Archive for October, 2009

Advertisers: Forget About Flash, Focus on Video

Back in June 2009, Google’s Double Click and Dynamic Logic published a groundbreaking report revealing the comparative performance of ad formats in online branding campaigns: The Brand Value of Rich Media and Video Ads. The bottom line: while simple Flash is currently the preferred format for online ads, it is largely outperformed by video ads.

The Research Report compares the performance of the four leading formats for online advertising: Image (GIF or JPG), Simple Flash, Rich Media Without Video and Rich Media With Video. For each of these formats, analysts dissected 4,000 online campaigns and rated them along five result-oriented metrics relevant to marketers and brand managers: Online Ad Awareness, Message Association, Aided Brand Awareness, Brand Favorability and Purchase Intent.

Results are loud and clear: if you are trying to promote your brand or sell a product, video beats Flash 5 to 15 fold.

Source and Copyright Double Click and Dynamic Logic, The Brand Value of Rich Media and Video Ads

Source and Copyright Double Click and Dynamic Logic, The Brand Value of Rich Media and Video Ads

With this in mind, expect a shift of online marketing budgets from Flash ads to video in the near future.

Historic and status-quo reasons aside, the current predominance of Flash ads has probably something to do with longer delivery time and higher costs of production for video. But here’s the good news: Stupeflix is here to change that!

With Flickr Pictures Import, Creating Videos Is Faster and Easier than Ever

When creating a new video with the Stupeflix Editor, the first thing to do is to gather and upload images and videos to be included in your glorious project. But what if you’re missing a nice picture to illustrate your message? What if you don’t have pictures at all? What if you’d like to use an already created album on Flickr.com?

Stress not: the new Flickr pictures import is the solution to all your problems. It lets you search Flickr for pictures directly within the Editor, or select an already created picture Set:

screenshot-Flickr1The upload wizard then retrieves the images on Flickr matching your query. You can now select the images you want to include in your video by clicking on their thumbnail. You can also select all the pictures you see with the “Select All” link, or request to see more images matching your query if you haven’t found the perfect match just yet:

screenshot-Flickr2Once ready, your images are directly imported in your video project, so you can group them, order them, add effects, transitions, musics, texts, and all that great stuff.

Creating killer videos is faster and easier than ever. Don’t forget to thank the Flickr photographers for their good work!