Video is almost always more compelling than a page of Web text, and it is becoming the language of the Internet for promotion, communication and sharing event content to broader audiences. We will see richer and deeper involvement with video in our daily lives and in promoting, managing and distributing event content, so consider these advances:
Video is getting cheaper and easier to produce:
- Most of us are carrying HD video cameras in our phones with multiple free apps to record, edit and share the videos recorded.
- The price for higher-end video production equipment has dropped dramatically as well as becoming lighter and easier to use. Companies such as Virtuvent.com are offering cloud-based video production and online distribution for as low as $1,000 per event, a fraction of standard video production studios.
- Hybrid meetings and event content capture are seeing substantial growth at events.
Video is becoming cheaper (in many cases free) and easier to distribute:
- YouTube.com, the second-largest search site on the Web, offers free video distribution to over 1 billion unique users each month. Over 6 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube—that’s almost an hour for every person on Earth and 50 percent more than last year; 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.
- Skype.com provides one-to-one HD video conferencing for free. Also, with Skype’s acquisition by Microsoft, we will likely see more integration to Office products, and, therefore it will be more widely used for business.
- Google Hangouts allows nine-way video conferencing for free and free video Web streaming and recording to YouTube with Hangouts On Air.
- The traditional online meeting platforms such as WebEx, GoToMeeting and others are getting easier, cheaper and more reliable, as is broadband Internet.
- Personal, free short-video distribution channels such as InstragramVideo, Vine.co and Tout.com are seeing huge growth.
- BOB.tv, a business video distribution channel designed specifically around events with broad meeting association support, has just launched.
Video can be more engaging than other online media:
- Video generates a 400 percent to 700 percent increase in viewer engagement and response rates using online video compared to static content online such as text and graphics (Flimp).
- Video e-mail messages generate two to three times higher click-through rates compared to static e-mails (MarketingVox).
Internet video is becoming more convenient to consume:
- Internet video viewing on phones, PCs, TVs and especially tablet computers is exploding; 89 million people in the U.S. watch 1.2 billion online videos daily, according to ComScore. Online video users in the U.S. are expected to double to 1.5 billion while global online video traffic will be 55 percent of all consumer Internet traffic by 2016, according to Cisco.
- Google’s Chromecast allows video streaming to your TV from any device for $35.
As video becomes ubiquitous, we will see strong growth and reliance on it for event promotion and event content distribution.
