How many times have you watched a video and seen a product that instantly caught your eye? And then you proceed to the description to find the product link. You are not alone. Now imagine the ability to click on a product, add to the cart, and checkout- all within a video or after the video. This is the value proposition that drives the concept of Shoppable video.
What is Shoppable Video?
A shoppable video is a multimedia recording that allows users to initiate a purchase from the video. More advanced versions of Shoppable Videos allow you to directly make a purchase from the video window itself. Whereas, in a non-interactive video, the URL of the product link is displayed instead of a clickable action. Shoppable videos are a type of interactive video.
How Does It Work?
Shoppable videos are the right blend of commerce and content. A shoppable video content removes the gap between the content and the underlying buying process. Creating an impressive content is very important as it ensures people are watching your full video and not miss the products displayed in between.
Features like Hulu’s shoppable previews allow the on-demand audience to buy movie tickets with just their remotes. This is a practical tool that simplifies the whole process into instant sales.
Source:.mediapost.com
As technology keeps advancing, more interactive elements and shoppability will be integrated into the viewer’s favorite movies and TV shows on OTT platforms. Shoppable videos are a perfect way to help shoppers make purchase decisions. Ultimately, leading to a significant boost in sales. The audience is looking for more engaging and interactive content from their favorite brands. You can incorporate shoppable content into your OTT platform and leverage the most potential revenue stream. For launching your OTT platform, you can use ready-made solutions to stream your video content.
Brands are looking for ways to reduce the gap between marketing and purchasing. Shoppable videos are able to achieve both. It helps to build a personal link between a customer and products to increase customer engagement. Most importantly, this shortens the customer decision making a path to boost your sales.
Benefits of Shoppable Videos
There are many benefits associated with shoppable videos and marketing products on an OTT platform. Some of them are:
Simplified Buying Funnel
The video content becomes instantly shoppable and this simplifies the buying funnel.
Increased Customer Engagement
Shoppable videos have increased customer engagement and offer optimum ROI. They are one of the perfect ways to increase user engagement, conversion rate and to decrease shopping cart abandonment rates.
Invaluable Performance Insights
Most OTT platforms, offering shoppable videos also gather significant real-time performance data. This data allows businesses to find out the best performing elements of their campaigns. Ultimately, it helps to get more potential customers.
Top strategies to launch successful shoppable videos
Here are the top strategies that OTT services must implement in their platform to launch successful shoppable videos.
Incorporate Shopping Into The Viewer’s Experience
People are inspired by the products in the videos they watch. However, there is no easy way to direct customers into the buying process. OTT platforms can shorten the search and buying cycle and make the shopping experience seamless with convenient shoppable videos. For the same reasons, most customers are more likely to become open to shoppable videos as a part of their regular viewing experience.
Craft a Less Intrusive Experience
Shoppable videos improve the viewing experience. However, if not designed in the right way, they might just not give the desired results. Today, most videos add dots to indicate the interactive element. However, OTT providers must design a less intrusive experience to notify viewers about shoppable elements in the videos they are watching. The cues can either appear in the opening part or during the end credits, which can be switched on or off as required.
Create Branded Content In A Measurable Way
Branded content is a new emergence in OTT programming and live streaming platforms. Brands are subtle when it comes to product placement in videos, but this just provides brand impression data. However, with shoppable videos, content owners can track click-to-view, click-to-buy, and click-to-share interactions, and ultimately will get a clear view of conversion data.
Branded content within a movie or TV show allow the audience to either seek more info about the product onscreen or click-to-buy. This may transform the way brands and content owners monetize using this Ad format.
Don’t Overdo Interactivity
Interactive OTT opens up plenty of opportunities to offer customers with everything from general entertainment to super-niche offers. It activates new revenue streams like shoppable videos, non-intrusive sponsorships, and individually targeted advertising.
There is no better time to convert a visitor when they are enjoying a well-crafted content. Whether it’s a shoppable show, or purchasing products from a favorite artist, or ability to donate to your favorite filmmaker, any video commerce is easy to use and frictionless. Most importantly, it must never get in the way of content, but must be able to enhance and convert it.
Conclusion
For OTT players, customer acquisition and retention is a major challenge. Revenue models that are subscription-based, ad-centric or a combination of both only offer a sustainable business model to a certain extent. Shoppable videos give a completely new revenue stream potential that also helps to differentiate OTT service offerings in the midst of tight competitions.
By adding commerce and interactive elements, OTT and live streaming platforms can explore the measurable impact of shoppable videos in their sales. Shoppable videos can link directly to the point of purchase, allowing OTT platforms to go beyond general advertising.
Moreover, advertisers can get some additional ways to market their products and uncover user buying preferences, all with the trackable conversions and data they desire. The possibilities with shoppable video commerce can be endless.
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