This article is part of a series inspired by GroupM What’s Next , an annual event for marketing and media executives taking a forward look at media and advertising, and what brands should be preparing for in order to succeed.
It’s that time of year where we start seeing see top ten lists that reflect on the year past – best of best movies, best music and best sports highlights. Often these lists are in the form of video montages, which many people like myself enjoy watching on morning television.
More and more, though, consumers are watching these and other videos on other devices. The screens of laptops, tablets and mobile phones are biased toward video, as text is difficult to read on the screen size. To tell a good story, video can simply deliver the story better. In even more emerging screens such as Google Glass, video will win over reading in-depth stories in text.
So we get it; video is a big deal and will only continue to grow. Cisco projects Internet video traffic will be 69% of all global consumer Internet traffic in 2017. But video isn’t a big deal solely because of scale. According to comScore, 64% of viewers are more likely to make a purchase in an online store after viewing a video. Even if viewers don’t purchase after seeing a video, sharing video is a big deal. Data from Invodo shows 92% of mobile video viewers share videos with others.
Here’s the issue. Marketers don’t always have the proper video assets to capitalize on the trend. Forty-three percent of marketers cite lack of available video content as their reason for not using video in email campaigns, for example, making it the top barrier to the practice according to eMarketer. Text is a critical part of societies worldwide for sending and consuming information. What’s its future?
For now, two companies are working to solve the lack of video assets issue, Wibbitz and Guide. Both companies focus on text-to-video translation and creation, compiling the news into video with the proposition to make news more digestible as you multitask throughout your day.
Ads are an accepted part of the existing video and text news landscape. The text-to-video channel will be no different. This will open the aperture of video supply in more personally relevant spaces, making the news much more personal.
Text-to-video isn’t just for news. This new technology can be applied to any text-based content. This means that if a brand has libraries of interesting content available in text form, text-to-video technology can be used. Why not create a fun avatar and highlight some of the more interesting white papers to help tell stories in the B2B space? Or, brands can have their valuable brand ambassadors writing highlights about the brand that can be translated to multiple form factors, including video.
There are challenges that lie ahead, however, for text-to-video. There are challenges on the IP ownership of the technology coming from companies, including Microsoft. Additionally, the industry is still determining the ad standards for native advertising, let alone the blurred world of text-to-video where we will need to add native standards plus video standards to create a new set. And, in some areas, bandwidth to deliver video rather than text will still continue to be a challenge.
Standards or not, if an 800% growth in the last six years isn’t a big enough signal, video will continue to grow across all Internet users. Contributing to that growth will be technologies like text-to-video, making video more pervasive and personal than ever.
As Chief Innovation Officer for GroupM, Cary Tilds is responsible for leading the company’s efforts in the identification, evaluation and development of new and emerging digital platform technologies. Appointed in January 2013, Cary works with all of GroupM’s media agencies, helping them to engage with established players and identify new game changers that will best enable them to powerfully employ “tech stack” digital tools such as search, social, and mobile in the development of marketing strategies for clients. Cary can be reached at cary.tilds@groupm.com or on Twitter at @ctilds.
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