Web Design was one of the first industries that emerged out of the Internet. It’s beginning is mainly attributed to marketing companies and graphics designers brining their industry to the web.
After thirteen years it’s become an established medium for branding, art and entertainment. Web Video is now following in it’s footsteps.
Video on the web has only recently become popular. Beginning around 1995 with streaming media players such as RealPlayer. In 1997 Shareyourworld.com was one of the first video sharing sites but failed mainly due to limited bandwidth.
With the birth of Adobe’s Flash Video codec in 2004 and the increase of bandwidth video sharing sites like YouTube emerged in 2005 popularizing web video.
There’s a shift from many TV and Film professionals to the web feeding the demand for web video advertising and entertainment.
Sites like YouTube catered to the users desire to connect and share. The user community varies from vloggers to independent filmmakers. Other video sites cater to a specific community or host certain content such as Funny Or Die, iKlipz and Expert Village.
For Advertising video communities can be difficult because of over saturation of content. YouTube being a good example. There are too many videos being uploaded too quickly for yours to stand out.
This video summarizes the most common techniques. Keep in mind these days everyone and their chimpanzee uses them.
Under three minute, hilarious content will always stick to web audiences. The trick is not just cheating the system by uploading tricky thumbnails or changing the title to “boobs”. Recently high quality content in both entertainment and advertising for the web has become a demand.
You can only watch this so many times. Professional talent and original ideas shouldn’t be excluded from the budget.
To make an effective web advertising campaign Viral Marketing is used like Batman: The Dark Knight and I Love Bees advertisements.
Combining their techniques with web video will insure you stand out and reach your audience.
For independent filmmakers to make a profit from their work many sites have partner programs were ad revenue is shared. To make more profit many use services like iTunes or Amazon.
Also through merchandising and hosting advertisements on the series/films official webpages. Brightcove is often used instead of YouTube or such sites because it allows for high quality video to be streamed.
A good example of this is Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog which was created by Joss Whedon starring Neil Patrick Harris. It streamed free online and earned it’s revenue from iTunes sales, merchandise, and DVD and Soundtrack.
Thanks to technology video has become an effective medium that can be incorporated into anything. From games to web sites.
AKQA’s work on the microsite for Unilever’s Peperami Noodles Army and the Philips Bodygroom site are examples of incorporating interactive video into a sites design.
YouTube’s annotations, Video Clix are an examples of easily attaching interactive information to a video.
Web games can incorporate video just like the classic FMV games used to. A simple yet hilarious example being Aliens from Planet Dave.
Like Web Design, Web Video is a new industry emerging from the internet. It is still in it’s infancy but with the rate today’s technologies evolve it is quickly reaching it’s prime.