Our buddy Jake pointed out a cool new feature on YouTube in his Masterworks blog post the other day. Now you can add a “call to action” (give, sign-up for a newsletter, etc.) in the lower third of your video.
Here’s Charity:Water’s video that’s a good example. Watch for that little “Ad” button in the lower right corner. That’s the magic button–I missed it the first time through. (And since I’ve whacked Charity:Water for their twestivals then it seems right to give them a nod.) One more note: we linked the video here rather than displayed because it appears that you can only see the magic button if you are on YouTube itself.
The statistics detailing online video’s use are staggering. Here are just a few points from comScore’s January 2009 reporting:
* Online video use rose 4% from December 2008 to January 2009.
– 76.8 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
– The average online video viewer watched 356 minutes of video (approximately 6 hours), up 15 percent versus December.
– 100.9 million viewers watched 6.3 billion videos on YouTube.com (62.6 videos per viewer).
Some simple takeaways:
-If you’re not exploring online video, you’re missing it.
– Viewers are watching more video online than you expect (or at least more than we thought).
– You have to begin exploring what will work for your donors.
– Online videos are relatively simple to do–no hosting necessary. Embedding a video in your website is usually a piece of cake. Give it a try. Our friends at CityTeam do a great job incorporating videos into their website.
– Start. Just try it. We jumped in and are beginning to explore video casestudies. See what you think.
So, how about you? What are some of the ways you’re using video? What have you seen that works?
Steve Thomas
Partner, Oneicity
