Interactive Video Most Used for Driving Engagement and E-learning
First things first: What is interactive video? It's 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.
Now that we've gotten that out of the way, Brightcove has sponsored a fantastic study of the topic, created by Demand Metric. Demand surveyed mainly customers or partners of Brightcove to find their thoughts on interactive video. Most of the respondents were marketing pros in B2B or mixed B2B/B2C companies.
Here's a quick take on some of the main findings:
- Roughly 1 in 5 already use interactive video.
- Roughly 1 in 4 are just starting out with it or have plans to use it.
- 36 percent of the video created by participants was interactive.
- The top two reasons given for creating interactive video were driving better engagement and e-learning or customer training.
- The average interactive video budget for the next year is between $30,000 and $40,000.
- Two-thirds of those studied say interactive video is becoming more important to them.
For those new to the area, complexity isn't a problem: 11 percent of those using interactive video called it very easy, and 35 percent said it was easy. Compare that with 25 percent who called it very difficult or difficult.
The top benefits of interactive video include more engagement (66 percent), longer viewing time (44 percent), and audience behavior tracking (39 percent). The study made a distinction between companies that use interactive video lightly and those that use it extensively, and found that heavy users rate the benefits much higher.
The main challenges in interactive video are the time it takes to create and integrating it with other platforms.
For much more on using interactive videos, download the report "Interactive Video: Defining and Measuring Performance" from Brightcove (registration required). Once you do, be sure to read this Brightcove blog post on calculating ROI for interactive video. It's a great lesson for anyone who needs to justify costs to their boss.
Troy Dreier's article first appeared on OnlineVideo.net