The upcoming explosion of video content for business purposes

December 13, 2009

As online video drops from the Gartner hype cycle’s “peak of inflated expectations” down to the “trough of disillusionment”, it is interesting to watch and participate in

  • Many experiments and ongoing implementation of video content management marketing that are intended to help buyers and users more quickly and easily understand the ideas, information, and entertainment that emerging growth (and other) companies offer,
  • Many video experiments that are intended to help advertisers reach their target audience, and
  • Many video experiments intended for customer training and serving customer needs.

Some observations that suggest an upcoming explosion of video content for business purposes:

  • I have written previously on Reality Digital’s* new Spotlight product, an example of a great low cost platform for managing, publishing, socializing, monetizing, and analyzing video content. These platforms make it extremely easy for people to manage their content online once it is created.
  • Professional video content creation is also becoming much easier and less costly. Thomas Friedman has a great example of how the costs of creating videos are coming down substantially in his Saturday NYT Column.
  • Online video viewing continues to go mainstream (some example data here and here).
  • Online content marketing videos really work well. The best most visible example is “will it blend?“, which has had significant results, but even if a video does not go viral, if they are compelling to the target audience they tend to have solid results.
  • Online video allows for microsegmentation of markets, which allow for extremely relevant content to small audiences (that are not economically viable in broadcast media).

The planets seem to be aligning and I fully expect that most business websites will be using video as part of their content management marketing, training, and customer service touch points over the next few years.

*full disclosure: Reality Digital is a portfolio company of our growth venture capital firm, OpenView.

Founder & Partner

As the founder of OpenView, Scott focuses on distinctive business models and products that uniquely address a meaningful market pain point. This includes a broad interest in application and infrastructure companies, and businesses that are addressing the next generation of technology, including SaaS, cloud computing, mobile platforms, storage, networking, IT tools, and development tools.