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Vilynx Offers Insight Into Video's True Effectiveness

December 30, 2014

Video advertising has become one of the new standards of online travel. Sure, banners and pictures are still seen everywhere, but many websites are offering up the video ad as a way to better interact with customers and provide ad buyers with better value overall. While some bemoan the extra bandwidth used, others find the video advertising more engaging. But how effective is that video? That's a question that Vilynx is eager to help businesses answer with its new video conversion analytics tool specifically geared toward the online retailer.


Vilynx was already widely known for its video preview platform, a platform that has been used to great effect in driving up video play rates and engagement times among various consumers. But now, it's bringing out a means to not only improve play and engagement, but also track the effectiveness of that video. With Vilynx's new platform, users can track real-time sales conversions, which allow the retailer to figure out just which videos are proving most effective in terms of engaging the viewer sufficiently to get that viewer to actually buy what's being sold. Vilynx's new platform is specifically geared toward noting the interactions within a video that get a consumer to make purchases, ostensibly so that those parts of a video that prove most effective can be used later on in future advertising.

The stakes are clearly high for such a venture; a recent report from eMarketer notes that 51.9 percent of marketing professionals, when asked about the kind of content that produced the best in ROI, turned to video as providing that top-notch ROI. This was supplemented by a report from Gartner, which suggested that mobile devices are becoming “...the first go-to device for communications and content consumption,” giving further credence to the idea that video is the path to take to reach the consumer mindset. Recently, one of Vilynx's clients, WaterField Designs, reported that it had seen some success with this approach; while it didn't quantify gains made, it did note reduced production costs and improved conversions.”

Indeed, this is the kind of approach that may not generate impressive results, but will likely have a hand in making gains. It's good to know what parts of a video are most effective and which are not; it makes the videos better overall and reduces the amount of fruitless effort going into the system. But it really can't definitively say which parts of the videos drive purchases. After all, take two people who watch the same video: one makes a purchase that day, while the other makes a purchase from a physical store the next day on the way home from work. Did the video have a 100 percent success rate for these two, or just a 50 percent success rate? Something measuring conversions might well miss the second purchase, as it wouldn't be tracked accordingly. Still, even a little information can be helpful, and for something like this, the chances of overestimation are fairly slim, so the online conversion rates can be valuable enough. Dealing with online retailers only, meanwhile, improves the chances as there's no physical store, but this factors in as well; what if that customer makes a purchase at work instead, or the next day?

Vilynx likely isn't foolproof when it comes to tracking conversions, but it will go a long way toward providing insight into video advertising. That's an important point, and one whose value can scarcely be underestimated.




Edited by Maurice Nagle



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