• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, September 9, 2008

Before spending a dime on Web video, marketers should take pause, according to Elizabeth Apelles, chairman and CEO of full-service digital agency Greater Than One.

"You should know exactly what you're going to get out of it," Apelles said during a presentation at the PMA Digital Marketing Summit in New York on Monday.

This did not mean that Apelles, who presented alongside Khee Lee, regional manager of Health and CPG at Google, is not a supporter of video marketing online. To the contrary, Apelles and Lee both fervently advocate this growing trend.

"The tools we have at our disposal that make engagement planning possible are just another reason to invest further in online video," Apelles said.

Also critical to the rapid growth of video marketing are the advancements being made in tracking and analytics technology. "Three years ago, we were looking at click-throughs," Apelles said. "Today, we know how many have seen a video, how much of it did they watch, and who did they share it with."

"Video is everywhere today, but who cares about size when you can track engagement?" Apelles added. "And it's not about what people are doing with video, but the fact that we can track that behavior."

And it's not just marketers who are getting in on the tracking game. Apelles predicted that within three years, service providers like Comcast and Time Warner will have profiles on individual consumers based on their content tastes, which the providers will use to serve targeted content and ads to consumers.

How can marketers best take advantage of Web video and Web video environments?

According to Google's Lee, the secret is effective community engagement. "It's about getting involved in the community," he said. "YouTube's success has come from focusing on the end-user and the community."

As extreme examples, Lee pointed to three brand-name companies--McDonald's, Apple, and EA Sports--that went so far as to incorporate YouTube-user-generated ads into their national ad campaigns. "These brands reached out directly to independent users, which is the best way to connect with a community," Lee said.

This last point, however, is where Lee and Apelles appeared to disagree.

"We'd look at the video assets a brand has rather than user-generated content," Apelles said in an interview with Online Media Daily following her presentation on Monday. "That sort of thing you just can't control."

In her presentation, Apelles detailed the work Greater Than One did for its client, BET.com, which was looking for inexpensive ways to increase ad sales revenue and increase visitor traffic and engagement. To achieve these goals, Greater Than One executed a pilot campaign highlighting BET.com's video player, and its extensive library of video content, which was supported by search optimization efforts.

The result was 142,500 visits at a $0.27 cost-per-visitor, 148,000 video views at $0.26 per view, and a 20% increase in repeat visitors.

"These campaigns can live forever," Apelles said. "The most important thing is to measure, measure, measure from the very start."