The Rise of Video on the Web

Content is King. According to the widely acclaimed book Content Critical, written by Internet gurus Gerry McGovern and Rob Norton, the modern world runs on content and the Web is fast-becoming the medium of choice for content delivery.

That being said, it comes as no surprise that the modern consumer is no longer interested in visiting outdated, static, text-based websites. With the introduction of new technologies, increased bandwidth availability, and affordable broadband connections, literally anyone with Internet access can enjoy the benefits of fresh, interactive, and relevant content.

Even amateur video photographers are capable of capturing and distributing pictures and videos in electronic format. With only a browser and an Internet connection, anyone can publish content.

The popularity of video as medium of expression on the web is obvious if you look at the statistics of popular video-sharing sites.

YouTube was one of the very first sites who started hosting video clips. According to imediaconnection.com, the number of people viewing videos on YouTube has increased from 55 million in 2003 to more than 140 million in 2007. At the time of writing, YouTube served over 200 million video clips per day.

The transition from text to video publishing has reached such an extent that even traditional text mediums, such as newspapers are now starting to introduce video on their websites.

Earlier this year, Google introduced a “Universal Search” system that takes into account search listings from its news, video, images, local, and book search engines. This means that companies who incorporate video media on their websites will enjoy a significantly higher search engine ranking than its competitors.

In addition to this:

• Video proves to be an excellent medium for illustrating processes, services, tutorials, training, and demos.It offers you a greater opportunity for educating, knowledge sharing, and communicating with your target audience.
• It helps reduce selling costs (businesses can reach more customers at less cost).
• Video helps to deliver a consistent high-quality presentation, which is virtually impossible to achieve even by the best sales person on your staff.

In short, incorporating video on your website offers you another marketing avenue to generate consumer attention, increase your website traffic and ultimately, improve brand loyalty.