• by May 31, 2011

Companies touting clickable video technologies -- which allow viewers to click on objects to obtain more information or make online purchases -- have had their starts and stops over the years. London-based wireWAX, which recently entered the field, has added the ability for advertisers or other users to tag moving objects dynamically and to insert buttons containing interactive forms, social media links, apps and more.

wireWAX has also arrived in the U.S. via an unlikely partner -- 12-year-old search-centric Denver digital agency Location3 Media. As agency president Alex Porter told Online Media Daily, video represents only "a small percentage of our overall revenue now...but it's growing steadily."

Location3's 60-person staff does include a video manager, Nathan Evans, who said he was checking out offerings from Brightcove, the agency's online video platform, when he first came across wireWAX.

He then contacted wireWAX directly, leading to custom collaborations -- and to Location3's status as one of only three content and production partners cited on wireWAX's Web site, along with Wiseguy in London and Social TV in Greece/Cyprus.

On the platform side, in addition to Brightcove, wireWAX has partnered with YouTube and VMix for plug-ins; it is currently in beta with an iPad app.

Location3 Media has tested the technology on an agreeable "client," its own Local Search Traffic division. Location3 teamed with LightGroup, a digital production company, to make a video showing small business owners how to optimize local listings and develop successful search advertising.

The video marks wireMAX's first integration with Brightcove Express, Brightcove's service for smaller companies -- and debuts new in-video functionality developed by Location3 and wireWAX, including SMS messaging, and the integration of maps with live search results.

The video is also chock-full of tagged objects. For example, as the narrator gives tips on improving rank in search listings, viewers can search live results via a pop-up window to see where they rank currently in local map listings.

The video runs four minutes, but Evans noted that with clickable technology, "usually you'll see viewer engagement even longer than the length of the video itself."

Such increased viewer engagement is paramount in speeding up the shift of ad dollars from TV to online video," Porter said, adding that being in a Brightcove layer also allows Location3 to see "where viewers are engaged and what they're clicking on."

To date, the clicking has mostly (71%) been in the video's "position, accuracy and content tags," according to Evans, because the video's narrator specifically instructs viewers to click in those locations. Other tags, so-called "Easter egg" tags such as "Get pickup lines via SMS," have received far fewer clicks, with the live search functionality proving most popular in this group.

"Next time, we'll reference those more explicitly," Evans said, explaining that after decades of traditional TV watching, viewers still expect to "lean back and be passively entertained. We're fighting that viewer behavior....If you don't really condition viewers to click on the video, they won't know to do it."

Now that Location3 has seen results from the wireWAX technology, Porter is moving to increase the agency's video revenues from current clients -- "four or five proposals are on the table now" -- as well as using wireWAX as a tool to attract new clients.

For possible real-world consumer applications, Location3's clients, which currently include Boden, Red Robin, Batteries Plus, and FASTSIGNS, need only check out wireWax's latest global work -- a "fully shoppable" video   produced by Ridley Scott Associates' Black Dog for online men's fashion retailer Oki-Ni.