Professional-Quality Video is Now Affordable for the Masses
Aside from social networking, one of the core components to the whole Web 2.0 paradigm is video content. Online users, remember, are a fickle bunch: they’re not going to suffer through reams and reams of online text just so you can get your message across. The easiest, and quickest way to make your point? Video.
But video is not without its own inherent gotchas. First, and foremost, video is expensive. Sure, you can go at it on your own with a DIY sort of attitude, but you run the risk of producing a video that is decidedly amateurish . . . and a cheap, tacky video is not going to instill any confidence in your users, nor is it going to win you any new customers.
However, according to the Wall Street Journal, a new breed of video producers is now offering software and services that make professional, broadcast-quality videos affordable for most eBusinesses. Firms like Jivox, PixelFish, and TurnHere Inc. now provide ways for smaller companies to create, deploy, and monitor online video content cheaply and effectively.
At PixelFish, for example, they don’t sell a one-size-fits all solution. You can go the easy route and pick through a catalogue of PixelFish’s stock video in order to create a quick, on the fly spot that drives home your message while catering to a modest budget. Or you can step up to a service that provides you with a custom television-like spot that delivers a definitive call to action for your customers. From there, you can go a notch further and have PixelFish create a one to two minute video feature that profiles your company directly. These higher-end videos are usually used for virtual tours and product demos.
Other firms, like Jivox, create video commercials for no charge. Customers can customize items from a image, video, and audio library, choose a target audience and market region, determine a media budget, and then distribute the ad across a network of 600 local TV, newspaper, and weather sites. Jivox gets paid according to the number of views each video generates.
By Robert Pothier
