Video has become a dominant format for content online. It accounts for 79% of internet traffic by 2020. Brands are increasingly using video for storytelling online to build emotional connections. While everyone can create video, using the right tools and formats can improve production quality and optimize videos for sharing and discovery across websites and social media.
4. Steven Soderbergh says “he’s done directing studio movies
and wants to only shoot on iPhones” — Sundance 2018.
Unsane, his latest movie was shot entirely on and iPhone.
Some of his other movies include Oceans 11, 12, 13, Magic
Mike to name a few.
5. Although everyone has the power to create, having the right
gear and tech can dramatically improve the production quality.
10. By 2020, videos will account for 79% of global internet
traffic.
In the past 30 days alone, there has been more video
content uploaded to the internet than the last 30 years of TV
content.
From 2011 to 2015 people went from spending 39 minutes
to nearly 2 hours per day watching video.
There is over 400 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every
minute.
11. But I am already producing lots of content, how can I find
time to do video too?
12. What if you made video your primary content format?
13. Live
Social
Shorts
Transcribed content
Imagery
Podcast
s
x1 video, (Live stream), x3 social shorts across x4 social networks, x4 transcribed blog posts, x1
podcast, x3 social media images, x1 email, x13 pieces of content shared across x11 different
distribution channels.
Emai
l
15. Website traffic up – 177%
Conversions up – 213%
Page 1 Google rankings for terms such as ‘Leeds Digital Agency’
Twitter followers have tripled
YouTube watch time increased by 800% after the first month
Using social media short videos has increased our Twitter
impressions by 1,976%
17. “Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make but about
the stories you tell.” – Seth Godin
18. Storytelling has been around for thousands of years, video just allows us
to tell stories at a pace which matches modern attention spans.
19. Video allows brands to capture imagination, provoke emotion,
create affinity, and promote their product, without selling it….
20.
21. Volvo understand who they are targeting with this video, instantly
provoking an emotional response and using a narrative that
matters and is important to their customer.
A story told which creates an emotional affinity to Volvo and
communicates one of their historic USP’s, safety.
22. Since the release of the video in June 2017 it has had almost
1,000,000 views.
It also received some of the most impassioned comments
YouTube has ever seen.
23.
24. Displaying your videos online
1. Self-hosted
○ Better compatibility for autoplay
○ No lock-in
○ No dependencies
○ Easier for developers/modern browsers
○ Better for technical SEO
25.
26. Displaying your videos online (cont.)
2. Hosted by a third party
○ No bandwidth costs
○ Better discoverability
○ Easier to set up advanced stuff (live-streaming)
○ Transcoding & cross-device compatibility taken care of
○ Pricing can sting for enterprise features
27.
28. Saving your video files for web
● Formats/Containers (webm, mp4, ogg)
● Resolution
○ No one cares for 4K on the web, 720p fine
● File size
○ Autoplaying? Remove that audio track!
Tools
● ffmpeg
● Handbrake
● video.online-convert.com
29.
30.
31.
32. Hosting your video files
1. Self-hosted
○ Don’t just upload to your website!
○ Use a third party file hosting service
○ Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
2. Hosted by a third party
○ YouTube
○ Vimeo
○ Wistia
33. Playing nice with SEO
● Easier to tick technical SEO boxes when self-hosted
● Always have transcriptions available
● Supply as much metadata as possible
● Subtitles are always useful
● Fallback content
● Best practice is to push out your video as a blog piece
37. We will find you, wherever you are
Social feeds YouTube Content websites
In-app
38. Video ad investment is on the rise
58%
54%
49%
45%
42%
39%
38%
20%
23%
27%
29%
30%
30%
30%
12%
12%
14%
16%
18%
20%
22%
10%
11%
11%
11%
11%
10%
10%
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
Banners Video Rich Media Sponsorships
US digital display ad spending
share, by format between 2012-
2018
% of total billions
39. Early challenges
Video shooting and production expenses
Ad servers, file sizes & video load speed
Video inventory is expensive to buy
Measurement of ad performance
40. Growth factors
More affordable
mobile data
Better mobile
coverage
Improved monetisation
for publishers supporting
video
Advertisers seeing better
performance vs other
mediums
Ad technology
improvements
Higher resolution mobile
screens
41. The rise in digital publishers supporting video is driving the digital
economy.
$13
$15
$18
$20
$22
$0
$5
$10
$15
$20
$25
2016 2017 2018 2019 2020
US Video Ad Spend (Billions)
Video advertising in the US alone is
set to become a $22b industry by
2020
Two main things to consider when you decide you want to show your videos to people online through your website.
Self-hosted means you’re using a HTML5 video tag.
Compatibility - one huge trend online is autoplaying videos. Devices are very picky about allowing this. Videos must be muted to be allowed to autoplay - much easier for devices to see if you’re playing by the rules with a self-hosted implementation.
Lock-in - if you want to move your stuff from YouTube to Vimeo later, what happens to your view analytics? What about your IFRAME implementations and customisations? All of your files/metadata (manually move it!)?
Dependencies - it’s unlikely that YouTube will suffer an outage, but lesser-known third parties can go offline. Or what if the business goes bust? Or what if they move to a paid-only biz model? Or what if they start putting ads on everything and you don’t like it?
Easier for dev - the web is getting trendier every day. People are doing quirky stuff all the time. It’s much easier to work with HTML5 video than IFRAMEs.
Technical SEO - want subtitles in 20 languages managed by your CMS? Course you do
**Need video of Ocean Beach website home page hero area***
No bandwidth costs - huge consideration. YouTube is totally free of charge - it doesn’t get cheaper than that.
Discoverability - as soon as you upload to YouTube you are exposed to their network. If someone wants to watch your videos, it’s standard to open YouTube and type in your brand name.
Advanced stuff - HTML5 video has come a long way but advanced features such as streaming live are hard to set up correctly. If this is your goal then you’re better off looking at YouTube or Twitch.
Transcoding - if transcoding and resolution sound like gibberish to you then you may be out of your depth experimenting with HTML5 video.
Enterprise pricing - want the video player to be branded? Want the video controls in your brand colours? Might be £100 per month for that…
Don’t need to consider much of this when not self-hosting - the third party will do the dirty work. (Just upload in as high resolution as your patience will let you.)
WebM is Google’s open-source, royalty-free initiative - because of this, it’s usually the first format to support cool features for web (usually in Chrome first). Such as alpha or green-screen.
Codecs are a more advanced topic…
Can offer multiple containers/codecs when self-hosted - let the device or browser pick which one it likes.
File size is extremely important. No one will wait more than a few seconds to see your video. Can offer multiple resolutions (smaller res, smaller file) to different screen sizes so mobiles (slower network) get smaller files.
Tools are ordered nerd to noob.
ffmpeg is command-line and underlies most transcoding software such as Handbrake. Great for automation (eg. transcode this entire directory of videos).
Handbrake is worth learning. It’s the de-facto tool (and free!).
Online converters are fine, main problem being that big files will take an age to upload and process.
As huge advocates of Amazon Web Services we always upload to S3 and serve through CloudFront. (Other cloud hosting providers are available - Azure, Google Cloud Compute, etc.)
This type of setup is certainly not free but in comparison to hosting through your website directory it’s probably cheaper and almost certainly much faster for users to load.
We serve about 200gb of video per month from a client website, and only 10gb gets through to our origin server (5%). This whole globally distributed infrastructure provided by Amazon is set up in a few clicks and costs about £15 per month.
Youtube - standard video hosting service. Never goes down. Everyone’s familiar with it. Looks a bit “common” if going for agency or creative market.
Vimeo - more business features (eg. branded video player). Might go down better with indie filmmaker crowd, etc.
Wistia - Optimised for marketing, automated SEO, also has branded video players.
Don’t forget - Google owns YouTube. So naturally you’ll be OK SEO-wise if you’re hosting there. (Of course Google prefers YouTube to other third parties.)
Some of these bits aren’t possible (easily) with third parties - eg. you can very easily fallback to a GIF or an image when self-hosting.
Always try to consider accessibility - having alternatives to anything aural or visual online is encouraged.
Blog pieces which are essentially a proper subtitled video embed, alongside a full transcription are great for consumption.
Speechpad for transcriptions (cheap - $1 per minute of video).
Don’t forget - Google owns YouTube. So naturally you’ll be OK SEO-wise if you’re hosting there. (Of course Google prefers YouTube to other third parties.)
Some of these bits aren’t possible (easily) with third parties - eg. you can very easily fallback to a GIF or an image when self-hosting.
Always try to consider accessibility - having alternatives to anything aural or visual online is encouraged.
Blog pieces which are essentially a proper subtitled video embed, alongside a full transcription are great for consumption.
Speechpad for transcriptions (cheap - $1 per minute of video).
Don’t forget - Google owns YouTube. So naturally you’ll be OK SEO-wise if you’re hosting there. (Of course Google prefers YouTube to other third parties.)
Some of these bits aren’t possible (easily) with third parties - eg. you can very easily fallback to a GIF or an image when self-hosting.
Always try to consider accessibility - having alternatives to anything aural or visual online is encouraged.
Blog pieces which are essentially a proper subtitled video embed, alongside a full transcription are great for consumption.
Speechpad for transcriptions (cheap - $1 per minute of video).