The Cygnus Multimedia production crew on location in Las Vegas, NV at MINExpo 2012 shooting “first-person” perspective videos using a GoPro Hero 2 mounted to a mining helmet. Here’s a link to view the end result.

A: 27x more effective

In a research recently relased by MediaMind.com, it found that “the click-through rate (CTR) for online video is 27.4 times that of standard banners and almost 12 times that of rich media ads…In an analysis of over 3 billion ad impressions globally over the first six months of 2012, the MediaMind study, shows an increase in consumer attention to online video in ads.”

People love them some online video ads.

Thanks to @TomKohn for sharing this article with us.

Why Brands Need Video by The Pulse Network [Video]

The four steps of Cygnus Multimedia

I’m a big music fan, I’m a huge proponent of the power of video. The two converge in a big way, starting today at 12:30 (central), where Bonnaroo Music Fest will be live streamed to the world. They will have around 18 live performances each day that can be viewed on YouTube. This is just plain awesome. 

We produce an online video series for the website MassTransitMag.com called Mass Transit TV. It launched in April with the sponsor. The sponsor had not been doing much advertising with our b2b publishing company for the past couple of years, but they opted to get involved with this series from the inception. So what was the payoff?

After one of the videos aired, the sponsor received a call from one (of about only five) of the major train manufacturers,  saying they saw them on the video and wanted to get more information about the sponsors products for their trains. To put this in perspective, that’s like GM calling up a radio manufacturer and saying they want to discuss  putting your radio in all their cars.

Pretty impressive stuff if you ask me. This further shows the value video has in boosting brand recognition and its positive ROI for marketers.

For marketers, get involved by sponsoring a video series. Where do you start? Contact me, I may know of a series or two that could fit your brand. Or launch your own series. We can help you out there as well. 

Publishers, if you haven’t yet, it’s time to start moving on your video strategy. The world is waiting to watch it. 

This shouldn’t be a shock to many. But the conversation I had with an editor yesterday helped illustrate the challenge transitioning to video. Essentially the quote was “I’ll just add video to my list of stuff I don’t have enough time to get done already.” 

The mindset shift isn’t that you know need to add video, it’s that you need to do video instead of traditional media. Stop spending hours sifting through news releases to republish and spend some of that time curating videos to share. Write one less article, make a couple of quick video updates.

The key being the future of media is video. It’s not to add on to what you’re doing, it’s a transition to what you should be spending your time doing. 

christinebeardsell:

Views Down, Engagement Up For YouTube (via Engagement, Not Views, is Driving Today’s YouTube)

Here’s an idea for a type of video production to develop - present trending topics, videos, social activity, news, etc. for an industry, vertical or niche. I’ve seen a couple of implementations of this type of video production. One is What’s Trending with Shira Lazar. There are plenty of other people on YouTube who follow this model - usually highlighting popular videos.  

Pull together some “hot” tweets, a couple of viral videos, and most popular articles. Then make a video talking about these items while showing the video clips, tweets, etc. as you talk about them. You’re now the go-to authority on trending topics for your industry.