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Jivox Video Analytics Tries to Gauge Where You Are in the Purchase Funnel

People-Computer

We all know video advertising has considerable brand impact online relative to other digital ad units, but we still don't know much about what that richer media experience actually moved someone to do. Well, there are post-campaign branding effects studies of course that can parse out the kinds of lifts in brand reputation or purchase intent a campaign had on users, but those metrics come well after most campaigns end. Jivox is introducing one ad model and analytics tool today that tries to address the issue.

Their Quattro ad is an interactive video unit that clusters around a video player a series of possible engagements including sharing, Twitter feeds, etc. the ad starts as a video player box on a Web page. Visual prompts invite the user to engage with the ad, or a mouse over can expand the unit to reveal a full panel of adjacent options. The interactive panel that accompanies the video can lead directly to ticket sales or simply a media pass-along. They are adding to the unit back end metrics that convert the different kinds of interactions a consumer has with the ad into brand effects that can inform optimization in real time. Because we don't have enough pithy product brand names in the digital marketing space already, they dub this one BrandGage.

"We are able to use the data to optimize the performance," Jivox CEO Diaz Nesamoney tells me. "We collect these interactions to give insights to the kind of interaction that give value to the users." Of course there are a number of highly interactive video ad units in the market and have been for a while. Nesamoney claims that Jivox is using algorithms that convert interactions into measures of where the user is in the purchase process.

"If someone saw the ad and then hovered over the interactions and saw all the options, we would categorize that as 'consideration.' If they posted a link to their Facebook page that would be engagement. If they download a coupon that would be purchase intent." Marketers can also add their own interactive element into the ad like a game and pre-determine what interactions with that element would mean. The system lets the marketer come in and see these gauges in real time and optimize the elements to drive specific marketing goals.

It is an interesting model, but everything really depends on whether consumers are all that interested in interacting with video advertising much at all. "Interactive video" has been a dream for marketers, but there are several hurdles an ad unit has to vault before they even get a viewer to engage. In the end it all still comes down to how good the creative is at attracting interest and whether the content is sufficiently targeted to viewer interest.

Nesamoney tells me that Jivox has seen big differences in interactions according to the types of products involved. Entertainment products are generating more social media activity, for instance. Higher value items seem to invite more interest in other videos. Better known brands activate more sharing. Social activity off of a campaign can extend the life of the buy considerably, he finds. A recent campaign for the band Muse, which plays on the Twilight film soundtrack, got posted to fan sites and generated clicks to buy tour tickets. The initial video buy captured a broad base for awareness and then the social sharing element located the people most likely to travel down the funnel and convert to buyers.

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