Everyone knows that a picture is worth more than 1000 words. According to this statement, and knowing that a video is made up of 25 images (frames) per second, we could conclude that a 10-second video is equivalent to 250,000 words.
Without being so pretentious, we can say that we live in an audiovisual world since we receive constant messages through both sight and hearing.
100 million Internet users consume video daily. 9 out of 10 watch the videos of the brands they follow and 65% of them end up visiting the website after doing so. But, what is the reason for so much video consumption? One of the reasons why this format suits all users so well is that it does not require any kind of effort. Just one click and watch/listen. Audiovisual content is infinitely more entertaining than reading text and attracts the user’s attention for much longer.
Doesn’t this all seem perfect? It would be if the “boredom” factor was not appearing in the user.
Increasingly, we find that this facility for consuming video is causing attention to begin to decline after a while after pressing PLAY. Hence, it is necessary to make a call to action directly involving the user to make their own decisions.
Surely you remember or have heard of the books “Choose your own adventure”. In them, the reader was receiving throughout the story a series of questions whose choices were directing the story. This in the video format is called “Interactive Video”. Interactive videos are designed to put the viewer in control of the story they are experiencing, breaking the traditional linear narrative and allowing the viewer to determine the content that is projected.
Imagine for a moment that the cinema was like this: you buy a ticket, you sit in the seat and the movie begins. What if William Wallace hadn’t been beheaded in Cinema8? What if Rose had let Jack up to the door where they were floating when the Titanic sank and been saved? Your decisions throughout the movie could lead you to see an alternate ending.
According to Forrester Research, interactive videos have a 1,000% higher click-through rate than traditional videos.
Some of the advantages of interactive videos are:
- Great power of attraction: There is no doubt that the creative attracts. It is a fact that the audience is looking for different entertainment and this type of format is it.
- The user as a protagonist: The way of involving the user makes him feel important and with decision-making power; this today is everything on the Internet.
- Better and more powerful engagement: The user who has created your story will feel unique and special. This feeling of differentiation will have repercussions on a more loyal audience, willing to repeat the experience again.
- Repetition: The interactivity of the video causes it to multiply (minimum) by two the times a video is played. This is so because the user wants to see the different options that he could have “lost” when traveling his way.
- Interactive elements: In addition to getting the user involved in the story, it is possible to use different elements to send him messages (through text and superimposed images, buttons, links, etc.). We can even make them send us an email from within the video, which would increase their conversion factor.
In the following link you can see a sample that we have created to illustrate this article. Throughout it, the user is invited to make a series of decisions in a road accident situation. Depending on your choices, the story will unfold one way or another. Act well? Act badly? What would happen if…? These are questions we can ask ourselves…
If you still haven’t convinced yourself of the advantages of this type of video, think about the following: Can you imagine a website where they told you how to consult it? Where you had some instructions that would force you to first visit the “About us” section, then “our services” and so on… Right? The user, by selecting his own actions, is making the video his own.
In training, this video format fits perfectly and all the big companies have focused on it. Isn’t it true that we don’t all study the same? Some first skim the contents, others prefer to make outlines and extract key ideas, others simply follow the linear structure, etc.
Thanks to interactive video, user learning increases considerably since with their actions they are reinforcing without realizing what they are viewing. It is a way to personalize the study.
Gone are the long and thick videos in which the user was advancing the playback control to get to the part they really wanted to see. Those in which you sat down to watch a video and disconnected after a few minutes because the content was not relevant. In the interactive videos, the user learns at their own pace, looking for the path and the content that best meets their needs.
The future of the video format looks promising thanks to the technological advances we are experiencing. AI (Artificial Intelligence) is entering this field that comes in handy. The “paths” traveled by each user after pressing PLAY leave a “data trail” that the machine collects, analyzes and memorizes. With them you will be able to get to know the user and get ahead of him by offering him options according to his tastes, habits and behaviors.