Red Fox Media - Video Production - Website Design - Birmingham, AL

While watching a recent episode of the New Minute Minute from Daisy Whitney, I was treated to this little nugget of information. According to eMarketer, online advertisers are spending more and more money on video, versus any other format. The chart below details the advertising spending growth (in percentages) for various online formats from 2008-2014. As you can see, advertisers definitely favor online video. Look at the statistic for 2009. Advertisers spent 20 times more money in video than in Search, which is ranked second. And the amount of spending growth for online video is expected to remain a favorite format for advertisers through 2014.

Here are a few things we can take away from these statistics:

• Utilizing video for your online presence is a necessity in today’s market
• Video has impact
• Video is an effective communication tool
• Your competition is using video
• The use of video is one of the best ways you can gain an audience and improve your bottom line.

Right now Social Media feels more like the Wild West — no solid rules and everyone is out for himself. Some are afraid to embrace this new generation of marketing, satisfied with the status quo of marketing and sales. However, there’s no ignoring the power of Social Media and Web 2.0. Someone shared this blog post with me a few days ago and the statistics are pretty amazing. The article is titled “20 Reasons Why You Can’t Ignore Social Media.” I want to share the number one reason with you, “394 million people watch video clips online.”

Let that one sink in for a moment. That’s a lot of people watching video, and those are people that you could be reaching with an online video campaign. And the wonderful thing about Social Media is that you can track who watches your videos and learn a lot more about them than traditional TV advertising. And if you can get them talking about your video, then the audience grows exponentially and you can turn that audience into buyers.

Consider the case of the “Will It Blend” video series where the owner of a blender company demonstrates the power of his product by shoving all kinds of objects into the blender. On this 9-minute video, one member of the marketing team discusses the genesis of this campaign and its impact on blender sales. It’s obvious that online video worked for them, and it can work for any business if they’re open to the new frontier of Social Media.