Video, Social Networking and You

Social networking and the predominance of user-generated content (UGC), such as videos, have, by default, become accepted strategies of online advertising by Internet marketers and some smaller advertising agencies. The use of these sites by traditional advertisers is limited and can best explained by two questions that remain.

• Will UGC, such as video, ever become an useful venue for branding?


• More importantly, how will advertising fit into the UGC community environment?

The USG video market is just too lucrative for advertisers to ignore. Advertisers need to reach members of the allusive 13-34 demographic sector that use social networks. Social networks have a high percentage of users who log in and, more importantly, complete profiles that offer gender, age, location, occupation, interests, hobbies, favorite music, games, books and movies.

There are several methods of adding the brand to video: ad ticker overlay; end of video still-frame call to action, inviting users to click through to watch a paid ad or visit a website; and a mixture of the two, a brand presence below the video as it plays, a brief still frame ad, followed by a 15-second or 30-second ad spot at end of video.

The problem is how to be sure the advertising is received in a context that is conducive to the brand yet will not alienate the viewers. There are different cues to behavior on a UGC site than on a traditional website. Network behavior includes commenting, rating systems, tracking how often a video is linked, forwarded or posted to another site.

For a more detailed discussion of this topic, please visit the Behavioral Insider Blog to view Catching The VIBE: Targeting The User-Generated Video Space.

Tags: consumer-generated content, social networks, video, online advertising