Video Banners - what’s putting affiliates off? VOTES PLEASE!

[casinorip]

Tweet

hi Miche,

Great discussion!

Casinorip.com is another merchant offering video creatives, through our Casinorip Affiliates program.

Our video creative is a 300x250 high quality video that is streamed through a Flash player hosted in the affiliate’s site and is not seasonal, so affiliates don't have to worry about updating it later.

We took our TV commercial that we use for advertising in the UK and turned into a click-able video banner. It's easy for affiliates to use because the creative is essentially a very small flash file (player) that pulls the video directly from our server and loads incredibly fast in the browser. :scared

Check out our Casinorip TV Ad.

The video creative has been well received by our affiliates and it ranks very well in terms of CTR (6th). So I too wonder what’s turning them off…

Gil

[KGP]

i remember a long time ago asking -in particular firebox- here on a4u if its possible to get the video location on url (or embed info but unfortunately this didnt materialize...

i believe this is one of the main reasons as to why affiliates dont use them.

[nim-b]

I'm not quite sure what you mean on that, sorry?

Obviously we're already giving the embed code. Did you mean to use the video without the product info?

I can give the actual video url so that people can download videos if they ask. However I won't give this out to everyone as I'd be concerned about affiliates going nuts uploading stuff to YouTube, or using our videos to advertise our competitors. If its simply to have them on your own server that's fine.

I'm not sure why this would be the reason for affiliates not using them though.

If you can explain more that would be great.

[shellbrook]

Hi,

Really interesting thread

Thomson Holidays have a range of videos for popular holiday destinations available on Commission Junction, but similar to others’ experience, we haven’t had a very large uptake of them to date. We would be really keen to understand what is preventing affiliates from using these videos; we think they’re a fantastic addition to our tools offering. We’re currently working on improving our videos further so it would be interesting to get some feedback on this.

We have over 16 videos on CJ including: Algarve (10574893); Cape Verde (10575802); Florida (10575808); Rhodes (10575812); Egypt Red Sea (10575807); Egypt Nile (10574894); Egypt Luxor (10575806); Sharm el Sheikh (10575812); Hurgarda (10575809) and Tunisia (10575813). These can all be found in our ‘Advanced Links’ section.
The videos are user-friendly, allowing users to play and pause the content freely and most importantly they won’t start unless the user clicks on them!

There is also a link through to book the destination and the videos are also deep linking into the landing page for the destination.

Looking forward to hearing your feedback…

Thanks,

Charlie.

Charlie Ranger
Affiliates Manager

Thomson - Holidays, Flights, Hotels, Cruises - Find your perfect holiday - Thomson.co.uk

[KGP]

I'm not quite sure what you mean on that, sorry?

Obviously we're already giving the embed code. Did you mean to use the video without the product info?

I can give the actual video url so that people can download videos if they ask. However I won't give this out to everyone as I'd be concerned about affiliates going nuts uploading stuff to YouTube, or using our videos to advertise our competitors. If its simply to have them on your own server that's fine.

I'm not sure why this would be the reason for affiliates not using them though.

If you can explain more that would be great.

i mean giving the embed info of the related product to the feed not the "original video source"

[nim-b]

You mean adding the embed info to our product feed?

[KGP]

yes the same suggestions i made to you -but know i am making to the network member who asked the reasons- when you started the roll out of the affiliates videos (which was and is a great tool!)

[nim-b]

Hi

I'm sure I did investigate this when you asked, and hit the same problem as I've just done- that there isn't anywhere to fit the code into our feed.

I've spoken to Affiliate Window and there are two problems- firstly that the code contains some characters that might interfere with their system, and secondly that the only field long enough to fit the code into is the description one, and we can't get rid of our current product descriptions as they are in use.

But it has been raised, and as AWin are obviously keen to push video content I'm sure its something they'll look to resolve.

The only other solution, which I'm willing to do, is to create a seperate feed ourselves. Would having to fetch an additional feed work for you? I'm concerned it would just cause more work. We'd also have to solve the problem of adding in the affiliate id if the network can't do it.

Thanks
Naomi

[KGP]

no plz dont take it negative... just mentioned it because awin is trying to find why its not escalating the way they would expected -i think- and thats why i mentioned our discussion here on the forum ;-)

i think awin and/or other networks will look into this as its going to be a good way to drive more sales

[jezaff]

I have never been a fan of video on the Internet because of the time it takes to watch it. I don't know if I am typical but I just want to see the nugget I'm looking for and move on. Do web users have the attention span to engage with video ads? (just asking - I have no idea lol!)

This is true when setting up a site too, I don't have time to review ads and see if they are appropriate.

[nim-b]

I think it depends on what point in the purchase path you're on, and also the type of product.

For some products video provides reassurance as to how the product looks, sounds like and that it really does work. It can also highlight other visual features you wouldn't get in a static image. For example for a video camera you can show clips taken with the actual camera which is invaluable.

However for some products I think its not necessary, and it should always be supported by additional information for those not interested in playing a video.

Video has definately been shown to improve conversion on retailer sites though, so I'd be suprised if it didn't have a positive effect on affiliate sites too.

[trevHCS]

For us in the travel sector mostly, I've not looked at videos much before due to the lack of them, but this inspired me to look at the Bluechip ones since that's the only relevant merchant on Awin doing them (that I know of).

- Size as has been raised here is a factor. It's like if you offer 5 banners all at 468x60 then it'll be fine for some affiliates, but if you offer a wide range then more are likely to use them. In the case of videos it should be even easier, but in the case of Bluechip they're only one small size compared to huge on their site. Going to ask Elise about this later.

- Numbers of videos is probably a big factor. I'm looking at adding them now, but it's going to require a number of updates to the sites so it's got to be a toss up between spending the time for a few nice vids, and doing something else. Admittedly they take time to create for any product, but if the merchants invested the time then I'm sure more affiliates would do the same.

- Mentioning them in the monthly merchant and network emails would be a good idea too. I don't get all of them, but just adding on a note reminding people that they can get videos might make more people look.

- One thing the merchants need to remember is we don't all run hand coded 5 page web sites. To add videos to our sites for example is probably going to take 2 - 3 hours backend work, so if we had more to chose from it might make it a little higher priority.

Btw, if you have trouble convincing merchants, maybe ask if they think videos on their own sites would work. For many they would and if they can see it that way then they might finally see that its worth allowing affiliates to use them too.

Trev

PS: I know this doesn't all apply to all merchants inc. those mentioned, but it's just a summary of what I've seen and had experience of.

[EliseNewman]

Hi Trev et al - bit of a late reply on this one..

Our video creative is something we are looking to expand and improve on in the coming months. The sizing that we offer at the moment was chosen purely because it was based on the player that we used on our old site (which changed at the end of April), and I've not had a chance to offer any other sizes as yet. And I'm the first to admit that I've not pushed video very hard - the video has just been re-purposed from the video tours we offer on our own site, I was keen to be able to offer video to our affiliates, but I also understand that it may not suit everyone's site - so partly my own fault on lack of uptake.

I'm very aware that you can't take a one-size-fits-all approach to banner creative - as hopefully is shown by the range we offer in our static creative. Ideally I'd like to offer a video solution like Buyagift and Firebox - where the affiliate can chose the size and style of the creative from an area on our site, but as Zak pointed out - its a bit of a vicious circle: there are cost implications with setting it up (and investing in more video creative) and currently the uptake has been quite low - but would the uptake be higher if there was more choice flexibility in the creative we offer?!

Video is something that Blue Chip are hoping to invest more in, and I'm very keen to be able to roll that out to affiliates, but i need to make sure that I offer a solution that is going to work for all parties - which regrettably won't happen over night! In the mean time, there is the packaged video creative available from us on AWin - or as with all creative I'm more than happy to provide bespoke solutions to anyone that contact me directly. :tup

Cheers

Elise

[trevHCS]

Taking Bluechip as an example again, I suspect a large part of not using it was simply that it's buried so far down in the AW stuff that it's very unlikely the majority will find it. Mind you, until AW update things their end I'm not sure where else it could be added, unless doing things the Firebox way.

Regarding the uptake - my advice to anyone looking at this would be to create things for your own site which are beyond the standard affiliate tools (like banners) and then it doesn't matter as much if other people use them. You've got a value out of them yourselves and with that you'll get more incentive to produce more videos which I suspect will help the affiliate uptake too. Having seen them on your site for example, the one thing which is putting it lower down the priority list is there's only I think 3 properties with it.

With regards adding them to sites - the ideal system I would suspect would be a Javascript line which takes the max size parameters as input and outputs all the code needed to play that specific video. If everyone did that then it'd make it easier to add into the affiliate admin and onto sites.

Eg: example.com/video.js?maxwidth=250&maxheight=300&autoplay=1 etc.

...which allows for the video to be added with defaults to AW etc.,

Trev