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278 9 Marketing and Advertising in E-Commerce

of individual markets. Line generates its revenue from in-app found that most major retailers are making product videos
games (60%), followed by sticker purchases (20%), which central to their marketing strategies. According to statistics
are essentially big “emoticons” (Q3 2013 data). A sticker is from 2014, 192 million Americans watched video ads in
downloaded from Line, which is a free download (available November 2014, and approximately 60% of viewers will visit
for Android and iPhones), and is attached as part of a text or a brand website sometime after watching a video ad. For
chat message. Users can get stickers from the Line Store details, see ramp.com/enterprise/video-statistics-2015.
(store.line.me), and now the “Line Creators Market” is Some of the leading companies in this area are YouTube,
available for those who wish to design, create, and sell their Metacafé, VEVO, and Hulu. Figure 9.4 illustrates the IAB
own stickers in the shop. Model of video advertising. For information on Google’s
video advertising platform, see google.com/ads/video.
Video Advertising Almost any video that you click on is preceded by a
10–30 s commercial that can be skipped only some of the
Video advertising refers to the insertion of video ads into time. This kind of “forced view” commercial has been found
advertisements or regular online contents. The Internet to be effective because people are used to seeing commer-
Advertising Bureau (IAB) believes in the importance of cials when watching TV programs. More TV shows are com-
video ads and created a guide to the topic; see slideshare. ing to the Internet, frequently with video ads.
net/hardnoyz/iab-guide-to-video-advertising-online and
the accompanying document transcript. Video ads are com- Viral Videos
mon in Internet TV programs.
Video ads are growing rapidly, mainly due to the popular- A viral video is a video that is spread rapidly through the
ity of YouTube and similar sites. Online video is growing process of online information sharing. These videos become
nearly 40% annually while TV viewing continues to fall. For popular when they are circulated via e-mail, SMSs, blogs,
statistics, see marketingcharts.com. discussion forums, and so forth. This way, people share vid-
Video ads appear all over the Web, both as unsolicited pop- eos that receive more attention, sometimes drawing millions
ups and when you give permission to see a demo or informa- of viewers in a short time. Popular sites that are used for
tion about a product. Video ads have become very popular in sharing viral videos include YouTube (youtube.com) and
the Web 2.0 environment and in social networking. The impact Vimeo (vimeo.com). For the top viral video ad campaigns,
of video ads based on their association with popular content see www.visiblemeasures.com/insights/charts/adage.
can be seen in Psy’s “Gangnam Style” video, which was Viral videos are liked (or disliked) so much that viewers
viewed more than 1.2 billion times within 6 months of its pub- send them to others, spreading the word about them quickly
lication on YouTube. Any ad sponsor receives huge exposure across the Internet. Marketers are using viral videos by
in such a case. A 2016 IAB report shows a growth of digital inserting ads in videos or by using ads as pop-ups prior to
video ads revenue to $10 million in 2016, an 85% increase the start of presentations; see adage.com/section/the-viral-
since 2014. For statistics, see iab.com/wp-content/uploads/ video-chart/674. Note that, if the reactions to a video are
2016/04/2016-IAB-Video-Ad-Spend- Study.pdf. The major positive, the buzz can be useful, but negative reactions can
reason for the popularity of videos is that almost everyone who hurt the brand. Baseline magazine periodically provides a
uses the Internet now watches online videos. Videos are also list of the 10 best viral marketing videos. For viral video
viewed on all mobile devices (e.g., smartphones, tablets), and marketing case studies (the best virals of 2013), see digi-
they can be posted on Twitter. Social media and the accessibil- talstrategyconsulting.com/intelligence/2013/12/viral_
ity to increased broadband mobile access are also reasons for video_marketing_case_studies_the_best_virals_
the growth of online video usage. Watching videos on mobile of_2013.php.
devices has become very popular on airplanes and other public
transportation. Consumer-Generated Videos
There are primarily two approaches to incorporating vid-
eos in Web advertising: (1) per-product videos that are Many companies are utilizing user-generated videos for their
embedded in regular product pages, adding product details; online ads and even for their TV commercials.
and (2) editorial-style videos that allow consumers to dis- YouTube is the largest advertising platform for video ads.
cover such products. Many retailers are adding product- It has billions of videos and is growing rapidly. YouTube per-
specific videos to their e-commerce sites. For a complete mits selected marketers to upload videos with ads to the site.
overview of video marketing and advertising, see webvideo- Google’s AdSense ad distribution network also offers ad-
marketing.org/video-advertising and Daum et al. (2012). supported video clips. Another way for advertisers to use
According to a Cisco survey, most large online retailers viral video is by creating contests (see onlinevideocontests.
are using videos to help sell products. Forrester Research com).