Online Viewers Prefer Socially Recommended Videos

February 7, 2012

This article is included in these additional categories:

Analytics, Automated & MarTech | Brand Metrics | Data-driven | Email | Media & Entertainment | Social Media

unrulymedia-online-video-social-recommendations.jpgViewers enjoy online videos they discover from a recommendation more than ones they discover through browsing, according to a white paper released in February 2012 by Unruly Media. Examining 4 social video campaigns from leading brands in 2011, the study found that 65% of viewers who watched a recommended video enjoyed it, representing a 14% increase from 57% who enjoyed a video found through browsing. Additionally, those who arrived at a video through a recommendation were 41% less likely to say they did not enjoy the video than those who found the video through browsing (7% vs. 12%).

According to a survey released in December 2011 by AYTM Market Research, Facebook users who have liked a brand on the social network are 3 times more likely to share a link or a video about that brand than users who have not liked a brand (57% vs. 19%).

Enjoyment Strongly Impacts Metrics

Data from Unruly’s “Social Ad Effectiveness” indicates that viewer enjoyment of a video has a direct impact on key brand metrics. Viewers who enjoyed the video they watched demonstrated 139% higher brand association, 97% higher purchase intent, 35% higher brand favorability, and 14% higher brand recall than viewers who did not enjoy the video.

Recommendations Drives Brand Recall, Association

The influence of recommendations went beyond enjoyment, though. Recommendations increased brand recall, too: 73% of viewers who had arrived at a video following a recommendation recalled the brand when prompted, compared to 68% who had browsed to the video. And 44% of viewers who watched a video following a recommendation agreed with key brand statements, 7% higher than the 41% of viewers who had browsed to the video. Concurrently, the proportion that disagreed with brand statements was lower among those who discovered the video through recommendation than through browsing (15% vs. 19%).

Brand favorability and purchase intent remained unchanged with recommendation, though. According to Unruly insight, this is likely to be because all 4 of the tested brands were well established, high profile brands with a high favorability index.

Half of Social Viewers Purchase Product

unrulymedia-socialvideoviewers-behavior.jpgSignificantly, 49% of the viewers of the social videos purchased the advertised product within 3 days of watching the video. 29% talked to someone about the video immediately after watching it, while a further 9% did so within 3 days of viewing it. Online sharing and emailing of the link of the video were performed only immediately, by 9% and 7% of the viewers, respectively.

Other popular brand or video related actions included commenting on the video (13% immediately, and a further 4% within 3 days), visiting the advertised product’s homepage (9% immediately, and an additional 4% within 3 days), and searching for the advertised product on a search engine (7% immediately, and another 2% within 3 days).

Unruly notes that these viewer actions do not demonstrate that its social video viewing is solely responsible for driving this level of action, since the focus of the research was around the effects of sharing.

About the Data: Unruly commissioned research company Decipher to determine a methodology and execute the study. Data was gathered from July to November 2011 across 4 social video campaigns from top FMCG brands Guinness, Coca-Cola, Unilever’s Cornetto and Energizer Batteries. Viewers could opt in to the survey directly from an annotation within the Unruly video player or from the video’s YouTube page. The data gathered from viewers following a recommendation was compared with that of viewers who had arrived at the video by browsing, to determine the effects of recommendations on brand metrics and post viewing behavior. 976 surveys were completed. Of those, 66% were completed by respondents who had arrived at the video they were watching from a recommendation, and 34% by respondents who had browsed to the video.

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