TED Talks: Chris Anderson: How Web Video Is Driving a Revolution in Global Innovation

September 15, 2010

TED's Chris Anderson says the rise of web video is driving a worldwide phenomenon he calls Crowd Accelerated Innovation -- a self-fueling cycle of learning that could be as significant as the invention of print. But to tap into its power, organizations will need to embrace radical openness. And for TED, it means the dawn of a whole new chapter ...

 

About Chris Anderson (TED)

After a long career in journalism and publishing, Chris Anderson became the curator of the TED Conference in 2002 and has developed it as a platform for identifying and disseminating ideas

Transcript:

If nothing else, at least I've discovered what it is we put our speakers through: sweaty palms, sleepless nights, a wholly unnatural fear of clocks. I mean, it's quite brutal.

And I'm also a little nervous about this. There are nine billion humans coming our way. Now, the most optimistic dreams can get dented by the prospect of people plundering the planet. But recently, I've become intrigued by a different way of thinking of large human crowds, because there are circumstances where they can do something really cool. It's a phenomenon that I think any organization or individual can tap into. It certainly impacted the way we think about TED's future, and perhaps the world's future overall.

So, let's explore. The story starts with just a single person, a child, behaving a little strangely. This kid is known online as Lil Demon. He's doing tricks here, dance tricks, that probably no six-year-old in history ever managed before. How did he learn them? And what drove him to spend the hundreds of hours of practice this must have taken? Here's a clue.

(Video) Lil Demon: ♫ Step your game up. Oh. Oh. ♫ ♫ Step your game up. Oh. Oh. ♫

Chris Anderson: So, that was sent to me by this man, a filmmaker, Jonathan Chu, who told me that was the moment he realized the Internet was causing dance to evolve. This is what he said at TED in February. In essence, dancers were challenging each other online to get better; incredible new dance skills were being invented; even the six-year-olds were joining in. It felt like a revolution. And so Jon had a brilliant idea: He went out to recruit the best of the best dancers off of YouTube to create this dance troupe -- The League of Extraordinary Dancers, the LXD. I mean, these kids were web-taught, but they were so good that they got to play at the Oscars this year. And at TED here in February, their passion and brilliance just took our breath away.

So, this story of the evolution of dance seems strangely familiar. You know, a while after TEDTalks started taking off, we noticed that speakers were starting to spend a lot more time in preparation. It was resulting in incredible new talks like these two. ... Months of preparation crammed into 18 minutes, raising the bar cruelly for the next generation of speakers, with the effects that we've seen this week. It's not as if J.J. and Jill actually ended their talks saying, "Step your game up," but they might as well have. So, in both of these cases, you've got these cycles of improvement, apparently driven by people watching web video.

What is going on here? Well, I think it's the latest iteration of a phenomenon we can call "crowd-accelerated innovation." And there are just three things you need for this thing to kick into gear. You can think of them as three dials on a giant wheel. You turn up the dials, the wheel starts to turn. And the firs thing you need is ... a crowd, a group of people who share a common interest. The bigger the crowd, the more potential innovators there are. That's important, but actually most people in the crowd occupy these other roles. They're creating the ecosystem from which innovation emerges. The second thing you need is light. You need clear, open visibility of what the best people in that crowd are capable of, because that is how you will learn how you will be empowered to participate. And third, you need desire. You know, innovation's hard work. It's based on hundreds of hours of research, of practice. Absent desire, not going to happen.

Now, here's an example -- pre-Internet -- of this machine in action. Dancers at a street corner -- it's a crowd, a small one, but they can all obviously see what each other can do. And the desire part comes, I guess, from social status, right? Best dancer walks tall, gets the best date. There's probably going to be some innovation happening here. But on the web, all three dials are ratcheted right up. The dance community is now global. There's millions connected. And amazingly, you can still see what the best can do, because the crowd itself shines a light on them, either directly, through comments, ratings, email, Facebook, Twitter, or indirectly, through numbers of views, through links that point Google there. So, it's easy to find the good stuff, and when you've found it, you can watch it in close-up repeatedly and read what hundreds of people have written about it. That's a lot of light.

But the desire element is really dialed way up. I mean, you might just be a kid with a webcam, but if you can do something that goes viral, you get to be seen by the equivalent of sports stadiums crammed with people. You get hundreds of strangers writing excitedly about you. And even if it's not that eloquent -- and it's not -- it can still really make your day. So, this possibility of a new type of global recognition, I think, is driving huge amounts of effort. And it's important to note that it's not just the stars who are benefiting: because you can see the best, everyone can learn.

Also, the system is self-fueling. It's the crowd that shines the light and fuels the desire, but the light and desire are a lethal one-two combination that attract new people to the crowd. So, this is a model that pretty much any organization could use to try and nurture its own cycle of crowd-accelerated innovation. Invite the crowd, let in the light, dial up the desire. And the hardest part about that is probably the light, because it means you have to open up, you have to show your stuff to the world. It's by giving away what you think is your deepest secret that maybe millions of people are empowered to help improve it.

And, very happily, there's one class of people who really can't make use of this tool. The dark side of the web is allergic to the light. I don't think we're going to see terrorists, for example, publishing their plans online and saying to the world, "Please, could you help us to actually make them work this time?"

But you can publish your stuff online. And if you can get that wheel to turn, look out.

So, at TED, we've become a little obsessed with this idea of openness. In fact, my colleague, June Cohen, has taken to calling it "radical openness," because it works for us each time. We opened up our talks to the world, and suddenly there are millions of people out there helping spread our speakers' ideas, and thereby making it easier for us to recruit and motivate the next generation of speakers. By opening up our translation program, thousands of heroic volunteers -- some of them watching online right now, and thank you! -- have translated our talks into more than 70 languages, thereby tripling our viewership in non-English-speaking countries. By giving away our TEDx brand, we suddenly have a thousand-plus live experiments in the art of spreading ideas. And these organizers, they're seeing each other, they're learning from each other. We are learning from them. We're getting great talks back from them. The wheel is turning.

Okay, step back a minute. I mean, it's really not news for me to tell you that innovation emerges out of groups. You know, we've heard that this week -- this romantic notion of the lone genius with the "eureka!" moment that changes the world is misleading. Even he said that, and he would know. We're a social species. We spark off each other. It's also not news to say that the Internet has accelerated innovation. For the past 15 years, powerful communities have been connecting online, sparking off each other. If you take programmers, you know, the whole open-source movement is a fantastic instance of crowd-accelerated innovation. But what's key here is, the reason these groups have been able to connect is because their work output is of the type that can be easily shared digitally -- a picture, a music file, software. And that's why what I'm excited about, and what I think is under-reported, is the significance of the rise of online video.

This is the technology that's going to allow the rest of the world's talents to be shared digitally, thereby launching a whole new cycle of crowd-accelerated innovation. The first few years of the web were pretty much video-free, for this reason: video files are huge; the web couldn't handle them. But in the last 10 years, bandwidth has exploded a hundredfold. Suddenly, here we are. Humanity watches 80 million hours of YouTube every day. Cisco actually estimates that, within four years, more than 90 percent of the web's data will be video. If it's all puppies, porn and piracy, we're doomed. I don't think it will be. Video is high-bandwidth for a reason. It packs a huge amount of data, and our brains are uniquely wired to decode it.

Here, let me introduce you to Sam Haber. He's a unicyclist. Before YouTube, there was no way for him to discover his sport's true potential, because you can't communicate this stuff in words, right? But looking at video clips posted by strangers, a world of possibility opens up for him. Suddenly, he starts to emulate and then to innovate. And a global community of unicyclists discover each other online, inspire each other to greatness. And there are thousands of other examples of this happening -- of video-driven evolution of skills, ranging from the physical to the artful. And I have to tell you, as a former publisher of hobbyist magazines, I find this strangely beautiful. I mean, there's a lot of passion right here on this screen.

But if Rube Goldberg machines and video poetry aren't quite your cup of tea, how about this. Jove is a website that was founded to encourage scientists to publish their peer-reviewed research on video. There's a problem with a traditional scientific paper. It can take months for a scientist in another lab to figure out how to replicate the experiments that are described in print. Here's one such frustrated scientist, Moshe Pritsker, the founder of Jove. He told me that the world is wasting billions of dollars on this. But look at this video. I mean, look: if you can show instead of just describing, that problem goes away. So it's not far-fetched to say that, at some point, online video is going to dramatically accelerate scientific advance.

Here's another example that's close to our hearts at TED, where video is sometimes more powerful than print -- the sharing of an idea. Why do people like watching TEDTalks? All those ideas are already out there in print. It's actually faster to read than to view. Why would someone bother? Well, so, there's some showing as well as telling. But even leaving the screen out of it, there's still a lot more being transferred than just words. And in that non-verbal portion, there's some serious magic. Somewhere hidden in the physical gestures, the vocal cadence, the facial expressions, the eye contact, the passion, the kind of awkward, British body language, the sense of how the audience are reacting, there are hundreds of subconscious clues that go to how well you will understand, and whether you're inspired -- light, if you like, and desire. Incredibly, all of this can be communicated on just a few square inches of a screen.

Reading and writing are actually relatively recent inventions. Face-to-face communication has been fine-tuned by millions of years of evolution. That's what's made it into this mysterious, powerful thing it is. Someone speaks, there's resonance in all these receiving brains, the whole group acts together. I mean, this is the connective tissue of the human superorganism in action. It's probably driven our culture for millennia. 500 years ago, it ran into a competitor with a lethal advantage. It's right here. Print scaled. The world's ambitious innovators and influencers now could get their ideas to spread far and wide, and so the art of the spoken word pretty much withered on the vine. But now, in the blink of an eye, the game has changed again. It's not too much to say that what Gutenberg did for writing, online video can now do for face-to-face communication. So, that primal medium, which your brain is exquisitely wired for ... that just went global.

Now, this is big. We may have to reinvent an ancient art form. I mean, today, one person speaking can be seen by millions, shedding bright light on potent ideas, creating intense desire for learning and to respond -- and in his case, intense desire to laugh. For the first time in human history, talented students don't have to have their potential and their dreams written out of history by lousy teachers. They can sit two feet in front of the world's finest.

Now, TED is just a small part of this. I mean, the world's universities are opening up their curricula. Thousands of individuals and organizations are sharing their knowledge and data online. Thousands of people are figuring out new ways to learn and, crucially, to respond, completing the cycle. And so, as we've thought about this, you know, it's become clear to us what the next stage of TED's evolution has to be. TEDTalks can't be a one-way process, one-to-many. Our future is many-to-many. So, we're dreaming of ways to make it easier for you, the global TED community, to respond to speakers, to contribute your own ideas, maybe even your own TEDTalks, and to help shine a light on the very best of what's out there. Because, if we can bubble up the very best from a vastly larger pool, this wheel turns.

Now, is it possible to imagine a similar process to this, happening to global education overall? I mean, does it have to be this painful, top-down process? Why not a self-fueling cycle in which we all can participate? It's the participation age, right? Schools can't be silos. We can't stop learning at age 21. What if, in the coming crowd of nine billion ... what if that crowd could learn enough to be net contributors, instead of net plunderers? That changes everything, right? I mean, that would take more teachers than we've ever had. But the good news is they are out there. They're in the crowd, and the crowd is switching on lights, and we can see them for the first time, not as an undifferentiated mass of strangers, but as individuals we can learn from. Who's the teacher? You're the teacher. You're part of the crowd that may be about to launch the biggest learning cycle in human history, a cycle capable of carrying all of us to a smarter, wiser, more beautiful place.

Here's a group of kids in a village in Pakistan near where I grew up. Within five years, each of these kids is going to have access to a cellphone capable of full-on web video and capable of uploading video to the web. I mean, is it crazy to think that this girl, in the back, at the right, in 15 years, might be sharing the idea that keeps the world beautiful for your grandchildren? It's not crazy; it's actually happening right now.

I want to introduce you to a good friend of TED who just happens to live in Africa's biggest shantytown.

(Video) Christopher Makau: Hi. My name is Christopher Makau. I'm one of the organizers of TEDxKibera. There are so many good things which are happening right here in Kibera. There's a self-help group. They turned a trash place into a garden. The same spot, it was a crime spot where people were being robbed. They used the same trash to form green manure. The same trash site is feeding more than 30 families. We have our own film school. They are using Flip cameras to record, edit, and reporting to their own channel, Kibera TV. Because of a scarcity of land, we are using the sacks to grow vegetables, and also [we're] able to save on the cost of living. Change happens when we see things in a different way. Today, I see Kibera in a different way. My message to TEDGlobal and the entire world is: Kibera is a hotbed of innovation and ideas.

(Applause)

CA: You know what? I bet Chris has always been an inspiring guy. What's new -- and it's huge -- is that, for the first time, we get to see him, and he can see us. Right now, Chris and Kevin and Dennis and Dickson and their friends are watching us, in Nairobi, right now. Guys, we've learned from you today. Thank you.

And thank you.

Tags: video social media , video social media , viral videos , web video

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Roundup of eCommerce Video Marketing Statistics - Impact of Online Video on Sales

September 10, 2010

 

eCommerce Video Drives Conversion, Sales and Traffic While Reducing Returns

* Internet Retailer reports that visitors who view product videos are 85% more likely to buy than visitors who do not, based on OnlineGolf.com results. (Internet Retailer, April 2010)

* Retail site visitors who view video stay two minutes longer on average and are 64% more likely to purchase than other site visitors. (Comscore, August 2010)

* In tests merchants such as Archie McPhee experienced conversion rate increases averaging 30%, with a range from 12% to 115%. (Practical Ecommerce, November 2008)

* According to Internet Retailer, Shoeline.com saw a 44% increase in online sales conversions by using videos to showcase their products. “With such positive results on our existing videos, the goal right now is to add video to as many of our products as possible,” says Frank Malsbenden, VP and GM of Vision Retailing Inc., the parent company of Shoeline.com. (Internet Retailer, January 2009)

* Zappos reports a 6% to 30% increases in sales for products with video. (ReelSEO, December 2009)

* Discovery Channel increased video streams 123% by properly implementing video sitemaps

* 20% of all males surveyed cited online video as a significant influence in recent purchases of jewelry and watches. (Ad-ology Media Influence on Consumer Choice survey, September 2008)

* Ice.com found that viewers who chose to view video converted at a 400% increase over those who did not. Ice.com also credits video with decreasing returns by 25%. (Internet Retailer, December 2009)

* Implementation of video decreased returns by 27% for PFI Western. (Videocommerce.org, December 2009)

* Simple video merchandising best practices can nearly double the impact of eCommerce video (Invodo research, February 2010)

* Shoppers who view video at Onlineshoes.com convert at a 45% higher rate than other shoppers, and the site has seen a 359% year-over-year increase in video views. Product pages with video have higher conversion rates than product pages without video. (Internet Retailer, February 2010)

* With proper optimization, video increases the chance of a front-page Google result by 53x. (Forrester, January 2010)

* Video in email marketing has been shown to increase click-through rates by over 96%. In response, the number of marketers planning to use video in email campaigns has increased 5x since the beginning of 2009. (Implix 2010 Email Marketing Trends Survey)

* Consumer packaged goods firm Reckitt Benckiser found that online video delivered a 6% increase in in-store sales. (Reckitt Benckiser / Nielsen, May 2010)

* Rich media ads containing video increase purchase intent by 1.16% and drive success more than four times that of Flash animation. In addition to the increase in purchase intent, video ads appear to increase consumer brand loyalty. Viewers favored a brand 2.30% more when exposed to rich media with a video ad opposed the tiny 0.15% increase simple Flash animation experienced. (DoubleClick, The Brand Value of Rich Media Ads, June 2009)

Consumers Use and Trust Online Video

* From July 2009 through July 2010, the number of US video viewers on retail sites grew 40%, outpacing 17% growth in the number of total US online video viewers. 96% of online shoppers also watch online video. (Comscore, August 2010)

* Video views doubled from 14.8 billion to 33.2 billion between January 2009 and December 2009. 86.5% of all US Internet users watched online video during the month. The average viewer watched 187 videos and 12.7 hours of online video during the month. (Comscore, February 2010)

* A minute of video is worth 1.8 million words according to Dr. James McQuivey of Forrester Research. (Forrester, January 2009)

Online Retailers are Implementing eCommerce Video

* 33% of online retailers plan to add video to their sites in 2010, making it a higher priority than any other advanced feature. (eMarketer, March 2010)

* Leading online retailers added video to their sites in 2009 to increase online sales. PetsUnited, the owner of 10 eCommerce sites, saw a 50% jump in average sales when shoppers made a purchase after viewing a video. (eMarketer, January 2009)

* eCommerce video success can be clearly measured. Conversion rate, cart abandons, increased traffic and View Through Rate (VTR) are key to demonstrating success. (Practical Ecommerce, March 2010)

* eMarketer senior analyst Jeffrey Grau characterizes the benefits of video as including “…a lower number of abandoned shopping carts, reduced return rates, and higher sales.” (eMarketer, January 2009)

* Search engine optimization (SEO) and online video were the two top priorities for online retailers in 2009. Online shoppers who viewed video had a larger shopping ticket than those who viewed traditional rich media such as flash animations. (Internet Retailer, January 2009)

Tags: comscore , e-commerce video , online videos , video social media , web video

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Top 10 Considerations in Selecting an eCommerce Product Video Solution

September 02, 2010

by Mark Robertson of REELSeo.com

So, you’re thinking about adding product videos to your ecommerce site. Once you’ve made your decision you’ll quickly realize there are a fair deal of things you need to consider in terms of the implementation of your video solution. In order to help you figure out what you should be looking for, I’ve compiled the following list of points you should address in order to ensure that your video solution works for you.
 

1.) Video Production Method

ecommerce video product Things To Consider When Choosing An Ecommerce Product Video Solution The type of video production you want to use is probably the biggest decision you’ll have to make. Generally speaking, your options are as follows:

* Create your own videos in-house
* Use your manufacturers’ videos (assuming these exist)
* Community videos & consumer generated content
* Outsource to a professional video production company
* Automated product videos

As a business owner your responsibility is to guarantee the highest possible ROI from your video investment. From this perspective, combining your existing videos with automated ones may be your best option:

* You get the biggest bang for your buck – more videos for less $$
* Enables you to update your videos easily and frequently to reflect changes to your products and offerings.
* Some platforms include an analytics panel allowing you to monitor your videos’ performance

Automated videos are offered by several companies.  I recommend that you check out Stupeflix, Activate Media Group and Animoto.

2.) Content Delivery Network – CDN

Whereas users watching video for entertainment may at times tolerate slow streaming & poor delivery, this is far from being the case for ecommerce videos. Users have zero patience for poorly delivered content when you’re trying to sell them something. Your providers’ content delivery network must be reliable – period. Be sure to check whether your provider offers high bandwidth and guarantees smooth streaming around the world.

3.) Pricing Model

Video platform price models abound. In order to ensure you have a clear understanding of your billing and can control your expenses select vendors that offer you a fixed price or one that’s tied to usage or performance. Some vendors that offers a risk-free pricing model where you only pay for videos that were actually viewed by your audience. This type of pricing model is often referred to as Pay Per View and is based on the same principal as Pay Per Click .

4.) Integration & Deployment

Before finalizing with a vendor ensure you understand the integration process required to add the videos to your e-commerce website. If you’re only adding one or two videos this needn’t be a major consideration, but if you’re going to be adding hundreds of product videos to your site, you really want to make sure you don’t have to add code to each product page individually.

The easiest integrations for large scale video integrations are based on addition of code to your product page templates. A parameter for the SKU can be used to automatically match the right video to the right product. This type of implementation also means that adding new videos will not require internal resources.

5.) Analytics & Measurements

By now good analytics are already widely accepted as being vital to any etailers success. More than just having a feeling for the site’s overall performance it’s important to have a good understanding of how every component on the site is contributing to its overall success. This is true for your new video component as well.

The basic requirement is that you have some form of reporting tool offering you information on video views which you can then correlate to your sales data. Some vendors provide advanced analytics that already tie these details into the platform, including measurements for your video’s conversion rates, comparisons of CVR for visitors who watched video and those who didn’t, and support for A/B testing of multiple video versions per product.

6.) Offsite Video Syndication

Video content destinations are among the most popular sites online today. So much so that Youtube is now ranked as the world’s 2nd most popular search engine and the 3rd most visited site on the web. To fully realize the ROI potential of your video investment you may want to syndicate your video content to outside video destinations. This can not only provide you further exposure and increased traffic, but can also have a great impact on the visibility of your video content across search engines. Some ecommerce video platforms include automated syndication to the major video sharing sites as an optional feature.

7.) Search Engine Visibility

Closely related to the former point is the issue of your video’s SEO. Ideally, you will want to be sure that your own video content is picked up by search engines for your own website domain. It’s easy to test the success of this effort, so make sure to choose a vendor that can show you proof with examples from existing clients.

8.) Share/Like Option

You may want to harness the social web to your benefit by adding options to share and Facebook “Like” your videos. This is a great way to further disseminate your content and create interactivity.

Remember to run A/B testing to see whether a clean video, with no “distractions” provides better ROI.

9.) Mobile Compatibility

The mobile web is exploding literally while you’re busy reading this.

With Google’s Android phones alone being sold at a rate of over 65,000 units per day more and more shoppers surf the net from their cell phones every minute. Your videos must be available to mobile devices: iPhones/ iPads, Blackberrys, Androids are a must in my opinion.

10.) Advanced Utilization of Video

It’s always smart to re-appropriate your existing content in as many ways as possible. Check if your vendor supports embedding videos in email campaigns, video banners, and video galleries, in order to maximize your existing video content and expand your reach.
 

Conclusion

This list is in no way exhaustive but it should serve as a starting point for prioritizing how you select your ecommerce video vendor and identify the solutions that best match your needs.

Tags: content marketing , e-commerce video , video seo , web video

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Consumers Who View Product Videos 64% More Likely To Complete Purchase

August 23, 2010

Brands are increasingly incorporating online video marketing to their multichannel brand campaigns, and with good reason. Shoppers who view online videos are more likely to make purchases, indicates a new report from comScore.

• Consumers who view videos on websites are 64 percent more likely to buy something from the site
• Consumers also tend to spend more time (up to two minutes) on webpages per visit.
• 96 percent of shoppers who make online purchases have watched online video before.

For advertisers, online video is also able to influence shoppers' buying decisions. According to comScore, 63 percent of total U.S. internet users are reached by video advertising. These consumers account for 83 percent of online sales, making them highly valuable targets.

Many marketers are increasingly incorporating online video solutions into their digital marketing campaigns - a trend that is sure to continue as brand marketers and online retailers wake up to the revolutionary shift in content production and content consuption happening with on-demand video.  The key is still creating a clear and unique message that resonates with the customer, but approaching the distribution of that message in a radically different way.  Instead of broadcasting or instead of "hoping" a piece of creative will go viral focus on the eliminating wasted time and money from the content engine and prime the pump with dynamic, relevant, exciting content optimiaed for search and interactively designed for sharing. Get the workflow down and crank it out based on leveraging your product portfolio digital assets and existing content rather than buying someone else's content or borrowing from ad networks.

Tags: web 2.0 , web video

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Best Practices in eCommerce Product Video: Top 5 Sales Conversion Boosters

August 09, 2010

Research shows that when product videos are featured, visitors are 85% more likely to convert. The evidence is overwelming that product videos really work. 

However, as any experienced online marketer knows, optimizing conversion rates is never an automatic achievement, no matter how good the approach and tools. Focusing on the details and being consistent in your approach to online video is key. 

Split testing is also an essential component of a good program and should not be done as an afterthought. Tactics like adding appropriate background music, voice-overs, and text can all generate more clicks to purchase among visitors to your web site. The key to knowing what’s appropriate and what enhancements drive desired responses.

Testing your creative and your messaging has long been a standard practice for brand marketers.  Large companies have been built focusing on research, focus groups, polls, etc.  With online video systems like Activate's can bring this power to your online portfolio without the guesswork, the additional time or the agency expenses.

We recommend pilot testing and split testing for each custom video solution developed for our clients. However, here are some general best practices for your consideration that may apply to existing or new videos you are currently working on.

 

Top 5 Sales Conversion Boosters for Online Video Production

 

• Adding voice-overs often results in higher conversions (see example video here using our automated natural voice database).
• With female fashion, a male voice-over might actually REDUCE sales, while a female voice-over can double sales.
• A call to action at the end of the video can increase purchasing activity by more than 20%.
• Adding text almost always increases conversions. Color of the text is significant as well, and we have found that red works better for some products.
• The size and placement of the video player is important – using an actual player embed rather than a video icon or button is best

 

Tags: video seo , viral videos , web video

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