Streaming Media: The New Essential

"We aren't selling toasters; we are selling exciting products," David Pryor says in an interview with Automotive News. He's the Vice President of Marketing, and his exciting products are Porsches. "It's quite difficult to communicate that emotion with only text and pictures."

As a technique of delivery rather than a medium itself, streaming media technology distributes audio, video, and multimedia in real time or on demand on the Internet. Unlike earlier online media, streaming media plays instantaneously without the added time and effort to download the entire file. In a nutshell, there's no thinking or technique involved: it really plays.

Streaming media isn't only for luxury brands, entertainment, or news industries. It's numerous common business applications, including company meetings, distance learning, sales force training, surveillance, video email, product introduction, event broadcasts, news distribution, webcasting and web conferencing.

For instance, educational and training opportunities aren't confined to classrooms -- companies can simultaneously train countless employees across the world. In 2003, the United States Department of Defense did just that, streaming 35 hours of training on smallpox vaccinations to 20,000 military healthcare professionals, including medical directors and clinical consultants.

Imagine commercials for the product airing continuously without having to be interrupted by TV or radio programs. In January 2008, a Research and Markets report on streaming media advertising noted that the marketing size for both streaming audio and video advertising was estimated at $990.3 million in 2006, up 128% over $433 million billed in 2005.

Businesses from every industry with the necessity for communication are quickly recognizing the value of streaming media, particularly streaming video. IBM notes that streaming video offers businesses "the ability to help dramatically boost the efficiency and effectiveness of these corporate communications efforts -- from rich media corporate portal content, to call home webcast presentations, to distance education for employees, and more."

A recent study by AOL's Advertising.com found that 66% of survey participants view streaming video content one or more times a week. These survey participants were at ages of prime consuming power: 44% of video viewers are between the ages of 18 and 34, while 56% are age 35 or older.

Insight Research reports that streaming video and music will grow at a rate of 29% and generate $70 billion over the next six years. Robert Rosenberg, president of Insight Research, concluded "the ongoing future of streaming media has never been brighter."

While streaming video can be viewed by anyone, anytime, anywhere, today's technology can track all the details. In the Streaming Media Magazine article "Eyes on the Enterprise: Streaming Video's Marketing Potential," Steve Vonder Haar writes "the net not merely exposes your promotional content to more individuals, additionally it paves the way in which for helping you discover who spent time reviewing your marketing information."

By learning your audience, you can develop targeted campaigns that establish a connection with consumers. In mention of Porsche's streaming video on Plum Network, an on line cable TV and video on-demand site, Porsche's David Pryor states "video we can create a mental connection with our consumers. We want it to be as immersive as possible."
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To ensure the success of a streaming video, proper planning must begin ahead of the camera starts rolling. Like traditional video, the quality of streaming video products reflects the skill and equipment employed in production.

Video production specialists learn how to capture shots that compress well and translate smoothly when streamed in even the smallest window. Any excessive camera motion techniques, including fast cuts, pans and zooms, decrease the speed and quality of streaming video. Tripods, image stabilization, close-ups and fine-tuned encoding can reduce complications in most connection speeds.

Color and contrast also affect compression. Dark colors can be blended with shadows, and patterns should be refreshed at even the tiniest movement. Consequently, solid bright colors and subjects that contrast with their backgrounds permit optimal video quality.

The running time of streaming video is imperative to its effectiveness. A movie made for distribution or displayed at a tradeshow, for example, is probably too lengthy to be streamed from the web. Such a video should either be re-edited right into a shorter version, or split into some clips.

An Advertising.com study concluded that the brevity of streaming video might explain why it's gaining popularity: 66% of survey respondents prefer online advertisements which are shorter than those on television. 15-second spots had 20% high end play rates in comparison to 30-second spots.

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