First things first, I'm a huge supporter of Video and I think it's definitely the next step for many automotive solutions (ie: service, sales walkarounds, communication, possibly video calling in the BDC, etc). The more personalized, the better. Customers aren't stupid so I recommend my dealers don't try and cut corners in this area. Good quality, personalized videos can make a world of difference. At the same time, I browsed YouTube for an hour once going through different dealership's videos and almost all of them had 10-20 views, even when they weren't personalized.
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That said, I feel that it's worth going through some of the points made in this article because I read far too many of these things that jump to conclusions on incredibly inconclusive statistics. This article's honest executive summary would read something like this:
"Video is everywhere. Over the past 2 years, video activity has exploded. Although the rate of increase is slowing, we're still seeing billions of dollars being spent on video advertising each year. With all this advertising money being spent, the probability of a user who is shopping online seeing a video is higher than ever - almost of half of all online shoppers now see video. We noticed that even after we slam shoppers with a never-ending stream of videos, 71% of them still decided to purchase a product from the companies advertising."
64 percent of all internet traffic is video - this is correct, but it's streaming video services like Netflix and Hulu that make up a huge % of that. In the age of internet connected devices, this statistic doesn't reveal anything to do with video's effectiveness in advertising. This number also includes watching webcams, security cameras, renting movies online and live TV served over the internet.
eMarketer estimates that $7.77 billion will be spent on online video advertising in 2015 - they provide this statistic without much context. That number was $5.81 billion in 2014 which was a 52% increase over the year before. $7.77 billion is only a 33.8% increase over 2014, so the actual rate of increase in this area is slowing down. When they ask the question "what's the next thing that will revolutionize the marketplace?" then I would expect the answer to be explosive growth, not a decrease in rate of growth. This suggests that video already revolutionized between 2012 and 2014 where it saw 32% growth and then 52% growth year over year.
The LSA survey found that 44 percent of buyers viewed an online video while searching for local products and services - this sentence alone explains quite a bit about how they surveyed and how they got their results. 880 of the 2000 people said that while they were already shopping for something they viewed an online video. This is not surprising in any way, since video is everywhere from Amazon to engadget reviews - seeing a video seems very likely. 624 of those 880 ended up making a purchase while they were shopping.
Let me try explaining their statistics a different way, because reports and studies always find what they want to see in the numbers.
2000 people came to my bakery looking to purchase something. 880 of those people, while standing in line waiting, watched the TV I had behind the counter. When they got to the counter, 624 of those people bought a donut. Therefore, 44% of my donut customers viewed my TV before purchasing a donut. All bakeries should start investing in TVs behind their counters.
Not to make a mockery of what they're saying, but those aren't statistics they're just assumptions.
The article fails to mention what % of people that didn't see a video also purchased something - I would be willing to bet it was also 70%+ because they surveyed people who were shopping for local products and services.
Another of their key stats says that 80% of "users" recall watching a video ad in the past month. Let's look at the stats:
- The study used 1,422 US online video users.
- In order to be selected for the survey, you must have viewed videos online - huge skew on the data
- This study took place in 2007 (as also evident by only 18% of respondents saying they watched video on a mobile device)
Don't even get me started on the "logic" behind "a video is worth 1.8 million words per minute".
A picture equals 1,000 words. Video shoots 30 frames per second. Therefore, every second of video is worth 30,000 words. Multiply 30k by 60 seconds – a common length for an explainer video – and you get 1.8 million. Ta-da.
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