Come bearing gifts

One plus one equals...maybe five. Let's take a look at two breaking stories about online video.

The skyrocketing stat.s detailing interactivity with streaming video are pretty well conclusive: the landslide has become an avalanche.

Parse out what the latest ComScore viewer numbers suggest and things get even more interesting. Note that Facebook has climbed into the top ten; while it's a given that Google's properties lead the pack (eg YouTube et al), that a social media site is rising fast in the video engagement sweepstakes is Big News.

What's this mean to media buyers trying to calculate their best venues for IOB (Impact on Business) in the Age of Pull?

Everything.

Social media consumers are the savviest minds on the web. They're the market niches everybody wants: the early adopters, the influencers, the alpha males and the gamma females whose interactions in online communities shape the power of the web. I'll say that again: they shape the power of the web.

And here's the kicker—these folk hate banner ads. One of the most empowering things these folk do is NOT to click banner ads.

They are less likely to click on ads because they overwhelmingly prefer to interact with video.

To these users, video is a gift, an opportunity to interact, not a flat "push" ad—which (if they're anything like the folk I live with on Facebook, they'll ignore as crude and condescending.)

Here's the killer distinction, courtesy Lotame Co-op's interactive creative insight numbers released yesterday:

"Of the banner types in the social media space, we found that video creatives had higher click-through rates than non-video units, with in-page units performing better on average from a CTR standpoint than expandable ads. When compared on the three most common banner sizes on the Lotame Co-op, we found that wide skyscrapers (160x600) had the highest click-through rate performance, followed by medium rectangles (300x250), and leaderboards (728x90), which had roughly the same click-through rate performance...

The full report's here.

In a nutshell, taken together, the August 2009 video stat.s and the Lotame analysis are yet another nail in the coffin of Push.

The takehome is simple: if you want to create a conversation around your brand, use the creative medium that's not only going to change minds but change the very minds whose opinions shape the web.

Streaming creative video.

It's that simple. Be well.