Video conveys emotion unlike text and can show features and functionality unlike any picture. That’s why retailers see nearly triple the conversion rate on product pages that have video versus those that don’t. Entering what Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg calls “this new golden age of videos online,” companies and brands need an enterprise-class online video platform to deliver the video experiences that drive customer engagement.

 

In The Forrester Wave™: Online Video Platforms For Sales And Marketing, Q4 2016 we looked at nine vendors in the space–Adobe, Brightcove, IBM, Invodo, Kaltura, Ooyala, Qumu, uStudio, and Vidyard–and scored them against a list of 39 criteria.

 

The myth that video must be expensive is just that, a myth. Of course companies can still spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on video. But OVPs allow you to tailor content to your audience through sales and marketing integrations. Which would you rather have: a video with 10,000 views where you know nothing about the viewers or a video with 1,000 views where you know the name and title of everyone who watched?

 

Throughout our research we found that OVPs support:

 
  • Robust, actionable analytics. The OVP is the command center for video, allowing you to push content out to social networks and pull in the analytics. Additionally OVPs integrate into CRM and marketing automation platforms, which help you deliver the right video to the right person at the right time.
  • Optimization for self service. We know that marketing departments are strapped for resources so it’s important to be able to design video portals and players without the need for development help.
  • Wider deployments because of lower-cost options. Video is no longer the domain of the media and broadcasting verticals. The democratization of the content has led vendors to offer new, cheaper pricing options. In some cases, these might only cost a few hundred dollars a month.

We encourage clients to review the criteria, download the spreadsheet, and customize the scores and weightings to fit their needs. Clients can also set up an inquiry with me to talk more about our findings.