We are very excited today to be part of an announcement from NET-A-PORTER, the world's premier online luxury fashion retailer, about the launch of NET-A-PORTER TV, a digital TV station housed on NET-A-PORTER.COM that allows visitors to shop for their favorite designers as they browse video content unique to the site.

As we dive headlong into the new year, a lot of you out there are busy laying plans to set your organizations up for success for the rest of 2011. Now is the best time to think about how you can up the ante with your online video strategy in the coming year. 

We've got a pretty cool new article in the Brightcove Developer Center that shows how you can use cue points in a video to create calls to action, like "Add to cart" links, based on what's happening in the video. This example, written by Tim Walling from our Professional Services group, takes advantage of the way you can store metadata in a cue point. You can easily add cue points to your videos in the Brightcove Studio Media module.

Sometimes we're all guilty of pontificating the value of all this wonderful stuff we call online video.   At the end of the day it's just easier to spread the word than to prove it.    One of the main challenges for proving an idea is that you need hard data to back up your claims.   And that, folks, is like gold dust these days.   Data, real meaningful data, can mean all the difference to a competitive edge of a company.  So yo

Here's a roundup of the week's news in online video, with a little perspective on the impacts to the industry at large.

VideoClix is a Brightcove Technology Partner that provides hotspotting functionality inside a Brightcove player. By editing the available information behind the scenes, an interactive layer is added to the video, holding valuable information and instigating calls-to-action, such as putting an item in your shopping cart, signing up for an advertised service or downloading a related whitepaper.  

Consumers are still warming up to the idea of interactive video experiences in their online shopping, and internet merchants have a growing opportunity to introduce rich interactive media that has material impact on customer engagement and conversion.

We've talked about using calls to action in videos to encourage conversion on your e-commerce website. Here we'll take a look at a few stats that illustrate the astounding results and impacts on conversion from video initiatives in the field.

In a recent report eMarketer explores retailers' adoption and implementations of video for e-commerce drawing from a number of specific use cases as well as statistics drawn from industry research. For the full report check out Video E-Commerce: Innovative Models Drive Sales. 

Driving Adoption of Video

The report highlights results from a Forrester ranking of the largest internet retailers in the US, showing that adoption of video has a majority of the top 50 online retailers now use video on their sites, compared to just 18% last year. As more of the big internet retail sites bring video into their online shopping experience, that will continue to drive further adoption in the entire industry, regardless of scale. 

Marketing efforts generally aim to reach that golden moment of conversion: when the customer takes the desired action. In e-commerce that's usually the point of sale, and to get there marketers rely on the trusty call to action.

Until recently video on the web played a supporting role in conversion efforts by demonstrating product or services' value, but hadn't necessarily led as a platform to support the critical click-to-buy moment. Now, video platforms are introducing all kinds of interactivity with hot spots, overlays, buttons, widgets, and mouse-overs that present an immediate next step to lead customers to conversion. Instead of thinking of video assets as static media, marketers are beginning to use that immersive content to grab customers at the most persuasive moment: when they see products in use and in context.

Timing

A call to action can happen at any point during a video. Queuing up click to buy alerts throughout a video in context, like when a specific product is featured in a video segment, increases the number of touch points and products you can feature. In other cases it might make sense not to interrupt a more complex story, so you might wait to show a popup at the end of a video to provide a link with a strong message to prompt a potential buyer .  It's important to consider the viewers' experience in deciding the right moment for the call to action. Will the call to action be jarring, or helpful? If you aren't sure, analytics can provide accurate and specific feedback about customer response to the timing.

Video is an inherently captivating medium. It's great for story telling, and that's why marketers continue to rely on moving images to generate customer interest in their products or services. Showing is always more engaging than telling.

So what kind of story are you trying to share with your customers? Videos can generate awareness, encourage conversion, or keep customers engaged. Mapping marketing objectives to a specific video use case can give your content purpose and refine your message for maximum impact. We'll describe some basic categories of marketing video types and share a few outstanding examples to inspire your own video marketing efforts.

Today we are publishing a new white paper entitled "V-Commerce: The Rise of Internet Video" co-authored with Adjust Your Set, the London-based Brightcove Alliance partner behind the pioneering application of online video by leading online retailers including Marks & Spencer, Thomas Pink, and others.  The paper is sure to become an instant

Today, Internet Retailer magazine published a great article as part of its weekly E-commerce Technology Report about Brightcove customer, Kmart, and the organization's innovative use of shoppable video in Facebook.

Using video in an eCommerce solution can increase your conversion rates by a whopping 40%.   To do this you need to follow some simple guidelines.  Mark Harpur, our Regional Sales Engineering Director, has been on the front lines gathering the following thoughts to help you succeed.

Mark writes:

Here's a great article on results on the use of video by Zappos and the results they're seeing - 6% - 30% uplift in sales.  The ROI is such that they're investing in 10 full time video studios with the goal of having 50,000 videos next year (up from 8,000 today).  Wow!  This is very much a trend that we're seeing with e-commerce retailers investing in online video, Share:

It has been an exciting year for Brightcove in Japan. Since the formation of our majority-owned subsidiary in 2008 and the introduction of a fully localized Brightcove Studio, media businesses and marketers across Japan have embraced Brightcove as the solution of choice for online video publishing, distribution and monetization.

One of the very first solution partners in the Brightcove Alliance, Adjust Your Set, has teamed with Brightcove to use our market-leading online video platform to build new video-rich websites for leading retailers Marks & Spencer and Thomas Pink.

Wall Street Journal reporter Geoffrey Fowler recently wrote about a growing trend among e-commerce sites to include video and rich media in the online shopping experience. This is a trend we have noticed across our customer base over the past couple years, especially among on high-volume e-retail sites like Gaiam and Ticketmaster.

Good article in the WSJ highlighting the use of online video by ecommerce sites to improve conversion rates, including featuring Brightcove customer Simon & Schuster.