Back in the 1980’s kids used to read these novels called the “Choose Your Own Adventure” Series. These books gave a sense of control over the story but publishers had no idea which turns and twists audiences preferred. They could do a test audience but that was costly and an inaccurate representation of the schoolyard. Fast forward thirty years and Marketing research is a fine tuned engine of more data than we can process. You can see exactly when an audience turns off a video and account where the viewers are watching the video. It turns out the average Viewer loses interest in a video within 8 seconds. There is a way to capture this short attention span with interactive videos.

An interactive video begins like a normal video but forces the viewer to push a series of buttons. It gives them several options for the path the viewer wants to take. There is an initial part of the video stating what the company does. Then it stops and requires the viewer to chose from selected options. Such as “continue to watch.” “Go to store.” or “Find out more about this product or that one.” This engagement entices the viewer in a way standard chronological video does not. More than half of viewers continue to watch when given the opportunity, plus you have the focus of their attention.

This participation is actually doing marketing research for the company. The viewer is tailoring the parts of the ad they want to see. If they have the option to make a purchase 15 seconds into a 30-second video, there is something positive about that segment. There becomes another factor about these increased clicks. The viewer watches the video again out of curiosity about the multiple options.

Buyers respond to sales and included incentives in interactive videos in one way to have them jump to the purchase. This also makes them feel rewarded for responding. Wording is particularly important and your copywriters can come up with fabulous ways to motivate the viewers into purchasing. They can do this with many chances throughout the video such as “click now and get free shipping” or “click now for 10% off” etc. Another idea is to offer a quiz about the video the viewer has watched for predetermined sale rates.

Interactive video marketing is still in its infant phase. But it has already done wonders for education and training. The idea is to capture attention and engage in communication. The power of video combined with choice does exactly that.

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