Affsum Session: Affiliate Videos: Where Do They Work Best?

Date: Monday, January 12th, 2009.  Session 5d, 2:00pm.
Session Description: How are videos being used by affiliates and merchants?  A detailed look into how and where they are performing best with suggested hints and tips to drive better click through and conversions. The panel consisted of:

• Marty M. Fahncke, President, FawnKey & Associates (Moderator)
• Michael Jenkins, CEO/Founder, MarketLeverage
• Melissa Salas, Director of Marketing, Buy.com
• Jonathan Stefansky, EVP Sales and Marketing, Qoof

This wasn’t the panel I had planned on going to, but I’m glad I went and checked it out.  There was some interesting factoids dropped and I enjoyed the Twitter going in the background with the anonymous admirer of Melissa asking if she was in the videos.

Bullet Point Review!

• There’s tremendous potential.
• Consider your site when trying to figure out what will work.
• Besides person to person, video is the second highest sales driver.
• ML looked at 2008 as the year of infrastructure.
• Big marketers have taken note of online video.
• In 2007, 59% of internet users watched video online.  In 2008 that skyrocketed to 77%.
• With banner blindness there’s a need for a new type of creative.
• Banners are the lowest performing; video overcomes even the success of text links.
• Give the affiliate a better way to convert.
• Low cost for affiliates – no streaming costs, no hosting costs, widgets are interactive.
• Attention spans are around 3 minutes.
• Content must be engaging and capture the user within 15 seconds.
• Networks and merchants wouldn’t invest in video if it didn’t work.
• Affiliates are very eager to receive the best content for the least work.
• People who are in video now are in it for it’s potential, not the actual of today.
• 77 million unique visitors on YouTube (my notes might be wrong on that, and I didn’t write down if that was per day or per month, but I think it was per day.)
• MLTV raises brand awareness, bloggers talk about it.
• Companies are very sensitive to UCG (User Generated Content).
• DO: think about the shelf life of a video.  Videos about how to do something instead of a hot trend or product will be relevant longer.
• DON’T: set your videos to auto play with sound.  It’s incredibly intrusive, especially if someone’s at work, which is where most people view videos due to faster broadband connections.
• DON’T: go over 3 minutes.
• DO: grab attention within the first 15 seconds.

Points brought up during the Q&A

• Where are things with .tv domains?  They’re increasing in popularity, but they still don’t get near the traffic a .com domain does.
• How do you track this?  Qoof embeds links with the AID and PID for tracking.  Others use view time, page views, how long people stay on the page, etc. to track success.

Once again, Michael Buechele of 11|15 Media blogged about this session for the official Affiliate Summit Blog.  Check out his recap for anything I may have missed while tweeting ;): Affiliate Summit West 2009 Session Recap – Affiliate Videos: Where Do They Work Best?