving off the TV and on to the internet increases viewer choice and control all the more. Online video means you don’t have to catch your favorite show whenever the network executives decide it should run.   Out of the huge library of videos online, you can find any topic and style imaginable.   You can experiment with what you watch and anything as annoying as a :10 ad might be enough to make you click out of the video altogether.

Oops, ran into a snag. That doesn’t sound good for people who want to advertise, so we’ll have to think about that.

But certainly increased viewer choice is still good for the producer in me since I personally don’t use pre-roll ads.    It means I have unlimited opportunity to make quality videos on any subject that at least a sliver of the massive world-wide audience would be interested in.

Even with just a sliver of the WWW, you still have a sizable audience.  BROADcasting has evolved into Sliver casting.  Niche casting?  Let’s coin a term here.   Targeted Broadband Requested Video Delivery?

Nah, too long.

Whatever we call it, it will continue to shape every nook and cranny of our lives.

Inside my crystal ball, the latest invention I know we’ll all love after remote control, cable TV, and video going online, is video interactivity. Why?  Because it further increases viewer choice and control.

As a viewer, interactivity exposes me to more, related stuff and I can either take it or leave it.  It hasn’t interrupted my experience if I am NOT interested, but it gives me more options if I am.

Interactivity also lets me easily share the video with somebody else, even if they are on the other side of the world.

Best of all, it lets me talk back to the video. Interactivity means I can email whoever put the video up.  Imagine being able to click your mouse and send an email directly to your favorite TV show.  Interactivity is going to give the viewer that option and the producer that opportunity.

As a producer, interactivity magnifies and diversifies what I can accomplish with my finished video.  Interactivity simplifies my task while improving its functionality.  Very few things are able to accomplish both.

Interactivity also gives me new storytelling opportunities.  It gives me ways to touch the audience that go beyond the basic building blocks of narration, music, pacing, special effects, graphics and so forth.

With this blog post, now perhaps you can see why I have gone so goo-gah over interactive technology.  There’s just so much potential and it excites me to see it unfolding.

If you are interested in using interactivity in your online video productions, I personally recommend the Veeple service. As the technology improves, they seem to be more focused on using it productively and not just for the wow factor.

Logic dictates that any technology spreads faster once productive, money-generating uses become common and that’s what Veeple seems to be concentrating on.

Veeple has developed an in-the-cloud interactivity platform and tested it using e-commerce, social networking, customer relations, list building, and direct product sales.  The results blow the conversion rate of other methods of monetization and advertising out of the water. The highest they have ever gotten was a 63% click-through-rate which then converted into an astonishing 100% sales.  Average has been about 24% CTR.

They were able to show that compared to regular video, video with “rich media” converts at about ten times the rate.

This means video with interactivity can be ten times as effective as video without.

No one argues with how effective video is.  Interactivity adds a truckload of icing onto the already delicious cake.

Compare interactivity to banner advertising at its pitiful .2% CTR.  That’s POINT 2, not 2.  So 2 out of 1000 for banner ads.

Veeple’s interactivity got 63 out of 100.

I am not good enough at math to really figure that out; besides, I’m too busy picking my jaw up off the floor.

Veeple has verified these high conversion and viewer engagement rates repeatedly.  I have seen their results.

So it turns out the interactivity is the way for the marketer to overcome the fact that viewers now have 100% control.  Viewers might not stick around for a pre-roll ad no one will bother to click out of a video where the ad is stuffed down into a little clickable link that isn’t intrusive.

Interactivity is very effective and versatile.  Whether you are a video viewer or a video producer, you will encounter it and perhaps already have.  I hope I can help you discover how best to take advantage of what will someday be as common and essential  as the remote control.  But it’s even better because you can’t lose interactivity in the couch!

Thanks for reading.

Lorraine Grula

Internet Video Gal