Brightcove Study Reveals the State of Interactive Video in Marketing

SINGAPORE, Feb. 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Brightcove Inc. (NASDAQ: BCOV), the leading provider of cloud services for video, announced findings from its study "Interactive Video: Defining & Measuring Performance" conducted with Demand Metric. The study reveals the state of interactive video and highlights ease-of-use, accessible cost, and high value to drive audience engagement.

Key Findings about Interactive Video

Interactive video is part of the evolving video landscape and offers marketers new opportunity in 2016 to drive better engagement with key audiences. To better characterize use of interactive video and to understand its potential to reach mainstream adoption, Brightcove and Demand Metric surveyed Brightcove technology partners and customers currently using interactive video.

Among this survey set, participants reported that interactive video represents more than one-third of the video content that they are producing. The report reveals that practitioners broadly define interactive video to include:

• Paths/branching - decision points in the video that allow viewers to choose different story paths.
• Interactive experience - quizzes, calculations, or assessments incorporated within the video.
• Click within video - clickable video hot spots that direct viewers to resources or companion content. 
• Clickable buttons - static clickable buttons or banners that connect viewers to related content, information, or calls-to-action.

Participants reported the top three benefits of interactive video as greater engagement, longer viewing time, and heightened understanding of audience behavior. Other responses included better learning outcomes, message retention, and improved product perception.

Nearly two-thirds of respondents reported that use of interactive video drives better engagement. They  noted particular value for e-learning and customer training for classroom use. These use cases benefitted from interactive video's capacity for gamification, personalization, and creation of a lean-in experience for audiences.

Interactive Video in Practice

Nearly half of marketing participants reported that creating and deploying interactive video was "easy" or "very easy." Marketers also reported planning to spend $30,000-40,000 USD on interactive video over the next 12 months. Both survey findings bode well for the two-thirds of respondents who reported their belief that interactive video will be "more" or "much more important" in the future.

The report also identifies current barriers to adoption. The top barriers cited included time required to create interactive video, integration with other marketing platforms, and interactivity not being supported on some devices. Cost, organizational silos, and resources (the number of people required to create interactive video) were reported as the least challenging of barriers reported.

For marketers eager to harness interactive video, survey participants recommended three keys to success:

• Define objectives - This initial step is imperative to measure success later in the process.
• Consider the challenges - New practices necessitate a learning curve and adjustments, so identify challenges but don't be deterred by them.
• Measure results - Interactive video offers the power to create 1:1 conversations with audiences to better understand their interests and behavior. The key is to analyze metrics in order to fully tap the power of interactive video.

The study results were based on survey responses from more than 500 individuals currently using interactive video or considering it for 2016 marketing activity.

Supporting resources:

●      Brightcove blog - Interactive Video: Calculating ROI

●      Brightcove blog - Why Interaction and Exploration Are the Keys to Learning

●      Brightcove blog - 2016: The Year Interactive Video Officially Becomes "A Thing"

●      Brightcove Video Cloud

●      Brightcove for Marketing