Tag: video
According to Cisco, video will make up 80% of consumer online traffic by the end of 2019.
But how long are they watching for?
Over the last 2 years we have seen video embed itself as the social format of choice, with the rise of Stories, .gifs and new channels such as IGTV and TikTok cementing the moving image’s place in the social content sphere.
We’ve been told as marketers that attention spans are waning and the race to the shortest video content possible is the race to run. Whilst this may hold true in certain circumstances (such as the most effective YouTube bumpers staying at 6 seconds or fewer), we think this is the year set to see the return of longer-form video pieces capturing attention spans and bringing worthwhile ROI.
Why?
A number of reasons – the nature of marketing content is shifting (for instance, more and more sponsored Influencer content is being consumed, which naturally takes longer to engage with), and as production values improve/quality becomes cheaper, captivating video content can last longer for the same budget. It’s proven that if you can capture attention spans for longer, the sales uplift of those who engage is greater. Basically, it’s worth the investment in your production to ensure your audience invest their time.
In fact, 64% of consumers said video content from Facebook has influenced a recent purchase decision. That’s almost on a par with real-life friend recommendations.
So, what’s the key to ensuring audiences engage with your video content? As distribution sophisticates at pace, through pre-planning to understanding the audience, use case and context with which they will engage with your content is paramount. Video is here to stay, but in a million different forms, and understanding how to effectively service many consumer needs with one content production will ensure you stay on the front foot.
According to Cisco, video will make up 80% of consumer online traffic by the end of 2019.
But how long are they watching for?
Over the last 2 years we have seen video embed itself as the social format of choice, with the rise of Stories, .gifs and new channels such as IGTV and TikTok cementing the moving image’s place in the social content sphere.
We’ve been told as marketers that attention spans are waning and the race to the shortest video content possible is the race to run. Whilst this may hold true in certain circumstances (such as the most effective YouTube bumpers staying at 6 seconds or fewer), we think this is the year set to see the return of longer-form video pieces capturing attention spans and bringing worthwhile ROI.
Why?
A number of reasons – the nature of marketing content is shifting (for instance, more and more sponsored Influencer content is being consumed, which naturally takes longer to engage with), and as production values improve/quality becomes cheaper, captivating video content can last longer for the same budget. It’s proven that if you can capture attention spans for longer, the sales uplift of those who engage is greater. Basically, it’s worth the investment in your production to ensure your audience invest their time.
In fact, 64% of consumers said video content from Facebook has influenced a recent purchase decision. That’s almost on a par with real-life friend recommendations.
So, what’s the key to ensuring audiences engage with your video content? As distribution sophisticates at pace, through pre-planning to understanding the audience, use case and context with which they will engage with your content is paramount. Video is here to stay, but in a million different forms, and understanding how to effectively service many consumer needs with one content production will ensure you stay on the front foot.
With Article 50 about to be called any minute now everyone in the UK is understandably uncertain about what the commercial future holds. But one thing that seems to be certain is that the luxury sector is experiencing quite a bonanza year so far as a consequence of the falling pound.
Just before Christmas, London’s Oxford Street was crowded with overseas visitors who appeared to be buying up the town as inbound tourism, principally from USA, China & Japan continued to surge. Tourist spending in UK stores increased considerably over the festive season clocking in at over £24 billion in visitor spending!
The falling pound
Let’s face the facts – luxury handbags, fashion apparel, eyewear and watches are all now cheaper here in the UK with their relative affordability making this market the top destination in the world for luxury shopping. OMD’s research further shows that roughly 65% of luxury products are currently selling for less in Britain than in the US, China, Japan and France, making it easier for inbound shoppers to offset the cost of their airfare against these bumper savings!
Seducing the Chinese traveller
Despite growing talk of China moving to a more national consumption economy, Chinese male millionaires still prefer Burberry & Chanel to top Chinese brands and love the shopping experience at Harrods, which has been acclaimed as the Best London Luxury Shopping Destination for the fourth consecutive year. The fact that they have hired over 100 Chinese interpreters to offer excellent and often personalised customer service to visitors is obviously a strategy that seems to be paying off! As high-paying customers who are used to the browsing and purchasing standards of WeChat & AliPay, the Chinese luxury shopper expects the very best service, including a choice of payment options, online chat assistance pre & post purchase and delivery within 1-2 days if not immediately.
An estimated 133 million Chinese outbound travellers will spend a forecasted $322 billion in 2017 and the UK wants to ensure it gets its fair share. The secret of success here appears to be getting in earlier on the shopping consideration journey and fully leveraging the research phase via social media and messaging apps to ensure you create the right list of ‘must have’ brands to buy before you set off travelling.
Duty-free has become a luxury shopper ‘destination’ in its own right
The global duty-free market is expected to grow to $64 billion by 2020, driven by a combination of low-cost tourism and increased demand for high-end brands, particularly from Asia-Pacific. With increasing numbers of High Net Worth individuals passing through airport terminals, luxury houses have realised the importance of producing items specifically for the duty-free market only which cannot be found on the High Street. Spending 50% of my life dashing through airports myself, I can understand first-hand the importance of squeezing in that luxury purchase as a critical moment of self-gifting to reward a few days of hard slog. Why not? We are worth it!
London Heathrow’s head of e-business and CRM, Simon Chatfield, recently said that when travellers describe what’s important to them at airports, retail is one of the highest priorities after punctuality and safety. Heathrow is also increasingly leveraging its own data sources from car park bookings to terminal Wi-Fi connections to help them hone their strategy around the profile and specific needs of the millions of different people who pass through their doors every day.
In 2014 Heathrow started their personal shopping service and over one million passengers have actually used the service to date. They also have approximately 25 personal stylists who speak over 14 languages to try and boost that special pre-flight luxury purchase. The recently installed social networking mirror at Terminal 5, inspiring friends to be part of the purchase decision, will undoubtedly also help protect Heathrow’s reputation for being the World’s Best Airport for Shopping.
A fresh approach
Global economic shifts and technological disruption are clearly redefining the rules of luxury marketing. It has never been more challenging to design a path to success and link the power of brand storytelling to the commercial importance of ‘getting that sale’. The power of video is now undeniable and some of OMD’s recent work with Tubular Labs has highlighted the fact that there is a growing consumer desire to get ‘behind the scenes’ of the once rarefied world of luxury – increasing its overall accessibility but without destroying the allure of scarcity.
We are playing a huge part in challenging our global luxury clients to ‘change the marketing model’ to better align with a new breed of influencers and brand evangelists. The Instagram generation are clearly luxury ‘owners in waiting’ and are dictating exactly how they want to search, browse and buy. Satisfying their needs will undoubtedly secure a bumper sales year for luxury in the UK and beyond.
Originally published by Luxury Daily.
With Article 50 about to be called any minute now everyone in the UK is understandably uncertain about what the commercial future holds. But one thing that seems to be certain is that the luxury sector is experiencing quite a bonanza year so far as a consequence of the falling pound.
Just before Christmas, London’s Oxford Street was crowded with overseas visitors who appeared to be buying up the town as inbound tourism, principally from USA, China & Japan continued to surge. Tourist spending in UK stores increased considerably over the festive season clocking in at over £24 billion in visitor spending!
The falling pound
Let’s face the facts – luxury handbags, fashion apparel, eyewear and watches are all now cheaper here in the UK with their relative affordability making this market the top destination in the world for luxury shopping. OMD’s research further shows that roughly 65% of luxury products are currently selling for less in Britain than in the US, China, Japan and France, making it easier for inbound shoppers to offset the cost of their airfare against these bumper savings!
Seducing the Chinese traveller
Despite growing talk of China moving to a more national consumption economy, Chinese male millionaires still prefer Burberry & Chanel to top Chinese brands and love the shopping experience at Harrods, which has been acclaimed as the Best London Luxury Shopping Destination for the fourth consecutive year. The fact that they have hired over 100 Chinese interpreters to offer excellent and often personalised customer service to visitors is obviously a strategy that seems to be paying off! As high-paying customers who are used to the browsing and purchasing standards of WeChat & AliPay, the Chinese luxury shopper expects the very best service, including a choice of payment options, online chat assistance pre & post purchase and delivery within 1-2 days if not immediately.
An estimated 133 million Chinese outbound travellers will spend a forecasted $322 billion in 2017 and the UK wants to ensure it gets its fair share. The secret of success here appears to be getting in earlier on the shopping consideration journey and fully leveraging the research phase via social media and messaging apps to ensure you create the right list of ‘must have’ brands to buy before you set off travelling.
Duty-free has become a luxury shopper ‘destination’ in its own right
The global duty-free market is expected to grow to $64 billion by 2020, driven by a combination of low-cost tourism and increased demand for high-end brands, particularly from Asia-Pacific. With increasing numbers of High Net Worth individuals passing through airport terminals, luxury houses have realised the importance of producing items specifically for the duty-free market only which cannot be found on the High Street. Spending 50% of my life dashing through airports myself, I can understand first-hand the importance of squeezing in that luxury purchase as a critical moment of self-gifting to reward a few days of hard slog. Why not? We are worth it!
London Heathrow’s head of e-business and CRM, Simon Chatfield, recently said that when travellers describe what’s important to them at airports, retail is one of the highest priorities after punctuality and safety. Heathrow is also increasingly leveraging its own data sources from car park bookings to terminal Wi-Fi connections to help them hone their strategy around the profile and specific needs of the millions of different people who pass through their doors every day.
In 2014 Heathrow started their personal shopping service and over one million passengers have actually used the service to date. They also have approximately 25 personal stylists who speak over 14 languages to try and boost that special pre-flight luxury purchase. The recently installed social networking mirror at Terminal 5, inspiring friends to be part of the purchase decision, will undoubtedly also help protect Heathrow’s reputation for being the World’s Best Airport for Shopping.
A fresh approach
Global economic shifts and technological disruption are clearly redefining the rules of luxury marketing. It has never been more challenging to design a path to success and link the power of brand storytelling to the commercial importance of ‘getting that sale’. The power of video is now undeniable and some of OMD’s recent work with Tubular Labs has highlighted the fact that there is a growing consumer desire to get ‘behind the scenes’ of the once rarefied world of luxury – increasing its overall accessibility but without destroying the allure of scarcity.
We are playing a huge part in challenging our global luxury clients to ‘change the marketing model’ to better align with a new breed of influencers and brand evangelists. The Instagram generation are clearly luxury ‘owners in waiting’ and are dictating exactly how they want to search, browse and buy. Satisfying their needs will undoubtedly secure a bumper sales year for luxury in the UK and beyond.
Originally published by Luxury Daily.
Now that CES is behind us for another year, we look beyond the Vegas Strip at tech news and developments from around the globe. First up, China’s leading messaging app ‘WeChat’ has released ‘mini programs’, embedded apps which require no download or install. By removing this step in the consumer experience, could this be the “app store” as we know it? We’ll just have to wait and see.
In the meantime, Facebook and Instagram’s Stories are increasing their ad usage. Whilst we’re seeing more and more ads, recent research has found the majority of Instagram users find their presence to be a seamless integration into the experience. Instagram demonstrates that branded content can work if done with thought and purpose. And finally, with a turbulent year behind us, check out this visual roundup of 2016 to change your perception. Go on…you might be surprised.
HEADLINES
INSIGHTS
COOL
- BMW have developed an AR ‘Product Visualiser’ – interestingly powered by Google’s Tango technology – that enables customers to get close to and customise selected BMWi models that appear before their eyes.
- Beautifully put together and mightily impressive: Kickstarter’s 2016.
- Uber Movement aims to help cities ‘grow in a way that works for everyone’.
DEEP READS
As ever, please read, learn and share away, #OMDFWD
Now that CES is behind us for another year, we look beyond the Vegas Strip at tech news and developments from around the globe. First up, China’s leading messaging app ‘WeChat’ has released ‘mini programs’, embedded apps which require no download or install. By removing this step in the consumer experience, could this be the “app store” as we know it? We’ll just have to wait and see.
In the meantime, Facebook and Instagram’s Stories are increasing their ad usage. Whilst we’re seeing more and more ads, recent research has found the majority of Instagram users find their presence to be a seamless integration into the experience. Instagram demonstrates that branded content can work if done with thought and purpose. And finally, with a turbulent year behind us, check out this visual roundup of 2016 to change your perception. Go on…you might be surprised.
HEADLINES
INSIGHTS
COOL
- BMW have developed an AR ‘Product Visualiser’ – interestingly powered by Google’s Tango technology – that enables customers to get close to and customise selected BMWi models that appear before their eyes.
- Beautifully put together and mightily impressive: Kickstarter’s 2016.
- Uber Movement aims to help cities ‘grow in a way that works for everyone’.
DEEP READS
As ever, please read, learn and share away, #OMDFWD
As Vine prepares to shut down, its users respond to the loss of their beloved platform. Thousands of fans including digital influencers, industry leaders and media members spent last Thursday mourning the platform. However, some Viners are choosing to look at the bright side. Despite increasing their social footprint on other growing and more lucrative platforms, Vine has allowed them to set up a format. Thomas Sanders, who won best Viner of the year at the 2016 Steamys, says “I continue to make content on other platforms. But Vine is a wonderful place for me to start with my social media and branch outward from there”. The news can perhaps serve as a reminder to us all that a single channel approach could be a risky strategy for brands and influencers.
HEADLINES
- As Vine prepares to shut down, its users respond to the loss of their beloved platform
- Facebook is getting all Snapchatty with an in-app camera and lens style Halloween masks
- The bots are (still) coming and they can now take payment
INSIGHTS
COOL STUFF
DEEP READS
It has been a significant couple of weeks for our understanding of the developing TV landscape. The convergence of TV and Internet technologies has been spoken of as some kind of future event for the past 15 years or so. Now, more than ever, we can understand it as something that has happened and will continue to develop.
The over the top global TV platforms continue to scale.

Netflix announced a global partnership with Liberty Global giving access to a further 30m homes worldwide driving growth beyond the current 29m subscriptions outside the USA. Additionally, RBC Capital Markets reported that 42% of UK internet users used Netflix to watch TV/Movie content in the past 12 months, compared to 54% for YouTube and 62% for the BBC iPlayer.
In terms of high-profile content, Amazon announced a launch date of November 18 for ‘The Grand Tour’ maybe the most prominent global reach show to date for an OTT platform. Twitter streamed their first live NFL Thursday night football match between the NY Jets and Buffalo Bills. In the VR space, the first VR Emmy went to the Oculus Story Studio. We are now witnessing premium content propositions, in virtually every genre, being made available through these new platforms being launched every few weeks.
On the other side of the convergence coin, the traditional broadcasters and platforms have been taking advantage of new technology led opportunities. At IBC in Amsterdam, Sky recently discussed the launch of Sky Go UK inventory sold via the Videology platform on a programmatic basis enabling brands to access content such as live English Premier League outside of traditional broadcast.
At IBC a range of new TV screens were launched that go beyond 4K into High Dynamic Range, Wide Colour Gamut and Ultra HD. Content in these cutting edge formats is more likely to be initially delivered over IP rather than broadcast.
It is not just a zero-sum game, these platforms drive each other.

Nielsen in the US report that increased viewing of related content on YouTube drives viewing of a TV show. Consumers are happy to bounce between platforms, especially on the same device, to create a more personalised experience. Measurement of this behaviour is now a global scale challenge requiring new methodologies for TV measurement, in-store attribution and cross-device targeting.
We can now see a path to better monetisation of video impacts delivered over IP. No longer are they something that is hard to measure, scale and trade. Consumers have taken to new platforms and formats, especially younger and more affluent consumers. Global platforms are creating and distributing some of the most high profile and sought after inventory. Brands can now also access that high-quality content through a range of new buying mechanisms.
Convergence has positive impacts on TV, we just need to frame the opportunity a little differently.
This was very much the focus of discussion amongst the media and advertising community at IBC. It is now especially relevant to have a deep understanding of many audience segments. Through conditional insight, testing different hypotheses and experimental design, we can recognise brand differentiators through value creation mechanisms. A clear measurement framework that operates across devices, platforms and approaches is now the most critical challenge to deliver on the opportunity of the post convergence TV/AV landscape.
Google has launched an artificial intelligence app called Allo, rejoining the messaging app war. While Apple (iMessage) and Facebook (WhatsApp and Messenger) have massive head starts, Nick Fox, Google’s VP of Communication Products isn’t stressing about Google rejoining the race. Fox said that “while messaging has been around for a while, smart messaging is much newer”. Google’s AI assistant and search functionality are built into Allo, offering a new level of service which other messaging apps do not offer. For example, if you are making dinner plans, Allo will scan nearby restaurants and cinema timings, helping you plan your night. You can even find out football scores and directions to your destination so you won’t be late. While Google+ or Hangouts may not have dented the messaging or social media scene, Allo represents Google’s persistence and commitment to foray back into mobile communication.
HEADLINES
INSIGHTS
COOL
DEEP READS
Share anything interesting you spot with the hashtag #OMDFWD
The annual tech and innovation fest, Dmexco gets under way in Cologne this week. This year’s tantalising premise is that, “Digital is everything — not every thing is digital.” Why? Because digital marketing is about to get personal, according to OMD Europe global account director, Steve Blakeman. OMD Germany will be hosting a rather grand presence this year with a stand in the main exhibition area (Hall 7 B-041), which will showcase OMD alongside other OMG agencies. Mainardo de Nardis, our Global OMD CEO, will be taking to the main stage to discuss the changing marketing agency landscape at 11:45 am GMT on September 15th, 2016 which you can livestream. Earlier that morning, Blake Cuthbert will be taking part in the Mediatel breakfast panel where experts will discuss expanding the reach and delivering new customers with digital advertising. Don’t worry if you won’t be able to make it to the event, we will be bringing you live updates across our @OMD_EMEA social accounts.
HEADLINES
INSIGHTS
COOL
DEEP READS
As ever, share what you spot using #OMDFWD